A guide to setting up and using a shooting range at your base for extremely quick Crossbow training without having to micro-manage against opponents.
*Kenshi Weapon Guide
*Best Weapon Type In Kenshi
*Kenshi Best Weapon Type
*Kenshi Best Weapon Type
Probably the rarest weapon class, alongside the Heavy Weapons class, Polearms are spear or glaive-bladed weapons With the exception of the staff. Their long reach means they can go on the offensive against most swords and blunts, and they handle exceptionally well against all sorts of animals. Perfect for the average gate guard. So far, i've used the Meitou No-Dachi and the Meitou Staff. They are effective but. My dude is a big bad ass Shek and those weapons feel underwhelming. Polearms for one, attack like a sword, which feels a little silly, since they should have like whirlwind attacks or at least AoE that hits surrounding enemies. What is the best weapon class and why (in your opinion). The Kensai, or Sword Saint, is a class kit for fighters in Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. This class kit has some major disadvantages and advantages, as they cannot wear any armor or arm protection, helmets (but they can wear other headgear, like ioun stones), shields and they can't use any ranged weapons except.
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Introduction
So, I haven’t seen this posted anywhere in regards to crossbow training methods, as most threads where someone asks about it usually get answered with the leviathan method. So I thought I’d share what I’ve rigged up for super-fast crossbow training right at your base (wherever that may be), and I’ll try to explain it in depth so you don’t have to spend the time I did experimenting with everything and avoiding all the small issues.Training your crossbows
Advantages & Disadvantages Over Leviathans
The following method to training your ranged combatants has a few advantages:
1) There is no danger of being attacked by your target or any other opponent – it is safe.
2) You do not need to travel to an area with leviathans, nor build a base/outpost there just to train crossbows.
3) Is constant training, if done right, with no waiting between targets.
4) Is less micro-intensive, as you aren’t needing to move your characters every few seconds to avoid attacks, nor to find new targets.
There are two disadvantages when compared to the leviathan method:
1) You won’t make profit (compared to the hides and pearls from leviathans and other animals)
2) It requires some initial setup time rather than just heading out and shooting
However, past the mid-game profits from training aren’t as important, as you can easily make millions of cats just from your base production, and the setup procedure at the beginning is well worth the convenience of extremely quick crossbowmen training at any spot on the map.
Setting Up
Now for the actual method: the shooting range. This will require some late-ish tier technology, specifically the Outpost S-III design. The reason why is below. There will be three set-up steps to the shooting range:
1) You must first build said outpost. In it, you will be making your shooting range on the top floor. I recommend making the bottom floor a production area for toothpick bolts, but you can make it whatever you want/need really. You’ll want some cages in the range, and to set up a row of tables across the room, facing the cages (as pictured below). Leave a gap somewhere so your characters can still access the cage/target side of the room (I left an interior wall-sized gap on the far side, to be quickly filled later).
2) You will need some skeleton prisoners. You can either send out a squad to areas such as the Floodlands or Iron Trail (among others) to find and capture some Broken Skeletons, or, if you don’t mind a relations hit, just attack and capture any skeletons in any faction. I do, however, recommend using Broken Skeletons, as I’ll explain further down. You should only need two or three. Bring these skeletons back to your range, place them in the cages and equip them with the sturdiest armour you can spare.
3) Get a skeleton character of your own (not an enemy prisoner) and place them inside the cage side of the room. This is the step that requires the use of the Outpost S-III. Normally, as some of you might be aware of, but many seem not to be, you cannot “trap” characters behind interior furniture. If you try to trap them, they will teleport out to the nearest spot from which they can move freely. It is, however, important that the targets, and your own skeleton, are trapped on that side of the range.
The reason is, firstly, because this allows the building to be opened constantly (especially if producing bolts downstairs) without the skeleton targets escaping, and, secondly, if you collected Broken Skeletons, they will lock themselves into the “Retreating fast” action when released from the cage, and if they cannot escape they will instead just stand motionless (pretty good crossbow target). The reason, therefore, that you want the Outpost S-III is because you can trap them in that smaller area of the room without them teleporting out, using a trick. Leave an “opening” against the upper-most segment of the stairs, between the first and second pole (see image).
Fill in the gap you left for your skeleton to enter, while keeping this stair-way gap open, and the game seems to be fooled into thinking that there is an open path to escape, when in fact it is not usable. Set your skeleton to be passive, so they do not attack the targets (the targets won’t attack them due to the “Retreating fast” loop).
A Range to Call Home
Your range is now ready. Simply equip any trainees with the weakest tooth picks or junk bows you can find, fill their inventories with toothpick bolts, and have the skeleton of yours (the “range-master”, if you like) release one of the armoured captives, and have your men fire on it. When (eventually) that target goes down, have the range-master place them back in their cage, release another target, and repair the injured one. I prefer this over using a repair bed as he can stand in the area of their new target while repairing the last one, also levelling the shooter’s Precision Shooting, plus it gets the downed target back to full health and already caged, ready for its next release well before the second target also gets downed. This means constant shooting, no waits, no moving except to very occasionally replenish ammo (which is especially quick if being mass-produced downstairs).
Just shoot until a target goes down, release the next target while repairing the downed target, rinse and repeat. The constant shooting results in extremely fast levelling, and you can be anywhere on the map doing it.
I realise this is less viable for the early-game, as it requires some high-tier technology for the building itself, and also requires capturing several skeletons which may be difficult for weak characters. It also requires you to have enough members to spare a skeleton recruit becoming a full-time trapped range-master, and a few individuals producing the ammo constantly if you don’t want the training to have any breaks (takes a long time for a full backpack and inventory of toothpick ammo to run out, and should have made enough in that time to replenish it, if not, assign more bolt-makers).
I’m happy to answer any questions, or give more details about anything I may have missed. I just wanted to spread this method around, as I couldn’t find any helpful info while trying to assemble it myself, so this might save the next person some time.More of this sort of thing:
Leveling combat skills is not as difficult or slow as you think, understanding how “combat level” is calculated is key to maximising gains. I will share in this guide some of my grinding methods, and why it is most efficient to level first Strength(+Athletics), Toughness (+Dodge), then Melee Attack, Martial Arts, and everything else, to avoid slowing down experience gain.
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Expect Strength, Dexterity, Toughness and most other combat skills to hit 70 (and beyond if you have the patience) with these repeatable steps.Combat Mechanics Explained and Outline
Experience gain (XP) is optimal when a lower combat level character fights one with a higher combat level. But how exactly does that work?
Combat level between 2 opponents is calculated by:
*Melee Defence: Armed, with weapon and using it (no crippled right arm or glitching out).
*Martial Arts: When unarmed. If you click over the NPC you should be able to see MA is being used.
So when 2 opponents are fighting with weapons, it is actually Melee Defence versus Melee Defence when calculating XP! Melee Attack does NOT factor in at all in XP. If one is unarmed, his Martial Arts skill is his “level”. It’s that simple. So armed vs unarmed? Just take M. Def. vs. Martial Arts.
This is the reason why it is possible to slow your XP gains to a crawl, if you have a character with e.g. 60 Defence/30 Attack, vs. an NPC with only 30 Defence/60 Attack. In fact, if that happens in your dojo, it is most likely your prisoner actually gaining more Attack XP than your guy, because your guy is the one with the higher “Combat Level”.
Bottomline: Keep your Melee Defence low at the start, if not you will slow your Attack and Dex skill gains! It is the easier skill to train later on, and just involves getting hit a lot by a high defence NPC while armed (and well armoured).
A small sized training dojo.
A larger, more spacious dojo.
An outline of how a new, fresh recruit is trained in my method. More details and explanation in the rest of the guide.
1) Strength to 50-60, by hauling between 2 storages. Can train higher to 70+, but gains are painfully slow after that. Trainee encumbrance is maintained at 70%+, but MUST be also carrying a body for the maximum XP gain!
2) Toughness to 70. During this phase, Dodge is leveled to about 40-50, and possibly a few points in Martial Arts but that is not important. Trainee is unarmed at this stage, against an armed opponent. If trainee’s Martial Arts is only at 1, that is the best- his Dodge skill will go up really fast even against a bandit of 30 Defence. The reason why we train Strength first is so that we can equip the heaviest armour, to prevent your trainee from going down too fast, and yet Dodge XP is minimally affected. I will explain later how the toughness can get to such an obscenely high level within an hour of this training phase, as it involves some planning and micro-managing, but it is worth it.
3) Dex to 70, Melee Attack to 50+. At this stage, 2 to 3 trainees (armed with crappy wakizashis) will attack 1 heavily armoured opponent armed with a Horse Chopper and other gear to make him attack slower. We want to be doing the hitting here. Because your Trainees are green, at first they will get hit a little and level up their Defence themselves. But over a few sessions, you will see their Dex and attack skills going up really fast, because their Defence is kept low compared to their opponent.
4) Optional: Martial Arts using similar method as above, but if you are knocking out your opponent too quickly, lower your MA by equipping stuff which gives you penalties. The nice thing about this part is even more easy Dexterity gains! You shouldn’t go down too quickly (unless you are a Hiver) because of the prior toughness and dodge training.
5) Optional: Melee Defence. In my opinion, quite unnecessary to train in a dojo setting. In my playthroughs, my recruits come out of training with 70 Attack and about 35-40 Defence. Because quite a lot of enemies in the world have 30+ Defence, over lots of combat and getting hit in the wilds, the Defence gains are still good, and they usually end up in the 50-60s. BUT if you really want to train it up in the dojo, equip your guy with the heaviest armour, and a crappy sabre like the Horse Chopper (reversing the training for attack) and just let him get hit repeatedly by your high Defence opponent.1) Strength Training
Super boring, but thankfully not so many clicks or micro-managing once you set it up.
Set up 2 storage boxes, (distance between them about the width of 5-6 Stormhouses). Test if you are able to transfer between them using a recruit, by Right-Clicking on one box (it opens up one inventory), then LEFT-clicking on the other. You should have both storage boxes inventories open. If you can drag the entire stack between the 2 boxes, perfect! This is especially important to reduce micro-managing later.
Accumulate as many building materials as you can into 1 box. Buy, craft etc. In Mongrel, I could buy up about 100 materials in 2-3 days, I don’t think I use the shopping mod.
LEFT click on the storage box with the building materials. Drag it out, you should see the whole stack on the floor. (Note that Importing saves removes all items on floors! Be warned!)
Order the recruit to haul to the other storage box further away. When the box is full (check periodically whether your recruit is “Aimless”, and not “Hauling to” so you don’t have to keep loading back to the strength circuit), order him by R-Clicking on any of the box, then LEFT-click on the other. Both boxes open, drag all the mats back to the starting box, then drag out to the floor. The cycle will continue again.
The recruit should be encumbered above 70% and MUST be carrying a body to have the maximal strength gains. For the recruits inventory, arrange it in a way that he can only take ONE building material per trip. I suggest for the bulk of the weight, to avoid so many clicking to add/remove stuff as the training progresses: Load up a trader’s backpack with Steel Bars, or Iron Ore if you have alot lying about. Then drag this loaded backpack into his main inventory. It will fill up most of the inventory’s grid space as well, so you don’t have to add too much junk to clutter it up. It also still gives you space at the side to add some food/meds. (Be warned: Importing a game clears the contents of these “loaded” backpacks within inventories!)
Other suggestions: Hauling water, ore, anything works, but I find that something with a larger inventory footprint is the best, to make them haul 1 at a time.
Example: In my game Mongrel had 2 small shacks with almost the perfect distance.2) Toughness Training
Toughness XP is of course given when being hit.
But the best Toughness XP is when your guy is “Playing dead” and you force him to get up, giving him a chunk of XP immediately.
Your character “plays dead” only in the following conditions:
*No other squad mates/or even allies(?) within about 1 screen (fully zoomed out)
*At least 2 conscious enemies in the direct vicinity.
*He is not below his KO point (recovery coma). Head, chest, stomach knocks out a person, but head knock outs last a bit longer (more annoying)
I discovered this by accident as I was using the Dust King and Ninja Tower as my toughness training spot. It worked well, but is too risky. Occasional patrols and bandits will come disrupt the entire thing, leading to wasted time and increased recuperation hours. And if you KO too near to the entrance, they will put you in their prison, wasting even more time.
Another important note: Toughness gains from being hit is not about the amount of injury, it is the amount of intended damage. I tested this by using a captured Security Spider and letting my guys get hit by it. The armoured and unarmoured guys got about the same amount of XP, although of course those without armour were nearer to death.
The Toughness Training Centre
Set up a training house, Stormhouse is good enough. Place it about more than 1 screen away from your base, in as safe a place as possible. I placed mine just outside Mongrel, so in case hits the fan, I could get my strength haulers/cook/researcher to come save the trainee.
Finding the suitable training partners is the tricky part. Some NPCS are overly aggressive, once you are KO or they are released they start bashing out of the house. We don’t want that. In my experience, Dust, Starving Bandits are quite good for this. I used a Fog Prince as my “attacker” in this case. strange that at first, he was always trying to get out of Mongrel, but after a while of imprisonment he becomes docile. But the main thing is this attacker shouldn’t be that type of NPC. Test first. Arm this guy with a crappy Horse Chopper and maybe some armour (if your trainee is a MA pro he will probably KO this prisoner)
The second prisoner you need is the thing which is the cheesing part. You will need to find a leg less prisoner. Fighting lots of Fogmen helps- occassionally you find one whose legs are gone or bleeding out. Patch that Fogman, BUT stop before you aid his legs. Let the legs fall off, then re-bandage to prevent death. Whatever your method, you need this prisoner being unable to escape. This immobile, but conscious(important!) prisoner is what will force your trainee to “play dead”, and is the crucial part of this phase.
Trainee: UNARMED, and in heaviest armour possible. You need the strength training prior to this, so that you can actually gain Dodge XP while getting good protection. We don’t want to get Recovery Coma at all. If his MA is 1, even better, means he won’t be knocking our prisoner out at all, and most likely he is getting hit. Remember, this phase is to train 1) Toughness, then secondarily Dodge, MA can always wait.
Put the crippled prisoner in a bed, release the Attacker prisoner, and fight. If your guy is MA pro, make him block instead, and encumber him even more with some large backpack. It will also force his MA skill down, and Dodge should skyrocket.
I tend to speed up time here, but pause and slow down whenever your guy is KO. Assess the situation, if it’s okay, speed up, get up from “playing dead”, watch your toughness level go up. If his damage to limbs or head is getting too heavy and risky, let him rest in a bed first. Our Attacker Prisoner should be courteous enough to wait. If not, knock him out and put him back in the cage first.
In my experience, getting to 60 toughness isn’t a problem, grinding to 70 and beyond starts to get tedious. I noticed that at a certain stage past 70, your KO time shortens to an extent that you get up faster too. But by then, you need to get up 10+ times to gain 1 toughness level.
Depends on your patience, I find 70 sufficient for most characters. Highest I got was 90, but do note that with Shek or Hiver it may be slightly easier to go higher.
Beep undergoing toughness training! (He went on to 71 Toughness)3) Dexterity, and Melee Attack
Note: If you cannot capture a Skeleton at this stage, kidnap a few Shek Dust Bandits, that is the next best prisoner for this.
Kidnap a Broken Skeleton from a Deadlands Workshop. At the same time, if you haven’t done so, buy 2 Engineering Research to unlock the skeleton repair bed. Save up some skeleton repair kits too, we need it for our prisoner.
Skeletons are naturally resistant to our crappy wakizashis, so will make an ideal training dummy for our recruits. Make this Skeleton prisoner a crappy Horse Chopper. You can equip this Skeleton with armour too, but it may not be necessary, unless your recruits are knocking him out way too fast.
Note: Nikon’s stats when just starting this phase, Dex is at 3.
Within one day(look at the time), Dex at 59, Attack at 55!
Release him and have your recruits have it at him. This method works without the 3x combat mod too, but if you have the 3x Attack Slots mod by HaTsUnE_NeKo (mod link, it speeds things up even more, as your 3 guys can stun and hit at the same time.
I speed up time to the fastest until Skeleton goes down. Then quickly get him to the Repair Bed, and have all 3 recruits patch him up for the next round. Keep doing this until you get bored.
The Skeleton will have higher and higher defence, thus gaining more XP for newer recruits. Your recruits will get hit occasionally, so they will still get Defence XP. Especially for the races which have Dex bonus, they easily hit 70+ dex in less than an hour with this method.4) Martial Arts and other tips, notes
Martial arts is done the same way as the above, and is good as you gain even more Dex XP and small amounts of toughness (like you need any more, if you had followed the toughness training method in part 2) I will write more on this when I get my first guy to 80 MA (past 65 seems to be so slow, without always KO’ing my opponent instead)
I will continue this guide when time allows, but here are some random tips:
Why do I keep saying, use Horse Chopper for the opponent?
Because it is the weakest cutting weapon which adds Defence to our prisoner, and lowers attack. A wakizashi will make our opponent attack too often.
Being a cutting weapon, your trainees will recover faster too. Blunt injuries, because they remove the part of the health bar completely, seems to always take longer to recover.
If you remembered how Combat Level is calculated- the most important thing is that your training prisoner attacks less than your guys. The ideal training partner is one which the Defence is highest, but attack the slowest. Use large backpacks or anything which slows the prisoner’s rate of attack.Kenshi Weapon Guide
The reverse is true when you are training up your defence yourself. So you can use this information to figure things out for yourself.
There are many, other methods of training, but why I like this the best is because:
*2 guys can be on strength hauling training
*And you can micro the toughness training for that 1 person
*Then rotate
*And get back all 3 of them for the Dexterity and Attack class
*Then Martial Arts.
Another tip about setting up your training camp: It is easier to wall off a section of your base with a gate, as opposed to setting the non-trainees to “Passive” or “Hold”, in case you really do get a raid. When the gate is locked, the non-trainees will not rush to attack or medic, so you don’t have to set them to “Passive”. Note that if you have mercenaries in your base, this will not work- mercs will bash your gate to get into the training compound.Special Section: Your first character, stealing as an OP start
Initially I wanted to put this section in front, but realised it has little to do with Combat Mechanics.Best Weapon Type In Kenshi
This is for the new players who have not understood why stealing and stealth is so overpowered, or they find the game too difficult (actually it is too easy because of these, that’s why we need to set limitations on ourselves).Kenshi Best Weapon Type
Your first character will most likely not be trained in the efficient combat methods above, but will be key to setting up your first training centre, as you will need to capture a bandit, and do research in a town to unlock storage, beds, cages, among other things. Stealing is of course a very overpowered start, but for new players who are still figuring out the game, it gives you a major head start as loads of money can be earned within the confines of a safe town.
Level up his/her stats this way:Kenshi Best Weapon Type
Stealth: Just by running around a lot in stealth. I had a Hive start, and at Day 2 my character was at 50 just by continuously running through the Hiver crowds. I used to think the XP gain is from being un-encumbered, but the best gains seem to come by running in darkness with the presence of many enemies around. Just level this naturally. IIRC around 50 stealth you will start to move quicker while in stealth.
Thievery: Go to a large town building like a Bughouse. Usually there are 1 or 2 corners which the NPCs will not see you even in daylight. While running (Stealthed!) around the shop steal as many cups, bowls, pickable small items as you can. The trick is this: Stealing items NOT in containers does not require a skill check, and will always give you XP to Thievery. Go to the quiet corner, PAUSE game and drop all your items, unpause and pick them all up. Repeat as many as your patience allows, but I find 60 skill to be more than sufficient at the beginning. IIRC 60+ skill allows you to steal from a container right next to the shopkeeper without getting caught. Use your common sense, only do this training when you are not seen (blue eye icon), picking up these stolen goods from the floor is a crime too.
Lockpicking: Faster than using the practice boxes, lockpick whenever an opportunity presents itself. A chunk of xp is awarded on successful picks, more than failures, so sometimes you grind by picking all those 90% success rates ones first. Stealth is more important, so you can get into more places to pick more locks. I recommend having a dedicated lockpicking thief, so you can concentrate all that skills in one guy to pick those really high level locks. The rest of your squad mates can just have some, enough to escape a fogman or cannibal cage.
Assassination: XP is given for failed attempt as well, although of course you do not want to attempt this on town NPCs. When you manage to capture your first bandit, leveling this is much easier. It sounds cruel, but if you can get a legless bandit with high toughness, that gives you the best gain. Put the bandit on a camp bed, then repeatedly try to knock him out. If it gets too easy, slowing the process of XP farming due to the KO time, equip Samurai Armour etc. to give yourself a penalty. Sometimes, certain bandits like Dust/Starving bandits “glitch out” in the training building, meaning they won’t retaliate even if you fail an attempt. It’s really cheesy but most of my trained characters have Assassination in the 70s in a few minutes (on x3 speed setting), due to how easy it is to cheese it once you have it set up.
Buy the cheapest house in town. Research T1, storage, etc. (Not sure if this exploit will be fixed) The Crossbow Locker accepts any item and cleans it of its stolen tag, allowing you to resell it. If not, dumping stolen weapons in weapon storage, armour into armour chest etc. cleans it of its stolen tag. This is super overpowered way of making loads of money right from day 1 (or 2), you may still need to fence your first stolen goods in another place before you are able to make your own house of fencing goods (hehe).Conclusion
I wrote this guide to record down some of the things which I learned in the past year of playing Kenshi, to help out the newer players and to give back to the community. Kenshi is easily one of the best games I have ever played, and I hope that people see that at the end of it, it’s not about grinding the skills to 100 or accumulating tons of money (there are always ways to cheese the system or through mods), it is about creating a playthrough which you decide how you want the story to pan out, maybe setting yourself some limitations.
For example, one can decide not to steal at all, then in that case getting that Masterwork armour for our training will be only through crafting or a lucky purchase. Or if a race has a penalty to Strength, I will not bother grinding it past 60-70, etc. So you decide how you want to play. I hope this guide only serves as an inspiration to start your own creative methods of training. It is certainly not the best or only way, as I have experimented with other methods prior to this. I plan to update with more images to better explain the concept of the training center, setting up the inventory and house, etc.
That said, have fun and happy trails!
Bo’s stats weren’t the highest I grinded, but at Str 75, Toughness 90, Dex 86, Atk/Def 80/56, MA:66 Dodge: 81 and a host of stealth skills, attacking the slavers was a walkover. This was on an Anti-Slavers/HN/UC playthrough. You can see the training dummy, the Broken Skeleton has 80+ Def for us to train on.More of this sort of thing:
