Books & Research ArtifactsReport

English：Books & Research Artifacts　·　Items & Equipment

The specifications and fixed sources of the four research materials, how the Artifacts System locks the world's high-value goods into a finite quota, and the sixty-odd lore books that are worth no money at all yet are the only first-hand historical record in the game.

Because knowledge is a valuable thing in this world. Somebody has to try to protect it and spread it around. — the Bookshop Trader

"Books" in Kenshi are three entirely unrelated things: research materials (burned in a Research Bench), lore books (reading them is the entire value), and junk books (purely for resale, or for tricking you into throwing the good stuff away). All three look alike and are named alike, and not one of their functions overlaps.

How the Research Bench consumes these materials and how tech levels are tiered belongs to Research; this page is about where the things themselves are, what they look like, and how many exist.

Specifications of the four research materials

The Book's item description says it comes from the "University of Machinists" — they compile their research findings into volumes in an attempt to teach others and improve the world. It is the only one of the four that restocks: adventurer traders, building materials traders, Hive traders and trade goods traders carry it in almost every settlement, wandering caravans carry it, and there is plenty of it in town houses to steal.

The Ancient Science Book is a different tier of thing entirely. It records the lost advanced technology of the First Empire, and the whole archaeological-scientific civilisation of the Second Empire was built on this body of books; what the Machinists study today is the wreckage of the wreckage of two empires. It barely circulates — the only vendors in the world are the Scraphouse and the travelling repair shops at World's End and Flats Lagoon, and because they are artifact-generated, they do not restock once sold out.

Engineering Research weighs 0 kg, unlocks the construction line exclusively, and is "almost guaranteed" to appear in three place types: the Post-Ancient Workshop, the Workshop Complex and the Deadlands Workshop.

The Artifacts System: the world's treasure is on a quota

The way the Artifacts System scatters good loot through the ruins is this: every location has an upper and lower value bound for "item artifacts" and "equipment artifacts" (calculated on the item's sale price), and the game randomly picks a batch of things whose total value falls inside that band. The item ceiling for Ancient Labs is 5,500, for the Ancient Tech Lab 31,000, and for Ashland Domes III and IV 45,000 each.

Three rules matter:

• The guaranteed quota is world-wide and one-off: at minimum 160 Ancient Science Books, 30 Engineering Research and 37 AI Cores. Copies beyond the guarantee also exist as random loot and NPC special items, but not infinitely.
• This system never generates an ordinary "Book". Books can only be bought or stolen.
• Equipment artifact rarity is hard-locked: armour, crossbows and robotic limbs are always Specialist or Masterwork quality; weapons are always Catun Scrapmaster, Skeleton Smiths or Edgewalkers (Edge Type 1 only) quality. Exactly 1 of each weapon at each quality grade is generated in the entire world, 1 of each prosthetic per quality (economy models excepted), 2 of each crossbow per quality (Junkbow excepted), and 1 of each armour piece.

Put another way: that Masterwork Falling Sun on the map is not a "rare drop" — it is the only one in the world.

The fixed sources of AI Cores

The AI Core is a metal sphere with connectors, described as "a rare piece of ancient technology which will allow anyone capable of studying it to unlock the most advanced technology of modern times". Its distribution is hard-coded:

The Ancient Tech Lab is the location type that guarantees at least 1 core, making it the most reliable source; it is garrisoned by Security Spiders and Broken Skeletons. Incidentally, the AI Core closely resembles a Leviathan Pearl in appearance, and certain features of the core-dropping "Cleanser Units" also resemble the Leviathan — the game offers no explanation.

Book-collecting routes

Ancient Science Books are scattered through Ancient Labs, Ancient Tech Labs, Lost Libraries and lost cities, the problem being that these places are usually heavily garrisoned. Three routes are friendly to an early squad:

• Workshop Complex (The Grid): no hostile garrison, merely close to The Crater, with the occasional squad of 2–3 Beak Things passing by. Requires a decent lockpick or a few sets of tools.
• Leaning Tower (Floodlands): unguarded, but not many books.
• Suspicious Lab: a "breadcrumb trail" left by Cannibals leads here, and the respawn interval is only 1–2 days, making it the best sustainable source of Ancient Science Books in the game. This is probably the Cannibal tribes' single greatest contribution to civilised society.

Lost Libraries have two further features: they often hold maps revealing other ancient locations, and the upper floor frequently has an empty Medical Workbench belonging to some old organisation. They are sometimes guarded by packs of Blood Spiders.

Lore books: worthless, but the only first-hand record

A further sixty or so books and series are worth almost nothing, and exist purely to convey information. Their contents range from historical research and ancient legend to military reports and suicide notes, and some carry survival tips for specific biomes. By source:

• The Holy Nation (the largest set, 18 books): Book Of Grace, Book Of Sacrifice, the Scripture of Radiance Series, The Holy Crusade, The Holy Flame, Birth Of The Phoenix and other official doctrine, paired with a large body of private correspondence — Forbidden Sympathy, Letter From A Freedom Fighter, Letter Of Farewell, Suicide Note. Doctrine and the suffering of those at the bottom, placed side by side; the contrast is the narrative.
• Shek Kingdom: Kral's Last Stand, Way Of The Warrior: The Book Of Kral, King Shager's Reign, Shager's Overthrow — the Shek's own account of their journey from martial glory to national ruin.
• United Cities: The Blessing Of Slavery, Money is Freedom, The Red Rebellion, Puppet, the Legend of Luquin Series and the United Weekly Series — core material for studying the propaganda rhetoric of slavery. Two documents in particular are the pillars of the Red Rebellion narrative: a diary signed by a certain noble records that "the ground ran red with blood, and those desperate souls clung to us like drowning rats to a sinking ship, dragging us into the deep with them"; and an unsigned letter titled simply Puppet strongly implies that Emperor Tengu is merely an emperor being manipulated by others^{[V1 0:10:31]}. The two volumes of the Legend of Luquin Series are the biography of the thief Luquin — who was eventually captured, paraded through the streets, then imprisoned in Tengu's Vault and tortured, and forced to write a book praising the Emperor^{[V2 0:06:39]}. In the same record, the Empire circulates his deeds as a story while simultaneously compelling him to write a hagiography of his own tormentor.
• Swampers and Drifters: the former gives everyday life at the bottom of the drug economy in items like Letters To Hash and Memo From Big Grim; the latter gives internal documents of the anti-slavery movement such as Moll's Speech and Letter To Moll.
• The Hub and miscellany: Ludin's Reports, the notes of the two priests, the Captive's Journal Series, Maril's Diary Series, the Mega City: The Beginning Series and other series.

The World's End library: the only scientific archaeology

The most valuable set is concentrated at World's End, signed by researchers such as Finch and Idad, and constitutes the only systematic archaeological discourse in the game: The Lost Ancients Series, The Mystery Of Skeletech Series, Mass Extinction Series, Cultural Groupings And Evolution Series, Okranite Theories In Relation To Findings Series, The Cannibal Plains: De-evolution Of Man? and the Tech Hunter's Notes Series.

Their value lies in explicitly flagging themselves as inference:

• The Lost Ancients judges from architecture and technology level that at least two preceding civilisations existed (called X and Y). X was far more advanced and long-lived than Y; Y reads like a failed imitation and reconstruction. Skeletons are confirmed to have existed within culture X, but whether they were X's creation or X itself, "we still do not know".
• The Mystery Of Skeletech asks: Skeletons are extremely long-lived, so why do they have no memory of the ancient world? The author lists three hypotheses (new Skeletons were still safely incubating at the moment of the disaster; they fled the scene; the disaster targeted only biological life) and states bluntly that verifying them would require deeper excavation and "a volunteer Skeleton test subject".
• Mass Extinction leans towards a natural-disaster explanation, and notes coldly that Okranite believers attributing the First Extinction to "the will of god" is nothing but tribal invention.
• Cultural Groupings And Evolution goes so far as to propose that the ancient dominant species may have been extraterrestrial colonists — because that level of technology is "beyond our physical understanding".

These books contradict and rebut one another, which is precisely how Kenshi handles lore: no narrator supplies the correct answer, only a group of people arguing in the ruins.

The Tech Hunter's Notes Series stands apart within this set: it is not a paper but a field guide, co-written by Trepp, Zed and Fish, recording region by region the opportunities and dangers of the Leviathan Coast, the Ash Wastes, the Black Desert, the Holy Nation, the Screaming Forest and the swamp, and even including a shopping list of "where to buy what"^{[V3 0:01:00]}.

Somebody is tampering with these books

The library also conceals a rather more awkward thread. One reading holds that Iyo, the Skeleton scholar who is second-in-command of the World's End science laboratory, has spent years quietly censoring any record describing the role Skeletons played in the fall of the First Empire, and that his superior Finch knows nothing about it; that Skeleton bookshop trader at the Great Library in Black Scratch appears to hold the same position^{[V4 0:22:38]}.

The evidence most often produced in support is the volume of the Tech Hunter's Notes describing what was seen at Obedience — it has been rendered unreadable by spilled ink, and proponents take this as deliberate Skeleton sabotage^{[V4 0:22:38]}.

Junk books, and the junk book that is not junk

• Damaged Book: avg. price 6 Cats. "Whatever it was, it's no use now." Found in Lost Libraries and, like old maps and parchment, has no function.
• Half-Eaten Ancient Science Book: avg. price 6 Cats. "Chewed up and half eaten by some kind of animal." Appears only in the Tower of Goats and the Cult Village — the game's little joke about how close you came to being rich.
• Unknown Old Book: visually identical to the Damaged Book, with exactly one copy in the world, in the Great Library at Black Scratch, making it the item players are most likely to discard offhand^{[V5 0:04:39]}. Its surviving passage is among the most direct first-hand testimony about Cat-Lon in the game:

We once fought together for justice. We survived the chaos, and we mourned the comrades we lost. The world seemed brighter for a while, but we were blinded by that false light. Even Cat-Lon — who ruled with compassion in his heart and an extremely hard hand — let order slip through his fingers. He was our hero once, and later he became our enemy. And we were pushed back into the dark. We never saw him again after the modern age... but he is still alive. A being like him does not simply die.

The weight of this passage lies in its vantage point: the speaker fought the same war alongside Cat-Lon, survived the same chaos, and ends by writing him down as "our enemy"^{[V5 0:04:39]}. Very few texts in the entire game can deliver a first-person reversal of that kind, and its sale price is 6 Cats.

The Great Library at Black Scratch (named Bookshop inside the FCS) is the largest bookshop in all of Kenshi: stock cap 200 items, restocking every 15 hours, selling both blueprints and lore books, and guarded by the bookshop trader plus mercenaries and ninjas. For topping up a full set of weapon blueprints in one go, this is the least legwork.

Related entries: Research, Items, Tech Hunters, The Second Empire.

Video citations

1. The Real Villain Of KenshiHeroInHisHead
2. Kenshi: Unique Companions | ScorchlandersCivilizationEx
3. Kenshi: Major Powers | Tech Hunters and CannibalsCivilizationEx
4. History of Kenshi: Major Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
5. The Age of Chaos: How Cat-Lon Became OkranHeroInHisHead