Commonly misread game mechanicsReport

English：Commonly misread game mechanics　·　Other

Kenshi has a set of mechanics that read one way and work another. Only two kinds of thing are collected here, the ones with hard numbers from the game files or from testing, and the ones a player is bound to misread from the name or the in-game description alone.

Contents

Weather: the name describes the phenomenon, the damage does not always follow
"Immune" is not all-or-nothing
What happens after you go down depends on whose ground you fell on
"Hostile on sight" ignores relations
Things players assume are there and are not
The official map's markers have nothing to do with place names
See also

# Commonly misread game mechanics

The confusable translations table deals with clashing names. This page deals with clashing concepts, meaning mechanics whose name or description says one thing while the mechanic does another.

NoteWhat qualifies: an entry belongs here only if the game files or testing back it up with hard numbers, or if a player is bound to misread it from its name and in-game description. Mistakes this site's own code or data have made are not listed, because those are our problem and not the game's.

Weather: the name describes the phenomenon, the damage does not always follow

What you see	What you assume	What actually happens
Dust storm	It hurts you	No damage at all. What it takes is accuracy: at strength 1.0, −10 Melee Attack and Martial Arts, −33.5% Perception and Precision Shooting. The arm-over-the-eyes animation is cosmetic and blocks none of the penalty.
Acid rain	You need 100% protection	One dustcoat (80%) is enough. Past 80% you regenerate faster than the acid takes, so the last 20% buys no extra safety.
Venge's beams	They can catch you at any hour	Daylight only. Enter around 23:00, be indoors before 05:00, and take zero. It is also the only weather in the game that deals Cut damage.
Poison gas	A good helmet will do	Only three head items in the game block it fully. Without one, nobody lasts much more than ten minutes.
Tents	Camping shelters you from the weather	A tent stops acid rain and nothing else. All-weather immunity means going indoors, and a rooftop counts.

"Immune" is not all-or-nothing

Skeletons and animals ignore every weather type. But the real value of skeleton immunity is elsewhere: they have no head, shirt or footwear slots at all, only armour and trousers, so immunity frees those two slots for combat armour.
Hivers are immune to acid but not to gas. Hive drones cannot wear helmets at all, which caps their gas protection at the Swamp Ninja rag's 20%, so a run into the Ashlands or the Black Desert has to be crewed by members who can wear a helmet.
Any shoes make acid ground completely harmless, whatever the type. But in acid water, armour's weather protection is not counted at all. The two rules have near-identical names and opposite behaviour.

What happens after you go down depends on whose ground you fell on

Being knocked out is not an ending in Kenshi, it is a fork:

Down on slaver or bounty-hunter ground → sold
Down on cannibal ground → eaten
Down on Skin Bandit ground → skinned

There is a second distinction inside "will they eat me": only a recovery coma, the long unconsciousness after heavy injury, gets you eaten. A normal KO wakes you the moment they bite.

"Hostile on sight" ignores relations

Cannibals, Fogmen, Starving Bandits and their kind attack on sight without consulting your relations with them, so diplomacy, reputation and gifts all do nothing. The answer is to run, not to fight.

By the same logic, an enemy-uniform disguise only works as a full set. One looted piece is worse than none, because it marks you as a traitor outright.

Things players assume are there and are not

Food never spoils. How much you carry depends only on your slots, and there is no need to worry about it sitting around. Skeletons eat nothing.
You cannot drown. Water is slow but not lethal, and it will shake off humanoid pursuers. Water with spiders in it is the exception, and that is a dead end.
Toughness does nothing against weather damage, it only governs combat.
Every percent of encumbrance costs a percent of run speed, and by default nobody waits for the slowest runner.

The official map's markers have nothing to do with place names

This came out of comparing the game's UI resource file (Kenshi_MapMarkers) against the official world map one marker at a time: the marker the game draws comes from its own taxonomy, and has nothing to do with what the place is called.

Place name	What the name suggests	What the official map draws
Guard Outpost, Scout Post, Watchtower, Tower Of Ninjas	An outpost, a tower	A small cross (SmallPlace)
Cannibal Village, Crab Village	A village	A tower over crossed blades (Outpost)
Eyesocket, Stone Camp	A town, a camp	Crossed hammers (Workcamp)
The whole Holy Farm and Holy Mines families	A farm, a mine	A cluster of huts (Village)

Worth adding: the ints.type field on town records in gamedata.base is not a size taxonomy either. Type 1 holds Barren Village, Capital and Megaprison all at once, so reading "village or city" off it will give you the wrong answer.