DeadlandsReport
English：Deadlands · Locations
One of the most polluted zones on the map — permanent acid rain, corrosive ground, zero resources. The Skeletons built Black Desert City here precisely because nothing living can get in.
Narko's sweet arse! This is the freakin' Deadlands, we can't come here! This is no place for anyone… — Shek / Greenlander player character
The Deadlands sit east of the centre of the map, wedged between the Grey Desert, Skinner's Roam, the Iron Valleys, Shem and Venge. The sky here is dark, the rain is acid, the ground is acid, and so are the lakes. Plenty of places in Kenshi will kill you, but the Deadlands are special in that the way they kill you has nothing to do with how strong you are and everything to do with what you are wearing.
Environment: three kinds of acid
The Deadlands' damage sources have to be understood separately, because the gear that counters them has to be packed separately.
- Acid rain — stun damage to organic parts. Reaching 80% protection is enough for natural regeneration to outpace the loss, which in practice means safety; your characters will nonetheless complain until you hit 100%. Dustcoat 80%, Longcoat 70%, Crab Helmet 60%, Ashland Hat 50%, Iron Hat 35% — any combination will do.
- Acid ground — blunt damage to the legs. This has nothing to do with the rain: any pair of shoes gives complete immunity. Plenty of people die here with the coat sorted and their feet bare.
- Acid lakes — do not swim. Acid rain protection does absolutely nothing while you are submerged in acid water.
Hivers, Skeletons and every animal are entirely immune to acid. Which is to say: in a single squad, the humans get slowly ground down by the rain while the Skeleton beside them feels nothing — and that is precisely the political meaning of this land.
A place with no resources
In the zone modifiers the wiki lists from the FCS, the Deadlands' water, fertility, aridity and greenery are all 0%, and stone, iron and copper are all 0. This is not "poor"; it is literally nothing.
Worse, there is no wind. Any base has to run on fuel generators, or extend its walls into the neighbouring zone to borrow wind.
Two contradictory details are worth remembering:
- Rain Collectors catch nothing at all, because that is acid rain; but farm plots are watered by it.
- Hydroponics built on a roof stay permanently watered, meaning no well and no imported water are required.
Put together, those two lines make the Deadlands a strangely viable option: a late-game squad can build here without any bandit harassment (the only patrol in the zone is the occasional lone Iron Spider), provided you accept importing every raw material and generating all your own power.
Black Desert City and the Scraphouse
Black Desert City is the headquarters of the Skeletons faction and the only town in the region. Its inhabitants are all Skeleton Civilians and Skeleton Residents, with no organic life at all, so the town has no food supply — the bartender will tell you so himself, even though there is genuinely edible food in other people's crates. The bar's second floor has both ordinary beds and skeleton repair beds. Sadneil, the game's one melancholy recruit, signs on here.
A bridge on the edge of town leads up a small hill to the Scraphouse — a shop set up inside an ancient factory, watched over by Quin, with 8 Soldierbot Guards and 5 Security Spider IIs on station. Its stock list is among the best in the game: 3 AI Cores (about 25,000 Cats each), 3 Engineering Research, 13 Ancient Science Books, and a Map of the Ashlands. Reading the Old Treasure Map marks it on your map.
The zone also holds 3 Deadland Workshops, 3 Lost Armouries and 1 Armoury Ruin. Deadland Workshops are among the few reliable sources of Engineering Research in the game; the price is near-continuous acid rain, broken Skeletons, and Double-Barrel Harpoon Turrets mounted over the walkways.
Why the Skeletons chose this place
The Deadlands spawn no camps and no nests, and the only roaming enemies are Iron Spiders. For a technological civilisation that is a perfect set of conditions:
- The Holy Nation regards Skeletons as heretics, but Holy troops cannot mount an expedition across terrain under constant acid rain
- Organic life struggles even to pass through, which amounts to natural immigration control
- The density of ancient ruins is high, providing materials and components
In other words, Black Desert City was not driven here — it was chosen. The city is said to have been founded after the collapse of the Second Empire (the wiki flags this claim as unsourced), the Skeletons having traded a whole stretch of poisoned land for the right to be left alone. One line of town dialogue captures the resulting state exactly:
Time flows slowly when you live in a bubble of lost time.
The only living people willing to come in
Acid rain keeps the Holy Army out, but it does not keep out a group of bandits who refuse to move. The Black Desert Ninjas (also known as the Cloud Ninjas) range across the relatively safe Grey Desert, the Deadlands and the Iron Valleys, robbing travellers under acid rain and gas clouds year after year[V1 0:16:17]. One channel makes a point of noting that this is voluntary: they would rather suffer in this environment, and even die in it, than give up their turf for somewhere habitable[V2 0:03:15] — the same poisoned ground the Skeletons use as a national border, they use as a bet.
(The wiki's Deadlands spawn table lists only Iron Spiders, so encounters with Cloud Ninjas mostly happen along the borders with the Grey Desert and the Iron Valleys.)
Common misconceptions
- "The inactive Iron Spiders are scenery." — They are not. The Deadlands, Ashlands and Iron Trail are strewn with apparently scrapped Iron Spiders, and you cannot tell which one is only sleeping. They are fitted with dismembering weapons, and a lightly armoured character who goes down will usually bleed out.
- "Fighting in town is harmless." — Black Desert City has no police station; get knocked out and you are carried outside the walls. For anything other than a Hiver or a Skeleton, outside the walls means acid rain.
- "Skeleton Residents are all good at repairs." — Black Desert City's Skeleton Residents have an extremely high randomisation range on their stats (20) and can roll negative Robotics, which makes them break what they try to fix.
Building a base here
The channel's verdict: Recommended
- Hazards Both the ground and the rain are acidic; characters with no shoes on will complain the whole way about the calluses on their feet.[V3 0:06:42]
- Hazards Both the ground and the rain are acidic; characters with no shoes on will complain the whole way about the calluses on their feet.[V3 0:06:42]
- Water Building a Rain Collector gets you nowhere: what falls on the Deadlands is acid rain, and the collector cannot take it in.[V3 0:07:16]
- Water The one workaround: put Hydroponics on the roof of a waystation building. The water bar creeps up on its own, so you never need a well.[V3 0:07:49]
- Wind There is no wind here, so power has to come from fuel generators; turning Hemp into Biofuel is the main energy route.[V3 0:08:56]
- Defensible terrain He picked a small patch of flat ground with a steep slope at its back as a natural barrier, and a pool of acid water left in front of the gate.[V3 0:09:29]
- Wind There is no wind here, so power has to come from fuel generators; turning Hemp into Biofuel is the main energy route.[V3 0:08:56]
- Defensible terrain He picked a small patch of flat ground with a steep slope at its back as a natural barrier, and a pool of acid water left in front of the gate.[V3 0:09:29]
- Hazards The acid rain is an asset in return: enemies knocked out in the Deadlands never get back up — their blood keeps draining while they lie unconscious until they die.[V3 0:10:05]
- Hazards Both the ground and the rain are acidic; characters with no shoes on will complain the whole way about the calluses on their feet.[V3 0:06:42]
- Hazards The acid rain is an asset in return: enemies knocked out in the Deadlands never get back up — their blood keeps draining while they lie unconscious until they die.[V3 0:10:05]
- Distance to supplies The Deadlands sits at the centre of the map, and Black Desert City is right there inside the zone — the Robotics Shop is well stocked, and the Scraphouse reliably carries high-quality weapons and crossbows.[V3 0:11:11]
- Raids His read is that no faction can put together a serious enough assault out here, so a base can be set up and then left to run itself.[V3 0:10:39]
- Distance to supplies The Deadlands sits at the centre of the map, and Black Desert City is right there inside the zone — the Robotics Shop is well stocked, and the Scraphouse reliably carries high-quality weapons and crossbows.[V3 0:11:11]
See also
Video citations
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Minor Powers | Gangs and Bandit CrewsCivilizationEx
- Should You Settle Venge or the Deadlands? | Kenshi Location GuidePaul Rogers Gaming