Fog IslandsReport
English：Fog Islands · Locations
A blue-grey basin under permanent ground fog, with fertile soil and iron and copper everywhere — and the least habitable zone on the map, because of the Fogmen. Mongrel at its centre is the sole exception.
The Fog Islands of Mongrel. Only the desperate come here. Refugees fleeing the Holy Nation, hoping their pursuers get picked off by the Fogmen... — player character
The Fog Islands lie in the north-west of the map, bordering Obedience to the north, Okran's Gulf to the east and Dreg to the south. It is a chain of low basins, the ground covered by a layer of never-lifting ground fog, the soil a blue-grey cast, scattered with vast metal fragments left by an ancient civilisation — the same visual vocabulary as Obedience to the north.
A Good Piece of Land Nobody Can Use
The environmental figures for the Fog Islands are the exact opposite of its reputation:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Fertility | 80–100% |
| Water | 50% |
| Iron | 100 |
| Copper | 100 |
| Weather damage | None (the fog is purely a visual effect) |
No acid rain, no sandstorms, no gas. On pure environmental terms the Fog Islands is among the best farming and mining land on the map. It sits empty for exactly one reason: the Fogmen.
The Blue-Grey Soil
The ground in the Fog Islands takes on an unnatural blue-grey tone, a rather rare palette in Kenshi. The explanation offered by the player research community is real-world gleying: soil soaked for long periods runs out of oxygen and forms a reducing environment, so iron cannot oxidise into red hematite and stays in its ferrous state, giving a blue-grey colour[V1 0:04:00]. The fog that never lifts supplies continuous moisture, and the Behemoth bodies corroding for millennia at the bottom of the Obedience pit to the north supply the iron — the proposer argues that the Fog Islands satisfy both conditions at once.
The same mechanism is used to explain why Vain to the south is red — the same iron, oxidised into red because it is dry enough there. See Vain for details.
Who Patrols Here
The Fog Islands spawns no camps and has no small outposts or ancient ruins at all — the entire zone contains one town and one kind of nest.
Nests: Fog Deathyards, up to 13. Deathyards mostly sit in the meteor craters of the basins, with a prisoner pole at the centre. This is the real source of the Fog Islands' lethality: several Deathyards often sit adjacent to one another, so while you are clearing the guards off one, the patrols from two others are already on their way. A destroyed Deathyard respawns after a while.
Homeless spawn squads (weight):
| Squad | Size | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fog Nest wanderers | 7–21 Fogmen | 40 |
| Fog Prince party | 1 Prince + 3–5 Fog Heavies | 7 |
| Fog Nest large hunting party | 31–56 Fogmen | 2 |
| Escaped Servants | 1–8 people | 6 |
That 31–56 strong squad is where the Fog Islands' reputation comes from. It does not appear often, but once you run into it, no size of party has any option except running.
Crossing Guide
The wiki's core advice on the Fog Islands is one word: run.
- If your only goal is to reach Mongrel, do not fight. A lone character only needs a movement speed in the low 20s to get away; leave the few that stick to you for Mongrel's gate guards.
- Buying a Map to Mongrel in advance saves a great deal of wandering.
- Skeleton characters who are knocked down are usually just left alone by the Fogmen; other organics get carried back to a Deathyard, tied to a pole and eaten.
- Fogmen eat people limbs first. If you move fast enough when a companion goes down, you can still get back a person with all four limbs attached; too slow and you retrieve a talking potato.
- Even after clearing every Fogman in the area, a tied-up companion is not out of danger — new Fogmen keep spawning to fill the gap.
One live playthrough shows just how sound that advice is: a player set out with an early-game squad and, halfway to Mongrel, was already getting tangled up with Fogmen at every corner, with one wrong step bringing the whole group down on him. He eventually turned around and ran straight out of the Fog Islands, with a very simple conclusion — if you do not have the numbers, do not touch this place[V2 0:03:18].
Building a Base Here
80–100% fertility, iron and copper everywhere, weather that is completely harmless — on paper the Fog Islands is prime land. The real problem is its relationship with the outside world. One player points out that a Fog Islands outpost can only go the self-sufficient route: outsiders can barely get in and caravans will not visit on any schedule, so farmland here is not an option but a requirement. The same player also flags a detail easily overlooked — vegetation in this zone is sparse, so planting too many trees actually makes the base stop looking like the Fog Islands[V3 0:25:10].
What This Place Used to Be
The wiki article itself advances one piece of speculation: given that Fogmen are implied to be "Hivers transformed after losing the influence of a queen", the Fog Islands may well once have been the site of another Hive civilisation, which collapsed at some ancient point, with today's ubiquitous Fogmen as its remnants.
The world states support this reading: after the death of the Western or Southern Hive Queen, Fogmen spread into what were Hive territories — including Vain, Dreg and Okran's Gulf. The condition for transformation is the disappearance of a queen, not the fog.
The City at the Centre
Mongrel is the only town in the Fog Islands and the only continuously existing order on this land. It belongs to no empire and sustains itself through an endless war of attrition between its gate guards and the Fogmen. Rebirth prisoners escaped from the Holy Nation, escaped servants and fugitives of every kind all run here — betting that their pursuers are more afraid of the fog than they are. See Mongrel.
See Also
Building a base here
The channel's verdict: Recommended
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The biggest drawback is how uneven the ground is — hills, mountains and valleys everywhere, and if you have not thought about your site in advance, flat land you can actually build on is hard to find.[V4 0:04:28]
- Defensible terrain The author scouts several spots on foot and notes that the commonly accepted "right answer" is a site up on high ground with a lot of room behind it.[V4 0:05:02]
- Distance to supplies The author suggests building the base in stages — when you run out of materials, go back to Mongrel to restock and return. It does not all have to go up at once.[V4 0:05:36]
- Raids The raiders are the Fogmen: rank-and-file Fogmen knock people out and drag them to a Deathyard, Fog Heavies escort the prince as it moves, and the prince eats whoever has been carried off.[V4 0:02:15]
- Raids Fogmen aim to carry people off rather than kill them, so wounded or unconscious squadmates must be dragged inside the gate — and it is best to lock it too.[V4 0:06:08]
- Raids There is no predicting how many Fogmen a single wave will bring, and the author stresses that retreating is nothing to be ashamed of.[V4 0:06:41]
- Distance to supplies Mongrel sits right in the middle of the zone; its shops sell building materials, armour, weapons and prosthetic limbs, you can buy a house there, and it is the supply heart of the whole zone.[V4 0:01:42]
- Distance to supplies The author suggests building the base in stages — when you run out of materials, go back to Mongrel to restock and return. It does not all have to go up at once.[V4 0:05:36]
- Other The position is not bad: close to the Holy Nation and to the Hive villages of Vain, not far from the Border Zone or the Shek Kingdom, with research-material sites and Burn's Tower to the north.[V4 0:03:54]
- Other An income stream for staying put: a Fog Prince's head can be torn off and sold, 6,000 Cats apiece.[V4 0:03:21]
- Other A precondition for moving in: your squad's run speed has to keep up — Fogman workers do 18 mph and Fog Heavies 20 mph. If you cannot outrun them, do not bring people here.[V4 0:00:34]
Video citations
- Why is Vain Red? - The Science of KenshiHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi | WE NEED SOME LAND!! | Let's Play Kenshi Genesis (Ep. 2)HeroInHisHead
- Kenshi Base Building - Beep's Fog HavenHeroInHisHead
- Why You Should Settle Fog Islands | Kenshi Location GuidePaul Rogers Gaming