Food & Medical ItemsReport
English：Food & Medical Items · Items & Equipment
An item list for food and medical consumables: what can be crafted, what the recipes take, where to buy it, and which container it goes into. The mechanics of hunger and healing have their own pages.
This page deals with the items themselves: which foods and medical consumables exist, how they are made, where they are sold, and what container they go into. For how the hunger value works see Hunger & Food; for bandaging and wound deterioration see Medical System.
Kenshi's consumables have two properties that apply everywhere: food never spoils (the item called "Rotten Food" is pure set dressing and is never produced by anything going off), and medical kits use a "quality" value to cap the user's effective skill — buying an expensive kit will not make a novice good, it will only waste money.
Food: 17 finished items
An asterisk marks player-craftable items. Prices are the defaults; global prices are re-randomised every new game.
| Food | Nutrition | Price | Cats/nu | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Nutri-Rations | 125 | 1,143 | 9.14 | Ancient Empire supply outposts only |
| Ration Pack | 125 | 1,143 | 9.14 | Bars, caravans; Paladins may hand them out |
| Foodcube* | 75 | 874 | 11.65 | Cooking Stove |
| Gohan* | 75 | 444 | 5.92 | Cooking Stove; most common in the Swamp |
| Dustwich* | 70 | 730 | 10.43 | Cooking Stove |
| Meatwrap* | 50 | 658 | 13.16 | Cooking Stove |
| Bread* | 30 | 488 | 16.27 | Bread Oven; also an ingredient in three dishes |
| Cooked Vegetables* | 25 | 318 | 12.72 | Cooking Stove |
| Rice Bowl* | 25 | 186 | 7.44 | Cooking Stove |
| Chewsticks* | 20 | 152 | 7.60 | Cooking Stove |
| Dried Fish | 20 | 360 | 18.00 | Bought or stolen only |
| Dried Meat* | 15 | 78 | 5.20 | Craftable on a Campfire |
| Raw Meat | 15 | 60 | 4.00 | Hunting; Hivers / Scorchlanders / animals only |
| Grand Fish | 15 | 360 | 24.00 | The Swamp and fishing villages |
| Thinfish | 10 | 360 | 36.00 | Fish and drug traders |
| Foul Raw Meat | 10 | 1 | 0.10 | Harvested in bulk from carcasses |
| Human Teeth | 1 | 0 | — | Only at the Bugmaster's throne and a few Holy Nation temples |
None of the three fish can be crafted; they can only be bought or stolen. The Dried Fish description claims it is salt-dried Thinfish, but the game never gives you that recipe. Thinfish and Grand Fish are the most expensive nutrition in the game and eating them is simply burning money — they exist for you to sell.
Meat yields are per corpse: Domesticated Bull 20, Swamp Turtle 14, Garru and Wild Bull 10 each, Goat 7, Crab 6, Beak Thing 5, Bonedog 3. Foul Raw Meat is scraped off Megacrabs (20), Barnabus (20), Skimmers (8), Swamp Raptors (6) and Fishmen (4). River Raptors in the Lands of Okran are a reliable source, because Holy Nation troops attack them on sight.
Three cooking buildings
| Building | Cost | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Campfire | 0 | Raw Meat → Dried Meat |
| Bread Oven | Building Materials | Strawflour 1 + Water 0.25 → Bread |
| Cooking Stove | Building Materials | Everything else |
Recipes at a glance:
- Cooked Vegetables = Greenfruit 8 + Water 1; Rice Bowl = Riceweed 10 + Water 1
- Chewsticks = Cactus 8 + Water 0.25; Dustwich = Bread 1 + Cactus 8
- Foodcube = Bread 1 + Greenfruit 8; Gohan = Greenfruit 8 + Riceweed 10 (no water)
- Meatwrap = Bread 1 + Raw Meat 1
The tech is cheap: Cooking (1 book, Tech Level 1) → Cooked Vegetables, Rice Bowl; Desert Cooking (3 books) → Chewsticks, Dustwich; Advanced Cooking (2 books) → Foodcube, Gohan, Meatwrap.
Water cost
The real production bottleneck is not research, it is water. Ranked by water consumed per unit of nutrition:
- Dustwich: 70 nutrition per 1 water — the most water-efficient food in the game
- Foodcube 1.477 water/unit, Gohan 1.49 water/unit
- Bread and Chewsticks are tied as the best of the single-ingredient dishes
- Rice Bowl is the worst: a whole unit of water buys 25 nutrition
Gohan has one decisive exception: Greenfruit and Riceweed are watered automatically in regions where it rains (the Swamp, the Deadlands, Vain), and the cooking stage uses no water at all, which makes the entire production line water-free. That is the only route to a self-sufficient base in the Deadlands.
Vices: filed under food, but inedible
Grog, Sake, Cactus Rum, Bloodrum and Hashish sit under "Food / Vices" in the build menu, but none of them has any nutritional value or status effect. They are purely trade goods:
- Hashish: Hemp 5 + Water 1, made at a Hashish press. Its markup is the most extreme in the game — up to 1200% in some United Cities towns, 600% with the Slave Traders. But it is illegal in most places, and the press itself attracts trouble.
- Grog: Wheatstraw 20 + Water 1. Unit cost around 825 Cats against a sale price of 1,155 — thin margins, but the crudest possible inputs, and hungry bandits raiding a caravan will not take it.
- Sake: Riceweed 20 + Water 1. Produced in the Swamp, sold in the United Cities, 150% markup.
- Bloodrum: Cactus Rum + Hashish, and cannot be crafted by the player — it can only be taken off the smugglers around the Grey Desert Waystation.
Medical consumables: seven items
| Item | Charges | Quality | Avg. price | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic First Aid Kit | 150 | 5 | 76 | 1×2 |
| Standard First Aid Kit | 400 | 40 | 147 | 2×2 |
| Advanced First Aid Kit | 1,000 | 100 | 265 | 2×3 |
| Splint Kit | 100 | 25 | 212 | 2×2 |
| Advanced Splint Kit | 100 | 50 | 311 | 3×3 |
| Authentic Skeleton Repair Kit | 100 | 20 | 1,865 | 2×3 |
| Skeleton Repair Kit | 500 | 50 | 4,341 | 2×3 |
Who carries what
You do not have to craft first aid kits; you can loot them:
- Basic First Aid Kit: ordinary United Cities and Holy Nation infantry, every soldier of the Shek Kingdom and both eastern and western Hive armies, and the vast majority of small armed groups and recruitable characters. Slave Traders and Cannibals carry them too, to bring victims back to a "usable" state.
- Standard First Aid Kit: United Cities police, bounty hunters, most generic recruits.
- Advanced First Aid Kit: almost every United Cities noble, the Holy Lord Phoenix, Holy Nation doctors and surgeons, and Tinfist.
- Splint Kit: Tech Hunters (who spend their time in ruins) and Sand Ninjas. Advanced Splint Kit: Wandering Assassins, the Holy Lord Phoenix, doctors and surgeons.
- Skeleton Repair Kit: Skeleton characters (Tinfist included), United Cities Police Chiefs, pretend skeletons, and a great many ancient ruins.
Crafting
The Medical Workbench (basic version 3 Iron Plates / 5 power, full version 6 Iron Plates / 10 power) makes every first aid kit, splint and sleeping bag, and trains Field Medic while doing it. The only inputs are Fabrics and Hemp:
| Output | Fabrics | Hemp | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic First Aid Kit | 1 | — | Basic bench |
| Sleeping Bag | 8 | — | Basic bench |
| Standard First Aid Kit | 1 | 1 | Full bench |
| Advanced First Aid Kit | 1.5 | 2 | Full bench |
| Splint Kit | 2.5 | 1 | Full bench |
| Advanced Splint Kit | 3.5 | 2 | Full bench |
The Skeleton Repair Kit goes down a different line: a Robotics Bench, 0.5 Robotics Components + 1 Steel Bar.
Research chain: Basic First Aid Kits (Tech Level 2, 2 books, also unlocks the Medicrate) → Medicine (Level 3, 6 books, unlocks the full bench and the Standard kit) → Advanced Medicine (Level 4, 1 Ancient Science Book). Reaching the Advanced First Aid Kit means spending ancient research material, so it is not something you open casually.
The Sleeping Bag deserves a separate mention: 8 Fabrics each, 5 kg, and the only ingredient for the Camp Bed, which refunds the sleeping bag when dismantled so it can be reused. It is the most overlooked life-saver in the wilderness — without one, taking a serious wound out in the wastes means limping all the way back to town.
Storage containers
| Container | Holds | Spec |
|---|---|---|
| Food Store | All food except Bread | 18×18, stacks ×4 |
| Bread Basket | Bread only | Single item, stacks ×50 |
| Medicrate | First aid kits, splints | 10×10, stacks ×5 |
| Storage: Robotics | Skeleton Repair Kits | 12×12, stacks ×5 |
| Storage: Meat | Raw Meat | Single item, stacks ×100 |
| Animal Feeder | Animal food (including Foul Raw Meat) | 18×18 |
The Food Store and Bread Basket share one behaviour: hungry characters will come and help themselves, which effectively automates food supply for the whole base. The side effect is that characters will occasionally drop what they are doing to eat even when they are not really hungry. The Medicrate and Storage: Robotics, by contrast, are strictly separated — the Medicrate will not take Skeleton Repair Kits.
Two common misconceptions
- The trade good "Medical Supplies" neither heals anything nor serves as an ingredient. It averages 120 Cats, is sold by trade goods merchants and found in ancient labs, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the medical system. The name catches out a great many new players.
- NPCs never use the splint kits they carry. Without a mod that fixes NPC behaviour, those Advanced Splint Kits are loot and nothing else.
Related entries: Hunger & Food, Medical System, Production & Crafting, Items overview.