Game StartsReport

English：Game Starts　·　Game Mechanics

Kenshi offers 13 selectable starts that set your location, headcount, gear, cash, faction relations and bounty - but change nothing about how hard the world itself is.

Kenshi has no main quest and no tutorial; the player's first contact with the world is the "Choose Your Beginning" screen. What you pick there is not a difficulty slider but a package of initial conditions: where you wake up, what you are carrying, and who already wants you dead.

What a start actually changes

Each start defines six things:

• Starting location — which enemies you meet first and which town is nearest
• Headcount and quality — most starts give one character with 1 in every stat; a few give five or six people, or an animal
• Gear and cash — anywhere from naked to an Edgewalker-grade Nodachi
• Faction relations — for example, starting at −100 with the Holy Nation
• Bounty — start with a price on your head, which means bounty hunters will come looking
• Whether you are malnourished — starts flagged Malnourished put the whole squad at 170/300 hunger, with stats already suppressed

Race restrictions are a separate condition: starts marked with an asterisk lock which races you may pick.

The difficulty label is the most misread thing on the screen

The Difficulty field on the screen (Default / Easy / Normal / Hard / Very Hard and so on) describes only the first few minutes of your game. It does not adjust the experience curve, does not weaken enemies, and gives you no hidden bonuses.

By the same token the Play Style field (RPG / Action RPG / Real-Time Strategy / Wanted Criminal / Trading RPG) is only a suggestion about mindset and binds you to nothing. Pick the "wanted criminal" start and you can still go and be a merchant.

What does change world parameters is Advanced Options in the bottom left of the same screen; settings like the squad size multiplier are the actual difficulty dials — and they can be adjusted again later when you import a save.

All starts at a glance

(*) marks a start that restricts your race choice.

A few starts worth expanding on

Wanderer: the officially defined "right way to play"

The start description says outright that "this is the way the game is intended to be played". A thousand cats, one rag, one weapon, and everything else is on you.

Worth noting: the description says "a rusty sword", but what you are actually handed is an Iron Club — a blunt weapon. This is one of the few places where Kenshi's copy and its implementation disagree, so do not waste time looking for that sword.

The Holy Sword: you took a relic, and two governments' death warrants with it

You have picked up an Edgewalker-grade Nodachi (equal chance of Edge 1 / 2 / 3), one of the strongest weapons obtainable at character creation — at the price of a 20,000-Cat bounty.

The good news is that the bounty is attached to the starting character only; everyone you recruit later is clean.

Rock Bottom: Kenshi's most famous hell start

Naked, without food, missing a left arm, dumped in the middle of a desert crawling with slavers. Worse still — under United Cities law, starving is itself a crime, so walking into a town may get you questioned by a gate sergeant and then attacked.

The usual survival route is to head east to an abandoned village, loot it for something to sell, or trail wild animal herds and pick up the meat of whatever gets knocked down, then cook it on a campfire.

The Slaves: the only scenario that begins with zero freedom

You are in the Rebirth pits building a pointless statue for the Holy Nation. The game tells you straight out: get into a cage immediately and you will take fewer beatings.

Headcount on this start is affected by the squad size multiplier in Advanced Options. The recommended escape direction is east; the south and west gates have guards on mounted crossbows.

The Hive Exile: the race that starts with its trading rights cut off

You have been exiled from your hive and are now "Hiveless". This is not just narrative flavour — the Hiveless cannot buy from or sell to traders in Hive villages, which makes the region you start in completely useless to you.

The one exception is Hive caravans on the road; they will still trade with you.

The Freedom Seekers: a real-time strategy start in disguise

Six people, 4,000 Cats, 20 building materials, 20 iron plates and a farming blueprint, plus an "Old Soldier" with stats around 20–25. This is the only scenario that actively encourages you to build a base immediately; the difficulty reads "Easy / Hard combination" precisely because the early game is comfortable and the raids begin the moment your base goes up.

The Old Soldier's 20,000 Cats Holy Nation bounty is almost harmless in practice — nobody will come to collect it. You can even turn him in with another character for the money and then have him escape, which amounts to free cash.

Guy with a Dog: an homage

The start hands you 13 Cats and a baby Bonedog. The number 13 is widely read as a nod to Fallout's Vault 13 and Dogmeat, and possibly also to A Boy and His Dog (1975) or Mad Max 2 (1981). Earlier versions gave a baby Mountain Dog, later swapped for the weaker Bonedog.

What actually deserves your attention is not the dog but the starting location. Bast is a permanent battlefield between the United Cities and the Holy Nation, and there may be two large squads hacking at each other within sight of your spawn. One stream's demonstration ended like this: the character stripped gear off a freshly downed United Cities soldier, was seen doing it by the dead man's comrades, and inside five minutes was bleeding on the ground alongside his companion^{[V1 0:04:21]}. Looting corpses really is the fastest way to get rich here (see money-making methods), but only if you wait until one side is completely down before moving in.

The cut start: Hungover Ninja

One more start still sits in the game files (FCS) without appearing in the menu: "Hungover Ninja". A low-ranking ninja wakes up hungover with no pants in the stone camp southwest of Sho-Battai, penniless, but with 20 Stealth and an Ancient-grade Ninja Blade.

Which one to pick

• First playthrough: Wanderer, Empire Citizen or Holy Nation Citizen. One character, money in hand, guards nearby to hide behind
• Want fighting strength quickly: Nobodies (5) or The Freedom Seekers (6). Numbers are the biggest safety factor early on
• Want the narrative: The Slaves or The Hive Exile. These two turn slavery and the Hivers' situation into gameplay
• Do not touch on a first run: The Cannibal Hunters and Rock Bottom

See also

• Getting Started
• Import
• Faction Relations
• Game Mechanics overview

Video citations

1. WELCOME TO "KENSHI" - Expect No Favors Here!HeroInHisHead