Robot LimbsReport

English：Robot Limbs　·　Items & Equipment

Losing a limb in Kenshi is not only a loss — fit a robotic prosthetic and a character gains bonuses no natural limb can ever provide, at the cost of expensive maintenance, Holy Nation hostility, and having to lose the arm or leg for real first.

If a limb is hit by a sharp blade and its health drops below −100, it will be severed. This loss is permanent, and you will have to find a robotic replacement. — loading screen tip

The tip is wrong twice: severing has nothing to do with whether the weapon is "sharp" and any attack can do it; and "permanent loss", in Kenshi's terms, is really an upgrade opportunity. Players routinely cut their own squad members' limbs off on purpose to get at the prosthetic bonuses.

How limbs get severed

Any single blow that drives a limb below −100% of its maximum HP severs it, provided the game's limb-loss frequency setting is not "never".

In practice this is fairly rare in normal combat, for two reasons: the torso is far more likely to be hit than the limbs, and the limb has to fall past −100% first, while a character has usually been knocked out by torso damage well before that. For a Greenlander at full health, assuming 50 damage per hit, the chance of any given limb being severed is only about 2.6%.

There are three ways to produce a severed limb deliberately:

• Let a wound degrade with limb loss frequency set to "frequent" (at that setting, a limb is severed the moment it reaches −100%)
• The Peeler Machine
• The Fogmen's Fogpole

Only humans, Shek, Hivers and Cannibals drop severed-limb items; animals never lose limbs and cannot take prosthetics. Severed limbs left on the ground get carried off and eaten by bonedogs or boneyard wolves.

Once it is fitted

As soon as a character is missing any natural limb, the "limbs" button in the inventory becomes active, and prosthetics are equipped and removed exactly like weapons and armour.

• A fitted prosthetic no longer counts towards carry weight. This is a frequently overlooked hidden benefit.
• Stopping the bleeding: losing a limb gives the character 0.2 bleed and 0.002 "continuous bleed" per point of cut damage to that part. Continuous bleeding will not stop without bandaging — but fitting the prosthetic stops it instantly.
• With one robotic leg and one natural leg, the character walks with a visible limp animation.

Model comparison

All figures below are at Masterwork quality. Items marked * cannot be crafted by the player.

Arms

Legs

How to choose

• Pure durability: the KLR series. 290 HP in a leg is the highest in the game, but −52% Stealth and −50% Swimming means giving up mobility altogether.
• Melee output: the Skeleton Arm (Dexterity +25%) is the first pick for characters using cutting weapons; the Industrial Lifter Arm (Strength +23.75%) is for heavy weapon users.
• Covering ground: the Scout Leg. Athletics +38% is the single stat on any prosthetic that most affects day-to-day play, and Swimming only takes a 1% hit.
• Crossbowmen: the Steady Arm (left). Note that it only actually grants its bonus at Specialist quality or above; at low quality it does nothing.
• Stealth/theft: the Stealth Leg with the Thief's Arm. The pair turns an ordinary character into a professional thief.
• Budget: the Economy models, whose every stat is negative and whose only virtue is the price. Hive robotics shops stock only these; shops run by Skeletons carry far better stock, and the robotics shop in Black Desert City has the widest selection of all.

The Economy models have a further problem that the stat sheet does not show: in actual play their bonuses are not just ugly, they break easily, and each break has to be repaired with a Robotics Repair Kit^{[V1 0:07:22]}. Fitting a cheap prosthetic, in other words, is not the end of the problem but the start of a stream of follow-up spending.

The prosthetic seller an early player is most likely to meet is not a shop in a town at all but a Western Hive caravan on the road^{[V1 0:05:43]}. That has led some players to rate the Hive's technological level as low-to-middling: they can build machinery and prosthetics, and are one of the earliest sources of prosthetics in the game, but the genuinely good stock stays inside the Hive and never leaves^{[V2 0:21:09]} — that is a player observation and assessment; the game gives no formal ranking of Hive technology.

Repairs: the real cost

Maintaining a prosthetic works exactly as it does for a Skeleton, and it is expensive.

• Cut damage: repaired on the spot with a Robotics Repair Kit.
• Wear and tear: 4% of all damage taken accumulates as wear, permanently reducing that limb's maximum HP. It can only be cleared at a Skeleton Repair Bed, usually installed in settlements that sell prosthetics, charged like a bar bed but far more expensive.

That makes prosthetics an ongoing expense rather than a one-off purchase. A prosthetic squad that spends its life at the front is a steady drain on your finances.

The Holy Nation problem

A character with robotic limbs is treated as a Skeleton in the Holy Nation and attacked on sight — unless the player's reputation with the Holy Nation is 50 or above.

Even with sufficient reputation, a prosthetic character still cannot interact with any Holy Nation member, including Holy Lord Phoenix, Paladins, priests and shopkeepers. To negotiate, the prosthetic has to come off first. The sole exception is Holy Nation caravans out on patrol — they trade with you whether you are allied or not.

Crafting your own

Prosthetics are made at a Skeleton Limb Bench, and their components are produced at a Robotics Bench.

Unlike weapons and armour, prosthetics have no blueprints. New options unlock purely through research in the crafting tech tree: the Economy models at tech level 4, the Skeleton models at level 5, the rest at level 6. Every prosthetic except the Steady Arm and the Thief's Arm can be self-made.

Output quality is determined by the Robotics skill — the same skill used for repair kits and for producing components. Quality has a random element, and a smith who is injured or working in poor light produces worse results.

The component chain is fairly long (iron plates → presses/motors → skeleton muscle → robotics components), and players working out of a bought house usually just buy finished robotics components and skip a great deal of the preliminary work.

Where to get them

Shops that sell prosthetics: Hive robotics shops, the Mongrel Robotics Workshop, robotics shops, robotics workshops, and travel and repair shops.

Prosthetics also generate at random through the artifact system in locations with an "equipment artifact value", always at Specialist or Masterwork quality, and each prosthetic exists in only one copy per quality in the whole world (the Economy models excepted). See Items overview.

Trivia

• No NPC in the game spawns with robotic limbs by default, even though the system supports it. In setting terms this is explained by prosthetics generally being affordable only to Skeletons and small Tech Hunter outfits who can cover the repair bills.
• As of version 1.0.68, the "unarmed damage bonus" on prosthetics does nothing at all.
• Fit a prosthetic onto a defeated enemy and, if he is injured again later, you gain a "treat this enemy" option — one that normally does not exist for a conscious enemy.
• There is a bug: remove a left-arm prosthetic mid-fight and issue no orders, and the character keeps fighting as though both arms were intact until the fight ends.

Further reading

• Skeletons — the source of prosthetic technology
• Weapons — how Dexterity and Strength convert into damage
• Armour — shares the same quality ladder
• Items overview — the artifact system and equipment slots

Video citations

1. Kenshi | The Nugget Mafia (Ep. 1)HeroInHisHead
2. Kenshi Base Building - Mountain HiveHeroInHisHead