World StatesReport

English：World States　·　Game Mechanics

The set of switches Kenshi uses to record what the player has done. It governs two things — what a town gets replaced with, and whether that faction's squads still appear in the wild. Every word in a "Town Overrides" field (Half-destroyed, Ruins, Prosperous) comes out of this system.

Kenshi has no main quest, and no journal entry ever tells you that you changed the world. Instead it keeps a very quiet ledger, the World States. Who you killed, who you captured, who you released — all of it gets written down, and the bill is presented the next time you walk past.

There are only two categories of thing it governs:

• Town Overrides — an entire settlement is replaced with a different version of itself: buildings, shops, residents, garrison, all swapped out
• Homeless Spawns — whether that faction's squads still appear out in the world, and how many

What triggers it

The direct route is to go after a faction's leadership. A small faction usually has a single head; remove it and their squad density in the wild drops sharply, while their base is destroyed or taken over by somebody else.

Large factions do not work that way. Power in the Holy Nation and the United Cities is spread across several people, and one death does not buy a collapse. Worse, if you take out minor leaders before dealing with the primary one, they will send base assaults that escalate in strength until they reach the largest size — and assaults at that size tend to arrive every few days or weeks, indefinitely.

The characters tied to World States are roughly these:

An army that loses its command spawns a lower grade of unit instead. A disorganised Holy Nation produces Strayed Paladin crusaders; a disorganised United Cities produces Samurai Rogue bandits.

Kill, imprison, release: how the conditions are read

This is where it is easiest to get things wrong in practice.

• In most cases, killing and jailing do the same thing. Where a condition requires that someone be dead, imprisoning them usually satisfies it as well
• Where a condition requires that someone be alive, it means alive and free. Sitting in your cage does not count as alive
• If the game editor (FCS) checks whether a character is "Okay", that means alive and free

The reverse holds too, and this has saved a lot of savegames: let a prisoner out and the effects tied to them roll back. Homeless Spawns return in full, and some Town Overrides switch with them. This is believed to be deliberate, so that "rescue the leader" scenarios work. A few overrides even require the opposite order — the character has to be captured to trigger it and then released for it to persist.

There are exceptions:

• The Dust King's Bandit Demands only stop if he is dead; imprisoning him does not end them
• The Hive Attack from the Western and Southern Hives is the mirror image: it launches only if the Hive Queen is kidnapped, not killed

One more case is easy to overlook: if you manage to recruit a character tied to a World State (Seto, Bo and the like), the effects still apply. They may be standing in your squad, but the ledger reads the same.

The words in the Town Overrides field

The "Town Overrides" row on a location entry lists the internal name the game gives that version of the place. They come from a small fixed vocabulary:

One town can carry several overrides. When more than one condition is satisfied, the one with the highest priority wins; the order is written into the game data and you do not choose it. Bad Teeth is one of the most heavily branched examples in the game, with five overrides ranked Half-destroyed, Destroyed, Shek Kingdom, Kral's Chosen, United Cities.

"Prosperous" does not mean better

This is the most common misreading. An override tagged "Prosperous" in the game editor does not mean the town is richer than before; it may have more buildings in ruins and thinner people. The label is relative: among all the overrides available for that place, this is the best one it can reach.

Drifter's Last is a clean example. With Lady Merin and Slave Mistress Grace both removed, the town falls to the Free Traders and gains guards, a police station, an independent bar and a Thieves' Guild — its defence ends up tighter than it was under the Empire, and this is the version whose internal name is prosperous. The town's other version, Half-destroyed, comes from removing the noble without touching the supply chain, and leaves ten buildings as rubble.

You cannot actually delete a faction

In most cases there is no way to erase a faction from the world. Once the leadership is gone, their squads are replaced with a weaker 'broken' variant, and some settlements keep flying their flag anyway.

The few that can be wiped out: Skin Bandits, Reavers, Manhunters, Slave Hunters, the Traders Guild, and possibly the Yabuta Outlaws. With their leaders removed, their homeless spawns, settlements, camps and events all go to zero.

Close to wiped out: the Gorrillo Bandits, Anti-Slavers, Black Dragon Ninjas, Hounds, Thrall Masters, Fishmen and Slave Traders. Their homeless spawns hit zero, but a handful of nominal settlements or base assaults remain.

Always keeps something:

Others such as the Berserkers, Band of Bones, Kral's Chosen, Red Sabres, Swamp Ninjas, Crab Raiders, Skeleton Bandits and Scavengers simply keep spawning as broken remnants once beaten down.

Three base assaults may never stop, whoever you remove: Wrath of God, Challenger of the Undefeated and Invincible Vengeance.

World State Routes

World State Routes point the other way: they grow a faction rather than break it. Achieve a particular combination of World States and that faction's influence expands, and routes belonging to different factions can coexist or even reinforce each other.

The English wiki splits the factions with routes into two tiers. Major: the Holy Nation, United Cities, Shek Kingdom, Traders Guild. Minor: Kral's Chosen, Flotsam Ninjas, Rebel Farmers, Anti-Slavers, Crab Raiders, Reavers, Skeleton Bandits, Skin Bandits, Southern Hive.

Check this before you act

The sources on this point disagree. The Heft entry states plainly that player-owned buildings in Heft are not safe from Town Overrides, while the general Town Overrides page says that any building the player has purchased will not be damaged or lost to one. The two are in direct conflict and the game does not reconcile them. If you intend to own property in a town that can be overridden, save first and verify it yourself.

The places known to be relatively safe are mostly held by Tech Hunters or other minor factions: Black Scratch, Mongrel, Mourn, Mud Town, The Hub, any Waystation, and Flats Lagoon.

There is one more piece of sleight of hand: some overrides only switch over on your second visit. Holy Mines going to the Slave Traders, and Okran's Shield going to the Reavers, both work this way. What you see the first time is not necessarily the final state.

See also

• Faction Relations
• Factions
• Import
• Base Building
• Game Mechanics