Nobodies Game Mode - Kenshi Guide
Nobodies Walkthrough Video Guide (Part 1) - Starting Out
- Nobodies Walkthrough Video Guide (Part 2) - Exploration & Raising Toughness
- Nobodies Walkthrough Video Guide (Part 3) - Starting A Base and Making Money
The Nobodies start is one of the notoriously difficult starts for Kenshi because the chances of you spawning in a high level zone are very good. When choosing this start you'll spawn in either The Hub, Stobe's Garden or Venge. The Hub is by far the best location to start of them all with Venge being the worst. Stobe's Garden you have a chance to survive and make it to where we're going but you have to book it north immediately after loading in game.
If you're lucky enough to start out in The Hub - congrats! You can jump right into my Kenshi Walkthrough without reading anything else on this page since that's the noob town I use for my primary walkthrough. For those of you who started in either Venge or Stobe's Garden -- pick up whatever items you can grab nearby that are valuable and RUN! Our destination is Brink or Black Scratch to the north, I would recommend Black Scratch over Brink since there are better money making opportunities there and it's not an Empire controlled town.
The reason you want to avoid an Empire town is because it's illegal to be poor and starving there. In my experience the guards have a low chance of arresting you for this but you should keep this in mind as our characters are poor and starving and entering an Empire town could result in us being thrown into jail and then sold into slavery.
Below I have included 2 map locations of the 2 Waypoints that you can start at. From the Venge location you will need to run northeast until you come across Brink; from the Stobe's Garden location you will be going almost directly north to Black Scratch.
Black Scratch Map Location
Brink Map Location
Tip: If you want to force the game to kick you over to The Hub what you can do is save your game and log out then at the start screen select "Import Game". After selecting this option you'll want to also select "Reset Squad Positions" - this will teleport your entire group to The Border Zone which is the same zone as The Hub.
When you arrive in Black Scratch you're going to spend the first couple of days doing nothing but looting corpses of enemies that attack the town guards and mining. There is an Iron Deposit right outside the gate leading into town which is very safe to mine - if you get attacked just run back inside of town and then loot the enemies that attacked you when they get knocked out.
You will not make very good money mining the iron for awhile but it will raise your Labouring skill. Eventually when you raise your Labouring skill high enough the speed at which you mine will generate pretty good income. Our first goal is to make enough money to buy enough food for all of our characters. Usually you can afford this within the first day, after you've got full bellys on all of your characters the next thing you will want to do is save up 28,000 Cats for the Y House that's for sale in town.
Once you've purchased the Y House you will want to build a Research Bench inside of it and start researching new technologies. For more information about all of this stuff check out my Kenshi Researching Guide. Any Building Materials, Books and Iron Plates you need to make stuff for your house can be purchased off the vendor in town.
I recommend that you create a Food Store, Storage: Ore (2), General Storage Chest and you'll eventually need to make a Research Bench II and Dismantle the first one we made. Keep buying more and more Books and research quite literally everything you can. To research some of the things in the Farming section you will need to purchase some crops too from a vendor in town, 2 of each.
The 2 "Storage: Ore" containers that you made in your building will allow your characters to automate the entire mining process; all you have to do is sell the ore and you're good to go. A picture of what my house looked like in Black Scratch is shown below.
At some point you will notice a lot less enemies attacking Black Scratch giving you almost no corpses to loot. In my experience this usually happens after you've spent about 5 days here. Depending on what you want to do, you can save the game and then load it to respawn enemies in the surrounding areas. Or you can deal with less enemies and focus on mining ore instead.
I kind of recommend you load the game every so often to make enemies respawn since the Grass Pirates are good enemies to raise Toughness against early on and the extra money is worth it. To raise your Toughness without fear of limb amputation what you should do is strip the Reavers/Grass Pirates of all their gear when they get knocked unconscious and heal them up with a medkit. When they wake up and attack your characters they won't be able to deal much damage at all since they won't have a weapon and you will get fantastic skill ups when fighting them since their stats are so much higher than yours.
When healing the injured Grass Pirates or Reavers you'll also raise your Field Medic skill which will help you a lot in the future. Our long term goal in Black Scratch is to keep making money to buy as much Food and as many Books as we need to research new technologies. You can also check the Bar in town occasionally to see if there are any new companions staying here for you to hire. It's up to you how long you want to stay here doing all of this before moving on, I'd recommend you save up about 100,000 Cats and complete all available research.
Before you depart Black Scratch you'll want to purchase a pack animal from the Farm Shop in town and a backpack to go with it. Having a pack animal is a must in this game because you'll need to carry around a lot of supplies with your group while adventuring. I'd also recommend you do some Strength training before leaving town too. Load your characters up with Iron Ore and run them back and forth for awhile with your game speed turned up for awhile to give yourself some Athletics and Strength skill ups. This will make it easier to escape any enemies chasing you as we run through more difficult zones.
If you feel that you need to, you can also hire some mercenaries to protect your group from the Bar in Black Scratch. You'll usually find mercenaries here as well as Tech Hunters that you can hire to protect you. These guys are pretty good for early game exploration as they'll protect and heal you if you get wiped out.
Tip: Avoid the zone 'Gut' at all costs when traveling north. This zone is filled with Beak Things and will be guaranteed death for you at this low of a level. From Black Scratch you should go west to 'The Eye' then go north from there to the Empire cities.
Our goal is to travel to the northern Empire cities so that we can buy some better gear and armor for our characters. You should also buy some new companions while you're up here because we're going to need at least 10 for the next part of the game. Heng is typically your best bet when it comes to purchasing new weapons as their weapon shop is one of the best in the area. Heft is the only Empire city that has an armor shop that sells what we want so when you want armor you'll have to head over there.
Below is a quick list of what armor and weapons are worth buying, I talk about this same thing in much more detail in my Kenshi Walkthrough (Part 1). I'd recommend buying [Standard] or [High] quality at this point in the game since [Specialist] will be far too expensive to buy for every slot.
Good Starter Armor (Heft): Leather Shirt, Samurai Clothpants, Drifter's Leather Pants, Armoured Rag Skirt (Medium), Samurai Boots (Heavy), Samurai Legplates (Heavy)
Good Starter Weapons (Heng): Foreign Saber, Paladin's Cross, Falling Sun, Nodachi, Heavy Jitte, Polearm
After outfitting your team in good weapons and armor it's time to raise Toughness! In order to raise your Toughness in Kenshi you need to let your characters get beat up; if you get knocked unconscious that's even better - in fact that's the best way to raise Toughness. There are actually a couple tricks to raising Toughness very quickly in this game - I recommend you check out my Kenshi - How to EASILY raise Toughness Video as well as my Kenshi - Nobodies Walkthrough (Part 2) Exploration & Raising Toughness Video.
It's completely up to you how long you'd like to raise your Toughness before returning to money making and/or before starting your first base. Usually I like to get Toughness on all of my characters up to 30 - 40 at minimum before building a base but that's still a pretty low range and will require you to supplement your weakness with "Base Defence Contracts" aka hiring Mercenaries to protect your Outpost.
To learn more about building a base, where to build a base and all the other information you need about this game I recommend you switch over to my Kenshi Walkthrough (Part 1). At this point in time we're pretty much done the unique part of the Nobodies game mode and from this point on all the information I give you will be relevant for any game mode that you start with.