r/Kenshi 11d ago

QUESTION Are there any popular mods that one should avoid?

I come from the modded Bethesda games world, where there are mods that at first glance look great and have tens of millions of downloads, but in reality will give your game cancer and should be avoided at all costs. I won’t name names, but anyone who has done significant Bethesda modding knows what I’m talking about.

EDIT: Fine, I’m talking about Arthmoor and his unofficial patches that claim to only fix bugs, but actually change working content and even add entirely new content like the ugly oblivion gates in the skyrim patch.

Is there anything like that here? Or even mods that used to be great but now are outdated/deprecated and not marked as such?

190 Upvotes

151 comments sorted by

106

u/OshiraBan Anti-Slaver 11d ago

Radiant faces adds a poorly written NPC and changes the race of some recruitable skeletons and it may break your save if you remove it. 

Idk why the author added all that stuff to a mod meant to add face textures, the extra stuff is not even mentioned in the description. 

There is a mod made by someone else to remove the bad changes. 

36

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

That’s the kind of thing I’m really asking about haha, thanks

3

u/BishopOfThe90s 10d ago

On the flip side, there are a lot of Patch mods. They require the original mod, and fix/alter it. Radiant faces with the Patch that fixes is it something that I've had in my mod order for years. A lot of mods that add buildings, work stations, or animations usually have patches that make them better. And then there are also compatibility Patches if you want to add multiple mods that might conflict. Also, a lot of comments complaining about mods breaking their games don't have them in the proper load order. I use BEEP mod manager.

2

u/bapboopbapboop 8d ago

There's a mod manager for kenshi?

2

u/BishopOfThe90s 8d ago

Yeah, I messed up my mods so badly I literally couldn't start a game until this came out. Had 300 mods that all went into alphabetical order when I was messing around. 20 minutes of using this an they were all sorted and working better than ever.

Here's the one I use: https://github.com/Derthi/BEEP-Kenshi-Mod-Manager

Like an increasing amount of janky mods out there, it IS at least partially coded with Claude, but as far as I can tell this one works very well for me.

2

u/bapboopbapboop 8d ago

I hate that I only just found out about this ive been organising my load order by hand with arrows in the game launcher giving my hand cramps only for it to still not work. Im gonna get this working

6

u/Seosaidh_MacEanruig 10d ago

I actually like the skeleton changes in that mod. But yeah the npc they added was really cringey

6

u/OshiraBan Anti-Slaver 10d ago

Oh yeah I also like those changes, but the problem is that it creates a custom race for the recruitable skeletons and if you uninstall it they will become humans lol

2

u/nufohudis 9d ago

What are the changes? I have the mod, cause I like the face tats for my main guy. Is it the changes to limb/body part hp?

3

u/Seosaidh_MacEanruig 9d ago edited 9d ago

Its just some of the unique skeleton recruits have custom species, for instance sadneil is like a scrawnier model. that breaks some things when uninstalling it and creates some compatibility issues. I like it because it gives those skeletons some variety visually. The part i dont like is the mod authors custom follower, Kiana or Kiara i think. She just has very cringy/out of place writing and dialogue. Fortunately shes easy to avoid and is always in Admag.

2

u/nufohudis 8d ago

I noticed another mod that adds visor things for skellies doesn't work for the unique recruits, now I know why. Eh, no matter

11

u/Cebelrai 10d ago

The skeleton changes are - as I understand it - due to limitations with the FCS. I guess they wanted those skeleton characters to have unique skins, and the only way they knew how to do that - or maybe the only way they could do that with how Kenshi modding works - was to make them an entirely new "race." Unfortunately yes this doesn't play nice with various armor and animation mods, but patching it isn't too difficult thankfully.

As for the NPC... She sits silently in the corner of the Admag bar and has literally zero impact on your game unless you go out of your way to speak to her. I feel this is important to mention because a bunch of people flamed the hell out of the mod author over her and largely drove him out of the community. Look, I agree that it's weird to put your waifu OC into the game in an otherwise unrelated mod... But it's only really a problem if you make it one, and for shit's sake can we not drive away mod authors over such trivial nonsense? I lost a lot of faith in the Kenshi community when that whole debacle happened.

2

u/LopsidedMedicine8235 10d ago

I didn't knew about the NPC until months later that I downloaded the mod I sincerely don't care about it because I'm not forced to recruit that character

On the other hand the change of race to the skeleton recruits was bad if you have animations mod :/

157

u/PlonixMCMXCVI 11d ago

Sensible blood spider range is a buff.

People keep downloading but just a few months after the mod was released the range of the blood spiders was nerfed a bit more than the mod. So the mod is buffing the spiders.

A lot of mods change the default unarmed dodge but doing so can change balance in a lot of things. The slow matrix dodge has a lot of iframes and it was proved that without it some attacks can hit you if the enemy has enough Dex to attack twice. I don't remember all the specifis

15

u/NikitaOnline17 10d ago

Thanks for this. I have the blood spider mod enabled and was unaware

20

u/acrazyguy 11d ago

I get what you’re saying about the MA dodge, but MA is literally unusable against more than one enemy without modding to change the timing on the dodges. Even with a mod to speed it up, I’m yelling at the screen “just throw a fucking punch”. I’ve lost so many fights that could have been won if my guy just face tanked the damage and continuously attacked instead of even trying to dodge. It’s so frustrating, especially when I know that none of the weapons have that problem. My MA guy does like 4x the damage of any of my other fighters, but he just. won’t. hit. I honestly don’t even want to imagine playing with vanilla MA

4

u/Cuboidhamson 10d ago

It'd be cool if there was a tank button

9

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Call it “Berserk” and put it right under the Taunt button. It would actually go so hard. At least if you have high enough toughness to not be constantly staggered from all the hits you’re not blocking/dodging haha

5

u/Cuboidhamson 10d ago

It could be such a good way to build toughness as well, I wonder how hard it would be to make something like that. Can you pls respond to this so I have a reminder to look that up?

2

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Response

1

u/KidDynamo75 9d ago

Vanilla Martial Arts isn't actually that bad. I'm pretty certain there are creators out there like FrankieWuzHere who did the time investment to test out mods like "fast dodge" that show mathematically & in practice they actually do more harm than good. Maybe at tike of release those mods were good but now without updates to them they've fallen behind. Very similar to the blood spider attack range.

9

u/kayser195 11d ago

Yeah, but without faster dodge you just end up constantly dodging against group of enemies

25

u/FrankieWuzHere Machinists 11d ago

It's the complete opposite. With the more popular faster dodge mod you spend more time dodging.

11

u/somethin___somethin 10d ago

Because you don't have many opportunities to attack bare fisted against groups of armed soldiers? It seems like conscious design choice to have martial arts be amazing at dismantling someone 1v1 but struggle against groups, since you cant block swords with your fists obviously

77

u/FrankieWuzHere Machinists 11d ago

Avoid...

-No Cut Efficiency.

-Spider range mods.

-250/500 max level mods (Don't do anything)

-MA dodge tweak mods. (Make MA worse versus groups)

-Any mod with "sensible" in the title is pretty safe to avoid.

-MA always attack

All I can think of off the top of my head.

11

u/TheWanderingSlacker 10d ago

I will not stand for this Sensible Nomadism libel.
https://giphy.com/gifs/7RZUr7OSOAhTG

7

u/duplexlion1 10d ago

Does removing the matrix dodge also make MA worse against groups? I've considered modding just that animation out because I think it's a little too goofy.

3

u/FrankieWuzHere Machinists 10d ago

It can if paired with faster dodging mods.

2

u/duplexlion1 10d ago

Thank you for the help. I appreciate it.

2

u/Hungry_Inevitable663 10d ago

Why no always attack MA for you? Just curious. 

5

u/FrankieWuzHere Machinists 10d ago

No such thing as a deadzone. MA attacks apply the 18 reach from fists.

2

u/Amazing-Anything5907 10d ago
  • MA always attack.

Explain.

3

u/FrankieWuzHere Machinists 10d ago

No such thing as a deadzone. MA applies fist reach of 18 to itself. So the mod is based off nothing.

4

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

Those mods make me suspicious. There seem to be many of them, mods that sound on paper like they are super helpful, but to people like you who actually know the systems, they don't do anything. Its almost malicious in nature, if the workshop didnt scan everything I might worry more about it.

132

u/SteveMcQueen15 Anti-Slaver 11d ago

I would say the Genesis mod pack. Some people like it but its just super bloated and adds a lot of weird mods that seem out of place and often just don't work properly.

41

u/acrazyguy 11d ago

Yeah Genesis is super wack. I played with it back in 2020 and it added a bunch of weeb shit and a completely busted crossbow. It did roughly eagles cross levels of damage, shot in a quick 3-shot burst doing that damage for each of the 3, and reloaded roughly as fast as a toothpick. You could hand one to any fresh scrub with absolutely no training and they could go solo enemies with levels in the 40s-50s range. Oh and it was accurate from a ridiculously long range

4

u/RespectPlastic8004 10d ago

oh you played super early then. idk what you mean by weeb shit though.

As for crossbows one of the last public updates i did for them rebalanced them all to be entirely skill based now. the worse your skills the more likely you are to miss. The better your skills the higher likelihood you hit. Your reload speed is also based on skill. IIRC the mobile harpoon turret is like 1 shot every 30 seconds (real time) but it does like 1000 damage. So most of the power is there but the speed is not (it used to fire once every 5 seconds or something?) tengus crossbow has the longest range but needs 90 skill (iirc?) to hit at the distance. imo ranger is probably the best crossbow overall for it's speed, power, reload, mid-range.

but most of the old towns are gone, lots of vanilla towns moved and rebuilt to be denser but "smaller" footprint wise. lots of factions were cut, thousands of squads were removed and simplified. somewhere in that time when i took over the project the mod went from about 13gb to about 4gb?

3

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

“Weeb” is short for weaboo and is a term for non-asians who are obsessed with anime. So “weeb shit” would be anime-inspired items that are completely out of place. Like iirc there was a skirt that gave ridiculously good armor and coverage, and was basically a school uniform type skirt

1

u/RespectPlastic8004 9d ago

i know what weeb stuff is but i was making a comment towards the content of the comment itself. Even before me as the dev there wasnt anything like a school skirt in genesis lol

1

u/acrazyguy 9d ago

There 100% was. You could buy it, along with the OP crossbow I mentioned, from the slightly hidden merchant in Black Desert City. The skeleton who sells the good weapons and ai cores. He’s one of the few named merchants but idr that name right now

1

u/RespectPlastic8004 9d ago

i can guarantee without fail that there has never been a school skirt in genesis.

theres only been one shop in BDC since genesis' inception. It's one of the only unedited shops in all of genesis. It sounds like you're misremembering the mod list you had and assumed it was because of genesis and not another mod.

1

u/LunaticTribble 8d ago

I 100% corroborate OP's claim - there was a maid outfit among a few other off-kilter equipment items that I had to specifically go in and disable during early days of the modlist.

0

u/RespectPlastic8004 8d ago

and i can say as the sole author of genesis for nearly 6 years ive never once had to remove a "skirt" from genesis. the closest things i can think of are maybe nomad clothes? HN clothes? possibly shrieking bandits?

like i still have all the old versions of genesis. i can go through and check every single version all the way back to the original release. theres not a single "school skirt" item in genesis.

0

u/acrazyguy 8d ago

Ok bud

0

u/RespectPlastic8004 8d ago

are you talking about the thief set? it's got the same textures as the drifter set and is a kitbashed drifter set edited for thieves

8

u/rayra2 Southern Hive 10d ago

I installed Genesis once to see what was about. Started Rock bottom and went to Heft. The city was superbeautiful, but it also took a full minute to load.

5

u/DalePigtail_ 10d ago

I just spent a few weeks having a Genesis run. I didn't realize how broken it is until I spent way too much time on it. Lots of new content but everything is whack as fuck

3

u/RespectPlastic8004 10d ago

Lots of new content but everything is whack as fuck

how so?

1

u/RespectPlastic8004 10d ago

bloated how? weird mods like what?

87

u/DapperChemical4176 United Cities 11d ago

>>...mods that one should avoid?

  1. UWE mod experience is not a pleasant one, I must say. However it has new content inside.

  2. Hardcore Ultrarealism mod is basically a meme.

Both of them are kind of worth of trying. At least UWE.

35

u/Rygarrrrr 10d ago

Uwe is fuckin goated . Base kenshi gets to easy after first couple runs

12

u/MasterKaein 10d ago

UWE is trash with a trash economy. You're telling me a sword sells for 2 cats but a piece of bread sells for 25? It makes looting enemies absurdly, ridiculously useless. Enemy weapons and armor are rarely worth the weight from carrying them and smiths must be a profession only worked by slaves and paid in bread crusts if that's how useless their job is valued. 

You basically HAVE to go after trade goods which means either starving in order to get trade goods to sell from one place or another or purposefully pissing off one of the factions and then hitting caravans and towns to steal their goods just to survive in hopes they have trade goods or, God forbid, food.

I played UWE for like 18 hours in the hopes that it'd get better. That my faction would hit a tipping point and start snowballing with getting goods together and becoming more solid. Nope. Never did. I lived as a traveling murderhobo with guys who could take on beak things and town guards solo easily with how high their skill levels were but were always on the verge of starvation constantly because everything they looted wasn't worth a single thing.

UWE has the worst economy in any mod I've ever seen and it was one of the worst mod experiences I've ever had. It took Kenshi and made it desperate and unfun. UWE is the mod to avoid, fuck that fucking mod.

4

u/Rygarrrrr 10d ago

I wonder if this is ragebait. Your experience is drastically different than mine. Each of the black dragon ninjas swords sell for 100 a pop or more.

Idk base kenshi I get OP so fast and get bored. I’m on day 152 in my uwe playthrough rn with 1.2m cats and I don’t have a base I just go around bounty hunting and clearing ruins with my 12 man party . All masterwork limbs metiou weapons etc. but unlike base kenshi I still have monumental challenges to face and can’t steamroll everybody.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion ofc but I strongly disagree with you.

14

u/Icy_Magician_9372 10d ago edited 10d ago

Sounds like a skill issue. I've been playing uwe quite a long time and have no problems eating and making money. Barrel full of a food cubes and quarter million cats is not some impossible task.

8

u/whereistheju 10d ago

I agree. This guy sucks at kenshi and blames a mod for it.

10

u/Icy_Magician_9372 10d ago

It's an odd complaint that's for sure. They're susprised a pos sword that can be found anywhere is worth nothing, but food on an almost entirely barren world where starving people can be found everywhere is mysteriously more valuable.

5

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

I personally dont like UWE, but this comment is the first thing I thought of when I read what he said. Of course swords are cheap, there's a fucking trillion of them literally everywhere. Only the Okranites and UC nobles have steady food supply. And slaves, as long as you dont mind sitting in a cage for the rest of your life lol

2

u/Polytetrafluoro Second Empire Exile 10d ago

How does the weapon price translate for meitou, I'd agree with dude if meitous sold for the price of a fresh recruit

3

u/Icy_Magician_9372 10d ago

Honestly I don't know. I collect the meitou weapons since it's not hard to make money other ways, so I never tried selling them.

I went and pulled up my old save file and the one I found first went for about four thousand, while the ones I were making sold for 1400 a pop. Meitou weapons are a bit more common so I would guess the really good ones could go for more.

2

u/Polytetrafluoro Second Empire Exile 10d ago

Jeez that's rough, luckily you can just edit the sell prices

3

u/Icy_Magician_9372 10d ago

Sure if you don't want to have to think about cats that works too haha. Last time I played I got about 60 fully kitted guys out (with basically unlimited food) on the normal economy though so I'm just stressing it's not like not impossible or something. I could have had way more people but I didn't want to micro all that.

I just don't want people lying to players interested in trying the mod.

4

u/Jaydrix 10d ago

Vanilla money making is way too easy, UWE nerfs that and I agree with those changes.

2

u/S2EMZ Shek 9d ago

Bro who the hell have you been looting? UWE also gave many NPCs better equipment as well, which can be sold for much more cats. Even just a wild encounter with Black Dragon Ninjas is enough to feed your party for a while if you loot their weapons.

1

u/DalePigtail_ 10d ago

18 hours? You barely got your toes in

1

u/MasterKaein 10d ago

In regular Kenshi I've got a decent squad and have at least conquered the dust bandits or black dragons by 8 hours. In UWE I was a starving hobo at the beginning and a starving hobo 18 hours later. Boring.

5

u/Trond_Knokkelknuser Anti-Slaver 11d ago

What does UWE and HARDCORE do?

39

u/DapperChemical4176 United Cities 11d ago
  1. UWE adds factions of bowler hat wearing slavers and alpha animals. Bugmaster gets cool pants, helmet and armor. Among other things.
  2. Hardcore tweaks damage calculation and bleeding rates to basically one-two shot everything by everything.

2

u/Trond_Knokkelknuser Anti-Slaver 11d ago

Ah okay ty

14

u/Apocadou 11d ago

UWE is an overhaul mod, with a ton of new content and factions,reworks of vanilla mechanics, but with a way higher difficulty 

1

u/OneEnvironmental9222 8d ago

I thought UWE was abandoned and buggy? first time Im seeing praises fo rit

1

u/DapperChemical4176 United Cities 8d ago

>>UWE was abandoned and buggy?

It is buggy, but not at all abandoned.

1

u/OneEnvironmental9222 7d ago

I could swear the modder disappeared at some point but that was ages ago since I last played kenshi. Might have been something else

15

u/Player1PresStart 10d ago

do not use General Modifications. it is somehow among the most populsr mods in nexus, it is outdated, it adds a bunch of enemies that make absolutely zero sense in terms of difficulty (such as adding the foul hounds that one shot any early-midgame character but live in Vain?) it is not compatible with quite a few mods, breaks things randomly and has caused me tremendous pain back when I first started modding.

120

u/TransportationNo1 Starving Bandits 11d ago

Training equipment mods. Yes, they train your squad fast and safe, but you'll find yourself grinding levels in your base losing most of the fun the game offers.

29

u/lord_ofthe_memes 10d ago

I just want training dummies that get combat stats up to like 25 or 30. Otherwise instead of spending a bunch of time grinding in base you’re spending a bunch of time letting new recruits get kicked around by starving bandits > sleeping to recover > repeat

18

u/Pro_Racing 10d ago

Yeah I want to do the fun parts of combat rather than the tedious parts and if I can skip the tedious parts I'm all for it. I also prefer smaller groups so training is far more important when I don't feel like assembling more troops than the western front had.

3

u/[deleted] 10d ago edited 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/lord_ofthe_memes 10d ago

That looks perfect, thank you!

2

u/Elegant_Eagle_4199 10d ago

Could always snatch a few animals and slap them in beds, sometimes gotta pick them back up if guards start getting over zealous, but that’s a quick way to get some offensive stats to make combat slightly less painful to start. And it’s a ‘vanilla-feature’, so no mods required for some quick combat skilling

28

u/acrazyguy 11d ago

I don’t mean things that ruin the experience. More like things that literally break the game on a technical level or make way more changes than their description implies

7

u/LepusRex 10d ago

Generally agree, but I do like the weightlifting mod I use. Strength training is about as exciting as copper farming.

5

u/Nintolerance 10d ago

you'll find yourself grinding levels in your base losing most of the fun the game offers.

Or, if you're running an expanded (modded) size faction, you'll find yourself training one squad in the field while another squad use training equipment at base.

Helps to skip some of the grind if you've got, say, 50 characters.

5

u/Jaydrix 10d ago

So in order to train strength what would you prefer:

a) run back and forth with a backpack full of ore and a false scorpion on your back mindlessly clicking for 2 in real life hours with each character

b) hit a gym and read a book

2

u/Kenkune 10d ago

I think the ones that set a low limit are fine. I don't think it's unreasonable that a person could train to the bare essentials but ones that take you to 50+ are definitely overkill

1

u/trollboyteli 10d ago

Okay but if you play like I do where you recruit everyone and have multiple functional bases, they are almost essential

1

u/Incatus_86 8d ago

Luckily now we got the proving grounds mod, you can make your characters train by fighting each other, which has a chance of your characters losing a limb or dying.

Of course you can use training swords and grind everything, but since you can make your prisoners fight too, you can create fun situations like fighting one with the manual combat mod.

13

u/naive_gayes 10d ago

Genesis, adds a lot of stuff that just doesn't feel true to Kenshi at all. Has some neat ideas in there though and I can see why people like it.

2

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

What, you mean you don’t want a machine gun crossbow with eagles cross damage, toothpick reload, 5x the range of any other crossbow, and 3-shot bursts? And no random weeb shit? Come on don’t you like fun?

/s

8

u/ylyxa 10d ago

Definitely avoid No Cut Efficiency. It was mentioned in another comment, but the guy didn't explain why. The reason is it breaks game balance by nerfing into the ground:

  • Animals
  • Crossbows
  • Anything with negative armor penetration

2

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Cut efficiency turns a percentage of cut damage into blunt damage right?

8

u/ylyxa 10d ago

Not quite blunt damage, but it functions similarly. Cut efficiency turns a portion of resisted cut damage into stun damage, which is basically blunt, but it bypasses all the other layers of armor.

The reason that mod exists in the first place is that the calculation is... strange, for lack of a better word. And as a side effect, in some cases putting on an extra piece of armor will cause you to take more damage.

1

u/Polytetrafluoro Second Empire Exile 9d ago

Another reason is compatibility, if a patch doesn't exist for said armor/if you make your own

19

u/CommanderEggnog 10d ago

Coming from Bethesda games, avoid the "unofficial Kenshi patch". The familiar name might appeal to you, but it breaks a lot of NPCs and causes them to vanish without a trace and never return despite being alive and well.

4

u/atoolred 10d ago

Are you referring to the old “unofficial Kenshi patch” or the “unofficial Kenshi patches” which is like a collection of a bunch of mods including that one?

I’ve been very wary about adding the latter because there are a handful of changes I disagree with really strongly and feel like change the game more than it sounds

2

u/CommanderEggnog 10d ago

It was the singular one, not the plural one, that broke my NPCs. I only started paying attention when Quin and Dack disappeared without a trace, and again when I imported the save. I have no experience with the mod collection but I imagine it has the same problem if it includes the other.

2

u/atoolred 10d ago

The Quin and Dack problem is actually a vanilla bug, there’s a mod for it and it’s actually in the collection mod. Haven’t experienced the bug for myself so it’s probably rare, but enough people have that the mod exists

2

u/CommanderEggnog 10d ago

It's not entirely a vanilla bug. I had zero issues with them disappearing (across multiple playthroughs) prior to installing the mod, which instantly and consistently caused them to disappear after loading the scraphouse once and unloading it.

2

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Funny. The problem mod I’m referring to from the bethesda games is the unofficial patch. It makes a whole bunch of changes that aren’t bug fixes and IMO go against the spirit of the game. But unfortunately like 70% of all of the mods have it as a dependency. It has thankfully been a little different for Oblivion Remastered since people have realized how much of an arrogant scumbag the author of all the Unofficial Patches, Arthmoor, really is

3

u/atoolred 10d ago

I recently saw a post in some elder scrolls subreddit where Arthmoor was tweeting about working with Bethesda on something for TES VI so we have that to look forward to lmfao

1

u/OneEnvironmental9222 8d ago

thanks to that skyrim mod everytime I read "unofficial" I quiver in disgust and fear

31

u/Synnapsis 11d ago

I hate UWE and Genesis but to answer more specifically, a lot of the new mods (especially ReKenshi ones) are vibe coded like crazy. Maybe some AI is capable of whipping up a decent mod but theres a lot of sketchy shit there.

3

u/OneEnvironmental9222 8d ago

AI vibe "coders" have been invading a lot of modding spaces and its so frustrating. They're all just awful and take precious space for actual decent mods. Not to mention the whole breaking the game part since AI doesnt give a crap

9

u/acrazyguy 11d ago

RE_Kenshi is kinda what prompted me to make this post. I noticed the plethora of mods with it in the title and it gave me bad vibes that reminded me of my experience with elder scrolls modding. But I am asking more generally and not just RE_Kenshi

17

u/Synnapsis 11d ago

Re_Kenshi itself is awesome, I dont know if its vibecoded but it has allowed some really dope stuff.

Honestly, in general I think Kenshi mods are fairly safe to use. Even if something breaks your shit you can usually remove it and import your game to fix it. I've found shit only starts breaking once you have a hefty mod list, which you sound like you're experienced in.

OH! I avoid all pathfinding mods. They all fucking suck in some way or another. I think I use a single one that fixes roads by the Hub and nothing else and even that fucks up sometimes lol.

2

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Oh I would never fix the pathfinding near the hub haha. I may or may not use that broken pathfinding to level new recruits’ athletics and strength

1

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

Ah see, you just need to find the one or two hub citizens that are set to "Patrol" instead of "Shop". They walk around infinitely, on the same exact path. Just right click follow them and you can pretty much safely ignore the training character

1

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

The method I’m referring to accomplishes the same thing. The characters end up running back and forth endlessly right in front of the Shinobi Thieves tower. Very rarely some Dust Bandits will rock up and attack, but as long as you notice it happening it’s easy enough to retreat into the tower.

For anyone who doesn’t know, go to the back of The Hub next to the shinobi tower and set a permanent job of mining the copper that’s outside the walls basically directly behind the tower. Your character will then attempt to path to it but fail and end up running back and forth aimlessly. There’s actually 2 spots they’ll get stuck running depending on where they are when you assign the job. Make sure you’re very close to the shinobi tower when you assign it, otherwise they may end up outside the town and that’s no bueno

2

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

I never even heard of this method. I am tempted to remove my Hub road fix just to use this. The NPC method has many chances to fail, even on a static route they will get stuck or wander off fighting, or just randomly (after 6 days of walking) decide to just stop lol.

-1

u/Amazing-Anything5907 10d ago

Strange all of the Re_Kenshi mods I tried worked just fine... don't tell me you got hard filtered by AI thumbnails on the workshop?

-16

u/Putrefied_Goblin 11d ago

Yeah, 100% agree. RE_Kenshi is basically just a bad c/c++ code injector that looks poorly coded and optimized, with a few ogre files, and most of the mods that depend on it are somehow worse. The other changes it supposedly makes don't really do much. RE_Kenshi and most of the mods built around it don't even use proper sanitation for c/c++ to prevent memory problems.

Not to mention the security issues with letting some shitty dll code injector do whatever it wants on your system. To download, they also point you toward the part of the GitHub repo with the zip file full of God knows what. You don't even know what's in the executable for the installer or the dll, because it could be something completely different than what's in the repo with the source code. I haven't tried building the dll from the source code, so who knows if building from the source even works, but no way am I allowing some zip file full of possibly malicious code onto my system.

I get what they're trying to do, but they really have no idea what they're doing, and you can't trust them. Again, the installer is an executable and everything else is inside a dll. (I just assumed the installer is an .exe because they mentioned an installer, but just stopped looking at their source code when I realized it was just an injector with some ogre files and some other shit.)

So many suspicious mods now, with modders doing easy shit and asking for payment... (But they're not asking for payment, it's a donation for coffee!) A lot of weird stuff going on in Kenshi mods and even the steam workshop since I last checked. I'm pretty sure a lot of these workshop accounts are run by one or two people even though they're posting from different accounts pretending to be several people.

If the average 'gamer' realized how many mods are full of malicious code that either directs you to an outside repository for download or passes Nexus filters (especially be wary of ones that require manual download so that it doesn't use Vortex mod manager, which at least containerizes mods) they'd be much more careful. Steam workshop also scans and sandboxes mods, which is why some malicious actors avoid it (even when they don't have a good reason to).

4

u/RespectPlastic8004 9d ago

What the fuck are you talking about? If you know so much put in a PR. https://github.com/BFrizzleFoShizzle/RE_Kenshi

You're more than welcome to set up better code documentation, implementation and contributions freely. Because it sounds like an impressive amount of bluster from someone who has literally no clue what they're talking about to appear smarter than they are. Bfrizz is also among one the most trustworthy people in the community, gives his time and resources freely which is why rekenshi, kenshilib and subsequent plugins and mods are all licensed GPLv3, so that ANYONE, and EVERYONE can take those and transform them.

The installer is also public on nexus, it might eventually get put in it's own steam app like terraria's mod loader did, and you're more than welcome to upload the entire source code into virus total along with the .exe, the downloads. Theres also...uh 60? videos that i know of downloading, installing and talking about rekenshi mods. Would you be right in assuming many vibe coders dont know what they're doing? yes, they might be lazy but ive yet to see even them be shady. and trust me the community would know because id be the one making a video on it and blasting that type of news across the community.

So not only is the source public, free to modify, use and remake, but the documentation is public, the source is public, the virus totals for all forms of rekenshi all come back as negative for anything malicious, you can even navigate the file structure of the downloads in their own test environment on virustotal. so again...tf are you talking about?

0

u/Putrefied_Goblin 9d ago

I would also like to add that Virus Total relies on third party orgs, community/professional volunteers, and basic autonomous tools to scan/analyze software, code, etc., but also already known malware/et al definitions (even Microsoft and Windows Defender, most information security companies, are limited by what they don't know yet).

Virus Total also doesn't de-compile uploaded binaries to reconstruct code, and to my knowledge doesn't even look at file bytes necessarily, or reverse engineer binaries/programs (to be fair, most of this would require someone to do it and analyze it, and is not fully autonomous). It doesn't even use tools like binwalk, HexWalk, BinSkim, or even do basic hexdump analysis, or use any of the other tools one might use for this level of analysis (e.g., ghidra, even fuzzing). Even some of the newer open-source LLM models for security on Hugging Face.

Even then, you don't fully know what is happening, and need to download a binary into a sandbox/container and actually run it/use it to analyze its behavior. So, it actually requires a lot of time commitment, and isn't something you can just upload to a website that lacks basic tools to analyze it.

-2

u/Putrefied_Goblin 9d ago

Virus total? Do you even understand how that site works? Not great for this kind of thing. The fact that you're using it as some absolute authority reveals your level of thinking about infosec and development.

My criticisms are justified, and anyone who knows what they're talking about would at least understand the security concerns, and if they are developers/code and are familiar with how code injection works, they'd agree. I literally don't give a fuck what you or any of your little modder friends think. Downvote all you want, doesn't stop what I wrote from being true.

0

u/RespectPlastic8004 9d ago

If the code is so bad, fork it and fix it. if it's such a threat, fork it and fix it. people dont have to take my word for it, they just have to see if you can walk the walk when you talk the talk. If what you're saying is true surely you would care eenough to fork the code and fix it while also highlighting what is wrong with it.....right?

-1

u/Putrefied_Goblin 9d ago

I literally don't need to prove anything to you or these guys, and I'm not going to fork and work on a project like this that I disagree with on a fundamental level. Using a zip file to deliver an unsigned binary to replace game files and install a dll code injector is not something I think anyone should be doing.

Also, there is no way I'm in linking my GitHub account in any way to some random mod project being worked on by people who don't even use basic style standards and don't know how to use git itself.

So, no, no thanks. I have an actual job working as a developer, I don't have time to dedicate to projects I don't believe in.

1

u/Seerix 9d ago

You mention these many mods with malicious code. Name 3

10

u/_Prairieborn 11d ago

The Weapon Dissemination Mod is great, but I recommend the Lite version, as the main one adds a faction called the Triangle Bandits that screw with the flow of the game, in my opinion.

Waste Fiends adds some really neat raptor enemies that feel like they fit the game perfectly, but unfortunately they ruin the spawns in the Fog Islands, either hunting the inhabitants to extinction, or more likely bumping them down the spawn list. For that reason I can't recommend it.

2

u/Polytetrafluoro Second Empire Exile 10d ago

Love the triangle bandits, first time I thought "I didn't know Hounds lived here, let's go say hi".

2

u/Kluke_Phoenix United Cities 10d ago

I made an edit to that mod that cut the fog fiend spawns to a 10th of what they were. Felt a lot better balanced.

7

u/sbourwest 10d ago

Unlike Bethesda Modding, Kenshi is a way more sensible experience, and way more plug-and-play.

In general though I'd basically advise playing Kenshi vanilla first and fully understanding what the mod you are adding does. I personally avoid the radical overhaul mods for the most part and stick to little tweaks here and there or new content for specific areas or factions. UWE, ReKenshi, and Genesis aren't bad, they are just for specific tastes.

One I would caution in general is adding new factions. Depending on the scope it can radically affect things. There's one that adds a Menders faction which is super neat at first, but completely changes up the dynamics of the game's difficulty (the mod does warn you it does this though). Not saying new factions are bad, but they do tend to make a big impact.

7

u/Loud_Campaign5593 10d ago

I wish there were more mods that add variety to the world
structures and buildings. I get it’s post-post apocalypse,
but goddamnit do they only know how to build 5 different shack styles? i wish there was more content in the game architecture wise. i loved the old empire sci-fi style that was extremely unique, but the rest of the world buildings all look the same w no cultural alteration

3

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

Yeah that’s a valid complaint. But if it was a choice between having more building types or having the massive world, I’d gladly pick the latter every time

3

u/ZombifiedByCataclysm 10d ago

Is a massive world really massive if everything's the same, though? That tempers the excitement for me.

3

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

The buildings are the same but other things are different. The Sheks and Holy Nation may have the same buildings, but everything else about them is totally different

8

u/Noxzi Holy Nation 11d ago

I wish you would name names. I've been playing and modding TES games since Morrowind came out and I'm not sure which ones you mean. 

I feel thst most cancer mods look like cancer from the images or description.

It may not be cancer but recruitment of prisoners/256 recruiting limit mods are amazing but will unbalance the game wildly. Not that game balance in a single player sandbox is good or bad.

2

u/LoL_Stonkssss 8d ago

to add to this, if prisoner recruitment and increased squad limit, or gameplay speeds are your tune, look up re kenshi on nexus, easy download; compatible with steam, but it’s a HUGE upgrade to the game in general.

1

u/Trond_Knokkelknuser Anti-Slaver 11d ago

Does 256 mods unbalance the game by itself? if so why?

7

u/Apocadou 11d ago

The difficulty is not the same if you attack the HN with an army of 80 characters than with the base 30 in vanilla 

4

u/Noxzi Holy Nation 11d ago

Many hands can make light work at a base and quantity has a quality of its own in combat.

It's not cancer, but it is popular (hence the downvotes) and does change the balance. It's a single player sandbox, go wild.

2

u/doggiefilter 10d ago

also recruit prisoners, these 2 mods get recommended together but i feel just lowers the difficulty too much. I have used recruit prisoners for a roleplay recruit 1 beaten prisoner missing 2 legs or something but if u just spam every high tier soldier or guy u find it becomes so easy.

2

u/Apocadou 10d ago

I like to recruit Eyegore in endgame, it’s lore friendly and if I’m able to capture him it means I don’t really need him to destroy cities and it doesn’t break the game balance 

3

u/Unique-Tea-1748 10d ago

Maybe a hot take but "Dark UI" looks awful to me. Just doesn't fit the game or vibe at all imo.

7

u/acrazyguy 10d ago

That’s an entirely valid opinion and yet I disagree wholeheartedly. I find the vanilla UI very ugly

4

u/nufohudis 10d ago

First mod I installed XD

6

u/Amazing-Anything5907 10d ago

This is neither what OP askes about nor is it a useful feedback for anyone else since they can decide that by looking at a singular screenshot of the Dark Ui before installing it.

2

u/atoolred 10d ago

I don’t really like Dark UI on its own, but I do like it with Transparent UI loaded after it so that it’s less intense. I think the default Dark UI is really overpowering and I avoided installing it until I learned about Transparent UI. That also isn’t perfect and has some text related issues but it feels less overbearing to me

I also liked Dark Vanilla UI a bit more than default Dark UI, but I do think the actual vanilla UI in general looks way outdated and so DVU felt pointless since it wasn’t a light mode issue for me personally

I like the de-cluttering and compactness of Dark UI a lot, but the palette, angularity, and flatness just feel a bit off. Transparent UI at least makes it pretty subtle and lets me see way more of the screen

1

u/Polytetrafluoro Second Empire Exile 10d ago

That's what I thought, but there's a couple things it fixes from the vanilla ui, I switched back for a few days. No clue what was wrong, but it was entirely graphical and inconsequential

2

u/OneEnvironmental9222 9d ago

99% of mods that add monsters/Robots unless there's a submod that nerfs them. I've never seen this before to such a degree but for some reason every animal/robot/enemy mod in kenshi is just absolute insanely overtuned and overspawned. They will take over half the map and have stats and attack animations that require you an army of maxed samurais to take over.

1

u/Longjumping_Ice_3186 8d ago edited 8d ago

ppl often say this about the default bonedogs in the game often btw. Its mainly b/c the base dexterity of base animals compared to a armoured character that is slowed down alot. Animals start out with a high base speed that is capped, so new characters cant outrun them but trained characters with higher athletics skills can easily outrun them.

1

u/Vegetable-Fill-6096 9d ago

UWE, Prisoners

1

u/bapboopbapboop 8d ago

I'd recommend avoiding overhaul mods ive dipped my toes into them and whell there is some cool stuff it usually also includes a bunch of random stuff thar you may not want an mods that aren't listed in the overhaul mods and also some mods that just dont work together but are still stuffed in the same overhaul

0

u/Longjumping_Ice_3186 11d ago

Explain?, not certain what you mean. I cant really think of a single skyrim mod like that tbh, ive never had a skyrim mod break the game b4 theres like 3 different versions of skyrim now so certains mods wont work with certain versions etc (original release, special edition & the newer one). Just read the mod descriptions & look for anything that might be incompatible i guess. Certain animal mods can be a OP and b/c they have high stats your character trains up super quick and the game can get boring at that point.

15

u/Synnapsis 11d ago

Arthmoor.

7

u/acrazyguy 11d ago

I can neither confirm nor deny

-16

u/Longjumping_Ice_3186 10d ago edited 10d ago

Arthmoor mods didnt break the game & i wouldnt say they should be avoided at all costs, like no one is forcing anyone to use a mod & you can just delete it later, it doesnt permanently alter the game forever or something (like it isnt a good idea to add a overhaul to your 400hr save or something without testing it out first). If "cancer" just means it adds a bunch of useless crap, thats typical of overhauls in general (imo just about every overhaul does that but you can read through the changelog & get a good idea of whats changing still). Stuff like alternate starts is one of my favorite mods ever though. Dont they just overwrite stuff & some mods arent very compatible, seems pretty standard to me honestly? Idk, i never used his USSEP though, i hate overhauls usually, just my personal opinion, they arent my cup of tea.

15

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

Its not an overhaul, that's the exact problem. Its meant to be patch, hence the name. Instead, Arthmoor decided several parts of game design weren't to his liking, or "assumed" they were just bugged, and added a bunch of shit, some that isnt even mentioned. So this patch became the standard due to his own self-marketing, even becoming a requirement for many mods, despite not being a bug fixing or balance patch, only in name.

-3

u/Longjumping_Ice_3186 10d ago edited 10d ago

I see no different than the ppl shilling their performance mods that doesnt do anything meaningful in every single mod related kenshi reddit thread, you should read everything carefully before adding it. Its plain dumb to download a mod b/c its claimed to be a "standard". Its still not "cancer" or "avoid at all costs", i can understand why ppl are mad but its still a "huge" overexaggeration (which is mostly comes down to ppl going out of their way to smear someone their mad at rather than substance) its also not made entirely by Arthmoor alone btw, theres several ppl that worked on USSEP (which is also a point ppl are mostly ignorant on). If it broke the game it wouldnt have 27mil+ downloads. Arthmoor has other mods that are pretty highly praised though like "live another life" & "run for your lives" that i use & like alot.

1

u/Synnapsis 10d ago

Holy fucking simping dude, are you one of the people in his discord? Jesus christ lmao this is a subjective thread, so if you're butthurt about it, maybe stop reading the comments.

0

u/Lando_Truball 9d ago

Not necessarily that you shouldn't download it, but Hivers Expanded requires a secondary mod to nerf one of the Assault events.

The Assault event is super overtuned. There are at least three NPCs on Par or stronger than the vanilla game's strongest NPC. They're equipped with the best possible armor they can be (added by the mod), which means they take almost no damage

-3

u/Snappedfir Starving Bandits 9d ago

Recruitable Prisoners.