#nomad chester | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

northwest-cryptid · 1 year ago

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I found this image on my computer, which; without context is probably EXTREMELY confusing but it kills me every time I see it

I cannot tell you how badly I wish I could explain this game to you all, more specifically the adventure I went on with Chester but all I have left from the streams is this recap, which if you can forgive my god awful voice/audio summarizes exactly nothing everything and shows just how often my audience abuses the sound/music alerts video below the read more so it shouldn't randomly auto-play for anyone:

So, right off the bat horribly sorry for my god awful voice gracing your ears.

Other than that, for people who don't know; Kenshi is possibly my favorite open world sandbox game because it genuinely has so much to offer. It has no goals, it has no morality system nor does it try to tell you what is right and wrong. Kenshi just puts you in the world and asks you to survive however you want.

In the playthrough I'm doing on my streams I am playing as Chester, who's literally an old man who was a slave, escaped slavery, and lost all of his limbs; he has since been re-enslaved but broken out several times. I've decided that since he has been mistreated directly by slavers he would seek to rid the world of the two factions in the game that heavily support slavery, those being The Holy Nation (who are essentially a parody of Extremist Christians with their sexist and racist beliefs that anyone who isn't a Greenlander Male needs to be someone else's slave, or be killed) and The United Cities (who are basically Capitalism, I would say "Capitalism to the extreme" but no that's implied by saying Capitalism in the first place. Wealth is everything to them, how you get it doesn't matter; sell drugs, sell people; who cares as long as you make money in the end) as a result his journey has taken him all over the world.

Now normally in Kenshi you play as a group of characters you can set up a base somewhere, start up productions and do whatever. Kenshi is really well designed in that the world will come to you and happen at you but it will never treat you like anyone special even if you become a big shot. Taking out a few Holy Nation Paladins will get you a bad rep with the Holy Nation but no one is going to call you an Anti-Slaver hero, but if you take down Holy Lord Phoenix himself, you'll start to get a name for yourself both good and bad depending on who you ask. For every ally you make you make an enemy of someone else. If you build in bandit territory they will demand food to not launch raids, if you build in Shek lands they want their tribute for your colonization, if you build in the United Cities you better be ready to pay taxes. The world feels alive no matter how you play, and Chester is something of a nomad who just wants to explore the world and have one last adventure while leaving the wastelands a more peaceful place than he came into it as.

My current playthrough off stream is actually 100% different, I'm a lone barkeeper who set up shop in one of the towns of the United Cities, I would buy slaves and release them if they chose to stay with me I'd give them a job working at my pub. I was literally just a humble barkeep. Eventually I had the whole situation automated, we have robots manning everything, one running well water to the farmer, one working the farms harvesting crops and turning them into usable ingredients, another taking the ingredients and preparing food, another running that food to the front desk for sales, it was an elaborate and beautiful pipeline delivering grog, sake, and plenty of rice to the fine people of Stoat while simultaneously ridding the UC (United Cities) of their slaves, with the money lining my pockets it wasn't hard to buy out every slave shop I came across, and just release the slaves.

Oh yea and I have modded the game to all hell without a care as to what I was actually modding in, which means everything from vroid models to dinosaurs to uh... warframe grineer? For some reason?

So my playthrough kinda looks like this:

I kinda want to run you through this playthrough in hopes it will share some of why I love Kenshi with you. See the stats in this game are brutal and they only get better by being used. If you want to get tougher you need to be beaten, if you want to run faster you need to travel, if you want to make better clothing you need to do a lot of crafting. So with only 6 Athletics (which is nothing) and a dream, I took off to go get my Skeleton crew (Skeletons are the name for robots in this game) which are out in the Black Desert which suffers from constant acid rain and lightning storms... which are a slight problem, however that's not as much of a problem when I didn't even make it 5 minutes out the door before some bandits launched an assault on me because I happened to have a loaf of bread in my pocket, yea this game is UNFAIR and it's great but we'll get to why later.

^ See this in the bottom left? Those are your health bars, you don't get HP in this game you get values for your limbs. Your VITAL limbs are things like your head, chest, stomach, and obviously blood. The higher your toughness stat the lower those can go before you fall unconscious/die. However you can entirely lose arms and legs and still be okay, you can even craft your own limbs (or steal them in the case of Chester :P) to replace them, and in a lot of cases limbs are a trade off, maybe you're really strong but that strength means you don't have good finger dexterity so you can't pick locks or steal very well but you can bust open a door or hit someone really hard, scout legs for example give you a ton of movement speed as they're basically springs on your feet, but they don't have a lot of health value so if you get hit in the leg you're probably going down quick, not to mention you can't swim very well with large pieces of metal for legs. These trade offs are really fun and the way health values work in this game is something I hated at first but came to love as I played more.

Everything you survive in Kenshi literally makes you stronger, it's that age old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" yea it's that cranked up to 11, because wouldn't you know it after hiring some robots at a pub (they can only drink grog because it's basically oil to them, and yes they have oil not blood as a stat; man the devs really put so much detail into this game it's so cute) I got struck by lightning and left out in acid rain... with literally no protection from it.

However if you notice most of my stats are in the green minus stomach and chest... and my left arm but my VITALS are doing better because I already took a beating getting here, and I got tougher for it! God I love that shit so much it's such a cool concept because it means you organically grow over the course of the game!

So anyways we get back to Stoat eventually (I had to get one of the robots to carry me) and we begin to properly set up shop, it's real cozy since there's no real conflict and I have plenty of money (called Cats) to spend on resources right now

I even started making and selling weapons and stuff! I eventually had enough money I bought ANOTHER building and decided to turn this one into a big farm, we'd use moister farming to condense water in the air since we're in the middle of the desert and wells out here kinda suck for consistent water supply, we'll continue the use of hydroponic farming and start bread production from grain silos, yes all of this shit matters; Kenshi is a complex game with lots of moving parts, I mean hell there's a whole graph for making robotic limbs and it's fantastic, you have to know what to make at what crafting station and where it all needs to go, and what research you need to do to unlock it all. This game makes you work for your reward and then properly gives you a fitting reward when you can make shit like this:

This whole thing is a blueprint that contains 3 different types of farms (Vegetables, Rice, and Wheat) a grain silo to turn the wheat to flour, then an oven for baking that flour to bread, as well as Grog, Rum, and Sake distilleries, storage for it all, as well as 4 stoves all set to make various foods from the farms, the floor above this houses 6 water condensers that will generate passive water for us so the farms won't dry out, and you know what? This all pays off, we make literally over 100k just selling various foods and drink that cost nothing for us to make since we can now grow it all in house!

Just to give you an idea, there was a moment like this for Chester too, except Chester's moment was when he tracked down a tyrannical Skeleton warlord who had been literally making skeletons go haywire so he could have an army to commit genocide on anyone and everyone, Chester couldn't fight through the literal hundreds of thralled skeletons so instead we used stealth which we had been training for a good while now; and snuck into his throne room before carefully sneaking up and assassinating him. It turns out he has one of the strongest weapons in the game, something called a "Meitou Falling Sun" which is actually really important because the "Meitou" in that name is the weapon's grade, Meitou is a grade only given to 1 of each class of weapon, forged by an ancient blacksmith named Cross who was renowned as a legendary blacksmith who made top tier weapons. Now the Falling Sun is still WAY too heavy for Chester to use properly, but he was able to grab the warlord and turn him in to an anti-slaver group for a bounty, fun fact about that the anti-slaver group is ran by another Skeleton who used to be friends with said warlord but didn't agree with his system of going to war, and instead became an anti-slaver gigachad who doesn't even fight with a weapon.

Notice how in my Barkeeper run my big moment was automating a farm + kitchen combo and decorating my bar to be nice and fancy; but for Chester it was basically an elaborate stealth mission to assassinate/Stealth KO a warlord and change the global politics of the game entirely? Yea that's the freedom this game gives you, you will get these big rewarding moments no matter how you play. In one of my playthroughs that rewarding moment was hunting down a slaver group who had taken one of my characters and enslaved them, I broke everyone out of the camp including my old team member and despite effectively only getting back to square 1 (having both my party members in the party again) it felt super cool and rewarding to break them out of this elaborate slave prison and set everyone free to help me fight off the guards, because my whole playthrough changed when they got captured, suddenly I cared a lot more about lock picking and stealth and everything else took a backseat, I joined a group of ninjas and had them train me so I could sneak in and pick all the locks before opening all the cages and arming all the slaves with weapons from the storage rooms. Kenshi is an entirely unique experience every playthrough and speaking of playthroughs after I upgraded my bar I decided to take a little vacation out of the desert to go pick up some more friends, this time I figured I'd get some fleshy new hires since I want to diversify a little bit. While I was out, this Beak Thing (large carnivore creatures who when the game was released, could accidentally talk and would absolutely destroy you before saying "relax, enjoy death" which is the most terrifying shit) got stuck in our grog room

But he's still only a pup so we can't legally give him any alcohol, don't worry; he still hasn't left and he's now an Elder. I am trying to find the guy who will sell him to me because he's become something of a mascot for the bar. He also doesn't fit anymore...

So you may be wondering if there's plot or anything and well, there kinda is; and it's super organic and I love it to death. Okay so let's back up, now that I have an automated system I've begun going town to town and buying a bar in each major town in the UC this allows me to make money in town and then buy out the slave market freeing any slaves and hiring any who want to stick around giving them a weapon more powerful than a sword in the UC; money. In doing so I wound up in a coastal town called Bark where I was approached by a young woman and this dialogue happend:

It's a little hard to read but I'll summarize if you're not able to read it; essentially she asks if I'm from around here and when I ask if there's a problem by any chance she tells me she somehow fucked up with nobility, which in the UC is a big deal; like a "they will kill you" big deal. She tells me she NEEDS to get out of town, so I ask her what she was involved in; remember that if I get a bad rep with the UC my bars will be raided, all the slaves I have employed will be killed, I won't be able to fight the system so for now I have to play nice and that means I can't be helping anyone out if it costs me my own skin; plus I'm not some super strong anime protagonist, I'm a fucking barkeeper! I have no stats for fighting at this point and can't very well go to war with the UC over one person as much as I may want to help everyone. She tells me it's all a conspiracy and someone ratted her out, she needs to be gone by the morning so I tell her I'll see what I can do; yes you can actually disguise people and sneak them over boarders in this game it's incredible. However she tells me she only needs about 3k to bribe the guards to look the other way, 3k is pretty much nothing to me at this point so I say sure. After which point she joins our squad, I am then approached by another young lady looking to join up and get out of town; sounds good to me but I kinda need people here to run the shop in this town so I attempted to have a bit of dialogue to figure out why she wanted out so bad;

But she's an absolute riot, she tells me she has a pet Gutter (a species of Beak Thing) named Grimes and how she apparently has had a steamy affair with the barman's daughter and then even goes so far as to try to show me her weird rash but I figured we knew enough and you know we stan a lesbian with a weird rash.

But I couldn't just leave them here if they weren't well protected; so I set up a small fishing camp, and taught them how to farm, I even bought them a house and made good sure Khida was safe to leave town if needed.

I even installed a little Gutter weathervane for Ojillo on their farm

This game just has so much charm! Though I really need to get these two some clothes, most characters spawn with pants but not shirts; but the game is never weird about it so meh I'll pick them up some leather jackets from the shop down the road from my pub.

Now remember how I said I'm physically pretty weak? And how I can't really fight yet? Well to fix that I went ahead and used the skills I do have (in crafting) to make myself some martial arts gear, in this case this absolute insanely modded mess of a game showed me I could make Goku's gi and you know I have never seen Dragon Ball but that wasn't going to stop me, I even found a guy selling some weird robotic enhancements and bought that to go with it.

I essentially waited around at the gates of Stoat for wildlife, bandits, or threats of any nature to attack the town and when the guards would get involved I'd just back them up, it was pretty safe and if I was knocked out I had my pub staff nearby with medkits to pick me up and haul my ass back to bed. After a LONG time of this I was finally skilled enough at dodging, tough enough to take hits when I couldn't dodge, and actually skilled enough with martial arts; to explore the wilds out by where Beak Things live, I was hoping to get some beak thing eggs since they sell for a good price and I could use them in cooking some really nice stuff to sell at my pub, would absolutely bring in higher paying clientele and I'm all about that.

Oh and while I was doing all of this, the rest of the world was still actively going on around me, remember how I said I was freeing slaves? They were starting to take notice of this, and one of my ex-slave employee's Frump went by the slave yard to free some more people when this really wholesome interaction happened:

Kenshi really does a great job of making the world feel like it's happening around you but at the same time, taking notice of you. I love stuff like this, it's genuinely cool to see slaves notice my faction and know they have a chance of escaping because I set slaves free; and yet they don't immediately trust me just off my reputation because that's the kind of world Kenshi is, it's a world where for all they know I "free" slaves and then shoot them for sport, or feed them to my pet dinosaur for fun. Oh yeah my pet dinosaur, about that.

So remember how I said I was going to go get beak thing eggs for profit and money? I found a Western Tyrant instead, or at least a Juvenile one; a quick fight later and it was knocked out, I patched it up and dragged it's ass back to my house in The Hub where I was greeted by none other than Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles X and 2b from NieR; why? Because MODS BAY-BEE WOOOO!

ANYWAYS we put it in a cage so it can't kill us and we feed it until it trusts us, we name it Gura because it will become an Apex Predator, and now we are best friends :D

Look at it! I love this thing! It's so cute! It's still a baby so I have to be careful not to let it get into fights with things that could easily kill it but it's a tanky beast and I'm keeping it safe. Well...

OKAY LISTEN IT'S OKAY! THE RAGDOLL PHYSICS ARE JUST HILARIOUSLY WEIRD IN THIS GAME BUT I PROMISE IT'S OKAY!

On my way back to Stoat I found a group of nomads who were also traveling with animals and I decided to follow them, strength in numbers and all that; we're all friends here.

This game is honestly beautiful to me even on low settings; I love looking up from the desert wasteland and seeing huge planets floating over the horizon it really sells me on the scale of this world.

Eventually we got to a town where I hadn't had a chance to set up a shop, the Nomads just brought me to an entirely new place; so I ran by the local bar to pick up a new hire and well, interview went great!

I literally asked if they had any potential skills they said no, and I hired them on the spot!

Oh yea I also found a guy getting chased around by a "processor unit" which are basically robotic vulture raptors that eat dying things; he was beat up pretty bad in a fight and woke up from his recovery coma because the unit was eating his flesh, and then the pathfinding decided he should RUN IN CIRCLES

So I see this looney tunes bullshit off in the distance while I'm traveling; gotta love it. Good luck dude! Some say he's still out there running in circles to this day.

This happened by the way because he was trying to attack the unit, and the unit was trying to attack him and the pathfinding wouldn't just let him turn around, and dear lord it was hilarious.

I was also laughing really hard because I sent my friends THIS picture which looks like the most generic youtube clickbait thumbnail, but was meant to express how much hell I was going through trying to transport all my goods over to the next town which was so heavy I couldn't move faster than 4 mph but of course there were a ton of things in the desert at this exact time of day, that want me dead:

I guess what I'm trying to say with this extremely long rambling, is that I genuinely love Kenshi for how much love and care and soul it has. Every character I encounter has a story, something to say, something to do. I wander into a town and someone tells me about this legend they heard and they want to join me to go hunt down some treasure somewhere, or I'll stumble into a pirate town where anyone who doesn't know the pirate code is immediately taken in to become a slave and work your way up through the ranks because you're an obvious outsider; but you can buy a pirate code book off a drunk guy super cheap at a bar and then pretend to know enough to not get caught. Sometimes I'm running through a place just for travel and stumble upon "Skin Bandits" who are Skeletons who think they're human, and they're all friends with a human who's their leader; and made them "peeler machines" to peel the flesh off their "flesh brothers" and wear the skin as a suit; genuine horror shit right there and I love it. Kenshi has so much packed into it, you could be a leviathan hunter seeking riches from battling behemoths that roam the land, or you could be a barkeeper who just wants to settle down in a quiet town and run a shop, or you could be an anti-slaver and free the oppressed people of the world; and hell there's nothing saying you have to play this way. If you prefer to be a morally bad person in games you can join the Holy Nation, you can become a slave trader; you can steal and kill to your hearts content because the game will never point a finger at you and say "you're being morally bad and mean and rude!" Instead you are chased down by the police, you might have to break out of jail, you might have to fight and die to get out of prison or to get away because you may get caught trying to rob people. Kenshi is immersive because it never tells you "no" outright, it plays like a huge game of D&D where everything is fair to the point of being brutal and unfair. Like the game doesn't deem you anyone important, you're just another person; so every choice you make matters but not in some grand scheme kind of way.

And what's really cool about it is, if you do want to be some important person, you can do that too! If you take out a big political name, someone else will make moves to take their place; other factions will move into the land and take up residency and you can sway how the game map will turn out. You can help the Shek reclaim their land, you can help the Holy Nation colonize everything, you can help the United Cities get even richer, or you can hang out in the swamps with the turtles; they're cute as fuck dude I love those little guys.

Yes the game is buggy, and yes you should probably mod the fuck out of it because there's a ton of ways to cheese it and honestly sometimes a bit of quality of life mods can go a long ways toward making a game more fun.

But I ultimately think this game deserves a look if you're into these sort of genres; explore the world, see what it has to offer; and just have fun with it. If you're curious and don't wanna play it yourself you're always welcome to check out my streams, Chester's quest to get all his stats to 100 is about to start back up again, we still need to put an end to the Holy Nation and make Chester the gigachad he deserves to be; so if you can handle my absolutely aggravating voice come hang out if you feel inclined.

Anyhow thanks for reading all of this, hope you enjoyed it; I could gush about Kenshi and it's little details all day but I'll spare you since this post is long enough as it is.

#long post sorry #oh god theres a really dumb 6 minute video under the cut #and you can hear my dumbass voice sorry about that lol #i love this dumb game so much

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