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[Sirus]

My mildly successful start is starting to snowball in my favor. I'm up to ten dudes, most of them not good at much of anything but at least they're warm bodies. Eight of them are working on my new outpost to the east of that early-game Shek town, while two are working in and around the town; one mining copper to sell, one serving as researcher and all-around gofer.

Despite being on the Shek side of Hub, this place is apparently in Holy Nation territory if the frequent prayer groups mean anything. Also I get periodic warnings of raids, but these raiders are way nastier than the normal wandering bandits: Black Dragon ninjas and Bone Warriors. I tend to abandon camp and try to lure them to the city, but it's a long run and I can never get more than a few to follow me all the way back.

Well, whatever. I have walls starting to go up, I have access to every resource (though water is only at 60%), and given time I will get some wheat farms and electricity up and running. Aside from the warned raids, we've also been hit by a couple of squads of Hungry Bandits. For the first time in my Kenshi career, my dudes have stood their ground against bandit groups and actually beaten them. Yeah, we get hurt ourselves, but at the end of the day (some of) my dudes are standing and the bandits are dead or dying. Since Kenshi runs on DBZ rules, we'll only get better at fighting as time goes on!

[nenjin]

I think the Missionaries tend to go where ever as long as it's reasonably close to the borders of the Holy Nation.

Sounds like you settled in or around where I did.

I'm at the point in my game where all there is to do, is collect blueprints, expand, and build the highest end research. That's sorta where I stalled. It's not that it's not fun, I just don't have a strong reason to continue versus other games. Maybe trying to arrange it so I can get my guys exploring and not worry about my base will get me to fire it up again at some point.

[Ulfarr]

Spoiler: Exploring the Fog Islands (click to show/hide)

First proper visit to the fog islands, were I was actually exploring the area, paying attention to the details and not just passing through. I happen upon one of the deathyards the moment a group of about 50 fogmen return carrying 4 holy nation outlaws. Boy was I not expecting to see the whole group start chanting/wree'ing while their princes ate the prisoners alive.

[Majestic7]

The Border Zone is literally a border zone between Shek and Holy Nation, meaning both consider it their own regarding patrols and taxes. That can actually be a good source of loot in the beginning, if you spot a Shek/HN patrol leaving town towards the middle of the zone, you can follow them as scavengers. If two patrols meet and inflict casualties on each other, you can loot some pretty good equipment for newbie levels.

[Sirus]

Oh wonderful. I think Kenshi saw my optimistic post last time and decided to put an end to that. Not even two in-game hours after the last attack, with half my squad still in recovery comas and the rest too battered to move, does another squad of hungry bandits come rushing in. They swiftly beat down everyone, many to the point that they'll likely die without swift medical care (and most of my medicine was used to patch up the wounded in the last attack), and steal all of my meager food stores.

Somehow I doubt a quick reload will cancel the attack; they must have been fairly close. What do I do?

[Glloyd]

Evac to a town. You'll have to shell out for beds in an inn, but it'll allow you to rest and recuperate for a bit. I'm not sure where you are, but if you're in/near Skinner's Roam, you can get absolutely massive groups of hungry bandits coming by, so it's best to get walls up, or settle deeper in HN territory if you're all human. It's also always nice to buy a building in a nearby town to use as a fallback base, just in case.

[Brotato]

Reload, pick up who can, and start running before the bandits get there. Honestly, in my opinion setting up a base before you've got ~12 dudes with 30+ ATK & DEF. Until then just buy housing in a town and build some storage bins in them for ore. Have your guys mining until you can reliably fend off the dust bandit attacks. This should leave you with plenty of money by the end and a half-decent group to go exploring with.

[Majestic7]

Outpost raids are insane currently, even if you toggle them to minimum in the options. I don't feel guilty at all playing with a mod that reduces them to one tenth. Even then, I get the shit kicked out of my guys occasionally. But at least usually I have time to heal between the attacks.

Raid frequency doesn't affect the chance of wandering parties attacking you, though - that is, animals and people native to the zone just wandering by and deciding to come visit you.

[Sirus]

Well, I managed to get the whole squad back to town, limping the entire way. My mule even managed to snag all the food in the storage barrel so that the bastard bandits wouldn't get any!

Now to figure out what to do next. I figure a recruiting trip might be in order, maybe heading up to the Holy Nation to snag some humans. Maybe send one of my three shek to explore other towns, but of them the only one I'd trust to survive alone is also an "outcast" and might have a hard time finding recruits. The other two are big dumb bruisers that are easily my slowest dudes - not ideal for traveling solo.

I also need to make money. Copper mining is nice, but the node I have easiest access to can only be mined by one person at a time. The one at my base is a little better, two people max, but it's much much further away from town and also subject to attacks, which might hit my mules coming or going. I hear that drug running can be profitable but I have no idea how to get started on that. For now, I'll just focus on copper. Maybe I'll set up a second copper operation in Hub.

I'm mostly just unsure how to get my dudes better able to survive. Yeah, I can use training dummies to get their melee attack skill up to "better than nothing", and I can have my dudes cart around lumps of iron to (very slowly) build their strength, but melee defense and toughness requires actually finding punks to fight. Finding punks that can be fought "safely" is tricky.

[nenjin]

Honestly, they just need to get the shit kicked out of them and survive. They learn more from losing unwinnable fights than they learn from winning winnable ones. The trick is losing fights and being able to recover your guys. What I did often was get a really, really good Medic, and hide them sometimes even outside the base. Once the horde had moved on he'd move back in and start patching people up. Or you can lock them in a building at the back of your base housing no containers, put him in stealth mode and wait for the baddies to leave.

For money, I assume you're at that Shek town SW of the Hub? I forget the name. (Squinn?) There should be two copper nodes to the west and at least one to the East of town, which should accommodate I believe 5 workers. You'll have to pay attention as plenty of wandering bands of shit constantly come at that town (at least in my game.) But it's pretty easy to see them coming and get to the gates before they out run your guys loaded down with copper. That's basically how I made my money for the first 6 hours.

If you really want to maximize copper, get some trader backpacks. (The ones made out of wood.) They don't give great weight reduction but you can stack wwaaaayyyy more stuff in to them than the standard small or medium backpack.

Selling scavenged gear also works but you have to be choosey. Can't just grab every piece of crap. "Decent" weapons and not shit tier armor sells ok.

As for Outcasts, I think that only really matters to other Sheks, and any Shek you find outside of Shek towns probably is an outcast themselves. Also note that, in the Holy Nation, vendors will not sell to non-humans and people talk a lot of shit to them. I haven't yet been attacked by NPCs in the Holy Nation towns but I'd imagine it's possible.

[Sirus]

In one of my earlier games, I did the "five nobodies" start and took dudes of each race. I explored North of Hub and came across a Holy Nation city, where the guards flat out demanded that I turn over the non-humans on my team. I tried to run and what seemed to be two entire squads ran me down and slaughtered my dudes.

Forgive me if I'm not planning to go back there with non-humans any time soon.

Anyway, it's the surviving I most worry about. Even my band of scrubs can leave hungry bandits dying in the sand - I shudder to think what will happen to them if they try to tackle someone really dangerous that might then decide to watch over the bodies for a few days. Even with a really good medic, I feel I'd lose dudes.

Random question: when my base was raided by ninjas I managed to lure a few of them close to town and loot what was left after the guards took them down. I saw that they were equipped with twin katanas in their primary weapon slot. Is there any mechanical reason for this?

[Ulfarr]

Dual wield is purely cosmetic, you can give two weapons to your own characters too but like the ninjas they will only use one of them in battle.  You can check if the attack/defense bonuses/penalties stack but I don't think they do.

[Sirus]

Went on that recruiting trip to the Holy Nation, found myself a couple of dudes in one city. One of them at least had some combat stats while the other was a fresh newb, so I considered it a good trip. While I was in the area, I decided to take my three scouts and run them up to the next city over. No sense in leaving and coming back later, right? I switched back to my Squin team to get some copper sold...and then I noticed the portaits for the scouts flashing red. I quickly switched back over, waited a couple of minutes for the game to load...

And was greeted with this lot.

I counted about 44 hungry bandits. While weak individually, all of them together was way, way too much for three dudes, one of them completely untrained and another only sorta-trained. I quickly turned them around and ran them back to the HN city and was chased the entire way.

Eventually we got close enough that the city guards began to charge our way, so I decided that this should be the newbies' first lesson. I set everyone to Block and let the chaos unfold. It was a mess, with more guards charging in every minute and bodies littering the sand. All three dudes got knocked out, though luckily my main character had sufficient toughness to merely play dead and wait for things to calm down before beginning the medic work. Once everyone was out of danger, I (very slowly) got them to an inn and rented three beds.

[nenjin]

Half a dozen more times of that and they'll be ninjas.

Although do note that it's pretty specific what gets better in combat. If they don't do any attacking at all, they don't get attack or (or weapon skill?) But they will get oodles and oodles of defense, which can maybe buy them the durability to fight and get their skills up. I also don't know if the Block order prevents dodging, which they have to do to raise the skill as well.

There is also a big XP modifier when you attack or defend against a much better opponent. So as counter intuitive as it might seem, letting your guys wade in to some nasty fights can actually raise most of their skills quite a bit all at once. I think it also has the added benefit of speeding the fighting up; the longer it goes on the more damage they'll take over all their bodies, and the nastier bandits with nastier weapons can do a shit load or sever easier than the guys with lead pipes. So letting them wade in and take hits as they come will often get them KO'd quickly....which is what you want so the bandits fuck off that much quicker. It's not a strategy you want to employ to win, but to survive and improve.

I like to think they structured the system based on Kung fu movies. You know the trope. The young, talented but ignorant martial artist tangles with an older and much better and meaner opponent and they get the shit kicked out of them. Probably more than once. Cue montages of laying around injured and doubtful, but then getting that spark and coming back tougher, stronger and wiser than the last time....I dig it. It's a neat system and one I might even try not save scumming my way through, because honestly the game can be pretty forgiving if things go right. (It's actually incredibly difficult to just outright "kill" anyone in this game that I've seen, your guys included.) It's just those moments where you're not paying attention and you come back to someone missing a limb that you feel like a dope.

(Also, maybe try talking to those hungry bandits sometime. Results might surprise you.)

[NullForceOmega]

Blocking also buffs dodge by 20 points.  What I like to do is set my fngs to block, put them in the heaviest high-coverage armor I can afford then let them get beaten into the ground until they hit 30ish block or dodge.  After that they can defend themselves pretty solidly and start leveling up attack.