A myriad of people live in the world of Kenshi, ranging from the mundane humans to the malformed beasts and broken machines that inhabit the three corners of the continent. These people are divided into several different groups and then into even more subraces, and they all tend to play quite differently from each other from both gameplay and lore viewpoint.

For ease of reading I’ve divided these races into three different categories: Playable Races, Recruitable Races and Unplayable races. I will go through these groups in the aforementioned order, introducing new groups and subraces as they appear in each category.

Kenshi is a game that is all about meeting new people and then running away from them.

The playable races come in four groups, with seven different subraces. These races are available in the character creation, and they are also the most common recruits you can find in the world (with Skeletons really stretching the common part). 90% of the time your party, associates and opponents will consist of these races, so you will eventually find yourself quite familiar with them.

A gaggle of human martial artists poses under acid rain.

Humans are, somewhat unsurprisingly, the most common group in Kenshi. From gameplay point of view, they, especially the Greenlander subrace, serve as the baseline for all other races in the game: If some other race is said to eat 20% more or heal three times faster, that number is always reflected to the basic human stats.

Humans are generally the simplest race in the game to play, having no particularly severe flaws or quirks. They can interact with most factions without problems, can use any equipment without restrictions and have no particularly gameplay-changing features – that is, of course, as long as you’re not the demonic spawn of Narko herself: A woman.

Human Pros in General:
+ Generally balanced
+ No problems in interacting with most notable factions (as long as you are a man)
+ Able to equip all types of armour, apart from the few race-specific ones
+ Show most visual improvement with increased stats: Your character will become extremely ripped
+ Only group with access to beards (very important)
Human Cons in General:
- No protection from hostile environment, requires specialized gear to survive
- Considered a delicacy and/or an item of clothing by certain factions and animals

Humans come in two different subraces:

Greenlander:
Body: 100 for all bodyparts
Blood: 75-150
Bleed Rate: 1
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: 16-27 mph
Experience Multipliers:
Farming +20 %
Cooking +20 %
Science +20 %

As mentioned before Greenlanders are the most bog-standard and mundane of peoples, whether it comes to gameplay, looks or stats. They have no particular flaws, but their bonuses aren’t that impressive either.

Greenlander Pros:
+ Balanced, can be used for anything
+ Nice multipliers for settlement work without any penalties
+ Most cosmetic character customization options
Greenlander Cons:
- Don’t particularly excel at anything, with other races being equal or better options when specializing
- No resistance against blood loss, unlike almost every other race

Greenlanders are found where there is civilization, and two of the three main factions of the game have them as significant majorities. They can be found as civilians, bandits, heroes and kings, and there are only a very few places out there where they don’t have some sort of presence.

Personal Opinion: Greenlanders offer a solid, balanced choice from both game- and roleplaying viewpoint. Not much else to say here. These guys are probably your best choice (alongside the next subrace) for your first playthrough, as they offer a fairly soft landing to the game while being quite vulnerable to the more dangerous parts of the world.

Recommended For: General all-rounders, Settlement Work

Scorchlander:
Body: 100 for all bodyparts
Blood: 75-150
Bleed Rate: 0,9
Hunger Rate: 0,9
Heal Rate: 1,1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: 16-27 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+10 % Dexterity
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Athletics
+20 % Armor Smith
+20 % Weapon Smith
+20 % Dodge
-10 % Strength
-20 % Labouring
-20 % Farming
-20 % Cooking

Scorchlanders are a human subrace that is far more adjusted to the hostile environment of the world of Kenshi. Compared to their more mundane cousins, these dark-skinned and glowy-eyed people are well suited for a life of adventure.

Scorchlander Pros:
+ Excellent stat multipliers to several important skills
+ Rare smithing bonuses make arming and equipping your forces with high-quality items much quicker
+ Heal faster, bleed slower, and eat less than Greenlanders, making them much more survivable
+ Can consume raw meat
+ Most penalties are negligible, expect for…
Scorchlander Cons:
- …Horrible, horrible strength penalty
- Mediocre at running basic settlement functions
- Notably lower water avoidance than other playable races, may cause pathfinding issues and suicidal tendencies near acidic bodies of water

Scorchlanders are often found where there are Greenlanders, but due to their more adventurous nature they are more commonly found as ninjas or bandits instead of farmers or city-dwellers.

Personal opinion: Scorchlanders make for excellent adventurers, owing to their great stats boosts and general robustness: They make for a great backbone for your forces, whether as agile fighters, sneak-thieves or smiths, often all three in one nice package. Their most notable flaw is the small but noticeable negative strength multiplier, which can be annoying as strength is in general the hardest stat to raise and very useful for both carrying stuff and wielding weapons that deal blunt damage (i.e. most of them), and they also have very low water avoidance compared to all other player races meaning they have a tendency to pathfind into water when unsupervised, usually leading to being eaten by a Blood Spider or a Beak Thing. They do have pretty cool-looking aesthetics in general, and are heartily recommended for all your wandering ronin-ninja-whatnot needs.

The +20% experience modifier to both types of smithing is an extremely useful quality, as the increased experience gain means that you will reach the levels required to manufacture higher-quality goods much quicker and with less resources. The combination of the increased multipliers and reduced food costs makes it particularly easy and effective for Scorchlanders to become top-notch crafters very quickly.

Recommended For: General adventuring, Smithing, Sneaking, Dexterity-based combat, Trading & Smuggling


Scorchlanders are born survivors.
Survival is not always dignified, but it beats dying.

A group of Shek warriors, uncharacteristically not in the middle of combat.


Body: 125 for all bodyparts
Blood: 75-150
Bleed Rate: 0,9
Hunger Rate: 1,25
Heal Rate: 0,8, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+10 % Strength
+20 % Melee Attack
+20 % Toughness
-20 % Dexterity
-20 % Robotics
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Athletics
-20 % Science
-20 % Labouring
-20 % Farming
-20 % Dodge

A bunch of literal boneheads hailing from a warrior society, Sheks are the only group without any separate subraces (though there's an exclusive, uh, horn-style only available to NPC:s and certain recruits). Sheks are good at one thing only (beating & being beaten) but they’re very, very good at it.

Shek Pros:
+ Meanest, biggest and toughest (organic) beatsticks out there, with excellent boosts to fighting-related stats
+ Rare and extremely useful Strength multiplier
+ Hard to down and even harder to kill due to their high body HP and lowered bleed rate
+ “Warrior” Sheks have excellent dialogue (and a few unique dialogue options)
+ Can wear all types of armour apart from a few (frankly terrible) hats
+ Very high water avoidance, moves efficiently in watery areas
Shek Cons:
- Penalties to dexterity and dodging hamper an otherwise great statline
- Bad at anything that seems vaguely dishonorable, aka basic labor and sneaky stuff
- Slowest playable organic race (can alleviate this with shoes)
- Eat a lot of food
- Slow healing rate gives Shek the same healing speed as baseline humans despite increased health
- It’s literally illegal to be a Shek in the Holy Nation lands, and others may hold some prejudice
- Suffer from the same environmental hazards as humans and likewise require specialized protective gear, also at risk from being eaten by wildlife and/or cannibals

Sheks are mainly found in the Shek Kingdom and its neighbouring zones, and though minorities live in both United Cities and as members of certain adventurer and bandit groups they don’t have a major presence outside their native lands.

Personal opinion: I used to be wary of using Sheks in the early game due to their sluggish running speed and high food requirements, but have now seen the light of Kral and learned to love the Plank and its wielders.

Sheks have three notable things going for them: Their increased health and reduced blood loss, ability to wear almost all armours in the game and excellent multipliers to several important combat skills. A Shek will stay fighting longer than most organics, and is also harder to knock out and kill while being able to ditch out severe punishment due to generally having excellent offensive statlines because of the aforementioned multipliers. The high durability and offensive potential allows Sheks to excel in all roles in the battlefield, ranging from glass cannon builds (increased durability allows them to shrug off damage that would be crippling or lethal to other races in similar setups) to heavy-duty tanking (extremely hard to kill when hiding behind several layers of high-quality armour while still being able to ditch out notable damage with a tanking weapon). Compared to Skeletons, which are even more durable, Sheks have the advantage of being able to wear hats, shirts and shoes to further augment their playstyle, giving them things like additional armour, damage multipliers and stat boosts while also not taking additional damage from anti-robot weapons.

The main flaws of Sheks are that they're slow both in and out of combat, they require a lot of food which is further multiplied from being overencumbered or participating in hard labor, and they have really mediocre multipliers for anything that doesn't seem particularly honourable. This may make Sheks a minor noob trap - Shek Kingdoms are next to the Hub and there's a lot of free, cheap and/or just plain good recruits (Ruka from the free recruitables, Oron, Rane and Kang from the ones that you need to pay for plus a bunch of random characters) so you can quickly fill your squad with them. Before one learns how to manage it their slow speed and potentially insane food consumption this can lead you to all manner of trouble - but, on the other hand, that's also the best part! Lead your hungry hungry hornheads to honour and glory and impending doom, just like Kral intended!

Sheks in general offer the best recruits in the base game. The aforementioned guaranteed Shek characters already boast impressive statlines for newbies, and Rebirth boasts a disproportionate amount of Shek slaves that can have really impressive stats with good RNG. In addition Sheks using the Warrior-dialogue package (aka basically all of them that belong into a Shek-only faction plus some slaves) apparently suffer from a glitch that circumvents the max stat limits on recruiting freed prisoners. This is most commonly seen in game when you free Berserkers imprisoned by Cannibals, but you can apparently theoretically recruit basically any unnamed character up to and including one of the Five Invincibles(!) because of this.

Recommended For: Heavy-duty frontline combat, Strength-based weapons, Maximum potential damage builds, fighting against enemies armed with blunt and anti-robot weapons, Emptying your food supply.

A group of hivers bravely engage a foe stuck in terrain and unable to reach them.

Hivers are an interesting group to say the least, being the closest thing Kenshi has to a dedicated hard mode. These flimsy bug-people come with a whole lot of flaws, problems, prejudice and other guaranteed hilarity.

Hive Pros in General:
+ The fastest group in the game, both in and out of combat
+ Immune to all forms of environmental acid
+ Eat a lot less than anyone else, capable of eating food usually reserved for animals
+ Extremely low bleed rate
+ Low food requirements and general ubiquity as recruits and slaves makes them easily spammable in combat
+ Adorable
Hive Cons in General:
- Limited choices of armour, can’t use shoes and requires specialized shirts that offer no arm protection
- Hated by a few notable factions, including the easiest source of the hive-only shirts
- Requires environmental protection from gas, dust and lasers, something which the limited access to armour may make harder or even impossible to get
- Blood fixed at measly 50, can’t be increased with strength
-Very vulnerable to turrets and crossbows due to heavy and instant blood loss, lack of harpoon-resistant armour and/or low limb health
- At risk of being eaten by wildlife and/or cannibals, low limb health and blood makes rescue operations much harder as they also get eaten much faster

Hive comes in three different subraces, each of which varies quite wildly from each other:

Hive Prince:
Body: 80 for all bodyparts
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,3
Hunger Rate: 0,5
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,2
Movement Speed: 16-31 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Dexterity
+20 % Toughness
+20 % Perception
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Science
+20 % Thieving
+20 % Athletics
+20 % Medic
+20 % Lockpicking
-20 % Strength
-20 % Labouring

Princes are the brains of the hive, (at least compared to the other hivers) functioning as merchants and machinists. When exiled, they become superb scientists and sneaky types. Or corpses.
This subrace can be recognized by being the tallest and most human-looking of the hivers.

Prince Pros:
+ Nice stat multipliers, excels at sneaking around and stealing stuff as well as archery
+ Rare perception multiplier
+ Consumes very little food, which combined with bonuses to “sciency” skills makes for an excellent craftsman (or just spammable fodder)
+ Combination of low durability and toughness boost means your toughness skyrockets very quickly if you get repeatedly beaten up (and survive)
+ One of the fastest races in the game with athletics boost, shared highest max speed and combat speed bonus
+ Loses limbs easily, giving you easy access to superior cybernetic replacements
+ Can be made to look AMAZING with customization
Prince Cons:
- Feeble due to low health and blood, even with high toughness
- Limited armour selection, though the best among hive subraces
- Negative strength multiplier hnghh
- Loses limbs easily, and you probably don’t have access to superior cybernetic replacements
- Low torso and head health can mean instant death when faced with harpoons, large animals and heavy weapons even for more trained characters
-Can't eat foul meat unlike other hivers

Hive Princes are most commonly found as traders and leaders in the hive communities, though exiled ones often end up as merchants, soldiers or scavengers across the world.

Personal Opinion: I love hivers in general, and princes are just amazing fun to play in a masochistic losing is fun-fashion. Your life will be struggle, and you will probably die and/or be enslaved a lot. Until one day, one day you will be badass enough to waltz into the Emperor’s throne room and beat his bloated arse – though then again you already stole his equipment two months back: You are, after all, playing the best thief in the game.

Princes are fun solo characters if you seek challenge, and they’re pretty easy to spam too due to their low upkeep as long as you can find recruits. Negative strength hurts in the long run, but let’s be real, you can just lose the arms and replace them with the setting equivalent of forklifts to boost your strength that way. The combination of dexterity boost and high combat speed can also make them horrifically oppressive with fast and/or long weapons like polearms, katanas and, if you’re feeling cocky, martial arts.

If there is one aspect of warfare where Princes excel, it's ranged combat: Combination of Dexterity and Perception boost married to high movement speed makes Princes some of the best ranged units in the game, and staying away from the melee can keep their frail bodies from being mulched. As a bonus Princes can also use all equipment that boosts ranged combat stats despite their limited armour selection. The stat multipliers, combined with their low food consumption, also makes them viable turret gunners.

If this skill set sounds fun to you, go on ahead, these are a personal favourite of mine. On the other hand, if this is still too easy for you, don’t worry, there are even more horrible options in the hive family down below.

Recommended For: Sneaking, Breaking and entering, Dexterity-based combat, Ranged combat, Turret gunnery, Padding your army with meat shields, Specialized settlement work, Trading and Smuggling, Challenge

Hive Soldier Drone:
Body: Head 200, other parts 100
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,3
Hunger Rate: 0,6
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,1
Movement Speed: 16-29 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Toughness
+20 % Melee Attack
-20 % Science
-20 % Robotics
-20 % Engineering
-20 % Weapon Smithing
-20 % Armour Smithing
-20 % Medic
-20 % Farming
-20 % Cooking
-20 % Perception

Soldiers Drones are exactly what says on the tin. Soldiers. Also drones. It’s, uh, not a particularly great combination.
Soldiers are easily recognizable by their hammerhead-style noggins, and their general unusability.

Soldier Drone Pros:
+ Simple but great combat multipliers
+ The most durable hiver, with whopping 200 health for the head
+ Fast, but not as fast as the other hivers
+ Doesn’t eat much, but more than the other hivers
+ Hammerheads are universally agreed to be cool as hell
Soldier Drone Cons:
- Terrible utility multipliers, worthless at crafting & farming
- Can’t wear hats
- Lack of hats means no protection from environment, enjoy choking on gas and getting burned by lasers
- No armour on head + poorly armoured limbs + 50 blood = recipe for disaster

Hive Soldiers are found protecting the Western hives as well as their caravans. Exiled ones end up joining militaries, bandit groups or other meatheads out there.

Personal Opinion: Let’s not beat around the bush, Soldier Drones are pretty mediocre. And not mediocre in the amusing way the other hivers are, as inability to wear headgear makes soldiers very vulnerable to attacks on their unprotected noggings, being especially vulnerable to harpoons. In addition being unable to wear gas masks and anti-burn hats makes them susceptible to two admittedly rare sources of environmental damage with no way to fully protect themselves against either. Dealing with either issue is mostly just tedious.

Still, these guys are pretty bulky (discounting unlucky headshots) due to their toughness multiplier and low bleed rate, and they still consume 40% less than a human. If one soldier is terrible, why not have two for the cost of one Shek? Plus they're pretty well suited for general labor due to their lesser food requirements and lack of labouring penalty.

Recommended For: Cost-effective meat shields, Guarding a settlement, Challenge

A group of Worker martial artists (for a lack of a better word) in various stages of dismemberment.

Hive Worker Drone:
Body: Head 125, other parts 75
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,3
Hunger Rate: 0,5
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,2
Movement Speed: 18-31 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Dexterity
+20 % Toughness
+20 % Labouring
+20 % Engineering
+20 % Thieving
+20 % Athletics
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Farming
+20 % Turrets
-20 % Strength
-20 % Cooking

Worker Drones are, once again, exactly that. They excel at menial work, skulking and dying. Worker drones are recognizable by their weird, long and flat heads.

Worker Drone Pros:
+ The fastest playable race in the game
+ Boosts to utility skills and low food consumption makes workers excellent and cheap base-runners
+ Though comparatively garbage at melee combat, can be used as excellent archers and turret gunners
+ Toughness boost and being even more flimsy compared to the Prince makes training toughness even more of a cakewalk (as long as you survive)
+ Very commonly found as recruits and sold as slaves, makes for excellent cannon fodder
+ Almost guaranteed to lose limbs in fights
+ Beep
Worker Drone Cons:
- The least durable playable race in the game
- Ability to wear hats greatly limited (up to and including the excellent Crab Helmet)
- Negative strength is still a terrible thing
- Almost guaranteed to lose limbs in fights
- Low torso health can mean instant death when faced with harpoons, large animals and heavy weapons even for more trained characters. Look out for friendly fire!

Worker drones are a common sight in the hives, living in huge swarms handling menial work. Exiled ones end up wandering the world until perishing, being enslaved or ending up as peasants, though rarely they can be found in more martial jobs.

Personal Opinion: These guys are like a lite version of a Prince that has been optimized to farm and build, and most of the stuff I said of the Prince applies here too. Their settlement-related experience multipliers, very low food consumption and extremely quick movement speed makes Workers possibly the best base-runners in the entire game, being able to accomplish whatever task they've been given very quickly, efficiently and cheaply. They suffer somewhat from lack of wearable headgear, though apart from the Crab Helmet they can wear most high-end and utility hats (Samurai Helmet, Armoured Hood, Gas Masks and perception-boosting hats).

They are commonly sold as slaves and eat very little, so just buying every single drone you can find and then equipping them with polearms or quick weapons (or martial arts, you madlad) is a surprisingly viable way to pad your squad (and to train your first aid skill, as their low body health makes them extremely easy to knock out). They can become a downright oppressive force due to their increased combat speed and dex boosts, though most will not survive the initial battles. Such is life in Kenshiland. Prepare to spend a lot of money on robotics. Like Princes their stats and movement speed make them excellent ranged units too, though they are more skewed towards turret gunnery due to their differing multipliers.

Workers are extremely quick even with fairly low athletics and make for the best errand boys and drug runners in the game, perfect for making quick, solo trade runs from your base, though their low Strength gain might hamper carrying capacity somewhat. Slapping scout legs on one gives them the ability to outrun even elder beak things with high enough athletics, while also making the aforementioned polearm spam strategy even more horrifying (also, very expensive). If you want to employ extremely rapid trade convoys pair them with older pack Garrus which are similarly quick, and just outrun anything that might want to challenge you. Who needs caravan guards anyway?

Recommended For: Menial settlement work, Padding your army with meat shields, Ranged combat, Turret gunnery, Sneaking, Breaking and entering, Trading and smuggling, Dying as acceptable sacrifices, Challenge.

Even the tiniest, frailest stick can become a terrifying warrior, given time, practice and plenty of luck.

You might have noticed a disclaimer about some things being the best organics at something. How it’s really nice that hives don’t eat that much and there’s little upkeep and not dying in acid sounds fun. Rapid healing and little bleeding are neat things to have too. Sheks sure are tough, huh?

And then we have Skeletons, who are here to put all other groups to the ground.
Skeletons are by far the largest group in the game, though only the base model is playable from the beginning.

Skeleton:
Body: 200 for all bodyparts
Blood: 100 (Called oil but functions identically to blood)
Bleed Rate: 0,1
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 2, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Heavy Weapons
+20 % Turrets
+20 % Robotics
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge

Skeletons are better than you. They don’t eat, sleep, get burned or eaten by cannibals. They are twice as durable as anything living and heal at a rate organic races can only dream of. And when they get beaten up, they just repair themselves and then come after you again.
Most of the below information applies to all Skeleton subraces, which will be discussed in later sections.

Skeleton Pros:
+ Insanely durable
+ Double heal rate and massive base health combine to an immense health regeneration
+ Many common weapons deal reduced damage to robots
+ Lowest bleed rate in the game (though blood is fixed at 100)
+ Taken cutting damage can be repaired instantly with kits without needing to wait for natural healing
+ Doesn't eat, reducing necessary upkeep, clearing inventory space and opening up more hazardous base locations
+ Completely immune to any and all environmental hazards, up to and including hungry wildlife
+ Doesn’t suffer self-damage from using martial arts and deals more damage than organic races against robotic enemies with them
+ Walks under the water instead of swimming, moving at double walking speed
+ Unique dialogue regarding the history of the world, can befriend certain otherwise hostile factions
+ Very useful experience multipliers
Skeleton Cons:
- Taken blunt damage can’t be repaired and will take a comparatively long time to heal
- Broken limbs can’t be splinted
- Accrues cumulative max health penalty when taking damage that must be repaired at a dedicated skeleton repair bed (which are rare and tend to be much more expensive than renting a normal bed)
- Robotics kits are much more expensive than medkits, and cheaper ones run out very quickly
- Barely any NPC:s carry repair kits with them, meaning that if you are captured or imprisoned while unconscious it's quite possible to bleed out in the meanwhile
- Lowest healing rate of all skeleton subraces (though still far higher than any organic)
- Can only wear pants and body armour, leaving most of the body unprotected
- Slow, can’t wear shoes to alleviate this
- Low max speed, negative multipliers and inability to wear certain items make stealth-based gameplay somewhat challenging
- Extremely rare, with only two guaranteed recruits, three uncommon ones, very rare randomized recruits and one type of naturally spawning NPC that can be recruited in rare circumstances
- Several already deadly weapons deal massively increased damage against robots
- Most of the world hates and/or fears you, with Holy Nation attacking Skeletons on sight
- Suffers from depression

Skeletons mostly keep to themselves, living in their own secluded settlement in the Deadlands, though some join other societies or become wanderers that can be found in basically all corners of the world. They are a rare sight nonetheless.

Personal Opinion: Hoo boy. Skeletons are really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good at basically everything they do, apart from the fact that aren't particularly fast (and even then, you can just waltz to the nearest acid lake and laugh your puny organic pursuers off). Their lack of need for sustenance and ability to ignore hazardous environment opens up playstyles and base locations that would be hard or impossible to utilize by other races. They are immensely durable and heal naturally at extreme speeds, and their ability to repair themselves can mean that they will be no worse to wear after a battle and can re-engage whatever knocked them out previously almost instantly, at least as long as they haven’t received crippling amounts of blunt damage. Skeletons do have to pay for this durability by sacrificing most of their armour slots, limiting certain easy boosts to stats, durability and speed: For example Skeletons can't boost their perception due to being unable to wear hats, limiting their potential at turret gunnery despite their positive multiplier to it.

Another notable difference between Skeletons and organics is that they are counted as robotic creatures, meaning that certain weapons have radically different damage potential against them: Skeletons laugh off most Katanas and other weapons that deal reduced anti-robot damage, allowing them to waltz through waves of ninjas and United Cities Samurais without barely more than a scratch (which can be then quickly repaired due to the almost pure cutting damage done by such weapons). On the other hand some weapons are specialized or otherwise excel in dealing with robots: A Paladin's cross wielded against a Skeleton will deal higher damage than any other melee weapon in the game, meaning that high-ranking Holy Nation warriors can dispatch their usually durable robotic foes with ease, and blunt damage in general can't be repaired with kits: A Skeleton that has had its limbs broken by blunt damage can't be splinted unlike organics, meaning that the Skeleton will simply have to wait until he has healed the damage instead.

Skeletons are extremely strong and really fun to play, but they can sometimes make the game a wee bit too easy and streamlined if you’re looking for the sort of skin-of-my-teeth survival horror. Of course, their rarity makes their power far less exploitable, but even the guaranteed two skeleton recruits can do enough work to put an army of hivers into shame, and you could begin the game with six of them. Only your early game poses a particular challenge, as you need to secure access to skeleton repair kits (which are rare in the starting areas, not to mention hella expensive) before you can even begin to consider getting into scraps with the local banditry, and the various sticks and clubs wielded by low-end mobs are surprisingly effective against Skeletons due to their blunt damage. Fighting the Holy Nation will also be more challenging as all members of the faction employ weapons that are highly effective against skellies, though on the other hand Skeletons resist almost all weapons employed by the United Cities.

Anyhow, Skeletons make for great solo characters, or lore-filled squad members, or simply automated base functions. Even when doing a themed or an otherwise skeletonless run it might be a good idea to have a skeleton whose main purpose is to simply idle at some hut in a city doing research or farming some veggies for you when the rest of the squad is doing random heroics somewhere. Plus, as they don't eat, you can just leave them to man turrets indefinitely.

Recommended For: Everything, specializing in all forms of combat (though at a disadvantage against blunt and anti-robot weapons), martial arts, completely self-sufficient settlement work, turret gunnery, adventuring in extremely hazardous environments.

Playing a Skeleton opens up all sorts of new and innovative ways of getting rid of your foes, most of them involving acid rain, acid ground and acid lakes.

The next category is also the smallest, featuring only five more subraces, three of which are basically nothing more than a change of paintjob.

These races can’t be played from the beginning of the game, but it is possible to recruit at least one of their kind under certain conditions.

These guys are hivers with a much cooler paintjob. They also come in the same trinity of Prince, Soldier and Drone, and they are almost identical to their Western brothers, with the following differences:

Southern Hive Prince: Bleed Rate 0.2, no multiplier to Perception, toughness & lockpicking, multiplier to the hidden stat "Hivemedic" (hivers are statted to be healed using this skill, no idea if it functions at all)

Southern Hive Soldier: No negative multiplier to perception, negative multiplier to hidden stat "Vet"

Southern Hive Drone: Bleed rate 0.4, no multiplier to toughness

They also belong to a different, unique group, and thus the game doesn’t consider them regular hivers. This means that you can use them to trade with the Western hive and other factions that ostracize normal hivers, though they seem to have some problems with lack of dialogue and the like, possibly due to their lack of gender.

Also, none of the Southern Hivers can eat human teeth, unlike Western Hivers. If this will somehow pose a problem to you seriously consider re-arranging your supply train.

Southern hive recruits are possibly the rarest finds in the entire game, as the only way to recruit them (with one exception mentioned below) is to have them spawn as slaves in the United Cities with an extremely low chance: When an UC slave spawns it is randomly chosen from six different types of slave. Three of these have a chance of spawning as a Southern Hiver with a very low chance that is even lower for a Southern Prince. (The odds are around 5,7% chance for a slave that has a 0,2% chance to be a Southern hiver to spawn and a 3,4% chance for a slave that has a 1,1% chance to be one. Only one in five of these will be a Prince, otherwise it's a 50-50 chance for a Worker or a Soldier). So, yeah, they're basically the shiny pokemon of Kenshi, thank you for asking.

Even when you might find one there’s no guarantee it will join your party due to how buying and freeing slaves works. I've seen two in around 1000 hours of gameplay, and only one of them joined my squad. You could try savescumming to get one to generate, as available slaves are randomized the first time you approach a slave market or shop. They can spawn as part of a noble hunter entourage, so there is technically a replenishable supply out there. They can't spawn as escaped slaves (a type of NPC that spawns in Howler's Maze and some UC-owned regions, typically in pairs), as those generate from a separate race list.

In addition, one recruitable Southern Worker Drone, Espher, can be found imprisoned in Tengu’s Vault. If you’re planning on breaking him out, please ensure that all of the guards are dead before starting to break locks, as he has a habit for dying in the middle of the escape otherwise. He seems to be hard-coded to join you if you manage to break him out. Beware that there seems to be a bug that may cause him to not appear in the vault, though this one has only happened to me once (might have something to do with the excessive save importing I tried on that run).

Unplayable Southern Hivers can be found across their own lands in the Southern reaches of the world.

Personal Opinion: Like normal hivers, but even cooler. Lack of toughness bonus hurts a lot for Prince and Drone, but the Soldier is a direct upgrade. Bit clunky when it comes to faction interaction, and waltzing into a Holy Nation city as a hiver always feels weird.

Recommended For: The same things as their Western cousins, with the addition of being even better traders due to not suffering from the same prejudice as them, opening more possible trade routes.

Two more subraces of Skeletons can be acquired during gameplay, one being a unique recruit and the other being an extremely rare random recruit spawn. Everything that applied to the base model skeleton applies to the other subraces, unless separately mentioned.

Soldierbot:
Body: 200 for all bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,1
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Perception
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Martial Arts
-20 % Medic
(Hidden -20 % to Strength, probably a nonfunctional code remnant)

A Skeleton with a log-shaped head, a really odd multiplier spread and extreme health regeneration.

Soldierbot Pros:
+ Even higher heal rate than normal skeleton
+ Perception bonuses and an increased vision range (which might not do anything under player control?) Make these guys superior archers and turret gunners
Soldierbot Cons:
- Questionable stat boosts compared to normal skellies, penalty to MA is a really low blow (though apparently this multiplier is bugged and doesn't work right now so yay)
- Only one character available in the entire game

The only way to recruit a Soldierbot is to find the unique recruit, Agnu, in the Tower of Abuse. He comes with a few advantages: Firstly, he is the third guaranteed Skeleton in the game, with all the perks that it entails plus the insane healing rate that this variant comes with. Secondly, despite being a fresh recruit, he comes with meaty 50 strength right from the get-go. Thirdly, he is one of the few playable characters in the game to have his own colour scheme, meaning that if you equip a “coloured” item on him it will gain a paintcoat, in this case a nice navy-blue colour scheme used by the Second Empire police forces (which may point to his origins). Of course, being a skeleton, you can’t use him to colour hats or shoes.

Unplayable Soldierbots can be found in various ruins across the world. Some might be even willing to help you.

Personal Opinion: Hey, it’s a free skeleton, and I’ve always liked how the logheads look like. Additional healing rate provides for even more insane regenerative power. Plus, this guy comes with some amusing, uh, dialogue? Anyhow, go grab him, at least if you can actually survive Venge in the first place.

Recommended For: Everything, specializing in ranged combat and turret gunnery

P4 Unit:
Body: 150 for the head, 200 for other bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,1
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Science
+20 % Engineering
+20 % Robotics
+20 % Weapon Smithing
+20 % Armour Smithing
+20 % Medic
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas
(Hidden -20 % Dexterity, probably nonfunctional code remnant)

Big brain skelly, basically a hybrid between a Hive Prince, a Scorchlander and a normal skeleton who is an even better stay-at-home-doing-science-and-swords guy than the rest of them.

P4 Pros:
+ Excellent utility skill spread combined with the lack of upkeep? Yes please
+ Heals even faster than the normal skeleton
+ Personal favourite when it comes to Skeleton aesthetics
P4 Cons:
- A little less durable than a normal Skeleton, though still tougher than anything living
- No positive combat multipliers, lacks the useful multipliers of the basic Skeleton
- Extremely rare


P4 units are extremely rare spawns in the very common Drifter-faction (1 out of every 141, or 0,7% of all drifters will be one), more than twice as rare as normal skeletons (and unlike regular skeletons there are no guaranteed or uncommon recruits available). You simply have to scrounge through the world and hope one spawns as a generic recruit. Theoretically, at least if my understanding of the FCS is correct, you could find one from anywhere expect from Shek, Holy Nation and Flotsam Ninja cities and from Mongrel, which use their own recruit tables. Good luck!
Unrecruitable ones appear in some deadland workshops, as well as members of a certain southeastern bandit faction. They can also be found fairly often as shopkeepers, mechanics and librarians.

Personal Opinion: P4:s come with a lot of utility, they look neat and they’re skeletons, what’s not to love? Oh yeah, that horrific spawn rate. In my (barely) over 1000 hours of Kenshi I’ve seen three as random recruits plus many, many more as random Drifters. It's theoretically possible to recruit the latter through slavery, but there was a reason why they were one of the first things I modded to be playable from the start.

Just like Scorchlanders, P4:s come with the same smithing boosts and the addition of needing no food or protection whatsoever, thus being an even better option for mass production of arms and armour - especially when you wish to set up completely autonomous and safe armoursmithing operations, which can be pulled off using the solitary player-ownable house in Black Desert City. (You'll need hydroponics for the manufacture of cloth first though).

Recommended For: Everything, specializing in self-sufficient settlement work, smithing and functioning as an all-around excellent medic/mechanic.

The third category consists of the various races that exist in the world, but are completely unplayable in the vanilla game. There are no recruits, slaves or other ways to acquire them. You will mostly be facing these guys as your opponents, so it might still be good to know a bit more of them. Plus, it’s extremely easy to mod them to be playable and/or recruitable in the FCS, so if any of these lot catch your eye you know what to do. I certainly did.

A few caveats before we begin: Firstly, technically all of the different animal races belong to this category (apart from the ones you can buy, of course) but I won’t be going over them in this guide. Secondly, there are a few races hidden in the FCS that don’t appear in the normal gameplay at all, and I won’t be going over them as they are a pain in the ass to test if not completely non-functional to begin with.

Most of these races are not assigned to any of the aforementioned groups at all, in which case the game will treat them as humans or as humans with skeleton limbs when it comes to faction interaction, similarly to the southern hivers. This may cause some problems with interacting with certain factions due to missing dialogue and the like.

Cannibal

Body: 100 for all bodyparts
Blood: 75-150
Bleed Rate: 1
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: 16-27 mph
Experience Multipliers:
Cooking +20 %
Farming -20 %

The larger members of the painted tribes of the northwest, these guys are almost completely identical to their (relatively) saner Greenlander cousins.

Cannibal Pros:
+ Same balanced statline as Greenlanders with minor multiplier changes
+ Immune to all forms of acid
+ Can wear almost all forms of armour
Cannibal Cons:
- No customization beyond sliders, all same-gender cannibals look identical
- Jack of all trades (apart from farming), master of none
- No bleed resistance
- Very low water avoidance, will go out of his way to screw your pathfinding
- Player-controlled cannibals become boring, respectable members of society

These guys are found all across the cannibal country, inhabiting various gruesome settlements and kidnapping local passersby. Middling combatants at best, they’re only dangerous due to their numbers and their ability to kidnap and eat unconscious and sleeping organics.

Personal Opinion: A reasonable alternative to a Greenlander if you seek a more exotic party I suppose. Can’t actually practice cannibalism without mods under your control which is a bit unfortunate. They don’t even eat human teeth unlike hivers, the bloody snobs.

Recommended For: General all-rounders that can function in harsh environments

Cannibal Skav:
Body: Head 100, 80 for other bodyparts
Blood: 75-150
Bleed Rate: 1
Hunger Rate: 0,6
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: 16-27 mph
Experience Multipliers:
Cooking +20 %
Farming -20 %

Weird stunted maneaters also found meandering about in the cannibal country.

Skav Pros:
+ Immune to acid
+ Eat only as much as a hive soldier, a reasonable option as base workers
+ While otherwise flimsy, they can wear almost all forms of armour
Skav Cons:
- About as durable as hivers in combat without the speed and dex boosts and lessened bleed rate
- No customization beyond sliders
- No bleed resistance
- Still no player-controlled cannibalism

The bastard lovechildren of cannibals, hive princes and hungry bandits, these guys are found in the same places as the regular cannibals are. They are even worse combatants armed only with sticks. They still want to eat you, which may pose a problem.

Personal Opinion: If you’ve ever looked at a hive prince and been like “Man, these guys would be nice but don’t they seem a bit too easy to play?” you could always play one of these green goblins instead. They’re really, really terrible at everything dangerous, being flimsy enough not to survive trouble and not fast enough to run away from it either. They’re, at least in my opinion, even worse combatants than the worker drones due to lacking any real combat-related multipliers and increased speed, though they at least have an easier time compensating with armour. They could easily be the worst race out there if the hivers wouldn't be rising up to the challenge with the following few subraces. At least these guys are functional...

Recommended For: Alternative to hivers, Challenge

Hive Queen
Body: 75 for all bodyparts
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 3
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using repair kits (but apparently still uses first aid skill)
Combat Speed: 1,2
Movement Speed: around 5-9 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Science
+20 % Medic
-20 % Strength
-20 % Dexterity
-20 % Labouring

The leaders as well as mothers of the hives, just like one you’d find in a beehive. About as dangerous too to boot. Weird cybernetic creatures boasting the worst of both organic and mechanical worlds.

Hive Queen Pros:
+ Very low bleed rate
+ Repaired instead of healed like Skeletons are
+ Combat speed boost
+ Immune to all forms of acid
Hive Queen Cons:
- Comes with all the problems normal hivers have without almost any of the boons
- Terrible, terrible stat penalties
- As durable as a hive worker
- Slowest creature in the entire game, moves at a brisk walking pace
- Requires the same amount of food as three humans
- Can’t actually eat, will starve in captivity

Only two of these creatures are found in the entire game, both serving as the queens of the two hives of the world. They both have ok combat stats, but they’re terrible combatants as the aforementioned shows: Only their guards pose a real problem. If you can beat their guards they will be easy prey, but killing the only, uh, source of hivers will have consequences.

Personal Opinion: Unlike the other races in this category these ones are literally unplayable, as they will shortly starve to death under player control (and in captivity, in case you wanted to keep one as a trophy). You will require further modding to make them capable of even basic survival, and even then they have multiple huge problems with how they work due to their mismatched attributes and atrocious maximum running (actually walking) speed. Using one in combat transcends difficulty and becomes masochism. They do make for great centrepieces for hive-only bases if you seek that sort of themed run.
Unfortunately, there is no dedicated queen race for the Southern Hive, they use the same, Western-looking model as the other hive.

Recommended For: Extended Masochism, Roleplaying

Deadhive:
The third type of the basic hiver trinity, Deadhive is not a mere reskin of the Western hivers unlike the Southern ones are, being more of a weird side- or downgrade with their own quirks and multipliers. Also known as Fogmen, these parasite-controlled blue hivers infest the aptly named Fog Islands and its surroundings and will spread further into the world when the power of major and certain minor factions starts to weaken. They also practice cannibalism, though theirs seems to be of a more ritualistic sort than that of the painted tribes.

All of the pros and cons given for the basic hiver subraces apply to their fogman cousins unless separately mentioned, and they will be mostly compared to them. They will sometimes be treated as humans, though some Holy Nation dialogue recognizes them as, well, cannibalistic affronts that they are.

General Deadhive Pros:
+ More offence-focused skillset compared to regular hivers
+ Reduced bleed rate compared to normal hivers

General Deadhive Cons:
- No toughness multiplier
- Require just as much food as normal humans
- Reduced health compared to normal hivers, which were terrible to begin with
- Not immune to acid, and can't wear shoes to block acid ground
- Can't eat foul and raw meat
- Zero water avoidance, horrid pathfinding issues, will plunge into acid lakes like madmen

Deadhive Prince:
Body: 75 for all bodyparts
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,2
Movement Speed: 16-31 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Dexterity
+20 % Labouring
+20 % Engineering
+20 % Thieving
+20 % Athletics
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Farming
+20 % Melee Attack
-20 % Strength

The parasite has turned these princes into sickly, hungry and angry versions of themselves.

Deadhive Princes Pros:
+ Excellent multiplier spread suitable for a more aggressive gamestyle

Deadhive Prince Cons:
- Even less health than the regular princes, lack of toughness multiplier doesn't help
- Negative strength
- No Perception multiplier

Fog princes can be found leading the elite (for the lack of a better word) squads of the Fogmen. Each and every one of them has a price on their head quite literally, and if you can beat one and chop it off you can sell it for a hefty price.

Personal Opinion: Prince with worker level durability and added hunger? Eh. Melee attack bonus is quite nice though, but that’s about it. Makes for a nice change of pace but not much else. Sell its head and employ six slaves with the money you got instead.

Recommended For: Challenge, Sneaking, Breaking and Entering, Dexterity-based glass cannon builds

Deadhive Soldier:
Body: 100 for all bodyparts
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,1
Movement Speed: 16-29 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+10 % Strength
+20 % Melee Attack
-20 % Science
-20 % Robotics
-20 % Engineering
-20 % Armour Smithing
-20 % Weapon Smithing
-20 % Medic
-20 % Farming
-20 % Cooking
(-20 % to Vet, an unused skill)

A hive soldier that has been turned from a bulky, tanky warrior into a rabid glass cannon.

Deadhive Soldier Pros:
+ Rare positive strength multiplier
+ No Perception penalty
Deadhive Soldier Cons:
- Less head health than regular soldiers, still unable to wear a hat
- No toughness multiplier
- Worthless out of combat
- Can only gain the required 90% acid rain protection with very specific loadouts
- Can't be made immune to gas, lasers and dust

These degraded soldiers are only found as the members of the aforementioned fogman squads. They’re the only fairly bulky member of the whole faction, which isn’t saying much.

Personal Opinion: Fog Soldiers, despite being about as terrible at most things as the regular hive soldiers, do at least have a completely unique niche for themselves: They’re the second race in the game with a strength boost. If you could keep one alive long enough you could probably turn it into a heavy weapon-toting death machine with some work. While a well-trained Shek or skeleton would beat one in the durability front, the increased combat speed, much higher running speed and very low bleed rate makes Fog Soldiers a very unique race indeed.

Barely functional in most hostile terrain (also known as most of the map) which can be a downright pain in the keister. Replace legs with cybernetic augments ASAP. Drifter's Leather Pants + Long- or Dust Coat is the only combo that can protect you from acid rain.

Playing a solo Fog Soldier was a surprisingly fun experience, if a challenging one. Heartily recommended if you're growing bored with the vanilla races.

Recommended For: Strength-based skirmishing, Glass cannon builds, Challenge

Deadhive Worker
Body: 50 for all bodyparts
Blood: 50
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1,2
Movement Speed: 16-31 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Dexterity
+20 % Labouring
+20 % Engineering
+20 % Thieving
+20 % Athletics
+20 % Stealth
+20 % Farming
+20 % Turrets
-20 % Strength

If the parasite turned the princes and soldiers of the Fog Islands into even less durable versions of themselves, it won’t take much guessing to figure out what happened to the already shoddy workers.

Deadhive Worker Pros:
+ Has a slightly better version of the already nice utility skillset of the hive worker
Deadhive Worker Cons:
- Weakest creature in the game (only rivalled by baby goats), basically guaranteed to die instantly to a single harpoon shot, martial artist, heavy weapon swing or just about any even vaguely advanced character, lack of toughness boost doesn’t help
- Having same food consumption as a human greatly decreases the main selling point of the Worker
- Gains running speed slightly slower than the regular worker, at the same rate as Princes do

Pure mooks, designed to swarm poorly trained characters and serve as fodder and fun pastime to experienced ones. They are found at the Fog Islands, dying in droves at the gates of Mongrel.

Personal Opinion: One of the worst subraces in the entire game due to their abysmally low health. Could be technically used as an alternative to Greenlanders or regular Workers when it comes to working in a settlement, though they will die en masse when the local banditry decides to visit, not even mentioning something like Shek Kingdom knocking on your door.

Modding a game where you start with 50 of these guys with zero stats and no gear is a "fun" challenge at the very least.

Recommended for: Masochism, Being the world's flimsiest sneak-thief, Farming Simulator 2020 Osteoporosis Edition

The Unplayable category holds several more Skeleton variants, some correctly added under the larger Skeleton group and some left ungrouped. It also holds a sort of a sub-subrace of the more common Skeletons, the mark II-variants.
Mark II:s feature a completely different chassis compared to the bulky MK I:s, a light, stripped down, well, skeleton with clearly visible internals and little armour to speak of. Accordingly the MK II:s are considerably less durable than their original counterparts, featuring 150 health compared to the 200 of MK I:s, though this still makes them tougher than Sheks. All of the MK I Skeletons have a MK II counterpart apart from the basic playable Skeleton, though the two types have completely different experience multipliers and other stats and are only visually related by gameplay standards.

All pros and cons from the basic Skeleton apply unless otherwise mentioned.

Screamer Mk I
Body: 200 for all bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,1
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Engineering
+20 % Turrets
+20 % Robotics
+20 % Assassination
+20 % Melee Attack
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas

The last and the only unplayable MK I, these uncanny-looking skeletons seem to be more geared towards combat than their normal cousins.

Screamer Mk I Pros:
+ Possibly the best race in melee combat in the entire game due to being a MKI Skeleton with a melee attack boost
+ Heals faster than the regular skeleton
+ Only race with a very useful assassination multiplier
Screamer MK I Cons:
- Boost to assassination doesn't sync particularly well with the penalty to stealth
- Lacks the heavy weapon boost of the regular Skeleton

MK I variant of the Screamer are found here and there across the world, mostly as members of a certain infamous sewing and handicrafts association in the southeast. Be extremely cautious when meeting one of them, as every single one in the entire game is a dangerous combatant, though most are at the very least poorly armoured.

Personal Opinion: Skeletons are great, these guys are even better. Possibly the best melee unit in the entire game in my opinion due to excellent multipliers, insane healing speed and staying power, with the only downsides being negative multipliers for niche combat skills. Only other Skeletons, Sheks and Alpha Fishmen (Yes, really, they are an actual race. See for yourself down below) can compete for the spot. They are also useful in your settlement just like regular skellies. A solid upgrade to an already excellent race.

Recommended For: Everything, specializing in melee combat and turret gunnery.

Skeleton MKII Screamer (Not grouped under the Skeleton group)
Body: 150 for all bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,4
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Blunt
+20 % Heavy Weapons
+20 % Robotics
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas
(Hidden -20 % Dexterity, probably nonfunctional code remnant)

The MK II counterpart of the Screamer, a less durable model with a far less interesting statline. On a quick glance it’s easy to see the difference in power between the two models.

Screamer MK II Pros:
+ Multipliers for two excellent weapon types
+ Heals faster than the normal Skeleton
Screamer MK II Cons:
- Less durable than MK I Skeletons
- Shared highest bleed rate of all the Skeleton models

These alternate Screamer models are only found in the Ashlands, either as extremely rare specialist patrols or guarding one of the domes there. Rare and deadly, treat with care, just like all things in the Ashlands.

Personal Opinion: As you can see the MK II:s are quite a downgrade from their original counterparts, though they’re still tougher than a Shek and come with all the other Skeleton-related perks. Not the best choice out there, but far, far from terrible, having little to no downsides. Interestingly, they are not considered members of the group for whatever reason.

Recommended For: Everything you’d use a normal Skeleton for.


Skeleton Log-Head MKII
Body: Head 200, 150 for other bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,4
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Perception
+20 % Precision Shooting
+20 % Robotics
+20 % Crossbows
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas
(Hidden -20 % Dexterity, probably nonfunctional code remnant)

The MK II counterpart of the Soldierbot, these guys are the finest archers in the entire game. No other race comes even close to the range and accuracy these steel snipers can bring to the battlefield.

A squad of Logheads assaulting something off-screen.

Log-Head MKII Pros:
+ Excellent and unique boosts to almost all archery-related skills
+ Toughest MK II Skeleton due to having the same amount of head health as a MK I
+ Increased healing rate compared to basic Skeletons
+ Comes with the same extended view range as the Soldierbot, if that actually matters under player control (It certainly does under the enemy’s!)
Log-Head MK II Cons:
- No positive melee weapon multipliers
- Tough, but not as tough as MK I:s
- Shared highest bleed rate amongst Skeletons
- Can’t wear perception-boosting hats which would be a godsend to the ranged mastery
- Low speed is a bit unwelcome to a ranged unit, running away from tough melee units may pose a problem

Logheads are found in the southeast, being comparatively rare finds. All are powerful combatants, and the ones with ranged weapons will see you before you see them. Sniper Valley is a very aptly named place indeed…

Personal Opinion: Combination of aesthetics and unique utility, these guys are another very common member of my armies when playing around with modded skeletons. They make for excellent skirmishers and base protectors alongside the typical Skeleton utility while still being very much a threat in close combat. Give one an Eagle’s Cross and look at him sniping across the dunes with impunity.

Recommended For: Everything, specializing in ranged combat and turret gunnery.

Skeleton P4MKII
Body: 150 for all bodyparts
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Blunt
+20 % Heavy Weapons
+20 % Robotics
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas
(Hidden -20 % Dexterity, probably nonfunctional code remnant)

The MK II model of the P4, with none of the benefits the older model had. More closely related to the Screamer MK II, with almost identical stats.

P4MKII Pros:
+ Lowest bleed rate amongst MK II:s
+ Heals faster than the regular Skeleton
+ Boost to two nice weapon skills
P4MKII Cons:
- Comes with none of the utility multipliers of the MKI P4
- Less durable than MK I:s
- The head and the body are coloured differently, and that's terrible

The second rarest race in the entire game, only five examples of this type of Skeleton exist in the world, all unique, named characters. All are strong combatants, one of them being possibly the single most dangerous person in the entire game, surrounded by a literal army of minions. Consider yourself warned.

Personal Opinion: A subrace reserved only for unique, strong leader types and it comes with such a boring multiplier set compared to the other Skeletons? Kind of a letdown, isn’t it? Still, it’s not like you can complain about one, as they’re still just as excellent as all other skellies. Get one as a centrepiece for your Skeleton-only run.

Recommended for: Everything, works as a similar themed centrepiece as the hive queen while being actually functional.

Skeleton No-Head MKII (Not grouped as a Skeleton)
Body: 120 for all bodyparts, has no head
Blood: 100
Bleed Rate: 0,2
Hunger Rate: 0
Heal Rate: 3, Heals using robotics
Combat Speed: 0,9
Movement Speed: 16-25 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Blunt
+20 % Heavy Weapons
+20 % Robotics
+20 % Melee Attack
-20 % Thieving
-20 % Stealth
-20 % Dodge
-20 % Katanas
(Hidden -20 % Dexterity, probably nonfunctional code remnant)

These guys are basically skeletal slaves who have had their heads removed in a process known as thralling. They are the cannon fodder of the remnants of the Skeleton civilizations. Only a MK II version exists in the game.

No-Head Mk II Pros:
+ Lack of Head removes one of the weak points Skeletons have due to being unable to wear headwear
+ Increased healing rate, once again
+ Nice melee skill multipliers
No-Head Mk II Cons:
- Lack of head is counted as an injury, giving permanent penalty to crafting, labour and turret gunnery skills
- The weakest Skeleton variant out there, and the only one who is less tough than a Shek


These thralls are often found under the servitude of more unscrupulous skeletons, essentially serving as a slave army.

Personal Opinion: A very unique subrace, as the lack of a head opens up some interesting combat options. I’ve personally employed them in mobs, armed with body-covering armour and polearms. They are quite a tough nut to crack hiding behind masterwork unholy plate. The massive (-33%, IIRC) penalty to most skills is a far worse thing than negative experience multipliers, so you should really use these guys only in the most menial jobs in your settlement. Never, ever use them for any jobs that produce items with a quality level or for farming. They serve as an excellent mook army in a skeleton-only run, being quite literally faceless minions.

Recommended For: Frontline tanking, padding out an army, menial work in a settlement.

No head Vs. No arms, the ultimate showdown! No-heads are incredibly easy to armour.

The last two races are quite unique, having no counterpart in the five groups introduced before. They are the fishmen, a species of some sort of fish-crab amalgams. Okay, maybe they’re related to the hivers. Or they’re yet another type of a failed clone. Who knows? Who really cares? All in all, they’re tough, mean and ugly, but what would you expect from a combination of a fish and a crustacean?

Fishmen Pros in General:
+ Toughest organics out there
+ Immune to all forms of acid as well as gas
+ (Apparently) the fastest swim speeds in the game, both races also have a multiplier
+ Generalists
+ All the ingredients of Frutti di Mare in one convenient package
Fishmen Cons in General:
- Can only wear pants and body armour
- Vulnerable to burning and duststorms, with no way to fully protect them from either
- Very low top running speed barely surpassing other races at their lowest possible point, can't wear shoes to alleviate this
- Negative water avoidance, prefers pathfinding through water
- Useless multipliers
- What even are these seriously

Fishmen are found across the coastal areas in the South and East. They apparently smell quite terrible. This is an important fact.

Fishman
Body: 200 for legs, 150 for other bodyparts
Blood: 75-125
Bleed Rate: 1
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: about 15-17 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Swimming
+20 % Athletics
-20 % Dodge

The basic fishmen, tougher than Sheks and twice as ugly. Even naked and armed with only their claws these guys are force (farce?) to be reckoned with.

Fishman Pros:
+ Very tough, landing between MK II and MK I Skeletons
+ Generalist stats with no real penalties
Fishman Cons:
- Athletics multiplier so you can go slow even faster
- A bit lower amount of blood than most other organics
- Inability to wear a hat, even less head health than Soldier Drones
- Alpha Fishmen exist


These guys are found as the basic mooks in the fishman army, if it could be called such.

Personal Opinion: A mix between a Hive Soldier and a Skeleton, with all the potential and the problems that implies. They do need to eat and aren’t completely immune to all weather conditions, but that’s about it. They're tough though exposed flesh is a problem when faced with bleed, katanas, harpoons or, well, anything really. Terrible in long-range adventuring due to their very low running speed, it might be a good idea to carry them around instead. A sidegrade to hive soldiers with some additional perks and weaknesses. An exotic and somewhat viable option as long as you don't mind the speed issues, but overshadowed by their even bigger brothers, the Alpha Fishmen.

Recommended For: Meat shields, Jack-of-all-trades tasks that don't require you to move long distances, Living in a watery environment

Alpha Fishman
Body: 400 for legs, 300 for other bodyparts
Blood: 140-250
Bleed Rate: 1
Hunger Rate: 1
Heal Rate: 1, Heals using medkits
Combat Speed: 1
Movement Speed: about 15-17 mph
Experience Multipliers:
+20 % Swimming
+20 % Athletics
-20 % Dodge

Alpha fishmen are even tougher members of the Fishman packs. Their size and durability puts even the toughest skellies to shame.

Alpha Fishman Pros:
+ Absolutely toughest non-animal race in the entire game by a large margin
+ Insane amount of blood, very hard to put down even with turrets and the like
Alpha Fishman Cons:
- No combat multipliers to really exploit the massive bulk of these absolute units
- Cybernetic limbs are massive downgrades in HP, so you have to make a choice between stats and bulk

Alpha fishmen are found scattered among the fishmen packs. An even larger version functions as a sort of a faction leader for the entire race.

Personal Opinion: Mamma mia! Look at the size of these lads! Alpha Fishman is basically two skeletons slapped together, being thrice as tough as any other organic sapient out there, having more resemblance to elder animals than people. They can take insane punishment even as their naked, unarmed selves when you meet them in the wild: Imagine facing one armed and trained for proper combat!

Their extreme bulk combined with no real multiplier-related weaknesses makes them a very viable contender for the throne of the best combatant in the game: Sheks can only boast having much better multipliers and more armour available, and Skeletons come with more utility, ability to repair themselves, damage resistances and less upkeep (if you ignore supplying robotics kits and repair beds, of course). Both races are also much faster than fishmen, though you could always use a Worker Drone as a carrier. Plus, they make for just pretty good workers, unlike certain “muh warrior culture” boneheads.

Recommended For: Combat, tanking, living in a watery area, venturing into dangerous lands and beating the local occupants senseless, flexing on lesser peoples.

And that’s it, a more-or-less comprehensive list of all the races in the game. Hope you’ve found it interesting, educational or at the very least somewhat amusing. I’m open for suggestions and rectifications to potentially erroneous information, as well as questions should I actually be reading this thread. Please don’t hesitate to comment, and thank you for reading this guide!

It may not be readily apparent how or why this or that stat or other attribute is important to note, or even what it does to begin with, especially if you’re new to the game. In this appendix I’ll give a quick rundown on all the different characteristics each race has or can have.

Body & Heal Rate: The health bar analogue of Kenshi, alongside blood and hunger. Each of your body parts, namely head, chest, stomach, both arms and both legs, has a separate health bar, and the “body” is that amount. Most races have the same amount of health for all bodyparts (for example 100 health for both human subraces) whereas others might have notable differences (hive soldier has 200 head health, and 100 health elsewhere).

Taking damage will reduce your body part’s health bar. Taking damage from an attack will hurt a random bodypart (with certain chances for each part – hitting the left arm is more common than hitting the right arm, for instance). Certain environmental effects may also damage your character, and they will be covered later in this appendix.

The importance of body health cannot be understated, as taking damage will reduce your stats and skills, and will eventually result in either dismemberment or death. Notable problem is taking damage to your torso, (aka chest and stomach) which will reduce your Strength and Dexterity, making you a worse combatant and often causing problems with weapon Strength requirements. Hits to other places may cause other problems, such as leg-wounds reducing movement speed, and hits to head causing skill reductions.

When the health of a body part is reduced below zero, further problems will rise: If your torso or head is hit and the hit reduces you to negative hit points, you will be knocked out. The time spent knocked out depends on how much damage you’ve taken, your Toughness and whether or not you’ve taken hits to the head. If you pass the knock-out point specified by your toughness, you will go to a recovery coma, where you won’t wake up until the health of your chest, stomach and/or head has regenerated back to at least 0. Suffice to say, if you’re bleeding out while in a coma and no one can bandage your wounds you are in trouble. If your health on these parts is reduced to the negative equivalent of your maximum health (for example, -100 for humans or -200 for a hive soldier’s head) you will die.

When your arms go to negative health they will break, and you will no longer be able to use a weapon with the broken limb. You always wield your weapon in your right hand, but certain weapons will require both hands to wield. Notably, most martial arts manoeuvres use your left hand (or legs) instead, so you have something to defend yourself with if your arm breaks. When your legs go to negative hit points, you are first forced to move at a slow walking pace and after that forced to crawl on the ground, where you are unable to block attacks and can only perform weak stabs with your weapon. When your limbs go to negative starting hit points they are cut off (if playing on frequent dismemberment, which you should be doing) and you will lose them permanently – You will have to find a cybernetic replacement.

From this lengthy introduction we can draw the following conclusions: Lots of body health good, not lots of body health bad. For health, that is. Races that have higher amounts of health will not only lose less stats from received damage (A skeleton taking 75 damage to torso would be above the halfway mark with stat losses, but a Hive Worker would be instantly knocked out) they also die less easily (A Hive Worker dies at -75 health, a Skeleton at -200 - a marked difference.) from both direct damage and degrading wounds.

Skeletons and robotic limbs slowly degrade when taking damage, reducing the maximum hit points of the damaged parts. To fix this damage you need to use a skeleton repair bed, found in many high-tech cities and in every hive village (or build your own if you have the tech).

Heal Rate modifies your natural healing speed, which is otherwise based on your max health. A Scorchlander with his 1,1 heal rate heals 10 % faster than Greenlanders. Skeletons, with their massive heal rate and base health can often regenerate wounds in prolonged combat. Staying in bedroll or bed will also multiply healing speed for organic races (4x and 8x speed, respectively)

Blood & Bleed Rate: In addition to your limbs you also need to keep whatever life-providing liquids you contain inside of you in combat. The amount of blood varies by each race: Some races, such as Hivers and Skeletons have fixed amount of blood. Others, such as Humans and Sheks, have a variable amount, and they can further increase their maximum amount with Strength. (For example, humans have 75-150 blood, so they have 75 blood at level 1 and 150 at level 100.) You lose blood when taking damage, when your wounds degrade and when you lose a limb. Blood loss is based on dealt cutting damage, so for example Katanas and Crossbows excel at bleeding the enemy while some Blunt weapons cause no bleeding at all. Similarly to torso and head damage, when your blood goes to negative you are knocked out, and when it goes negative of your starting amount you bleed out and die. You can’t rise out from a knocked-out state if you have negative amount of blood regardless of your other injuries, meaning that causing as much blood loss as possible in combat can be a viable strategy.

Bleed Rate is an additional multiplier. If you, for example, have a 0.9 bleed rate multiplier you will simply bleed at only a 90% rate compared to some other, more blood-lossy-dude in a similar situation.

A charcter will have either blood or oil, which defines whether they heal with medkits or repair kits.

Hunger & Hunger Rate: Living things require food to survive. If you haven’t eaten recently, your hunger bar will be constantly dropping, affected by any Hunger Rate multipliers you might have (a hive worker starves 50 % slower than a Greenlander, as an example.) Other activities might increase (f.ex. mining) or decrease (f.ex. sitting around) the amount. If you go under your starting hunger bar you will start to starve, taking penalties to all skills. This will be followed by random knockouts from hunger, followed by death.

All characters are smart enough to eat on their own and need no further micromanaging to force them to eat: A character will automatically eat (when hungry) from his own inventory, from any equipped backpack in your squad (so you can have a dedicated food guy and not bother splitting food into everyone’s inventory) or from dedicated food storages in your base. Skeletons, being even smarter, don’t need to eat and have no hunger bar at all.

Combat Speed: This is actually the Combat movement Speed, a separate stat from the how-fast-grug-swing-sword-stat which is affected by approximately a metric crapton of other things that I may one day cover in another guide. Combat Movement Speed is a stat that can only be affected by choosing a race with a multiplier to it. It only affects the speed at which the character moves around while in combat (as in the shuffling combat walk animation), sometimes allowing the combatant to strike his foe before he is ready to block the attack.

Movement Speed: How quickly the character runs, with the lowest number being the speed at Athletics 1 and the highest at Athletics 100. Also affects your maximum Stealth Narutorunning speed cap.

There’s also a separate Swimming Speed stat for each race. Why hasn’t it been included in this guide? BECAUSE EVERYONE IS A TERRIBLE SWIMMER, THAT’S WHY. If you’re interested on a swim speed of a particular race, the answer is always “very slowly.”

Experience Multiplier: A flat increase or decrease to the amount of experience gained in the particular skill. It doesn’t raise the level cap (which is 100, by the way: You can temporarily go higher with stat-boosting items, and some NPC:s might spawn with higher amounts) or anything, it just makes leveling faster or slower. The main reason why I harp about the importance of Strength multipliers across the guide is because training Strength is slow, tedious and tremendously important for wielding almost all high-end weapons and armor in the game. At 100 Strength a Shek and a Hiver will be equals in damage, carrying capacity and ability to wield heavier weapons, but the Shek will get there much, much faster under a similar training regime.

Hidden/Unused Multipliers: Certain races seem have hidden negative modifiers to either Dexterity or Strength in the FCS. I've mentioned these as "nonfunctional code remnants", as they are applied differently from actual, visible modifiers to these attributes and at least in my experience and very limited testing do not function in any way. They are mentioned only for the sake of completion and in the small case they actually apply or if they will be fixed in a future patch.

A few races (Read: Southern Hive) also have modifiers to several unused skills, notably "Hivemedic" and "Vet", which seem to be a remnant from a time when different lifeforms required different healing skills which is still retained somewhat in the distinction between Field Medic and Robotics. To my understanding these multipliers do absolutely nothing, though interestingly all Hivers are still statted to be healed using Hivemedic instead of Field Medic in the files. There are a few other, hidden skills in the FCS that are not used in-game and don't appear on the character sheet, and no race has multipliers in them.

Environment & Immunities: There are three types of environmental damage in Kenshi: Acid, (light and heavy acid rain, common in all across the continent with certain areas being constantly rained upon, acidic bodies of water which are found in a few zones, and acid ground which can be found in the Deadlands and Iron Valleys) Gas (found in The Black Desert and Ashlands in the form of drifting clouds) and Burning, better known as orbital weapon-and-or-terraforming-system-lasers (Found in Venge during the day). Acid rain and water slowly damages your entire body on exposure, whereas acid ground damages your legs and gas damages your chest. Venge-lasers cause very rapid damage to your whole body if they hit you and can open wounds unlike the other types of environmental damage (though if you play with frequent dismemberment you may still bleed from limb loss caused by such effect).

Duststorms are the fourth environmental effect present in most arid zones, but they are harmless and only reduce your melee attack, perception, precision shooting and martial arts while fighting within them while also making you harder to detect.

If you don’t want to get hurt or hampered by the environment when crossing these zones, you need protection, which certain types of clothing can provide. A resistance of 90 % is enough to remove the negative effects, though the character may still complain about them. Acid resistance only removes the damage from acid rain: Any kind of shoes or cybernetic leg replacements are enough to block damage from acid ground, but you can't make yourself immune to acidic bodies of water with gear. Certain races are immune to some or all environmental effects.

While gas and lasers are fairly rare effects, only present in three zones (both can also be theoretically dodged by micromanaging your squad and the latter can be fully avoided by simply traveling at night), acid effects, especially rain, are extremely common across the world. Many zones have at least a small chance for acid rain every now and then, and you should make sure you have some sort of protection against it before venturing to the outlands. It may not be a bad idea to always carry protective equipment with you in case you're unsure of the weather in the region you're about to enter. Gas masks, rice hats and longcoats are all fairly light and can be easily stored in a backpack, should you have one. The quality of the clothing does not affect its protective qualities against environment, so a shoddy coat will work just as fine as a masterwork.

Predators, cannibals and skin-thieves could also be considered environmental hazards. If you're a Skeleton, animals and man-eaters will leave you alone - that is, leave your unconscious body alone after roughing you up instead of devouring you.

Water Avoidance: Not listed in the guide proper, but mentioned a few times, this stat makes the pathfinding go haywire near liquids. In short, Sheks avoid water like crazy, Hivers, Skeletons and Greenlanders try to avoid it, Scorchlanders will often try swimming, and certain non-player races like Fogmen and Fishmen will either have no distinction between dry land and water or will rather swim than walk. This stat can and will cause most of your pathfinding issues when guiding mixed race group through watery areas. When navigating Floodlands or the Swamp carrying certain party members will help you preserve your sanity.

Racism: Certain people don’t like people of other colours, or people with no colours to begin with. Or flesh, for that matter.

In short, Holy Nation hates all non-human people as well as women: They will attack Skeletons or people with skeletal limb replacements on sight, will attempt to peacefully reincarnate hivers and Sheks through slavery-induced death and will tell women to head to the kitchen post-haste. Even as a male human it's best to carry a copy of the Holy Flame around in their lands, so that they will give you free food instead of free beatings. A male human with Holy flame can sometimes manage to convince that any Hivers, Sheks and women in your squad are actually slaves and thus totally A-OK too. They also should hold tech in general illegal, but are missing related dialogue and aren't actually bothered by any research benches and skin-peelers in your home.

United Cities doesn’t care about race that much but Noble hunters will sometimes try to hunt more exotic things like robots and women for sport. They also consider poverty a criminal offence, so make sure you have some dosh on you while on their lands, though they tend to only target malnourished people so Skeletons can get away scot free. In addition, the racist power rangers known as City Heroes will try to harry non-humans in UC lands, though this will usually result in them being beaten up by the Samurai and being sold to slavery.

Sheks make snide comments towards people who aren’t real warriors, which is terrible. If you have a Shek with the Shek Warrior dialogue pack in your party (for example Kang and Rane) you can skip their smuggling checkups by exlaiming that rummaging through a warrior's backpack is not a cool thing to do.

Western hive doesn’t like exiled hivers and will shout at them if they try to approach their mud(?) hut towns, which can be inconvenient as they're one of the few sources of Hive-suitable shirts and cheap prosthetics, both of which are a necessity to the flimsy Hivers. Use a member of another race to trade with them while keeping any exiles out of the shop. Their caravans don’t mind talking to exiled Hivers though and will trade freely outside their towns.

Skeleton and Skin bandits can be more easily befriended by a Skeleton. The latter don’t care about Sheks or hivers, but really enjoy the company of humans and you should visit them at some point.

Due to an apparent oversight Southern hivers are in a weird place where they're basically treated as bog-standard humans, meaning that they can deal with both the Western Hive and the Holy Nation without any problems, apart from some missing dialogue for the latter faction.

Some races are clearly meant or otherwise better for this or that role, but does that mean you should only ever use this race for the job? Certainly not! Kenshi is, after all, all about your choices and living with them and their repercussions.

While certain races are better than other races at certain tasks, in general skill level is much more important than mere multipliers. A worker drone, while still suffering from his innately low durability, becomes an unholy terror with high combat skills and great equipment, and can mow down hordes or lesser Sheks and Skeletons, for example. A Shek with similar levels of melee combat abilities would certainly be better, but not necessarily by some overwhelming margin.

Multipliers should not necessarily dissuade you from going down a certain path, or to only focus on strengths of the character. It just means that higher levels of that skill will be harder or easier to reach, but anyone can get there with enough time. Innate features like low running speed or lack of durability might hamper whatever task you want to accomplish, but they rarely should make it wholly impossible. I have had successful runs with utter meme builds, like a faction consisting only of Hive martial artists, and that bunch managed to destroy every main faction in the game despite being very poorly suitable for the task at hand. It had its own problems, like the fact that I had to spend basically all of my money to buy prosthetics as hivers excel at losing limbs, but that just added to the challenge.

All in all, the only thing you should avoid is trying to use races for things that are impossible for them, such as trying to co-exist with the Holy Nation using only non-human races, or attempting to conquer the Ashlands with an army of Hive Soldiers that can't be made immune to gas clouds. Modding in unplayable races to be playable might raise further problems, like the god-awful running speed of Fishmen.
Also, I'd recommend avoiding using races with relevant negative multipliers at tasks that produce items with quality levels (any type of smithing & robotics when making prosthetics) or produce less or nothing on a failed attempt (farming) as this will in general result wasted time and materials. Tasks that merely take more time at low levels (labouring, cooking, etc.) aren't nearly as noticeable and can more often than not be performed adequately enough by races with negative multipliers.
In addition specialized characters come with 40 or so non-combat skills right from the get-go and can be effectively used despite any multipliers they might have, as they've already skipped the initial low-level hurdle.

But, in short, don't let this guide deter you from committing tactical suicide: After all, experimenting and challenging yourself with utterly daft builds and ideas, or simply roleplaying some sort of themed faction, are some of the most fun parts of the game.

I'll give you a hint: The S in S-tier stands for Skeleton.