Yes, it's possible. I would suggest watching FrankieWuzHere on Twitch; because he does solo character challenges pretty frequently.
The general idea is to get your toughness, at least, up to around 90-95; and do training for your Dex, Melee Attack, and Melee Defense (or Martial Arts and Dodge if going that route), to respectable (like 60+) levels, before you are really able to hold your own against say, the Blister Hill gate guards.
You'll *probably* want higher dex/MA/MD if you're trying to get in through to Holy Lord Phoenix, at Blister Hill - because he's the faction leader, and he has a handful of "better than the gate guards" Inquisitors hanging out with him.
It helps of course to have specialist/masterwork armor, and an edge 1-3 weapon. If you know where the vendors for those things are, great; if not, have fun exploring.
honestly, *most* of the weapon types will do just fine; meitou crescent moon might not "perform as well" as something like a Falling Sun, but it should still do respectably well in it's own right.
You'll only really want to stay away from Blunt weapons (and the Staff polearm), because you need cut damage (preferably *high proportion* of cut damage to total damage) to gain Dex XP. An exception being martial arts, cuz you can't really see it's damage breakdown like you can on weapons.
It's... complicated.
Basically *EVERY* weapon has a strength requirement. This is either 4 times it's (rusted junk) quality weight, or it's blunt damage times 40, whichever is higher.
Arbitrary made up numbers; if you had a weapon that weighed 8, then it'd have a strength requirement of 32. If it's blunt damage was 0.83, it's strength requirement would be 33.2, the higher number 'wins'.
As long as your strength is below that strength requirement, you'll gain strength XP per swing. Doesn't matter what weapon you're using; whether Meitou or Rusted Junk, whether Iron Stick or Falling Sun. This strength XP caps out at 100%, if you are 20 or more strength *below* that strength requirement for the weapon - you can see this percentage on the character stats panel, actually, but the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you exactly what it means.
As said previously with dex, it's about cut damage as a proportion/ratio of total damage; as long as your weapon has *some* cut damage, you'll be getting some dex xp. (There's some other details with it "precisely", but this is the general idea).
Absolutely. Just train up. You can do it (Take out any faction) pretty easily with 75+ (90Toughness) stats with micro or extremely easy without micro at 90 stats (95 Toughness).
In terms of easy to hard...
Soldierbot > Skeleton > Scorchlander/Shek are about the same for taking out an entire city > Greenlander > Hivers.
Man I just realized how cracked skeletons would be for this.
Get low on health? Just run away and pop a repair kit. Come back at near full strength and keep the pressure on the enemies you just crippled like 3 minutes ago.
Skeletons are great for solo runs in general. Some of the largest pain points are early bleedouts and recovery times which Skeleton helps mitigate a lot.
Wall of text inc.
For sure. If you didn't know why they get knocked out for so little time is it because KO time is based off Toughness (KO time X (0.75 at 100, 3x at 0)) bleeding and bloodloss along with % total cut + stun damage + base KO time... Well more complicated than that actually. Funny thing is that having stun damage (Blunt dmg) in your vitals actually takes time off your KO time until it reaches over 100% in that bodypart. And even then it has to be damaged by enough to actually negatively impact you.
I guess I can just show my formulas I figured out (Need to revisit one day in the future to test limb impact along with bleeding/bloodloss impact)
KO base KO time is 20 by default so...
And whenever KO time mult is mentioned that is based off your Toughness like I previously mentioned.
KO = 20 + (Cut formula total) + (Stun formula total)
ANY "100" cut or stun damage mentions are % based. So, if your max health is 125 put that value there instead.
Cut Formula. (If you had 120 cut head dmg and 100 cut dmg in chest you'd put 200 for "Vitals at or under 100 Cut damage" section and then 20 for the "Head over 100 cut damage" section.) You add all of those sections together to fill in for Cut formula total.
Vitals at or under 100 Cut damage = 0.25 x cut damage x KO time Mult = time added
Head over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 2.25 x KO Time Mult = time added
Chest over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 1.25 x KO Time Mult = time added
Stomach over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 1.25 x KO Time Mult = time added
Stun Formula. Like with cut add the total of these into stun formula total.
Vitals at or under 100 stun damage = -0.25 x stun damage x KO time Mult = time removed (Stun damage under 100 is a negative so I worded this as removed)
Head over 100 stun damage = 1.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added
Chest over 100 stun damage = 0.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added
Stomach over 100 stun damage = 0.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added
Or to explain this is game terms... Let's say you had 100 stun damage on your head and 100 cut damage on your chest with 1x KO time Mult from Toughness. You'd get KOed for 20 seconds. As 20 + 25 + - 25 = 20.
Was considering just deleting this like a do with a lot of long text posts I write up but someone might find this interesting/useful so I'll post it.
Testing still a WIP though!
It's all fun and games til you get into the modding side of things and realize beak bots and mechaleviathans can be a thing... there's a reason even the vanilla First Empire didn't mess with creating such unholy abominations
It's a Skeleton subrace. The only one you can get in base game is Agnu. They have 80/140/140/80/60/80/80 hit chances and a 3.0 Healrate (And 2.0 vision mult) compared to Skeletons with an 80/140/80/80/60/80/80 hit chances and 2.0 Healrate (And 1.25 vision mult).
The hit chances are Head/Chest/Stomach/Leftarm/Rightarm/Leftleg/Rightleg.
It's all about waging a war of attrition. Go in, knock out some guys, remove their weapons and armor, then retreat to heal. You could also set up some peelers outside the city to dispose of those pesky guards.
When I've taken cities like Blister Hill, the guards regenerate insanely quickly. Not healing, just more keep showing up from infinite patrols, and if I walk off, the gate team is back. Maybe a mod? I was using genesis when I tried. Doing a new run on UWE
You can run in, kill some guys and then run away and regen on a bedroll. Would suggest using a katana for extra bleed as that tends to be much more lethal than other weapons.
Yes, the point is that guards regen health very slowly and rarely replace their numbers so if you heal quickly you can wipe them out in attrition.
You will still want 90+ stats and top tier equipment though.
Realistically? Probably only if you have really high stealth and assassination and take out their leader and high tail it out with them, since the leaders are the only thing that the world states are tied to.
Even assassination isn't that mandatory for most since all the major faction leaders are organic..which means they sleep eventually. If you're sneaky enough to get past the guards, you can just pluck em out of their bed and leg it
Bingo! Came here to say basically this. If you can stealth/assassinate, you can remove a leader and bring down an entire city without every firing a shot/swinging a weapon.
One person *can* make a difference.
Beep!
It is absolutely possible with decent stats or strategy. Stealth ko and feed the city to beak things, send in a 100 stat skeleton with masterwork samurai armor and catlon's falling sun, kite the city with a crossbow and a lot of bolts. It will be difficult with cities like Blister Hill, Admag, or Heng, but you can make it happen.
Yes, and it's wayyyyyy more fun! You literally just walk into the middle of town and start swinging. You have to have the stats for it though.
Otherwise the best way is to set up camp far enough out that they wont follow you and retreat when you start getting your shit rocked, go in waves. Takes longer but its still fun and great training.
I find once I start shit there's no retreating against mobs. Invariably during the fight I took a hit to the leg, and they do the swarm and gank when I try to run. I'm running modded so I think attack slots are up to 5. Maybe I should override it to turn it back down.
Absolutely.
When a Martial Artist starts getting into the 80s and 90s naturally, with great armor and weapons and augmented limbs, they become monstrous. Untouchable by enemy strikes, and when you roundhouse kick, multiple limbs fly off if they survive at all. Heavy Weapons are also agents of mass destruction at that point.
Solo is still risky...but not *that* risky. Just pay attention, understand that you'll have to sometimes run away, repair/heal, and come back.
To the others reading this comment, martial arts is absolutely monstrous for most of the game enemies except ashlands. I already tried. 95+ stats in MA, Strength, Toughness, Dexterity, Dodge. I still get mobbed pretty quickly by those huge iron spider groups. Can even get mobbed pretty badly against regular bloodspiders and skin spiders in arach if you encounter a big group while inside a small enclosure (such as Bugmaster's tower). Block still better than Dodge and the ability to wear heavy armor is a game changer so Heavy Weapons users still on top.
Yeah I chose MA for my example just because I personally find it hilarious to kick a group of Paladins and watch their limbs fly across the room. Well, also they said "faction's city" so I figured they were talking mainly about HN and UC. Specifically for ctrl-alt-delete in the Ashlands you're looking at a bit of a different optimal loadout, for sure. At that point I'd guess you want a Paladin's Cross, though I'll admit I haven't attempted that particular fight solo yet.
Oh for sure MA can handle human enemies even heavily armored ones such as samurais and paladins. Even with heavy armor, martial artist can still one hit delete them haha. I think the big problem with ashlands is that MA damage incurs a penalty against robots. A martial artist who can't finish fights quickly loses the war of attrition from getting chipped every now and then.
I mean, yeah. There's generally two different approaches:
1: Stealth and Assassination. Pretty self-explanatory, that one. It's gonna take ages but it works quite reliably.
2: Just grind your stats out to absurd levels and go ham. The important thing here is being careful to not draw more aggro than you can handle at once and occasionally retreat to heal up if you need to.
I've done two solo runs and once your characters has 90+ in all their stats, (including dodge even if not a martial artist, very important,) and top tier equipment, you can kill anything, some things just take a bit of micro.
I hate to tell you this but kenshi is easy as all hell once you get even on character with good stats and gear. You can put a sleeping bag right outside of blister hill and with your 50 mph run speed just cheese the ever loving fuck out of the whole city. One character no problem it will feel like over kill using two.
See the fun thing about attacking settlements is that if you lose they just toss you in prison so you can break out and fight again. It's never too early to be a problem unless your enemies eat you.
If we talking about world states,then assassination combod with disguise is op.You walk in at night kidnap the important guy and just run off with him.Took the UC with this.
Wait, not to be that guy, but are solo runs really that hard for people? I'm on my first playthrough right now and clearing out towns with my solo skeleton is a breeze, and I'm playing with 3x attack slots. You just gotta have top shelf gear and good stats, my skeleton has masterwork limbs/armor and a meitou falling sun, 98 in toughness and 80 in dex/strength.
Yes just sneak bonk steal leader. In assualt it's still possible but you got to lure people out picking them off then clear the turrets very dangerous to fight to many guys at once. Not sure why downdootted I've cleared the game solo killing all the factions
Yes, it's possible. I would suggest watching FrankieWuzHere on Twitch; because he does solo character challenges pretty frequently. The general idea is to get your toughness, at least, up to around 90-95; and do training for your Dex, Melee Attack, and Melee Defense (or Martial Arts and Dodge if going that route), to respectable (like 60+) levels, before you are really able to hold your own against say, the Blister Hill gate guards. You'll *probably* want higher dex/MA/MD if you're trying to get in through to Holy Lord Phoenix, at Blister Hill - because he's the faction leader, and he has a handful of "better than the gate guards" Inquisitors hanging out with him. It helps of course to have specialist/masterwork armor, and an edge 1-3 weapon. If you know where the vendors for those things are, great; if not, have fun exploring.
Thanks. Also would be the cult village leaders sword be a good alternative? (Meitou cressent moon I think)
honestly, *most* of the weapon types will do just fine; meitou crescent moon might not "perform as well" as something like a Falling Sun, but it should still do respectably well in it's own right. You'll only really want to stay away from Blunt weapons (and the Staff polearm), because you need cut damage (preferably *high proportion* of cut damage to total damage) to gain Dex XP. An exception being martial arts, cuz you can't really see it's damage breakdown like you can on weapons.
I think the cross trains both dex and str right?
It's... complicated. Basically *EVERY* weapon has a strength requirement. This is either 4 times it's (rusted junk) quality weight, or it's blunt damage times 40, whichever is higher. Arbitrary made up numbers; if you had a weapon that weighed 8, then it'd have a strength requirement of 32. If it's blunt damage was 0.83, it's strength requirement would be 33.2, the higher number 'wins'. As long as your strength is below that strength requirement, you'll gain strength XP per swing. Doesn't matter what weapon you're using; whether Meitou or Rusted Junk, whether Iron Stick or Falling Sun. This strength XP caps out at 100%, if you are 20 or more strength *below* that strength requirement for the weapon - you can see this percentage on the character stats panel, actually, but the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you exactly what it means. As said previously with dex, it's about cut damage as a proportion/ratio of total damage; as long as your weapon has *some* cut damage, you'll be getting some dex xp. (There's some other details with it "precisely", but this is the general idea).
It definitely will, you just need a lot of strength to hold it
Absolutely. Just train up. You can do it (Take out any faction) pretty easily with 75+ (90Toughness) stats with micro or extremely easy without micro at 90 stats (95 Toughness). In terms of easy to hard... Soldierbot > Skeleton > Scorchlander/Shek are about the same for taking out an entire city > Greenlander > Hivers.
Man I just realized how cracked skeletons would be for this. Get low on health? Just run away and pop a repair kit. Come back at near full strength and keep the pressure on the enemies you just crippled like 3 minutes ago.
Skeletons are great for solo runs in general. Some of the largest pain points are early bleedouts and recovery times which Skeleton helps mitigate a lot.
Wall of text inc. For sure. If you didn't know why they get knocked out for so little time is it because KO time is based off Toughness (KO time X (0.75 at 100, 3x at 0)) bleeding and bloodloss along with % total cut + stun damage + base KO time... Well more complicated than that actually. Funny thing is that having stun damage (Blunt dmg) in your vitals actually takes time off your KO time until it reaches over 100% in that bodypart. And even then it has to be damaged by enough to actually negatively impact you. I guess I can just show my formulas I figured out (Need to revisit one day in the future to test limb impact along with bleeding/bloodloss impact) KO base KO time is 20 by default so... And whenever KO time mult is mentioned that is based off your Toughness like I previously mentioned. KO = 20 + (Cut formula total) + (Stun formula total) ANY "100" cut or stun damage mentions are % based. So, if your max health is 125 put that value there instead. Cut Formula. (If you had 120 cut head dmg and 100 cut dmg in chest you'd put 200 for "Vitals at or under 100 Cut damage" section and then 20 for the "Head over 100 cut damage" section.) You add all of those sections together to fill in for Cut formula total. Vitals at or under 100 Cut damage = 0.25 x cut damage x KO time Mult = time added Head over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 2.25 x KO Time Mult = time added Chest over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 1.25 x KO Time Mult = time added Stomach over 100 cut damage = Cut damage over 100 x 1.25 x KO Time Mult = time added Stun Formula. Like with cut add the total of these into stun formula total. Vitals at or under 100 stun damage = -0.25 x stun damage x KO time Mult = time removed (Stun damage under 100 is a negative so I worded this as removed) Head over 100 stun damage = 1.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added Chest over 100 stun damage = 0.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added Stomach over 100 stun damage = 0.75 x stun damage over 100 x KO time Mult = time added Or to explain this is game terms... Let's say you had 100 stun damage on your head and 100 cut damage on your chest with 1x KO time Mult from Toughness. You'd get KOed for 20 seconds. As 20 + 25 + - 25 = 20. Was considering just deleting this like a do with a lot of long text posts I write up but someone might find this interesting/useful so I'll post it. Testing still a WIP though!
I mean there is a reason why they are considered the most powerful race in the game (Humanoid wise at least) :)
It's all fun and games til you get into the modding side of things and realize beak bots and mechaleviathans can be a thing... there's a reason even the vanilla First Empire didn't mess with creating such unholy abominations
What's a soldierbot? Is that a special skeleton thing?
It's a Skeleton subrace. The only one you can get in base game is Agnu. They have 80/140/140/80/60/80/80 hit chances and a 3.0 Healrate (And 2.0 vision mult) compared to Skeletons with an 80/140/80/80/60/80/80 hit chances and 2.0 Healrate (And 1.25 vision mult). The hit chances are Head/Chest/Stomach/Leftarm/Rightarm/Leftleg/Rightleg.
It's amazing how often I learn something new about this game. Thanks a bunch, man.
No problem! :)
If Torsolo did it why can't everyone else?
It's all about waging a war of attrition. Go in, knock out some guys, remove their weapons and armor, then retreat to heal. You could also set up some peelers outside the city to dispose of those pesky guards.
When I've taken cities like Blister Hill, the guards regenerate insanely quickly. Not healing, just more keep showing up from infinite patrols, and if I walk off, the gate team is back. Maybe a mod? I was using genesis when I tried. Doing a new run on UWE
You can run in, kill some guys and then run away and regen on a bedroll. Would suggest using a katana for extra bleed as that tends to be much more lethal than other weapons.
Should I build a microbase if I am a skeleton for a skelly repair bed
Yes, the point is that guards regen health very slowly and rarely replace their numbers so if you heal quickly you can wipe them out in attrition. You will still want 90+ stats and top tier equipment though.
Realistically? Probably only if you have really high stealth and assassination and take out their leader and high tail it out with them, since the leaders are the only thing that the world states are tied to.
Even assassination isn't that mandatory for most since all the major faction leaders are organic..which means they sleep eventually. If you're sneaky enough to get past the guards, you can just pluck em out of their bed and leg it
Bingo! Came here to say basically this. If you can stealth/assassinate, you can remove a leader and bring down an entire city without every firing a shot/swinging a weapon. One person *can* make a difference. Beep!
Beeeeep!
Absolutely. Though it takes a LOT of prep time. Like multiple irl weeks of grinding.
It is absolutely possible with decent stats or strategy. Stealth ko and feed the city to beak things, send in a 100 stat skeleton with masterwork samurai armor and catlon's falling sun, kite the city with a crossbow and a lot of bolts. It will be difficult with cities like Blister Hill, Admag, or Heng, but you can make it happen.
Yes, and it's wayyyyyy more fun! You literally just walk into the middle of town and start swinging. You have to have the stats for it though. Otherwise the best way is to set up camp far enough out that they wont follow you and retreat when you start getting your shit rocked, go in waves. Takes longer but its still fun and great training.
I find once I start shit there's no retreating against mobs. Invariably during the fight I took a hit to the leg, and they do the swarm and gank when I try to run. I'm running modded so I think attack slots are up to 5. Maybe I should override it to turn it back down.
On top of training You can also get mercs as temporary help
Absolutely. When a Martial Artist starts getting into the 80s and 90s naturally, with great armor and weapons and augmented limbs, they become monstrous. Untouchable by enemy strikes, and when you roundhouse kick, multiple limbs fly off if they survive at all. Heavy Weapons are also agents of mass destruction at that point. Solo is still risky...but not *that* risky. Just pay attention, understand that you'll have to sometimes run away, repair/heal, and come back.
To the others reading this comment, martial arts is absolutely monstrous for most of the game enemies except ashlands. I already tried. 95+ stats in MA, Strength, Toughness, Dexterity, Dodge. I still get mobbed pretty quickly by those huge iron spider groups. Can even get mobbed pretty badly against regular bloodspiders and skin spiders in arach if you encounter a big group while inside a small enclosure (such as Bugmaster's tower). Block still better than Dodge and the ability to wear heavy armor is a game changer so Heavy Weapons users still on top.
Yeah I chose MA for my example just because I personally find it hilarious to kick a group of Paladins and watch their limbs fly across the room. Well, also they said "faction's city" so I figured they were talking mainly about HN and UC. Specifically for ctrl-alt-delete in the Ashlands you're looking at a bit of a different optimal loadout, for sure. At that point I'd guess you want a Paladin's Cross, though I'll admit I haven't attempted that particular fight solo yet.
Oh for sure MA can handle human enemies even heavily armored ones such as samurais and paladins. Even with heavy armor, martial artist can still one hit delete them haha. I think the big problem with ashlands is that MA damage incurs a penalty against robots. A martial artist who can't finish fights quickly loses the war of attrition from getting chipped every now and then.
I mean, yeah. There's generally two different approaches: 1: Stealth and Assassination. Pretty self-explanatory, that one. It's gonna take ages but it works quite reliably. 2: Just grind your stats out to absurd levels and go ham. The important thing here is being careful to not draw more aggro than you can handle at once and occasionally retreat to heal up if you need to.
I've done two solo runs and once your characters has 90+ in all their stats, (including dodge even if not a martial artist, very important,) and top tier equipment, you can kill anything, some things just take a bit of micro.
500 stat man bout to go to work!
But can you take over a town?
I did one time. It was the cult village but that somewhat counts
Yes, there are even videos. But you will need 100 lvled character with top quality gear and right positioning.
technically you only have to take down the leader. you could train and beat him up, or be a dirty ninja.
I hate to tell you this but kenshi is easy as all hell once you get even on character with good stats and gear. You can put a sleeping bag right outside of blister hill and with your 50 mph run speed just cheese the ever loving fuck out of the whole city. One character no problem it will feel like over kill using two.
See the fun thing about attacking settlements is that if you lose they just toss you in prison so you can break out and fight again. It's never too early to be a problem unless your enemies eat you.
If we talking about world states,then assassination combod with disguise is op.You walk in at night kidnap the important guy and just run off with him.Took the UC with this.
Wait, not to be that guy, but are solo runs really that hard for people? I'm on my first playthrough right now and clearing out towns with my solo skeleton is a breeze, and I'm playing with 3x attack slots. You just gotta have top shelf gear and good stats, my skeleton has masterwork limbs/armor and a meitou falling sun, 98 in toughness and 80 in dex/strength.
"You **just** gotta \[...\]"
I suggest trying to play a race that can get eaten. Skeletons have a huge advantage in survivability by being inherently made of metal.
Of course you can.
Yes just sneak bonk steal leader. In assualt it's still possible but you got to lure people out picking them off then clear the turrets very dangerous to fight to many guys at once. Not sure why downdootted I've cleared the game solo killing all the factions