Something else to note is that characters that have less than 15 melee attack can train in the soldiers headquarters. Unlike other citys they are ok that you train there and won't kick or kill you for it

This is actually where I settled in my current playthrough. I enjoy it very much so. My characters have got so much experience fighting fogmen, that every encounter is just limbs flying across the screen. On a side note. You don't have to tie one of your own people to a pole to attract a prince if you don't want to. You can tie one of the fogmen to it and a prince will come along to eat em just the same.

Also protip: there's an iron mine in Mongrel that produces infinite iron ore. If you want to passive train someone's strength or just get free money, check it out.

I'll say the fog islands are an amazing location for an all skeleton party. If you bring enough repair kits your group can train combat skills almost 24/7 without a worry of getting abducted. And if you collect fog prince heads you can easily pay the skeleton bed fee in mongrel to heal off wear dmg!

You forgot to mention that unlike the peeler machine, the fogmen build up your toughness while they eat your limbs off. This is in addition to the toughness boost you get from losing limbs. I could be wrong but I believe that the boosted toughness xp gain from the being eaten status does apply to the limb loss xp too.

Another cool feature is if you want to become an ally of the Holy Nation, this is the easiest way to do it. Your diplomatic efforts start as one would expect for a game like Kenshi: by having your assassin knock out and kidnap Lord Phoenix. Then you take him to the Fog Islands and drop him in front of a fogman. Let him pick up Phoenix and tie him to a pole. (Do not tie Phoenix to the pole yourself.) Then when the fog prince shows up, kill all the fogmen present and rescue the Phoenix. He'll thank you and declare you an ally of the Holy Nation.

Once you've gone through a lot of good locations to settle, it'd be interesting to see some guides for settling in challenging regions, like the Black Desert, Deadlands, Cannibal Plains and Sonorous Dark.

I don't even play Kenshi but these videos are a lot of fun. It's a very cool world and I like seeing the kind of stuff you deal with in there.

2:15 Don't mine iron. There's a place on a canyon with minable wreckage pieces. And there are 4 (!) nearby copper sources for 3 characters each. 2 of them are reacheble from the hill, so you don't have to go down into fog and you can loot them from safe position. And, if that wasn't enough, you can level up your sneak as you keep mining. If you see patrol - just run to the gates. You won't lose anyone even if that's a brand new recruit. Guards will interfere much faster. A little downside with that mining place - it's too close to town, so you can't place protection structures around it. But for the start - it's ideal location.

Haven't played in a while but I really enjoyed just beeing a lone wanderer in this game. Getting a small shack somewhere, living among the locals for some time and then moving on.

My favorite zone ! My base is located just in front of the eastern gate of Mongrel, litteraly on the side of the mountain shown at 2:22 . It is flat enough for a small base and you can make a fun city layout on the mountain. The thing to take into consideration here is Shinobi guards patrolling in this area. They are super strong and are a great help to defend your base against fogmen and the few cannibals raid that can occure, pretty usefull when you are beggining a playthrough. The other thing I would advice is : Adopt a bonedog ! They are not picked up by fogmen and when they reach adulthood they litteraly shred fogmen into pieces, feeding on their limbs and keeping themselves alive. You can basically place a bonedog in front of your base and forget him forever. I even think they could be a great help to settle in Cannibal Plains if cannibals don't forage animals but I'm not sure about that.

My usual Fog Island strat is to buy a shack next to the big Y house, build an ore storage there, it is in range for miners to haul ore from the gate. Very safe, can leave beep there to train his strength and run speed while the rest gathers science, etc. Eventually all that ore can be turned into armor plates for selling and training armor craft. As for my main money earning, I like to pick up KO'd fog boys and mount them on poles as bait (heavies have higher limb HP so I'll prefer them if available). Do this over a couple of death yards and wait for the *crunch* *Munch* noises. Sometimes I gotta wait for the princes to disperse because if like 5 show up to a pole, they'll bring some 20 heavies total + drones. Ideally the princes show up ahead of the heavies due to their speed giving a quick opportunity to nab some cats. Early on I tried to help the Holy Nation Outlaws roaming around, sometimes even buy them a cheap leg, let them sleep at the Y house I use as an HQ, etc. But they dumb AF, loud as bait at least. Then after a while I did a little bit of a culinary exchange program of supplying fishmen, cannibals, and foggies to each other because I had a 54mph Beep delivery service.

The Fog islands are my early game training area i love the place you don't need much in the ways of stats to survive fights with drones, so long as you are careful, and well they are way easier to find than starving bandits

You can actually toggle sneak on and never toggle it off unless said character can handle 20+ fogmen and reach 50 or more sneak in 2-3 days

This is one of those games where it is so much better to play with only a basic understanding before you go out and learn more indepth things. I never had a trouble in the fog islands because I made sure the only time I go in there is when I can book it, and I never once fought fogmen.

Now I'm gonna build an outpost in near Mongrel. These guides are amazing, keep it up!

The Fog Islands are my go-to location for any starter character because of three reasons. 1. Mongrel's shinobi HQ has tier 3 training dummies that you can easily use without getting into trouble, because there's like only two cages up there, which get quickly filled out, meaning the shinobi guard do not walk up there at all. 2. Fog Men make a very decent early game enemy to train your combat stats on, provided you don't overextend. 3. It's one of the best early game locations to make money passively, as the assaults on Mongrel are quite frequent, and so you can easily sell fog men weapons in bulk, with the addition of fog prince heads.

One fine day in the borderlands, my little base were graced by a bunch of Shek from Squin. They demanded that since I was farming on Shek land, they deserved tribute. Once I made it very clear that no, this is my food and if they're hungry they can either buy it, learn to farm themselves or just stick to eating rocks. They didn't like this, so they did the reasonable thing - attacked us, raided my base, took it for themselves and left my folks to starve and bleed. It was treason - we had been their partners. Their shops thrived under our trade. I could have abided by the mockery, the insults - even the "routine" checkups every time my Ashlander was sent into town, but this was the straw that broke the camels back. Deciding that I'd rather deal with endless hordes of man eating bugmen than pay taxes, I used what little savings I had to buy a pack animal from a caravan, which I named "Hop" because it looked like a giant naked rabbit. We grabbed what we could carry, torched the old place and headed on over to the Fog Islands. I had to deal with Holy Nation lunatics on the way and rabid packs of bonedogs while traveling at a snails pace because my civvies weren't really accustomed to traveling the wilds. My first few night consisted off fending off tireless waves of patrolling bug men. We beat the first, barely beat the second, but the third managed to break through and abducted two civvies. Though messed up, my warriors attempted a rescue, but ended up getting ambushed themselves and had to retreat. At night, we could hear them scream from the fog. It went quiet soon after. By the time the walls were up, the farms were running and the we had a place to rest out heads most of the settler were battered, bruised and tired - but they had gotten pretty strong and were hankering to take the fight to the bugs. Throughout the day we'd work the mines and fields, and in the evening they trained away. As my settlers trained to become warriors, the town took shape. We named it Svard, after the one of the settlers who were taken from us by the bugs. We stockpiled food, materials and weapons. We crafted out own equipment, as the roads were still too dangerous to traverse. One morning we woke up to the howling of one "Mighty Canhead", a cannibal raider who had decided that we were slim pickings. By now, my once squishy civvies had packed on muscle, traded in their rods for swords and polearms. The cannibals thought to find pudgy villager cowering behind walls. They instead found an unshakeable wall of iron and muscle. The few who made it past the crossbows swiftly found themselves having to deal with my Shek warriors. Kang a tough as nails Shek saw fit to take the leg of Canhead. While he was flaying about on the floor, we settled on a suitable punishment. As a final act of defiance, we denied him glorious death. My medics patched him up, and while my people looked on, he started his long and arduous crawl back to the shithole he came from. Without his helmet, which was now Kang's prize. Whether he made it back, whether his own people ended eating him or the bugs - no-one knows. It was the last we ever heard of Canhead. One thing was sure, the price for attacking my people was steep. Things became quiet after that. The bugs stopped raiding my gates. Every now and then some starving cannibals raid would try their luck. We'd leave them to die at the gates, as bait for the bugs so my gunners could train their aim on them. We were without mercy. This world had taken more than it's fair share, we were embittered, disillusioned. But we stood as one, and that made us strong. It made us dangerous. One evening, we heard the howls of someone come from fog below. Not the guttural shrieks of cannibals, but coherent. My men, seeing a chance to correct their previous mistake, charged into the fog. This time, we would take the fight to them. This time, we would not tolerate failure. This time, they brought back a survivor. A Holy Nation outlaw, down an arm and a leg and on verge of death. We bandaged him, fed him and let him sleep in our beds. When he came to, he thanked us - and in return, offered him a shelter and food. He graciously accepted. We used our resourced to augment his limbs. We trained him in the way of the sword and polearm - our people's weapons of choice. In time, he had become one of us. Strong, disciplined - and with a healthy disdain for bugs. Our town grew. We saved more people from the fog, we recruited folks from Mongrel. Our trips to through the valleys below become more common. Escort missions became patrols, and patrols became hunts. As we whittled away at the bug population below, our numbers ballooned. I build a squad out of my 8 most elite warriors, led by Kang, who'd forgo their civilian life to train day in and out. Each one, more than a match for an army of bugs. We slaughtered them by the hundreds, bringing back the heads of princes, whose bounty we used to fuel our growing town. Once we've stomped out the bugs and rid the fog islands of their presence and the people of Mongrel and Svard can freely walk the fog islands, only then we will go back to the borderlands. We will reforge the remains of our base into a mighty city. And the first Shek who believes he can walk up to my gates and demanding tribute from MY people can consider himself lucky if I allow him to utter his final words before I impale him on a harpoon.

Another perk is that you can call you outpost the mist village and your people the mist ninjas/shinobi

This is where I settled the first time. There is a place at the south-eastern part, if I remember correctly, which is essentially a medium-sized round valley with two exits surrounded by mountains, you can get water, stone and iron there and copper is very close in some wreckage just outside of the Fog Islands. The funniest part is how many raids who will come to attack your settlement will often either get stuck because of the path-finding or get eaten by fogmen.

I usually go into the fog islands with a large group. We use the enemies to grind our combat skills.

The fog islands is OP as fuck. My first play through i used the natural cliffs to make walls so i genuinely never used crossbows or walls in any meaningful capacity. My base was right in front of a deathyard so i was able to have my groups just standing outside racking up stacks and stacks of heads. 100% green in some spots, high wind, natural protection, and potential infinite resources makes it just the best spot. You can also just forget about raids cuz if you make them load in they will get attacked my fogmen. No matter what.

Just arrived at Mongrel, I'll definitely consider this. Thanks!

Hey Paul! Great videos! Good luck with the channel!

Grey desert is my favorite location to settle. It's a central location in the east with oodles of copper and iron. I've created massive industrial powerhouses fueled by outposts in gut and shem with skeleton caravans escorting the shipments. You can sell all your products to the 3 nearby settlements and have caps comin out the anus. I've had to buy houses in nearby settlements just to store ore because I max out how much I can sell to every shop.

You should cover doing the black desert sometime. I personally haven't found amazing spots there but you can usually find good iron and copper along with plenty of flat space and a central location. If anyone raids you, they tend to lost half their numbers because they didn't bring gas masks

I really hope Vain or the Swamp is next

My games are usually in the "lore friendly vanilla +" category, and I'm going off memory alone. Corrections are welcome. I'm almost certain that getting your limbs eaten by fog princes is the best way for a fleshie to prepare for cybernetics. Getting nom-nomed by the blue boys seems to give way more toughness than the peeler, starts with the legs, and is way safer than getting chewed on by gutters or hacked apart by cannibals. Tying a new character to a fog pole and having all his or her limbs chewed off usually leaves them with toughness in the high 30s or low 40s, which is good enough to prevent getting killed by Band of Bones, Kral's Chosen, and other new game training fodder. The fact that fog men start with the legs is great! If given a choice, I like to leave my fleshies with their God given arms as long as possible for the sake of dex/str training, but the stats affected by leg prosthetics (stealth and athletics) are easy to power level quickly, ignore, or train passively. By the way, if you use a mod that allows you to make prisoner poles, fog princes will eventually show up and eat whoever you tied to it. This can be used to cheese fog princes into a safer area, but I mainly use it for disposing of UC nobles.

Great video, keep up the good work

I loved settling here to start my Kenshi runs. The fogmen feed you such a huge amount of XP and the cannibal tribes that raid you once in a while are just as weak. My last run I made thousands of food cubes and had all my character well trained before I moved out to a more difficult area. Anyway love your videos, I've been binge watching them, makes me want to load up Kenshi. Haven't played in a few months.

good tip for mongrel if you dont mind the thieving cheese: it seems the robotics trader is not in the same faction as the other shops, so you can sell him stolen goods for full price he also has heaps of cats, so you can make bank fast!

Bought the game like 3 months ago gave like 130h into it and only scratched the surface love your locatuon guides keep them coming 😄

This was pretty interesting, I wouldn't have guessed the farming capabilities would be that high!

i really like these videos man.

Love this guide so much

There's this one plateau I found in the fog islands that only had one entrance and it was a pretty hidden one, the fog drones mostly left me alone and they served well in killing most factions that tried to invade me, and whatever actually managed to climb up to my lil town got decimated at my gates, was a damn good settlement.

There is a third kind, the horde slayer, just hacking and smashing through the fogmen until the sheer amount of limbs crashes your computer.

Ive just settled on the fog islands and i must say the fogmen havent even bothered me once I keep getting attacked by cannibals from the hermit tribe lands but they usually get wiped out by the fogmen before they even get close The best free protection i could ask for

I remember a mod that lets you yoink the head from all the fogmen, not just the princes, but I couldn't find it last time I looked. Fogmen huntins a good job, mate. Challengin work, outta doors. I guarantee you'll not go hungry, cause long as there's at least two fogmen left in the fog islands, everyone is gonna want them dead.

Fog Heavies will also SNACC if you kill the Fog Prince they are protecting.

You can put Fogmen onto the poles and it will still trigger Fog Princes.

I tried to settle out in the Foglands after doing a beep speedrun and setting up out of mongrel. Word to the wise, Dreg is totally dead on fertility and full of cannibals. I tried to settle on the South West portion of the Foglands right on the border of dreg. Tons of space to set up, amazing 70 70 arid green fertility perfect for growing fruit(70), cactus(70), wheat(107), and hemp(100). Plenty of iron and copper nodes in a small area. Problem is we set up to take out fogmen and had no problems from them, yet because we were on the border of dreg, apparently cannibals constantly invade the foglands from the south via dreg. We opened ourselves up to all sorts of cannibal raids. Scrawnys were no problem and left sacrifices for the fogmen to take. Mighty canhead was kicking our asses and the only way we were in any position to defend was to hire mercenaries and we still got tossed around. Ended up leaving and settling squin till we could come back with better armor. Another advice is if you are settling foglands or any area with cannibals, make sure you train everyone in lockpicking. The locks arent tough but if you have a 0 skill its only like a 9% chance to pick. versus a character with around 20 skill who has a 45% chance to pick when captured and a 90% when not captured.

Don't know about settling in here, but it's a pretty good place to get some money if you start as a slave at the Rebirth. With high stealth and assasination, you can knock out and put one of the fogmen on the pole in the deathyard to attract the prince so you can knock him out too and "steal" its head.

My main run's main base is in the fog islands. Shryke sadly died during the founding. Once you can hold off the fogmen at your gates without worry, the fog islands is the most secure location. No taxes, tythe, or prayer day.

I discovered that if you stealth through the Fog Islands, your stealth will skyrocket. On (or in) my latest playthrough, I have two (Elder) Pack Bulls with stealth > 50. However, when passing groups of oblivious Fogmen, huge stat increases.

7:37 no, you just have to assassinate the prince. If you have a recruit with 1 assassination skill, you can start whacking the drones first. The assassination might fail,but they won't budge. Also, you can move around the ritual and watch your sneak skyrocket, just don't go in front of them. One cheese way in raising your assassination with the fogbois is rapidly right-clicking before the hand hits the nape. If you can 100% bring down a drone, do the heavies. Work your way up to the princes. This is how i end up having a "Deathyard Exterminator" in one of my playthroughs. If this fails, well that is what the 21+ running speed is for.

Went to Mongrel to train and save Beep. Ended the playthrough with 40 combat stats across the board and a cannibalized Beep. Obviously I’m restarting from square one at the Hub 🥲

Such a wholesome community ! Thanks for the guide , gonna smack some beak thing ass level up strenth 30 martial 50 with a couple of bros , dealin hash to get rich and migrate to the fog islands FRFR

in this place you don't need to wall around the base, just put them on the choke points which is basically 3. just move the character outside the the area do see which paths needs to be walled. one of the paths i put the wall lower to reach the 100% water.

If you can get to the Holy Nation Outlaws that end up on the poles, you also have decent starting characters for an army if they decide to join you after being freed.

I had a mod installed called Fogmen to Fugmen, it replaced all their normal textures and 'dialogue' with spurdo sparde and spurdo speak Many laughs were had

subscribed, loving these location videos. what about that area of the map north west? like the purple sand area?

Fog islands are where im doing my current playthrough, was the most stressful setup because i was dumb and didnt bring enough materials to build walls so im running my 4 characters in and out of a shack every time the fog men come on screen so they dont aggro on us in between stone mining sessions

This is alway my place to safely reach the midgame. Great way to farm skills

When I first started the game I went to Fog Islands... The Fog is now my home.

Would be cool for a skeleton playthrough

I usually go in the fog island for training have a bunch of low level people send them in with on high level make a base have a place no bandits will go and training base

Do you plan on doing a playthrough? I'd watch hour long videos for sure

i never noticed only the princes eat the victims. so good to know for farming credits. i had almost given up on gaming when i found this game about 1 year ago. really got my fun back. x4 foundations is another game that gets overlooked a lot. i feel the title, and i guess it had not so good launch held it back. but like kenshi great rpg space opera game. u choose ur path. that said i trying to do simple 5 man fogman outpost base. for starter base..... lol. 3 of the 5 are skeltons. then ofc BEEP and my human char. i figured 2 humans makes for way less food-farm production. i can focus on just crafting. mining. atm i trying to settle in the gold standard spot. looks nice but i not sure how to wall it off..... mixed feelings about the spot. but i wanted something new and challenging from my first play through by squinn. and keep it smaller cause i know i move once im lvled up again. this game is such a hidden gem. i feel anyone that doesnt like it just doesnt give it an honest chance. or they get to frustrated with the ai and bugs......... admit it can feel frustrating. but time, patience and trial and error u can usually figure it all out. my biggest headache was making bread last time. forget at what point but they struggle to move something to next machine for some reason. i do know i finally found solution to it. and also learned eventually sometimes the AI just breaks. and u have to reload the game. save reload and everyone be working proper again. old engine........ works its butt off for this game.

You can actually attract princes by tying up fogmen corpses to the poles instead of having your own characters tied up like at 7:40 those princes are too damn hungry lol.

I started as 5 skeletons and settled in okran valley to piss of the holy Nation. Apparently though, after you take them out, the former come out of the fog islands cuz the holy Nation outposts were keeping them at bay lol. Oops

Only had the game for a couple of months. Quick question: why are the health bars in videos green? Mine are yellow. Thanks!

Wonder what will happen if u carry large animal and put it on pole?

I love the text when the guy was being eaten its just like fuuuuucccckkkkkk! Lol

yea i struggled a littile bit here but i have 2 bases set up nicely

If the town guards arrest a prince you can steal his head from him while he’s in the cage which is funny (yes it kills him)

By the time i got here half my group was 30-40 melee abd defense and we just cut dowb the fogmen although they still do more damage then i would have thought. Theres a lot of them though. Im more afraid of the holy nation areas.

My trick for the fog lands is this: don’t go in there unless you have to unless you’re a skeleton.

glad my best characters run at 40+ :D

I'll try to settle in that place I will never settle again

If u steal, then once u get to mongrel, just rob the skeleton limb guy and u can sell the limbs in the same town. In a week, u will never have to worry about cash again. Almost makes the game easy

You’d think a place with constant fog would have a decent amount of water

Never settled there, i did train my skeletons there and got filthy rich hunting princes :-) Stamina training man, it's fantastic, they club you down and don't eat you heheh

watched

"Mad Cat" . . . You a Battle Tech enthusiast as well?

Once you down the fog prices you should first aid them and tie them to the pillars, the fog men eat them just the same xD

THE FOG IS COMING

instructions unclear, created a cursed society of Boops and enslaved fogbois, and regretted every step of it.

today I learned that crossbows can shoot through the gates.

Nice kek

Make a video about why you should settle at bonefields

7:50 you don't really need to attach a human character, as far as i've seen fogmen work too

BEEP BEEP!

The third type of player is a skeleton start farming free in the fog, they don't eat metal!

First place I go most runs

Bump

What i do is knock a fogman out and and put him in a pole and wait, with my army (or when i play as a ninja, that is much more easy and you only need to have assassination and sneak at high level.) i kill all the princes that come to have a meal.

"Character Development": losing all your limbs and replacing them with masterwork prosthetics lol🤣

Dont need to tieup one of yours,you can even tieup Others fogmen. They will also eaten by the Prince.

I got eaten'

Too slow? Hire bodyguards

anyone upset about vanilla fogmen have no clue xD

fog island? more like squad training island 😅

DON'T LISTEN FOGMEN PROPAGANDA YOU WILL BE RATEN IF YOU GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I encountered a fog prince and I outran him. LOL Most of my guys run 22+ mph and definitely 23 to 28 mph with wood sandals. They can never catch me. My garru runs 30 mph. I am only scared of the beak thing.

6k per head is nothing. you get FAR more money grinding out the never ending hordes of fishmen in the swamps, and from them you just get straight cash, no need to lug a backpack full of heads.