Kenshi delivers the promise of unrestricted exploration and freedom better than any other great sandbox game. In the post-apocalyptic desert, the player may choose to be a trader, bandit, merchant, survivalist, slaver, murderer, bounty hunter, warlord, or something altogether else. If the desert doesn’t kill them first, the only true limitation on what the player may become is their own imagination.

Despite its depth, Kenshi might still be enhanced, and this is where modifications come in. The finest Kenshi modifications push the game even closer to becoming the definitive option for post-apocalyptic sandbox roleplaying, whether by adding modest but critical quality-of-life changes, reorganising major mechanisms, or reworking how NPCs and factions are handled. Here are several modifications that every gamer should have.

1) Trade Routes Intensified

This is a small tweak that makes trading in the game more lucrative. Modifications are made to pricing to suit the faction’s economy. For example, The Holy Nation will provide Grog at a discount and have a demand for rice-based goods, while Swampers would offer rice-based foods at a discount and pay a premium for Grog.

This generates a demand that the player may exploit to increase trading earnings. It also encourages players to travel to other regions in order to sell the stuff they seize from bandits or discover in ruins, since the prices for each item vary across countries.

2) Advanced Character Creation

This mod adds a tonne of cool choices to the character creation screen, so you don’t have to look like every other lone wanderer in the wasteland. With a multitude of new face textures and eye colours for each playable race and sub-race, this mod represents a startling amount of effort.

In addition, Advanced Character Creation develops a character’s eye colour and facial texture based on her race, maintaining uniformity across the universe.

3) Tamed Beasties

This patch enables you to catch and tame a variety of monsters for your own purposes, making it a wonderful companion to the previously stated mod. These creatures may either aid you in combat or offer an effective means of transporting a big quantity of items from one location to another.

The mod allows you to place monsters in cages while they are asleep, speak to them and feed them to build their confidence, and then, once liberated from the cage, they will obey your commands.

4) Dark UI

When playing alone, the default UI is a small source of irritation. And I would argue that it becomes aggressively terrible if you recruit party members and must manage the inventory of numerous troops simultaneously.

The colours render it almost illegible at points, and the type is so small that anybody who has played the game for more than 40 hours would acquire cataracts.

Dark UI is not a panacea for the interface problems plaguing Kenshi. However, it fixes the colours and cleans up the borders, making menus substantially more legible.

I am aware that certain purists may not wish to alter the gameplay of Kenshi, thus many of the modifications on this list are inaccessible to them (boring people).

The Dark UI hack, however, is essential for those who value their corneas.

5) Player’s Slavery

This mod is popular among fans because it may be used to roleplay as an evil dictator or to address the game’s endgame recruiting issues. While players may already purchase slaves to labour for their country, this mod enables them to capture enemy soldiers and force them to work for them.

Counter Attack is an optional feature of the mod that causes slaves to instigate riots, rebellions, and other difficulties for your empire. This mod makes a gloomy element of the apocalypse somewhat more realistic and dismal.

6) Populated Cities

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with monsters, cannibals, and robbers, it seems logical that the planet would be sparsely inhabited. Nonetheless, some players believe that the game is overly lifeless and that the towns and communities could use a little more activity.

The Populated Cities mod not only adds additional inhabitants to the game, but also gives them actual schedules to adhere to. It also provides a much-required gaming mechanism that allows residents to go to your businesses and make purchases. With this mod, you won’t be trampling on people, but it does add some life to the landscape.

7) 256 Recruit and Squad

The 256 Recruit and Squad mod has the greatest potential to completely break the game in multiple ways. If you use this mod, you are not only attempting to control the continent where Kenshi occurs. You want complete and absolute dominance. You want to establish a dynasty that will last for decades.

This patch boosts the maximum number of recruits from 30 to 256 and allows you to carry up to 20 squad members with you. Imagine what you might do with so many followers. With labourers who mass manufacture items, you might build an economic powerhouse. You have the ability to loot and demolish large communities with relative ease, running over the town’s fortifications with your devoted army. The world is an oyster for you.

8) Adventurer’s Guild

You may use the Adventurer’s Guild mod to increase the population of your empire as an alternate approach. You may engage someone to conduct the recruiting process on your behalf, eliminating the need to repeatedly visit the same bars in the hopes that someone with at least passable qualifications applies.

Your post-apocalyptic employment agency may be compensated with a headhunting charge in order to recruit local citizens for your empire. Instead than chasing down and speaking with each possible recruit individually, you speak with a representative of the Adventurer’s Guild and hire the whole group at once.

9) Peeler Machine

How beneficial the peeling machine is depends on the player’s willingness to be irritated. Depending on the player’s response, the Peeler Machine mod may become an integral element of the game. By feeding dismembered corpses into the machine, the player may extract and reuse the limbs.

Gross? Absolutely. However, this distressing process enables the player to mix and match character bodily parts. Importantly, it enables for the restoration of lost limbs, a very typical event in this harsh desert country where healing is often insufficient. Even though mechanical replacements are already available for purchase in the main game, the peeling machine enables even more dependable replacements.

10) Minor Factions Amplified

There are now two new minor factions for each of the three current main factions: the Holy Nation, the United Cities, and the Shek Kingdom. In addition, it adds two additional neutral factions with whom you may trade and collaborate, as well as a myriad of biome-specific groups you might find in the wasteland.

However, there is more! The majority of smaller factions inside the game have their own judicial and law enforcement systems. In addition, there are several new sidequests, such as bounties and town invasions. In addition, the sheer presence of so many groups adds a whole new degree of dynamic to the landscape, which makes every foray into the wilderness more fascinating.

11) Enhanced Shopping

Managing an empire requires significant resources, and Enhanced Shopping is an excellent method for generating these resources. It modifies the mechanics of NPCs that visit your stores, granting them more money and class-appropriate shopping lists. It also has the advantageous effect of aligning their spending limitations with their vocations.

There are a variety of customizable options that may make this a useful mod for producing money or a game-breaking one that will have you searching for modifications to develop gold-based structures since you have so much of it.

12) Reactive World

After playing Kenshi with the Reactive World mod, it is impossible to return to the original game. It improves upon the existing response system in Kenshi, adding more triggers and situations that breathe fresh life into an already fantastic sandbox game.

This mod’s improvements, which are too many to mention here, enable a multitude of new, unexpected interactions that will leave you with your mouth gaping. Before installing the patch, you may see a complete list of modifications on the page detailing the mod. This is the complete realisation of Kenshi’s potential. The planet and its people have a feeling of life and purpose that is not there in the main game.

For instance, the assassination of a faction leader might spark an all-out civil war as sub-factions compete for dominance, impacting neighbouring territories and trade caravans. Even seemingly little acts may have long-lasting consequences that influence whole communities. Play through Kenshi at least once, appreciate it for the amazing game that it is. Then re-enter the game with the Reactive World mod enabled and be prepared to be blown away.

13) Biome Map

In the vanilla version of the game, players get access to a gigantic globe map that depicts the whole continent and names each region. This lacks the crucial knowledge of where one biome ends and another starts for empire builders. There is also the issue that The Great Desert is not identical to the Stenn Desert, although this is difficult to see on the original map.

This issue is resolved by the Biome Map patch, which overlays the map with an optional colour scheme that distinguishes and divides each biome. On this map, gamers can see how expansive The Great Desert is and that the Stenn Desert is brown, suggesting that it is more rocky than the sand-covered Great Desert. It’s hardly a game-changer, but it significantly simplifies trip planning and location selection.

14) Tsuki – A Reshade Preset for Kenshi

This mod may make Kenshi appear like a game from this generation if you have a monstrous rig. At least it may make it seem to be a current free-to-play MMORPG.

It is a post-processing shader hack that graphically changes Kenshi into a brand-new game, complete with stunning weather effects, heat haze, and improved blur FX.