Top 17 Best Kenshi Mods To Try (2023)

Best Kenshi Mods to Try in 2023

Anyone who's played even a little bit of Kenshi will agree with how brutal and unforgiving it is. They'll also agree that mods improve the gameplay experience significantly. Players who are tired of playing through vanilla Kenshi might want to start exploring the depths of the Steam Workshop for player-made content that vibes with them the most. For those who don't want to rifle through the mountain of mods, here are the best Kenshi mods that we just absolutely have to recommend.

1. 256 Recruitment Limit

This nifty mod by Aurelia does exactly what its name suggests—it boosts the total number of recruitable characters from 30 to 256. The mod also bumps squad size from 20 to 50 and the total number of squads from 10 to 20. Yes, having 256 guys under one banner will definitely cause performance issues, so be prepared for that.

2. Recruitable Prisoners

Sae and Nanogiraffe's Recruitable Prisoners lets players coax survivors of bloody encounters into joining their parties. Carry them home, lock them up, and try to convince them to leave their past lives behind. The actual chance of converting a prisoner into a friendly party member is low, but there's no limit to how many attempts one can take at making friends.

3. Reactive World

This mod by Shidan breathes more life into the world of Kenshi by making NPCs react to the player's actions. Killing the Dust King, for example, might cause a power conflict to sprout up within the Dust Bandit faction. Similar stuff may happen when other notable figures (like the Hiver Queen) suffer less-than-savory fates. Reactive World is perfect for making Kenshi even more immersive.

4. Living World

Just like Reactive World, Mad Scientist's Living World aims to make Kenshi's wasteland a little less dead. Both mods behave similarly, with Living World focusing more on constant territorial ownership shifts between factions. Slave hunters might take over Slaver bases, Holy Nation and Shek Kingdom fighters might occupy each others' towns, and so on. This can be installed in tandem with Reactive World, though expect some bugs to pop up every now and then.

5. Animation Overhaul

Blubb's mod adds new animations for crafting stations like the Research Bench, Heavy Armour Smithy, and Cooking Stove. It doesn't offer any practical benefit, but it's nice to see a base full of friendly units who are actively doing their jobs in a more immersive fashion.

6. More Combat Animation

This animation pack by AGO adds a number of flashy fighting moves for the majority of melee weapons. Due to how hit detection works in Kenshi, this mod will be a little more practical than Blubb's animations above. Faster combos with more swings mean a single unit has more potential to deal damage in a single attack string. Don't worry though, since these combos are locked behind higher skill levels, so don't expect to see beginner swordsmen fight like how real masters do.

7. Enhanced Shopping Economy

Anyone who's ever wanted a more profitable in-game store should check out this mod by love-tea and Matvey Traveller. Enhanced Shopping Economy gives Kenshi's townsfolk and travelers a bit more spending power to set some more realistic expectations in the game's mercantile systems. NPCs will start to buy more food, luxury items, weapons, and armor depending on who they are and what they do for a living.

Related: Days Gone – Best Mods To Try

8. Moisture Farming

Trinimac's Moisture Farming mod lets players draw water from thin air via a craftable Moisture Collector. With this craftable station built in a town or a custom-made base, players won't have to keep manually drawing water from a nearby well (as pictured above). This mod shouldn't break the game in terms of progression or money-making capabilities since it focuses on convenience and not some sort of cheesy way to earn cash. It works best with the Enhanced Shopping Economy mod listed above.

9. Compressed Textures Project

This mod by FG resizes Kenshi's textures, cutting down the ones used by terrain and other miscellaneous objects by half. Doing so should grant a massive performance boost to most systems, especially those with low VRAM. It'll also reduce stuttering and improve loading times across the board, resulting in a more favorable post-apocalyptic desert wasteland survival experience.

10. Reduced Weather Effects

This is another mod by FG that works almost the same as the one above, except it focuses on making the in-game rain look less intrusive. It won't reduce VRAM usage or improve performance by any stretch of the imagination, but it will at least make those rainy days look a little less depressing than usual. The mod is totally optional, but having it on results in a world of a difference visuals-wise.

11. Dark UI

The Dark UI mod by Eldryn is another light Kenshi mod that overhauls the look of the game's UI, replacing its drab brown tones with sleeker and cleaner-looking shades of black and gray. It gives some much-needed visual contrast that makes HUD elements pop out from Kenshi's sandy dunes and rocky outcrops.

12. Lively Bars

This mod by rxwr injects a bit more life into the bleak and quiet bars of Kenshi's wastelands. It changes the layouts of existing bars and adds different variants for furniture like stools, tables, and benches, Players can craft these new furniture pieces themselves too by getting a specific blueprint so they can make their own lively bars for their custom bases.

13. Talkative Kenshi

Ever thought that people in the wastelands are just a tad too quiet? Milk's mod (somewhat) makes Kenshi a little noisier by making NPCs blurt out random lines of dialogue as players move past them, making towns and even random NPC encounters in the desert more lively. Characters will also start shouting at each other during fights, which should make big brawls feel more intimate.

14. TameBeasties

Petrus.91's lets players tame wild animals by knocking them out and putting them in cages. Build up trust with the caged animal and eventually, they'll become friendly. This mod is perfect for anyone who wants to make their own personal army of Blood Spiders and Bone Dogs, though that might make the game a little too easy. Tame responsibly!

Related: Best Zelda BOTW Mods To Try

15. Strength Bench and Wooden Dexterity Training Dummy

These are two separate mods made by Space_Lettuce_OG and Hatsure Neko Gaming that pretty much fulfill the same purpose: give players a way to raise the stats of newly-recruited characters without having to worry about micromanagement. It opens up some breathing room and allows for less stressful multi-tasking, especially for those who already have way too many people in their party. Just build the bench and the dummy inside a player-controlled area and assign the desired characters to them.

16. Nice Map

This Kenshi mod by Djeeshka is a small QoL update that makes the in-game world map cleaner and more readable without making it any less immersive. It features "scribble style" markings that clearly define the borders between zones and highlight usable roads throughout the wasteland. This should give players a better idea of which routes they should be taking not just to get to a specific point faster, but to also avoid dead ends that the game's pathfinding might fail to detect.

17. Better Small Shack

This mod by Mik turns the humble Small Shack prefab into a slightly bigger but significantly cozier home that can fit a ton of items and furniture. It definitely makes shacks feel much more like a proper home, especially compared to the rest of the buildings in Kenshi. The mod is simple yet elegant, and it makes building these little houses that much more worth it.

17. Kenshi Genesis

Kenshi: Genesis, presented by Atlas and friends, takes away the hassle of mixing and matching mods by offering players an enormous bundle of world-altering stuff. This mod pack includes tons of features like new areas, over 300 additional items, more than 5,000 new lines of dialogue, increased squad and recruit limits, revamped animations, and so much more. It's an ongoing project that's been in the works since 2019 and the authors are still actively updating it with even more interesting content. Give it a shot, but keep in mind that this is a total overhaul, which means that installing any other mod that isn't already included in it might cause issues.

How to install Kenshi mods

The mods found on the Steam Workshop can be installed by simply clicking on the green Subscribe button on the mod page itself. Steam will download the necessary files and place them in the right folders. Once the download is complete, boot the game launcher and click the Mods tab to see if everything is installed correctly. For mods downloaded from Nexus Mods, players will have to manually install them by unzipping the files to the /Kenshi/mods folder in their install directory.

If you're interested in more mod articles, check out Best Ghost Recon Breakpoint Mods and Best Payday 2 Mods here at Pro Game Guides.

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