Kenshi: Strength Training Guide

Strength in Kenshi controls three important things. How much your character can carry. How fast they can swing heavy weapons. And how hard they hit with Martial Arts. Unlike most RPGs there is no level up menu to click through. Every point of Strength comes from actually using it, which means if your characters are sitting idle they are not getting stronger.

The good news is that there are a couple of reliable methods to train Strength efficiently without putting your characters in constant danger. Some of them can even be set up to run passively while you do other things. In this guide, I cover the best ways to get Strength up as fast as possible so you are not wasting time on slower methods.

Complete Guide on Training Strength

The easiest method to get started with is earning Strength XP through walking. When your encumbrance is at 70% or higher you gain up to 25% more Strength XP while moving. Carrying another unit on top of that pushes this bonus up to 50%. So the optimal setup is to be heavily loaded and carrying a body at the same time.

There is also a neat trick worth knowing. Pick up a corpse and walk a significant distance away from where you found it. Once you have covered enough ground save your game and reload. The corpse will have disappeared but you will still keep the XP bonus as if you were carrying it.

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To get yourself properly encumbered, place your backpack on the ground and fill it up with everything heavy you can find. You can even throw your limbs in there. Once it is packed, pick the bag back up without wearing it so all the weight applies directly to your character.

After that hold down Shift on your keyboard and queue up multiple movement commands across the map. Your character will then walk (or crawl) their way through all of them automatically while you go AFK. If you are primarily training Strength this way I recommend doing it in a safe zone so you are not interrupted by enemies while you are away from the keyboard.

Training Strength Through Combat

Now let me go over training Strength through combat. This method is faster than walking at higher Strength levels but requires a bit more setup. Here is the best loadout to maximize your Strength XP gains in combat:

• Crab Helmet
• Samurai Armor
• Dark Leather Shirt | Leather Hive Vest
• Samurai Legplates
• Wooden Sandals | Robotic Limbs
• Skelton Arms
• KLR Legs
• Weakest Fragment Axe You Have

Blocking

Blocking is actually faster than walking for Strength gains when done correctly. To set this up all you need to do is find a couple of Beak Things and activate blocking while they wail on you.

You will take minimal damage in the process with the armor I mentioned above so it is a fairly safe method. If you do need to bandage up at any point you can do so without much worry since the damage intake is low enough that you are never really in danger of going down.

Fighting

If you want to train Strength as fast as possible then active combat against large groups of weak enemies is the way to go. The more targets you hit per swing the more XP you rack up. To set this up properly head into your settings and crank all the population sliders up to the maximum as shown in the image below.

Once the population settings are maxed out, find a location with large numbers of weak enemies and start cutting through them. Some solid options are Raptors on Raptor Island, Baby Crabs in Howler Maze, Blood Spiders in the Burning Forest, Shrieking Bandits in The Shrieking Forest and Bulls or Starving Bandits in Skinner’s Roam.

All of these spawn in decent numbers and are weak enough that you can fight them continuously without burning through too many supplies.

One particularly good spot for this method is the Ashland Domes. Climb up to the highest stairs and position yourself there. The width of the stairs is ideal for wielding the Fragment Axe since enemies are forced to funnel towards you in a narrow line.

Just set up there and keep mowing down enemies as they rush up. You can stay there as long as you want and the Strength XP will keep coming in consistently.

Wrapping Up

Strength is one of those stats in Kenshi that rewards patience more than anything else. None of these methods are instant but combining a couple of them together, like setting up a passive walking route while also doing combat runs when you are actively playing, will get you there a lot faster than sticking to just one. The higher your Strength gets, the more of the game opens up so the grind is absolutely worth pushing through.