Kenshi’s Best Base Locations Detailed

From penniless wanderer to leader of a thriving empire, your journey in Kenshi will be a truly epic one… if you can survive long enough to start building a settlement that’s worthwhile.

If you want to set up shop and start your own community, you need a good starting location. It’s all too easy to starve, run out of water, or get slaughtered by wandering enemies.

Not quite sure where to set up your base? We show you the 5 best overall locations, and then look at several other options to consider in subsequent playthroughs.

What to Look for in a Good Base Location

Before getting into the specific areas of the map for using as a base, you need to keep in mind these four main things you need when choosing a potential location.

• High fertility for growing and access to resources — stone, copper, iron, animals for meat, and water are key. Usually no single spot will have 100% of everything, but the more you have in one location, the better.
• Proximity to cities or caravans for selling

• Areas to funnel enemies when they attack, or the ability to build walls and cover open sections to artificially create choke points
• You want a large, open space that has plenty of flat sections to make building easier

Note that specific resource amounts in these best Kenshi base locations may vary between playthroughs as they are generated differently, so you may need to move slightly from the exact spots we show below.

The key is to pay attention to the biome type of the area, then check your prospecting map values to see how much of each resource can be found at your prospective base location.

Eastern Plateau 

This is easily one of the best places for a new player going with the Wandering Trader character beginning. To find this location, head east of the ruined holy outpost and northeast of the Waystation.

You get a big flat area here with lots of stone, iron, and copper in addition to good wind speed if you want to build wind generators. From this position, its easy to go to the Waystation or ruined holy outpost for supplies and materials, and caravans pass by since its near the road.

Fog Islands

This one has more enemies to deal with, but can be worth the trade off. You can find this spot by heading south of Obedience and east of Mongrel.

There’s plenty of copper and iron and good opportunities to grow things, but lower access to water is the main downside, so build some wells. Make sure to defend or wall off two of three entrances to the area so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Greenbeach

Further east of our first plateau base location listed above, this spot with Greenbeach to the east and Waystation to the west is an easily defensible plateau rising directly above a river.

The best part is that there’s only one way up, so you don’t need to worry about building a ton of walls and creating choke points, since you automatically get one.

In terms of resources, this is probably the single best location in the game, as you get iron, stone, copper, and extremely high fertility for an arid region.

Shem

Southeast of the Waystation, this area tends to be lower on the stone resource, but has high water and fertility. The best part is that its centrally located and you can easily reach all the other biomes quickly.

There’s one particular building strategy that can be really useful here. Try building your walls in a large semi-circle around a lake, then put your gates at the edge of the lake where the water meets the dirt.

If you put turrets up above the gates, you effectively force invaders to move slowly through water and get mowed down before they can enter your base.

Forget the Base – Go Live in Stoat!

This is a different way to play that essentially forgoes the base (at least until you’ve spent plenty of time on tech and crafting). Rather than starting your own base, just use Stoat as your base of operations until you can afford to buy a building in the city.

This allows immediate proximity to shops and the safety of living in an existing settlement, while still allowing you to craft and send out your war party to get into trouble and search for loot.

Other Kenshi Base Locations

While those are our top 5 base spots, there are other places that work well depending on your play style and whether you are going with skeletons or humans. In particular, these other potential spots are worth checking out if you don’t like our top picks:

• The river between Clownsteady and the Waystation: Usually lacks iron but has all your other important resources in close proximity
• South of the green valley in Okran’s Pride: This area in Holy Nation territory is a great flat location for building, with close and easy access to bonedogs and river raptors for food, and both wheat and cactus grow well there.
• The High Bonefields north of Catun: The middle of this section can be easily walled off, has high fertility and stone, and you won’t be bothered by any of the major factions

What’s your best Kenshi base building location? Let us know your favorite spot in the comments below, then take a look at the rest of our Kenshi guides here:

• How to Build and Manage a Squad in Kenshi
• 3 Ways to Start Making Money
• How to Eat
• How to Become a Competent Fighter