Have you seen vanilla faces in this game? Kenshi is a masterpiece of a game, no doubt, but the characters look like they were put together at the very last moment before release. If you are looking for Kenshi mods for faces and appearance, then you are in the right place – now we will fix this horror.
I have collected face and appearance mods for Kenshi so your recruits can stop frightening crabs just by looking at them. For more about the game, visit my main Kenshi section.
Radiant Better Faces & Eyes
Vanilla eyes are just glass, empty and dead. When you look at the character up close, you understand that this is not a person, this is a doll from a bad dream. The author of the mod, Shiroho, a veteran of retexture mods with experience in professional gaming projects, decided to radically fix this problem.
- Faces and eyes have been reworked for all races, including Skeletons – a total of 101 textures (58 basic + 43 custom).
- Unique recruits finally get unique faces. Agnu, Burn and Sadneil now appear as separate individuals.
- Shek got reptilian rectangular pupils (purple, pink, red), Scorchlanders got gold/silver eyes with a tiny pupil, and Cannibals got dark red sclera.
- Kiana is a unique new recruit in Admag with her own dialogue, shooting skills and experience in making crossbows.
✅ How it changes gameplay: You will stop recoiling from your own characters when you zoom in. Seeing some expression on your companions' faces improves the atmosphere, and unique NPCs become memorable by appearance as well as name. The mod is over 370 MB and can put pressure on VRAM. Weaker graphics cards may suffer FPS drops with squads of 100+ characters.
Beautiful Bodies and Faces
The Random button in Kenshi's character creator usually buys you a ticket to a freak show. Getting a good-looking face is like winning the lottery, with roughly the same odds. This mod edits character-generation XML files so the game produces appealing people instead of genetic experiments gone wrong. It keeps the creator's limits intact and simply sets sensible slider ranges and average values.
- The randomizer now produces beautiful characters without deformities or broken proportions.
- Enables previously hidden sliders for Cannibals and Scorchlanders
- Increased breast slider slightly (to 175) for all vanilla female characters, if anyone needs it… 😀
✅ How it changes gameplay: You no longer need to spend an hour creating an NPC who does not look like a potato. The world fills with better-looking people without twisted jaws or crossed eyes. The author recommends Sheesh Skins and Radiant Better Faces for maximum variety; otherwise, everyone can start looking alike.
Advanced Character Creation — Basic
If inconsistent face and eye styles annoy you, this mod gives them a unified look. The author disables vanilla face textures and gives each race a consistent style, with simple stylized eyes instead of intricate realistic ones. It also unlocks plenty of content the developers hid for some reason.
- New face textures and 10 eye colors with 4 brightness levels for all races: brown, green, blue, red, violet, cyan (blue-green), yellow, orange, magenta, and gray.
- Playable Southern Hive, Dead Hive (Fogmen), and Cannibals with proper textures
- Color variations for Skeletons (red, green, blue) for all MK I and MK II models.
- Adds Palelanders as a separate human subrace, alongside reddish Shek
✅ How it changes gameplay: Plenty of roleplaying possibilities: rare subraces now have proper faces instead of placeholders. The visual style becomes more restrained, with everyone's eyes following the same design. Compared with Faces Plus and its brighter, more intricate eyes, this mod keeps things simpler and darker.
Beautiful Bodies and Faces (Modded Races)
The body mod above is great, but it often breaks when you add custom races from other mods. Beautiful Bodies and Faces only works with copies of standard races. This patch makes its appearance presets work with overhauls such as Kaizo and Legacy Of The Ancients.
- Support for popular mods (Lost in the Ashlands, Kenshi Heroes, I Am The Main Character, NPC Enjoys More Shopping and others).
- Fixes generation for races from mods so that they are not freaks with default settings.
- Requires correct load order – BBAFMegapatch.mod is always at the very bottom of the list, otherwise it will not work.
✅ How it changes gameplay: Your mod setup stops suffering conflicts and crashes from malformed XML. Every faction looks consistent, including those added by other mods. The author can only add support for races in MEGA All-In-One Compatibility Pack, so send a request if your favorite mod is missing.
Tribal Hiver Face Paint
Hivers usually look equally drab, as if stamped out in a factory. Drones of the same type are practically clones, distinguishable only by their names in the squad list. The author hand-painted a range of war paint designs to give them individuality and a tribal look.
- 600 new hand-painted face textures with war paint
- On existing saves, apply the designs through a plastic surgeon. They appear automatically in new games.
- Lore-friendly patterns that fit Kenshi's world without looking out of place
✅ How it changes gameplay: Beep can look like a true warrior of the apocalypse instead of a faceless drone. Distinctive markings help you recognize your Hivers in a fight and look stylish besides. The mod does not unlock Hive races; it only adds customization options.
Re Faces
A small but worthwhile texture replacer that removes blur. The author focuses on realistic skin and eyes, without clutter, strange filters, or an anime look. The download is modest, but the difference is noticeable.
- The textures of bodies, faces and eyes have been reworked with an emphasis on realism.
- Added new customization options and several additional hair colors.
- Supports the main races (Greenlanders, Scorchlanders, Shek, and Cannibals), with partial support for Hivers
✅ How it changes gameplay: The picture becomes cleaner and more pleasing to the eye, especially noticeable in close-ups during dialogues or when creating a character. The characters look like real people with detailed skin, rather than plastic mannequins, which is great for immersion.
Faces Plus
A good old mod that adds a ton of variability to the editor. Do you want scars, wrinkles or war paint? There is everything you need to create a unique freak or beauty, a real face designer. This is one of the oldest and most popular face mods, time-tested.
- Hundreds of combinations of face and eye textures – 125 female and 125 male faces for Greenlanders, 63 for Scorchlanders, 27 for Shek.
- Scars, aging (wrinkles) and war paint for most races.
- Unlocks the Southern and Dead Hive for playing with normal textures.
- 13 new eye colors for Greenlanders, 7 for Scorchlanders, and 3 for Shek and Hivers
✅ How it changes gameplay: Ideal for creating a character with a backstory. Scars and aging on the face immediately indicate the hell your hero has gone through, even before you press Start Game. The eyes in Faces Plus are more complex and vibrant compared to Advanced Character Creation.
Shek Perfect Body
Shek are killing machines and should look the part, rather than resembling overinflated balloons with blurry muscles. This mod sharpens body textures, defining muscles and bony growths so they look intimidating at a glance. The difference is most visible around the shoulders, knees, and elbows.
- Improved rendering of muscles and bones with an emphasis on anatomy.
- Restored belly buttons for normal body types (yes, some body types didn’t have them, but muscular ones did).
- Vanilla texture resolution, with no FPS cost or extra system load
- Retained vanilla underwear.
✅ How it changes gameplay: Playing a Shek now conveys their physical power. Every point of Strength and Toughness you train shows on the body, with more defined muscles and more pronounced bony growths. Looking at your character becomes a pleasure.
Small Little Kenshi Thangs
Minor tweaks that make life in the Wasteland a little more comfortable. The mod is modestly named, but there are several useful things inside. The main thing here is the ability to wear hats and bandanas in the belt slot, plus several useful body presets with normal, realistic proportions.
- Heart Protectors and headwear such as scarves, bandanas, and masks can use the belt slot instead of the standard head slot
- Zebb (a tall, athletic Greenlander) and Jynn (a female Scorchlander) body presets maintain realistic proportions instead of becoming walking wardrobes as Strength increases
- A "Wannabe Heroes" game start with five highly trained characters: a little cheaty, but fun
✅ How it changes gameplay: You can finally wear a helmet together with a bandana or scarf like a proper desert traveler. More customization slots are always a win if you care about appearance. The body presets also solve the problem of disproportionate muscle-bound characters.
Installation recommendations
Installing Kenshi mods is easier than surviving the Fog Islands, but a few things are worth remembering. Avoid throwing everything together without thinking; the game's engine is old and temperamental.
- Always check for conflicts – two mods to replace one texture will not work, one will overwrite the other.
- Keep an eye on the load order in the launcher – patches are always loaded below the main mods.
- If the textures “float” or the characters look strange, try moving the problematic mod to the very bottom of the list.
- For old saves, use “Import Game” to apply changes to existing characters.
If you are confused about the folders and the launcher, I have a detailed guide for installing mods, everything is there for beginners from scratch.
Install mods and enjoy the updated appearance of the characters
Enough of those blurry faces, seriously. Proper textures transform Kenshi, and you no longer want to claw your eyes out whenever you start a conversation or zoom in. Experiment and mix mods, but watch for conflicts: the engine is as old and temperamental as Holy Lord Phoenix after a failed prayer.
If I missed a good retexture, write to me. I will check it and add it to the list.
