Making Money (Cats) in Kenshi: Hashish Trading and Other Methods

In Kenshi, Cats, the local currency, decide almost everything, from buying food to hiring mercenaries and building a base. The fastest early-game methods are collecting equipment after fights between factions, or guards and bandits, and mining copper. Later, more profitable options open up, including hashish trading (75-100k Cats per route), hunting Leviathans, and collecting Beak Thing Eggs.

Money in Kenshi keeps you alive in those first few days, when everyone wants to kick you around (just like real life). If you're just starting, I recommend my main Kenshi page , where I've gathered all the guides, mods, and useful resources in one place.

How Do You Make Money in the Early Game?

Your first 10-20 thousand Cats are the hardest. You have no equipment or skills, and bandits see you as easy prey.

Luring Bandits to Guards

This is probably your main source of early income. The idea is simple: lure a group of Hungry or Dust Bandits to the gates of the Hub or Squin, let the guards knock them out, and collect everything valuable from the bodies. One cleanup can bring in 2-5 thousand Cats, especially since Squin's shops are right beside the gates.

Here's what to do:

1. Find a town with guards (the Hub or Squin are ideal)
2. Leave the town gates and let bandits spot you; in Squin, they sometimes wander too close themselves and draw the guards' attention.
3. Run back to the gates; the guards automatically join the fight
4. Wait until all the enemies are knocked out on the ground
5. Open each fallen enemy's inventory and prioritize weapons and armor (they're worth more than food and bandages)
6. If your inventory is full, pick up an unconscious bandit and use their inventory as a walking backpack
7. Take everything into town and sell it to any trader (looting a hostile faction doesn't count as theft)
8. Repeat until you can afford reasonably decent equipment

Important: don't wear faction armor. Put on samurai armor, and the Holy Nation will assume you're from the United Cities and try to cut you down.

Another trick: use the first aid kits you find to heal unconscious bandits on the spot. This trains First Aid, and nobody attacks you.

Mining Ore (Copper and Iron)

A boring but reliable method. Copper is worth twice as much as iron, and deposits are scattered across the map. The problem is that it's incredibly tedious and only trains Laboring, a useless skill for a fighter. An hour of real time can produce ore worth 3-5 thousand Cats.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Find a copper deposit on the map (marked by rock icons)
2. Choose a deposit with at least 100% quality for fast mining
3. Shift + right-click the deposit to start your character mining automatically
4. Buy a backpack in town (preferably a normal large one rather than a thief's backpack); it reduces the burden of carried items
5. The deposit only holds 5 ore, then stops; transfer the copper to your inventory to continue
6. Find a town with a copper price markup above 100% (check the traders' "Trade Goods" section)
7. Don't leave miners alone: wild animals and bandits love defenseless workers, but you can lure them to the guards and earn Cats from both ore and loot

If you're attacked while mining, drop your backpack or move it into your main inventory. Backpacks impose combat-stat penalties of up to -10 (except thief's backpacks).

A bonus trick for the truly lazy: buy a cheap house in the Hub, put ore storage inside, and assign three characters to automatic mining. They'll run to the deposit, mine copper, and carry it to storage themselves. Have one character periodically collect all the copper, sell it in town, and buy food. With six people, you'll mine so quickly that you'll constantly be hauling copper to shops.

You can give them polearms and decent armor. Only Hungry Bandits roam around the Hub, and a group of 10 people with proper armor and weapons can handle them comfortably.

Collecting Animal Skins to Sell

A free way to train First Aid and earn money early on.

Here's how it works:

1. Go into Holy Nation territory
2. Find a paladin or soldier patrol
3. Follow them at a distance
4. Wait for them to attack River Raptors (the local dinosaur pests)
5. After the fight, collect skins and meat from the raptor corpses
6. Sell the skins or save them for crafting leather equipment later
7. Cook the meat on a campfire for free food

Holy Nation patrols are constantly picking fights with wildlife, so you just collect the rewards. I recommend doing this with human characters: don't take Shek into Holy Nation territory

Looting in Bast

Bast is a region where the United Cities and Holy Nation constantly slaughter each other. Samurai patrols versus paladins, with bodies everywhere.

The trick with Bast is that United Cities patrols usually win. That makes Holy Nation equipment more profitable to collect: you can sell it in United Cities towns without the "stolen" tag. Drin, a village northeast of Bast, has a bar where you can sell some loot and buy food without hauling everything to a large town.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Go to Bast (in the north of the map)
2. Find patrols from both factions: United Cities samurai wear distinctive armor, while Holy Nation paladins wear white
3. Keep your distance and wait for the fight to end
4. Wait until everyone on one side is knocked out (otherwise you'll be attacked for looting)
5. Collect weapons and heavy armor first; they're the most valuable
6. Sell the equipment in Drin or United Cities towns (Stoat, Sho-Battai)
7. If you see a paladin with a bounty (500+ Cats), carry them to a prisoner cage in Drin (there are two cages on a building's roof)
8. After healing them, take your bounty to Stoat or Sho-Battai's police station for full payment

Drin is a real find:

When Holy Nation paladins attack Drin itself, they commit a crime and receive a bounty (~500 Cats). Each time they get up and fight again, the bounty rises by 500. A paladin can accumulate up to 1500 Cats.

Drin has two prisoner cages on a building's roof. Put a paladin inside, and you automatically collect the bounty without visiting a police station.

Dead targets pay only half, so heal them before the long trip across the desert. Fortunately, you'll collect plenty of first aid kits from bodies. Healing also gives a small reputation bonus with the Holy Nation, although turning in the bounty causes a much larger loss. If you want to stay neutral, heal everyone but only turn in a few.

Carrying prisoners is excellent Strength training. If you're encumbered, Strength grows faster. Athletics also improves from constantly running between Drin and UC towns.

Don't wear looted faction equipment. The United Cities may mistake you for an enemy and attack. Put stolen items in dedicated storage (armor storage or a weapon cabinet) to remove the "stolen" tag, letting you sell them back to the same faction.

Making Cats by Trading Alcohol

A legal way to earn money through trade on specific routes. Goods have different prices by region: buy cheaply in one town and sell for more in another. You can install economy and trading mods to make the system more logical and interesting.

The classic three-stop route:

1. Go to the Hub and buy all the Cactus Rum from traders
2. Run south to the Swamp towns and sell the rum in villages at a markup
3. Buy all the Sake from local traders
4. Run to the United Cities and sell the Sake
5. Buy all the Grog in the United Cities
6. Return to the Hub, sell the Grog, and repeat the loop

One complete circuit can earn around 7000 Cats. After an hour of repeats, you'll have enough for good equipment.

Here's what to do before you start trading:

1. Save at least 2-3 thousand Cats as starting capital; mine ore or loot equipment from guards
2. Train Athletics, preferably to 40+, and wear Wooden Sandals
3. Train Strength to 20+ (put all your ore in your inventory, throw a bandit corpse over your shoulder, and walk around the Hub until it improves)
4. Buy a backpack (preferably a large one that stacks goods, rather than a thief's backpack)
5. Go to a trader in the Hub
6. Buy Cactus Rum with a price markup below 100% (the lower, the better)
7. Run to the nearest Swamp town (a village or another settlement such as Shark)
8. Sell the rum to traders; it has a large markup there
9. Buy all the Sake you can find (it's cheap in the Swamp)
10. Run to United Cities towns (Clownsteady, Drifter's Last, and later Heng, Stoat, or Sho-Battai) and sell the Sake to bartenders
11. Buy Grog at a low price
12. Return to the Hub, sell the Grog, and start another circuit

It's best to avoid pack animals until you have a decent squad. They slow you down, and you'll inevitably have to fight bandits and wildlife in the Swamp. The nasty Blood Spiders there destroy poorly prepared squads.

Making Money by Trading Hashish in Kenshi

Drug smuggling is the game's most profitable trading route. Hashish costs pennies in the Swamp but sells for absurd amounts in towns where it's illegal.

There are two main routes:

• The legal route (through Flats Lagoon): buy hashish in Swamp villages and sell it in the Tech Hunter town of Flats Lagoon. Drugs are legal there, and traders pay markups of up to 400%. One trip brings in 75-100 thousand Cats.
• Smuggling (through the United Cities): sell in United Cities towns through Shinobi Thief Towers (remember to join the guild for 10,000 Cats). Markups are even higher there (up to 600% in Heft, Heng, and Sho-Battai), but there's a risk of being caught by guards.

Step-by-step instructions for the legal route:

1. Make sure your character runs faster than 22 mph (train Athletics)
2. Go to the Swamp towns (Shark and nearby villages)
3. Buy all the hashish from traders
4. Run to Flats Lagoon (beware of Swamp Ninjas, Blood Spiders, and Beak Things along the way)
5. Sell hashish in any shop in town, not just to thieves
6. Return for another load

How to transport contraband:

1. Buy hashish in the Swamp villages
2. Before entering a UC town, put all the hashish in a backpack
3. Remove the backpack from your back and put it in your main inventory (don't wear it)
4. Pass through the gates: guards only search what the character is wearing
5. Find the Shinobi Thief Tower in town
6. Sell the hashish to the thieves' trader, who pays half the illegal-goods markup
7. Leave town and repeat

You can establish your own hashish production in the Swamp and sell it directly, then use the proceeds to buy armor and weapons in Catun for your combat squad and show the local bandits who's king of the Swamp.

Making Money by Stealing from Shops

Theft in Kenshi is a frankly broken mechanic. You can become a millionaire overnight if you know where to steal.

The trick is that robotics shops usually belong to a different faction from the town guards. Guards won't intervene, even if the shopkeeper shouts at you. Robotics traders are also passive: they stop chasing once you're out of sight.

How to steal properly:

1. Train Stealth to 30+ and Lockpicking to 20+ (you can train with the Shinobi Thieves or on a bandit crippled by guards)
2. Join the Shinobi Thieves in Sho-Battai or the Hub (10,000 Cats), giving you a 50% discount on thieving equipment
3. Buy a Thieves Backpack (it has no Stealth penalty)
4. Wait until night and enter sneak mode
5. Sneak into a robotics shop (Mongrel is the best choice for beginners, provided you get through the Fogmen)
6. Pick up exposed items from tables and shelves
7. Pick locked chests and safes (even if the trader stands nearby: they just shout rather than attack)
8. Take Skeleton Repair Kits (4,341 Cats), Robotics Components (2,838 Cats), Power Cores (3,000 Cats), and CPUs (6,000 Cats)
9. Leave the shop through a window or door
10. Sell the stolen goods in other shops in town (items stolen from a hostile faction don't get a "stolen" tag)

Laundering stolen goods: stolen items are usually marked "stolen," and traders call the police if you try selling their own goods back to them. But there's a bug.

How to launder stolen items:

1. Build a crossbow cabinet
2. Put the stolen items inside
3. Take the items back out
4. The "stolen" tag disappears
5. Return to the shop you robbed and sell its own goods back at full price

I wouldn't bother laundering: it's easier to run to another town and sell there. In Mongrel, you can earn 100-150 thousand Cats every day just by clearing out the robotics shop. If you only take things from open containers, you'll get 25-50k. With high Lockpicking, you can reach 150k+.

The best places to rob:

• Mongrel (robotics shop): the safest, with guards who don't intervene
• The bank in Heng (United Cities): it holds Leviathan Pearls and plenty of Cats, but you need high Stealth
• The Scraphouse in Black Desert City: tons of weapons, but you need Lockpicking 60+ and Stealth 70+

You can also steal anything in any town. If you don't feel like going to Mongrel, head to Squin, steal as much as you like, upgrade your armor, and move on to something more interesting than theft, unless you're building an assassin, of course.

Making Money by Crafting Armor and Weapons

Once you have a base or a house in town, you can craft items to sell. It's a long road, but eventually the most stable income source, and you can equip your own squad too.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Buy a house in town (Squin is a good choice)
2. Build a Clothing Bench inside the house
3. Buy Fabric from local traders
4. Assign a character to craft bandanas (right-click the bench, assign a job, then choose bandanas)
5. At first, they'll make terrible bandanas that sell cheaply

Once your armorsmith reaches level 40+, buy or find Engineering Research (sold at the Scraphouse for 8,000 Cats) and switch to crafting chest armor. This is the most profitable craftable item in the game : it takes 3 times as long as a bandana, but the profit is 3+ times higher.

Crafting weapons:

1. Build a Weapon Smith
2. Buy a Desert Sabre blueprint (12,000 Cats in Catun, Mongrel, the United Cities, or the Scraphouse)
3. Buy materials from traders
4. Craft sabres: even at the first level, they cost 675 Cats in materials and sell for roughly 942 Cats
5. As your skill increases, profits multiply

I don't recommend crafting crossbows : it takes too long and uses too many resources.

Bounty Hunting

Characters with large bounties are usually gang or hostile faction leaders. You can find them through Wanted Posters in bars, or simply encounter wanted patrols. Next, I'll cover a couple of easy beginner targets.

The Dust King

How to capture him:

1. Find a bar in Squin or Sho-Battai
2. Hire 2-3 squads of mercenaries and Tech Hunters (3,000 Cats each for several days)
3. Lead them to Dust King Tower (north of Squin)
4. The mercenaries clear the entire tower
5. Pick up the king
6. Heal him with first aid kits so he doesn't die
7. Carry him to the police station in Squin or any UC town

Band of Bones

How to collect the bounty:

1. Hire mercenaries at a bar
2. Go to the Band of Bones camp (near the waystation south of Squin)
3. The mercenaries clear the camp
4. Take the leader (a 10,000-Cat bounty) and the loot (another 10-15k Cats)

Make sure you have enough people or animals to carry all the loot home. You can do much the same with almost any bounty. You can download a mod if you want to focus on bounty hunting, adding special buildings in towns that also pay bounties for bandits.

Hunting Fog Princes

The Fog Islands are among the game's most dangerous places. Fogmen grab you and drag you to their nests for the Fog Princes to eat. But Prince heads are worth 6,000 Cats each.

How to farm safely in Mongrel

1. Go to Mongrel (in the Fog Islands)
2. Stand near the town gates
3. Fogmen constantly attack the town, and Shinobi guards knock them out
4. Fog Princes (with yellow bodies and a katana) usually reach Mongrel's barracks
5. Once the guards knock a Prince out, open its inventory
6. Take the head: this kills the Prince instantly
7. Sell the head to any trader in Mongrel for 6,000 Cats
8. Repeat with every attack

An option for players willing to take more risks:

1. Train Stealth to 60+ and Assassination to 40+
2. Sneak into a Fogmen nest
3. Kill or knock out a Fogman, pick it up, and put it on a Prisoner Pole
4. Move away, but remain within dialogue range (you'll hear eating sounds)
5. A Prince approaches the pole
6. Stealth-knock out the Prince (Sneak Attack)
7. Even if you fail, the Fogmen usually don't react: they're too busy worshipping and eating
8. Take the head and leave

Fog Heavy heads (the heavier Fogmen with better weapons) sell for 3,000 Cats, but only with mods: in vanilla, they have no heads in their inventory.

Hunting Leviathans and Selling Pearls

Leviathans are the game's most powerful creatures. Huge health pools, regeneration, area attacks, and monstrous damage. But each corpse contains a Leviathan Pearl worth 12,000 Cats.

Method 1: A Turret Base

Here's what to do:

1. Build a small base on the Leviathan Coast
2. Build U-shaped walls with a gate
3. Install 4-6 harpoon turrets facing the gate
4. Open the gate and lure Leviathans inside
5. The turrets automatically shoot them
6. Collect the pearls from their bodies

Method 2: Crossbows

This option involves more movement:

1. Train Crossbows to 40+ on all fighters
2. Equip your squad with long-range crossbows and stacks of bolts
3. Find a Leviathan (or a young one, which is weaker and slower)
4. Attack from a distance
5. Keep backing away: Leviathans are very slow, so you're always faster
6. Keep shooting and retreating until it's dead
7. Collect the pearl

Young Leviathans drop the same pearl (12,000 Cats) but are much weaker, less armored, and slower. I recommend starting with them.

Leviathans regenerate health very quickly, so the crossbow tactic can take a long time. Turrets or a large squad are more reliable.

Raiding Beak Thing Nests

Beak Thing Eggs are worth 4,200 Cats each. Nests spawn randomly in many regions. The problem is that Beak Things run at around 40 mph and eat living characters.

How to do it stealthily, without fighting:

1. Train Athletics to 25+ (to run away)
2. Train Stealth to 40+
3. Train Strength to at least 30 (eggs weigh 6 kg each; a full inventory is 24 kg)
4. Wear a Thieves Backpack (no Stealth penalty)
5. Wear Stealth-boosting equipment (Ninja Rags, Dark Leather Shirt)
6. Wear Wooden Sandals (+running speed)
7. Find a Beak Thing nest on the map (paw icon)
8. Arrive at night; they see poorly in the dark
9. Enter sneak mode and approach carefully
10. Pick up eggs from the ground
11. If spotted, stand up and run immediately
12. Beak Things have a slow attack animation, so you can kite them
13. Sell the eggs in the nearest town

The mercenary alternative:

1. Hire 2-3 mercenary squads in the United Cities
2. Lead them to a nest in Gut
3. The mercenaries distract the Beak Things while you grab eggs and leave
4. Try to minimize mercenary losses: their lives cost money too

10 eggs in one raid = 42,000 Cats. But it's dangerous: Beak Things don't just knock you out, they devour you while you're still alive. Always keep a backup character nearby for rescues.

You can collect Crab Eggs the same way, but they're worth far less. I don't recommend it.

Comparing Money-Making Methods in Kenshi

Method	Income per trip/day	Requirements	Risk	Preparation time
Luring bandits to guards	2-5k Cats	None	None	0
Copper mining	3-5k/hour	None	Low	0
Looting in Bast	10-20k	None	Low	0
Alcohol trading	7k/circuit	2-3k starting capital	Medium	1 hour
Hashish trading	75-100k	Athletics 22+, capital	High	2-3 hours
Shoplifting	25-150k/day	Stealth 30+, Lockpicking 20+	Medium	5-10 hours of training
Crafting bandanas	10-30k/day	House, bench, capital	None	10 hours
Crafting weapons/armor	30-50k/day	Base, research, skill 40+	None	20+ hours
Bounty hunting	10-50k	Mercenaries or combat skills	High	10 hours
Beak Thing Eggs	42k/trip	Athletics 25+, Stealth 40+	Very high	15 hours
Princes (Fogmen)	6k/head	None	None	0
Leviathans	12k/pearl	Turret base or skills 60+	Very high	30+ hours

How to Earn Your First Million Cats in Kenshi

Here's a practical plan for going from penniless wanderer to wealthy trader in 20-30 in-game days.

1. Days 1-3: Lure enemies to the Hub's guards. Lure bandits, collect equipment, and sell it. Heal bandits along the way to train First Aid. Save 10-15 thousand Cats.
2. Days 4-7: Join the Shinobi Thieves (10,000 Cats). Start training Stealth and Lockpicking on crippled bandits or with the guild's dummies and chests. Meanwhile, rob Mongrel and collect Prince heads
3. Days 8-15: Night raids on robotics shops. Once you have Stealth 30+ and Lockpicking 20+, clear out Mongrel every night. That's 25-50k Cats per night. Meanwhile, learn the map and look for safe ruins (the Grid, west of Vain). Save 100-150k.
4. Days 16-25: Hashish trading. Buy a Pack Bull and train Athletics to 22+ by running with a load. Start shuttling between the Swamp and Flats Lagoon. At 75-100k Cats per trip and 2-3 trips a day, you'll make 200-300k Cats over several days.
5. Days 26-30: Hunting with mercenaries. Hire mercenaries and clear Dust King Tower, the Band of Bones camp, and similar targets. That's a total of 100-200k Cats in bounties plus loot. Meanwhile, start building a base or buy houses for crafting.

By the end of your first in-game month, you can easily be sitting on a million Cats if you combine methods and do not die. I use interactive maps to plan routes.