Kenshi recruit mods: new companions and better recruitment

Kenshi is a harsh place, and surviving here alone is an activity for true masochists. I have compiled a list of modifications that will help you put together a reliable gang. There is a lot of useful information in my extensive Kenshi knowledge base , but today we will focus specifically on how to fill your squad with new fighters.

Mods for Kenshi for new recruits will allow you to hire prisoners and even increase the limit of companions to such a scale that you can assemble your own army.

Interesting Recruits!

Vanilla bar drifters are often silent and dull, which does little for a squad's atmosphere. This mod adds 28 unique recruits with developed personalities and dialogue that reacts to their surroundings. It also introduces quests and events tied to those characters.

• 28 unique NPCs with personal dialogues and lines in battle
• 32 regular followers for extras and variety
• New point of interest with the mercenary faction
• Quests tied to specific followers
• Quick-join recruitment system; appearance editing is available only through a plastic surgeon

The supporting cast offers plenty of variety, from hired thieves and wandering monks to ninjas and failed merchants. Recruit bored townspeople, escaped slaves, former caravan workers, ronin, and Shek tribal warriors. You will also meet broken Skeletons, Hive Princes, weaponsmiths, and armorsmiths.

✅ How it changes gameplay: The world feels more alive when companions stop being silent dummies and start reacting to their surroundings. Each unique fighter has a personality and history beyond their stats. The quick-join system limits appearance editing to plastic surgeons, preserving their individuality and avoiding bugs with playable races.

256 Recruits For Version 1.0.68

The standard limit of 30 people often stifles the ambitions of those who want to build a great empire or just a big city. This simple but critical mod removes the limits.

• Increases the recruit limit from 30 to 256 people
• Allows you to keep up to 170 fighters in one squad (instead of 20)
• Raises the maximum number of squads to 85 instead of 10
• Works on version 1.0.68+
• Compatible with mods that do not alter squad limits

✅ How it changes gameplay: Now you can create a real army to conquer the world or fully populate a huge city without being limited by the artificial restrictions of the developers. You build huge bases, control entire armies, create extensive networks of trade caravans. You no longer hit a 30-person ceiling. You need to keep an eye on the load order of mods – if other mods change the same values, put 256 Recruits last in the load order.

Adventurers Guild — Lore Friendly Recruitment

Running around the bars of all cities in search of a recruit of a certain race is a tedious task that quickly gets boring. The Adventurers Guild solves this problem by allowing you to have recruits delivered straight to the doorstep of your outpost for a reasonable fee.

• Guild representatives in bars in almost all major cities
• Two new settlements: Ishiyuku near the Hub and Shirokyo in Sinkuun
• Robotics store in Shirokyo
• Requires an active base (someone must stay there)

How to get recruits:

1. Find a guild representative in a bar in a major city
2. Ask for recruits and choose their race
3. Pay the fee to the bounty hunter
4. Wait a few game hours
5. A detachment of adventurers will arrive at the base with your recruits
6. Talk to recruits and hire them individually

Important restrictions: do not order the same race again before your first delivery arrives. Doing so overwrites the first order and wastes your money because of an engine limitation. Someone must stay at the base, or the party will not spawn and will try again a few days later.

Guild suppliers will not go into hell like the Fog Islands, Deadlands or Black Desert for the sake of delivery. If your main base is in one of these deadly zones, you will have to build a small transit point in safe territory to meet reinforcements.

✅ How it changes gameplay: You save plenty of running around by paying for recruits of your chosen race to be delivered to your outpost gate. Instead of visiting every bar, pay and wait. Convenient, fitting for an RPG, and free of headaches.

Recruit Prisoners for Cats

Many prisoner recruitment mods break the balance by allowing you to get powerful fighters for free, but this mod offers a fair deal. You will be able to lure prisoners to your side, but only if you have enough money to pay for their loyalty.

• Ordinary fighters (stats 40-50) – from 30,000 to 40,000 Cats.
• Ninjas and Paladins (stats 50+) – from 40,000 to 50,000 Cats.
• Hundred Guardians (stats 55-65) – from 50,000 to 60,000 Cats.
• Inquisitors and other elite (stats 70-80) – about 80,000 Cats.
• Unique faction leaders (stats 100+) – from 100,000 to 150,000 Cats.

The author also improved the base stats of many common mercenaries to 5-15 from a measly level 1 to better suit their price. Added minor stealth skills to ninjas and scouts.

✅ How it changes gameplay: You can recruit prisoners through a proper payment system, with strong fighters costing a substantial sum of Cats to preserve the economic balance. Captured a strong ninja? Budget 40,000–50,000 Cats. A faction leader costs far more.

Stronger Unique Recruits

It's often frustrating to find legendary characters like Griffin or Chad when your squad is already leveled up and they still have basic stats. This mod tweaks the stats of unique recruits based on their history and lore, making them useful right out of the gate.

• Increases the skills of all unique NPCs according to their backstory
• Everyone's Basic Athletics is at least 60 (if not higher in the standard version of the game)
• Individual approach to each character
• Requires save import to apply changes
• You need at least 2 Cats to start the recruitment dialogue

✅ How it changes gameplay: Named characters live up to their reputations without weeks of training on dummies before they become useful in a fight. Unique recruits stop being a burden. Griffin is immediately useful in combat, Doctor Chung has a high Field Medic skill, and Green lives up to his boasts as a marksman.

Base Recruits

Usually, to join the ranks, you need to look for people yourself, but this mod makes people come to you. Travelers and representatives of allied factions will periodically visit your base, offering to join the settlement.

• A wanderer brings new recruits in pants and shirts, accompanied by a plastic surgeon
• Allied factions send equipped recruits in their colors
• Shek Kingdom (1 Shek fighter + 1 Shek servant)
• United Cities (1 samurai conscript + 1 empire peasant)
• Holy Nation (1 Holy Chosen + 1 Holy Citizen)
• Western Hive (1 Worker Drone + 1 Soldier Drone, with a 10% chance of a Prince)
• Shinobi Thieves (2 thieves + a fence + a plastic surgeon)

How to get recruits:

1. The Wanderer periodically drops off a couple of recruits with zero skills
2. Form an alliance with a faction
3. The faction will begin sending themed fighters to the base
4. Set the frequency via Settings > Gameplay > City Raids: Frequency

New starting scenarios include: Shek Colonists, Empire Colonists, Priest Colonists, Western Hive, Shinobi Thieves Start, Tech Hunter Expedition, New Black Dog Outpost, New Crab Raider Outpost, Rebel Farmer Colonists, Plunder Colonists, New Skeleton Outpost, Nomads.

All characters have zero skills, but themed armor/weapons and faction colors. Starting scenarios contain research for a quick start of the base – basic mining technologies, forging armor and weapons, recipes for faction equipment.

The frequency of visits is regulated by the raid settings. Set it to 3 – a high chance every day, 0.25 – once a week if you're lucky. The number of recruits scales with the squad size multiplier.

✅ How it changes gameplay: Your base turns into a point of attraction for wanderers, providing a stable influx of labor without having to look for it all over the world. Forget about running to bars. You sit at the base, build, farm – the fighters themselves come to you. True, they are weak (zero skills), but they wear thematic equipment of their faction.

Mercenaries Plus — More diverse mercenaries

The mercenaries in the base game are quite monotonous and boring, which does not fit with the rich world of Kenshi. The mod introduces 8 new mercenary groups with unique equipment, races and specializations, scattered across different regions.

• Dune Sailors
• Catun Riders
• Red River Ronins
• Straw Hat Ronin
• Defenders of Okran
• Remnant Mercenaries
• Clan Stride
• Gorilla Conservation Group

✅ How it changes gameplay: Mercenaries are becoming more diverse and useful, allowing you to hire specialized units that are ideal for a specific region or battle tactics. Each region has its own fighters with their own characteristics. Dune sailors are cheap, but weak (former peasants). Catun Riders are strong, but expensive (tribe from the Bonefields). Red River Ronin are the lost drones of the Western Hive with high evasion.

Weapon & Armour Smith Recruits

Leveling up blacksmiths in the game takes forever, and sometimes you just want to hire a professional rather than spend hundreds of hours forging garbage. The mod adds several high-level craftsmen to the bars, ready to work for you for a tidy sum.

• Forge (Shek) – search in Admag.
• Pal (Greenlander): found in the Hub.
• Psi (Scorchlander): found in Sho-Battai.
• Swindle (Hive Prince): found in Shark.
• Tomei (P4 Skeleton): found in Black Desert City.

These craftspeople join with serious skills. A weaponsmith with skill 70 can immediately forge Edge Type 1 blades, while an armorsmith with skill 80 can supply your squad with Specialist-grade equipment.

Recruiting any of them costs 50,000 Cats. They are easy to spot in a crowd by their red bandanas, worn by all of them except the Skeleton.

✅ How it changes gameplay: Allows you to skip the tedious grind of crafting and immediately start producing high-quality equipment, if your wallet allows it. Instead of grinding for blacksmith levels for a week, you simply pay 50,000 Cats and get a ready-made master. The price is steep, but if you already have money and need a quick start to production, this is a salvation.

New Bar Squad Recruits

If you use mods for new races, you often have problems finding and recruiting them in vanilla cities. This mod adds squads with recruits from popular races added by mods directly to bars, using standard equipment for compatibility.

• Squad of Skeleton recruits with robotic limbs
• Basic low level equipment
• Includes Skeleton repair kit
• Compatible with vanilla weapons and armor only

How to use:

1. Unpack the downloaded file into the Kenshi/mods folder
2. Open FCS, select this mod + base game + race mod + other mods
3. Create a new mod (it will ask for a name and become active)
4. Scroll to City, open the desired city
5. Click the "bar squads" section, then click "Add"
6. Find the desired squad, click OK
7. Repeat for other cities, save

✅ How it changes gameplay: Recruits from custom races become available in ordinary bars without a complicated workaround. If you use new-race mods, you can hire their characters just like regular recruits. It requires a little FCS editing, but only takes a couple of minutes.

THE Recruit Anyone Patch

Sometimes you want a simple solution – to be able to recruit absolutely any character you see. This patch adds a recruiting dialog to all NPCs in the game, including those added by other mods.

• Requires Recruit Anyone and KenshiPatcher v1.07+
• Automatically adds recruit dialog to all characters and squad templates
• Does not change the original mods, creates a separate .mod file
• Works with the base game and all active mods
• The patch handles everything automatically, no manual editing required

How to use:

1. Activate this mod in load order
2. Launch KenshiPatcher
3. Select this mod as target
4. Apply the patch
5. The patch will apply the code from the .patch file to all mods
6. A new .mod file will be generated with all the changes

✅ How it changes gameplay: Recruitment restrictions disappear, letting you invite literally any character you meet into your squad. See an interesting NPC? Hire them. Like an enemy added by a mod? They can join too. The patch leaves original files untouched and generates a new mod containing the changes.

Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/1777

Recommendations for installing mods

To assemble your army without crashes or bugs, follow simple installation rules.

1. Always import the game (Import Game) after installing mods that affect NPCs or cities
2. Place recruit mods below city changing mods in the load order
3. Do not use two mods to increase the recruit limit at the same time
4. Check compatibility with the game version – not all mods are updated for new patches
5. Use Vortex or manual installation depending on the source

Read more about how to properly configure mods on Kenshi in my mod installation guide.

Assembling the perfect squad of new recruits

I hope this list will help you fill your barracks with worthy fighters and bring new faces to the world of Kenshi. Experiment with your composition, hire new unique recruits or create an army of clones – now you have all the tools for this.

If I missed a useful recruitment mod, write to me. I will test it and may add it to the list.