A selection of city mods for Kenshi

Cities in Kenshi often appear empty and lifeless. Bark resembles a village of three huts, and the Hub looks more like an abandoned warehouse than a human settlement. The developers clearly focused on survival rather than architecture – and it shows.

This list brings together town mods for Kenshi that radically change settlements with new districts, factions, and even the ability to take over any town. It includes major overhauls such as CATO and smaller expansions to individual locations. All mods have been checked for compatibility with the latest game version. Let's start with the largest changes.

City Architecture Total Overhaul (CATO V4)

CATO V4 completely reworks 120+ locations, making them realistic and visually rich – without expanding the boundaries of cities, but with full compatibility with the original game.

• The entire road network of the game has been reworked, hundreds of incorrect, duplicate and strange roads have been fixed
• Hundreds of new roads improve navigation, especially in the Grid, Shun, Okran's Arm, Stobe's Garden, and the Crags
• Lighting in almost all cities has been completely redesigned
• All non-original buildings from the third version have been replaced, a huge number of small details and decorations have been added

✅ How it changes gameplay: Characters finally stop getting stuck on invisible obstacles and teleporting through walls. Towns look like places people could actually live rather than scenery from an early alpha. Movement is smooth, roads follow the terrain, and the lighting sets the atmosphere. This is a foundation mod for any setup focused on better architecture.

Towns Expansion

Four of Kenshi's largest towns, Bark, Flats Lagoon, Heng, and the Hub, become full-fledged cities with new districts, factions, and quests. This goes beyond a cosmetic overhaul, reimagining what the world's trading and industrial centers should look like.

• Bark gains a military fort and a seaport that becomes a center for the Traders Guild
• Flats Lagoon becomes a complex of oil-refining platforms with buildings on multiple levels
• Heng becomes Kenshi's most populous city with areas under construction
• the Hub turns into a giant slum infested with criminal gangs from the Swamp

✅ How it changes gameplay: Towns become living places with their own economies and internal conflicts. The Hub now has a war between the Holy Nation Outlaws and the Dudoed Syndicate, which you can defeat by knocking out its leader at its headquarters. Bark gains a restricted United Cities laboratory with unique world states triggered by killing the general. Performance can take a hit, but it is worth it. A single save import is required to update the towns.

Take Over the World

City capture mod. You can kill Holy Lord Phoenix, but his city will remain an enemy city. Brilliant logic. Take Over the World corrects this misunderstanding by allowing you to capture any city in the game after killing its leaders.

• Works with all original cities without exceptions
• Automatic change of owner when killing a faction leader
• Compatible with most popular modifications (except those that rename cities)
• Simple mechanics: kill the boss, leave the rendering zone, return – the city is yours

✅ How it changes gameplay: Killing faction leaders finally has a purpose beyond seeing what happens. Captured towns become outposts where you can station garrisons and build an economy. That changes the late game considerably: instead of building a desert base, you can take over an existing Blister Hill or Stack. Do not rename captured towns, or they will be duplicated. Translation and language mods can conflict if they change town names.

Town Buildings Upgrade

Demolishing an entire town and rebuilding it to upgrade a hut into a house is how construction works in the base game. Town Buildings Upgrade allows you to upgrade buildings in place while keeping the turrets and items inside.

• Eight upgrade tiers for standard buildings, from a Shack to a Y-House
• Upgrading small huts into watchtowers
• Four levels for swamp buildings (from Swamp Shack to Swamp Dome)
• Works both in your settlements and in purchased city buildings

✅ How it changes gameplay: You save thousands of building materials and hours of game (and real) time. Engineers simply make up the difference between the old and new model, using only the missing resources. You can cycle between upgrading and downgrading while the building is in construction mode – you only pay for the final version. The only negative is that modifications with instant construction disable the level reduction function. Appropriate technology is required for the correct building level.

Better Building System

Kenshi's building system uses invisible interaction points that are placed absurdly. Storage units cannot sit side by side, chests will not fit on workbenches, and characters get stuck trying to walk around machinery. Better Building System reworks collision for almost every object.

• Removes, edits, or rebuilds interaction points for most machines, storage units, and objects
• Storage units can be placed close to each other and to walls
• Chests and small storage units can sit on crafting benches and sometimes on larger storage units

✅ How it changes gameplay: Building a base stops being a fight against invisible walls. Characters move naturally, the job system works properly, and decorating does not require fiddling with the developer menu. New objects work fully without a reload. Compatible with most building mods.

Easy Building

Construction in Kenshi is a marathon of iron ore mining and steel smelting. Easy Building simplifies this process a bit by adding a hybrid stone processor that instantly produces building materials for most buildings with zero build time.

• Hybrid stone processor produces materials for free (if you have an unlocked building)
• Most buildings require only building materials and are built instantly
• Not recommended for use without unlocked Hybrid Stone Processing Technology

✅ How it changes gameplay: Building becomes architectural planning rather than a chore. You focus on base design instead of gathering resources. The mod drastically reduces difficulty, so use it only if you are tired of hauling iron or want to build a huge town without spending real days on it.

Fall Of Empires

In vanilla Kenshi, 59 towns lack town overrides for changing world states, so they remain untouched even when everything falls apart. Fall Of Empires adds simple town overrides to locations that did not have them in the base game.

• 59 new town overrides for locations without vanilla world-state changes
• Loot can be found in ruins depending on the location
• Some ruins can be purchased and partially rebuilt
• Uses no non-vanilla characters and leaves towns with existing overrides untouched

✅ How it changes gameplay: The world reacts to your actions. Killing faction leaders turns towns into ruins filled with looters and wild animals. The Bugmaster is dead? His Throne is now an abandoned fortress with valuable loot. Every boss kill carries more weight because you see its consequences rather than just ticking off an achievement. The mod is designed to be as lightweight and compatible as possible.

Chaff

The Border Zone between the Hub and Squin is an empty stretch with a couple of bandit camps. Chaff adds a small town with a hydroponics shop, basic traders, and property you can buy and build on.

• The new town of Chaff in the northeastern Border Zone
• Weapons, Hydroponics, Traveler's Shop and Joko's Bar
• Three plots for sale (ruined small hut, regular hut, ruined tower)
• Recruitable character Whitebeard is a tough warrior and assistant to an arms dealer.
• A standard game start in Chaff

✅ How it changes gameplay: You gain a stop between the Hub and Squin where you can trade, recruit companions, and buy property. This was the author's first mod, so it has some rough edges, but it runs reliably and fits the atmosphere. It is ideal for the early game: the town is safe, the shops are useful, and hydroponics helps solve your initial food problems.

Cities Rebalanced Series

The walls and buildings of the Shek Kingdom and Border Zone look as though drunken Shek built them after a battle. Cities Rebalanced straightens out the architecture and improves 13 locations in Shek territory, 16 southern towns from Drifter's Last to Spring, and another 16 locations in the Outlands.

• Shek territory: Admag, Berserker Village, Dust King Tower, Last Stand, New Kralia, Old Frontlines, Rebel Base, Ruined Holy Outpost, Squin, Great Fortress, the Hub, Tiny Settlement, Tower of Ninjas, and two Waystations in the Border Zone
• Southern towns: Abandoned Town (Shun), Abandoned Town (the Hook), Catun, Clownsteady, Dead Fishing Village, Drifter's Last, Fishman Island, Flats Lagoon, Free Settlement, Manhunter Base, Mourn, Old Prison, Slave Farm South, Slave Markets, Spring, and the Hook Waystation
• Outlands: Black Scratch, Black Dog HQ, Brink, Crab Town, Crab Villages, Cult Village, Expedition 4, Eyesocket, Farming Village, Fishing Village, the Grey Desert Waystation, Iron HQ, Nomads, Smugglers Bar, Blood Raider camps, and Ruined Waystation

✅ How it changes gameplay: Cities no longer look like the result of rendering errors. Mourn received reinforcements of mercenaries so as not to die out from each pack of Beak Things. The turrets are finally being used – previously in Catun the guards didn't even approach them. Added low-level militias and additional peasants to work in the fields. Compatible with Reactive World.

More Towns

The Kenshi map is full of empty spaces with nothing interesting for miles. More Towns adds several towns and villages to empty regions, creating new factions for their population.

• 11 new settlements: 3 hostile (2 bandits, 1 cannibal), 8 neutral (1 “good” with an outpost, 1 like United Cities, 6 true neutrals)
• Small changes to Mongrel, World's End, Expedition 5, Black Dog HQ, and Old Village (Cannibal Plains)
• Most new cities are located outside the center of the map

✅ How it changes gameplay: Exploring becomes more interesting, with fewer endless journeys through empty biomes. New factions provide more varied interactions, and hostile settlements give you raid targets. Works with Reactive World and Genmod. Conflicts with Ultimate Wasteland Expansion because Far Harbour occupies the same location. Partly compatible with Odyssey, though its traders end up with too much money. With Eternal Fortress, two locations cause crashes: one near Squin and another northeast of Spring.

Holy Nation Expanded Plus

Holy Nation controls a huge territory, but there are only six farms growing a limited range of crops. Holy Nation Expanded Plus fills the lands of Okran fanatics, adding farms, cities, military installations and even an academy to train holy servants.

• 2 towns: Watermouth near Wend and Okran's Hammer, a weapons and armor production center led by High Inquisitor Talus
• 2 smaller towns: Bit in Okran's Pride and Sands in Okran's Valley, large settlements that supply Holy Servants
• 4 new holy farms (3 in Okran's Pride, 1 in Okran's Valley) – grow cotton, hemp and other crops
• Military base in Okran's Valley for enhanced security
• Okran Academy under the leadership of High Inquisitor Naster
• 2 holy mines
• A military checkpoint between Okran's Pride and Okran's Valley, plus 4 smaller checkpoints near the main exits from Rebirth

✅ How it changes gameplay: The Holy Nation becomes a full-fledged empire with coherent logistics. Watermouth brews alcohol locally, while Okran's Hammer manufactures all the Holy Nation's equipment. Okran's Academy trains Holy Servants on a schedule using practice dummies, showing where this army of fanatics comes from. Checkpoints around Rebirth make escaping the camp a hellish ordeal. The mod does not yet have fully developed town overrides: all new settlements are destroyed after the High Inquisitors and Phoenix die. The author plans to add these later.

Recommendations for installing modifications

1. Create a backup copy of your save – city modifications may conflict with your buildings in these locations.
2. CATO should be at the very bottom of the load order – otherwise you will get floating buildings and overlapping objects.
3. Save import is required – when you first start with city modifications, use the Import Game function, but uncheck “Import Buildings” if you have bases in modified locations.
4. Check compatibility – modifications that edit the same cities (CATO and Towns Expansion for the same location) will create duplicate buildings.
5. Watch performance : expanded towns such as Heng in Towns Expansion can lower frame rates on weaker PCs.

You will find detailed instructions on how to properly install and configure load order in the guide to installing mods for Kenshi.

I hope you enjoy the improved cities, architecture and expanded content of these mods

Cities will no longer be just trading points. CATO will correct the architectural mistakes of the developers, Towns Expansion will turn the four largest centers into living metropolises, and Take Over the World will allow you to capture any city after killing its leader. Construction will become convenient through the Better Building System and Town Buildings Upgrade.

If I missed an important town mod for Kenshi, write to me. I will test it and may add it to the list.