Symbiosis: An Animal Overhaul
Kenshi’s wildlife is beautiful, bizarre and deadly, but I’ve often found it a bit lacking, that more development could be done to flesh out how the worlds ecosystems work and how the different species behave or even work on a purely mechanical level in regards to gameplay. ‘Symbiosis’ is my attempt to address those issues, and completely overhauls various aspects of each animal such as spawn regions, AI behavior, nest density, interspecies/faction relations and coexistance, hunger, healing and age rates, item drops, squads and raw stats without deviating from the established concept of each animal.
Be warned: wildlife is more prevalent in the world and generally more dangerous. Herbivores often have increased health, more carnivores have no issues with eating you alive and almost everything is faster then they were before, making escapes harder. Most creatures have an increased random stat range, so just because you put down one bonedog easily doesn’t mean the next won’t maul you. Be careful.
Spawn region additions are in the preview pictures, the darker color representing where they spawn in vanilla and the lighter representing new areas they can be found. Many are quite broad while others are not, but my approach was to think about how animals would migrate in nature, what biomes they could be found in, what regions would impede them from migrating and which animals would cross regardless as well as the possibility of population isolation over the years. A full breakdown of the changes can be found in the discussion below. (No room for it all here!)
Additionally a couple of small universal changes are included, such as expanding animal inventory sizes to 10:8 minimum, but otherwise that’s it. I wish I could do so much more, especially with a title like ‘Symbiosis’ but the limits of the FCS and my own knowledge so far prevents me. I’ve been working on this mod for a long time, and I’d greatly appreciate feedback, suggestions and bug reporting, especially since I’m still pretty new to modding. Also this mod wouldn’t be possible without many other smaller mods I’ve subscribed to that have done similar things on a smaller scale, so I’ve written up a post crediting all those modders for inspiring me and linking to their work for those that prefer a more à la carte approach to modding. They all deserve more love and attention!
Optional submods:
Symbiosis & Unofficial Patches for Kenshi Fix
Symbiosis – TameBeasties Compatibility Patch
Stop eating my dog! (Symbiosis sub mod)
More Animal Colors – Symbiosis Patch
More Dogs – Symbiosis Patch
Swamp Things? Beak Turtles? …Symbiosis
Symbiosis Master Patch
Feel free to translate any additions in my mod into other languages.
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
