Master Ninja
Start as a member of the Shinobi Thieves. No 10k cats required.
There are two starts for this, Genin (new recruit) or Jonin (master) level. Stats vary between the two, and certain Shinobi NPCs will react differently based on this ranking.
Recommended (but not required) mods:
OMO’s Armor for the World
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1534443862
You can buy better thief/ninja-themed armor from the Shinobi Trader.
Lively and Safe Hub
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1547176025
Makes the Hub a bit more exciting, and many destroyed buildings to choose from. It also adds police, and what’s the fun of being a thief if you’re not going to run into the police?
If you have some other preferred Hub mod, it should also work just fine.
Includes a custom character, Onyx Star, who will join your party if you find her…though she will likely find you. Look in the bar if you get stuck trying to find her, she tends to return there.
This is still early days for this mod, I have a lot of other plans, but I thought I should do an early release for those who want to start immediately with the Shinobi.
Each of my mods has taught me something different about the creator. This mod is where I learned a lot about dialogue, and long-term I’d like to turn this into a full on ‘quest’, culminating in being recognized as a ‘master ninja’.
This might include other characters as part of the Shinobi Thieves, voyages to other areas where the major thief towers are, new custom NPCs to join your group, etc.
One existing piece pointing to this is purchaseable from the Shinobi Trader, to sell a special map that will reveal the locations of all the cities with Shinobi Thief Towers in them.
Changes to core game objects:
* Heavily modified the dialogue for the Thief Boss.
* The Shinobi Trader will no longer mock you and treat you like a noob.
* In addition to removing the mocking dialogue option for Shinobi Trader, he also sells a map to all of the cities with a Thieves’ Tower.
* Modifed the Hub spawns so Onyx Star is a resident.
I went with as light a touch as possible here (I didn’t remove the Thief Boss dialogue, simply added a dialogue package for TB, linking to new dialogues). There shouldn’t be conflicts with many other mods, unless they are also mucking about with the Shinobi.
Mechanics (Technical stuff)/How This Works:
THIS IS A LITTLE SPOILERY. IF YOU JUST WANT TO BE SURPRISED BY HOW IT WORKS IN-GAME READ NO FURTHER.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no way to actually start as a member of any faction. You can start well-liked by a certain faction. You can start with a faction assigned to your character, even, but you can’t start with any faction rank. In other words, you’re rank 0 until some kind of in-game interaction occurs.
I also didn’t want to do anything especially lazy like just start you with 10k cats so you could buy your way in. That sort of ruins the immersion of you being a member already.
So I figured out a workaround for that.
Dialogue is pretty powerful in Kenshi, and handles a lot of the scripting for events, checking of certain conditions before applying certain dialogue trees, etc. It also can do things like take money from your inventory, or open trade windows.
So what I did was modified both Onyx Star, and the Thief Boss, so that they will instantly recognize anyone with the Master Ninja starts, and apply the faction rank instantly, upon recognition of that person. It is, in fact, checking for a certain inventory quest item (Shinobi signet) in order to trigger these dialogue options.
Whether you run into Onyx Star, or the Thief Boss first, you will see them react to your arrival. (Onyx Star, if she sees you, will actually chase you down.) The initial hail made by either the TB or Onyx will automatically set your faction in the Shinobi Thieves. So by the time you initiate conversation with either one of them, you’re already a member.
So that’s how it works. 😀
