"What Do I Sell?" Guide

Hi, I've played Kenshi a lot. This guide is based on my own gameplay style, when I play Kenshi I essentially sell any item that I know I can get easily later simply with money or because I know where to run to in order to find it.

Additionally, this is focused on a hybrid townie/adventurer playstyle. Typically setting up a base somewhere is inevitable for me, so I always hang onto research artifacts, knowing I WILL need them later - but your mileage may vary, and if you have no intention of doing research or building a base, you might want to simply vendor AI Cores and such you find anyway.

This guide ought to be useful for newbies or anyone else who needs a quick reference sheet.

I'm also going to note down some tips and tricks that might be of interest, in-line with the general theme of selling stuff for cats.

Below, I detail what's worth your time and what isn't, and I tried breaking the details into sections because it WAS going to be quick, and concise, I promise, but then I ended up trying to fit in more detail to explain my thought process behind each item and it got a lot longer than I truly expected. Oh well. Oops.

CPU Unit - Avg. Price c.6,000

This sturdy green cube has no use in vanilla Kenshi, so sell it as soon as you get the chance.
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Power Core - Avg. Price c.3,000

No use in vanilla Kenshi, sell it.
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Skeleton Muscle - Avg. Price c.1,944

Worth some money, nice and compact (1x5 in inventory). You could save them for use, like Robotics Components, in the elongated resource tree to make robot limbs, but honestly just vendor them. See 'Notes' down below for more info.
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Skeleton Eye - Avg. Price c.3,600

It's no use! Sell it! They look kind of cool, but cats are cooler.
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Robotics Component - Avg. Price c.2,838

To cut short a lengthy explanation, I recommend you simply sell them, and then use the money spent to buy Masterwork limbs and repair kits as needed, especially earlygame when you need the cats. Sell them. See 'Notes' section for more info.
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Skeleton Repair Kit - Avg. Price c.4,341

You may not even have any use for these, if you have no skeletons in your squad - however you DO need them to repair robot limbs. My rule is, as long as each skeleton under your control has two repair kits in their inventory, as long as your robot-limb characters have one repair kit in their inventory, you can sell the rest.

Not only are these extremely common to find scattered across the world, you can even buy them easily. They can even be crafted, and the research is relatively inexpensive. Sell!
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Weapons - Mk. III quality & Below (Grey, White, Blue, Green quality)

Since you only want the best for your crew, I honestly don't even bother holding onto these. Better to have some more cash you can use to spend on genuine Edgewalkers. In vanilla Kenshi, ALL weapons crafted by the player up to and including Mk. III (so, Grey, White, Blue, Green quality), are equivalent to the same quality weapons found or bought. So, you may as well craft them if you need them in quantity.

For these reasons, I just sell without even thinking.
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Skeleton Limbs - Specialist quality & Below (Grey, White, Blue, Green and Gold quality)

Some people might disagree with this aggressive sales strategy, but I don't need replacement limbs very often, so I usually just vendor anything that isn't Masterwork. You can easily and relatively cheaply buy replacement limbs, and if you explore many ruins, you will find many that are Masterwork quality anyway. If you have to replace a limb, you generally want the best possible quality, the best arms tend to range from 25k-32k, and the best legs are only around 18k.
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Chainmail Sheets - Avg. Price c.2,527

Takes a while to craft, but honestly you shouldn't even be thinking about crafting chainmail until you already have the skills to guarantee Specialist/Masterwork. Just sell it and worry about crafting it later.
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Steel Bars - Avg. Price c.648

You often find these in various quantities just around the game world. While on their own they aren't worth too much, they ARE fairly compact and valuable if you have a stacking backpack (Wooden Backpack for instance or a Pack Beast/Bull on hand), so you may as well pick them up if you have the space for it - especially earlygame.
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Armour - High Quality & Below (Grey, White, Blue, Green quality)

High quality or lesser is fairly easy to come by if you are looking for armour. Unless you particularly like the type of armour you're looking at, just sell it, you'll find something better anyway.
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Grog - Avg. Price c.1,155

Like Bloodrum, just a solid item that doesn't take too many slots of inventory space and is worth a little bit of money, and usually if you've found one, there's more nearby. Best stacked in a stacking backpack, but someone in your squad probably has some space free.
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Bloodrum - Avg. Price c.1,328

Like Grog, just a solid item that doesn't take too many slots of inventory space and is worth a little bit of money, and usually if you've found one, there's more nearby. Best stacked in a stacking backpack, but someone in your squad probably has some space free. Not to be confused with Cactus Rum, which isn't terrible, but probably not worth picking up as loose loot.
-- Robotics Component - Though you can use these to craft Skeleton Repair Kits and skeleton limbs, you can only do this in the VERY late endgame of Kenshi's base-building and research, so for the first 40+ hours of your save, maybe longer, you will have absolutely no use for this item - and even then, crafting skeleton limbs is a very long and inefficient process. If you get to the point where you can craft skeleton limbs, you will be able to craft these components yourself if you REALLY want, so you may as well vendor these whenever you find them.

Skeleton Muscle - I just wouldn't bother trying to hold onto them, given they are an intermediate crafting component. You need to make a motor, or find one, to craft a robotics component out of the muscle, and then you have a robotics component that sells ~400 cats more than the materials you spent crafting it. Now you need 3 more and you can make one limb. Or you could just vendor the muscle, save yourself a lot of time, effort, space for the respective workbenches, and labour from your own characters, and get almost the same profit.

Armour - Specialist quality & Masterwork (Gold quality)

If the item in question you are looking at is some crappy low tier armour, feel free to vendor it. Nobody needs Masterwork Rag Shirts or Heart Protectors. Rarer, harder to find gear like Specialist or Masterwork Sleeveless Dustcoats, Samurai Armour, Mercenary Plate, or Plate Jackets... you may want to hold onto. You may want to specially consider holding onto some of the more difficult or time-consuming crafts (which are equally valuable because of it) such as Chainmail, Blackened Chainmail, or Blackened Chain Hive Shirt, because they take a LONG time to craft.
-- Weapons - Edgewalkers Type 1, 2, 3 & Meitou quality (Gold quality)

CRAFTED Edgewalkers in vanilla Kenshi are NOT equivalent to looted/purchased Edgewalkers!

With that out of the way, feel free to vendor any CRAFTED Edgewalkers any members of your squad make. LOOTED or PURCHASED Edgewalkers, thanks to their rarity, may give you pause. For me, I just ask myself if I have any interest in training any characters to use the weapon in question. Edgewalkers Type 3 Horse Chopper? Sell, vendor it. Edgewalkers Type 3 Falling Sun? Okay, I will keep that, and use it. Additionally, maybe hold onto high rarity Spiked Clubs and Mercenary Clubs, because stacking several of them in your inventory can be useful for weight training, and their weight increase with rarity.

Meitou weapons... are one-of-a-kind, so even if I don't like the weapon in question, I usually hold onto them, just for the sake of having a trophy. If that doesn't appeal to you, feel free to sell!
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Copper Alloy Plates - Avg. Price c.608

Similar to steel bars, but comparatively less useful for crafting, takes up way more space in your inventory so it's harder to stack a lot of them, and overall not as valuable per inventory slot. You can pick them up if earlygame, desperate for cats, or because it's just barely worth carrying to the nearest vendor if you have nothing else to loot.
-- Miscellaneous Map Items - (Ancient Military Documents, Engineers Map and more)
Not to be confused with the 'Old Map' junk item which does nothing, you can find a variety of maps that, when used, will indicate a point of interest with a green outline the next time you open the map by pressing 'M'. The outline will disappear, but the location remains marked.

You can metagame by simply using a wiki or whatever to find locations throughout the world, instead of utilizing the maps you find in-game, in which case you can just sell them and rake in a healthy amount of cats, but... I'd honestly just use the map. It's more fun that way!
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Generator Core - Avg. Price c.2,755

AKA: Rock Lee's legwarmers. You can use these early to really kick off your strength training simply and easily. For best results, keep a few in your inventory, but by the time you're starting to need 6 or more to overload yourself enough, you may want to swap to the 'Wooden Backpack + Iron Ore' method. Still, best to simply keep them on hand to train up new recruits - they aren't worth enough to sell, really, especially given how uncommon they are.
-- Crossbows

I debated having an entire section for this because crossbows are very complicated and they all have a particular purpose (except for the Spring Bat which is terrible), and you might even want crappy quality crossbows, just to have 'trainer' weapons that won't instantly kill your own guys if your trainee sharpshooter accidentally clips someone in the skull with a Masterwork Eagle's Cross.

I've been using heavy weapons a lot lately, so no room for crossbows in the squad, but if I were running a more dedicated crossbow squad with an offhand Guardless Katana or whatever, I would probably take a mix of Masterwork or Specialist Oldworld Bow Mk. II and Eagle's Cross, and just risk friendly fire incidents. Mixed melee/ranged squads might want to instead use Rangers or even Tooth Picks/Junkbows. If you want to micro all your ranged squadmates, you could use Oldworld Bows, use them to open the engagement with a firing line, then retreat them behind your melee units, which would push forward, and then you could move your crossbows to flank the enemy and take shots from the sides or even behind them, which would reduce the chances of a friendly fire incident...

TL;DR sell any quality below Specialist/Masterwork (sell Prototype, Shoddy, Standard, High qualities) if you intend to use crossbows full-time. Use best available quality you find in a mixed ranged/melee squad, and sell the rest. Either way, sell all Spring Bats you find. I prefer the Oldworld Bow Mk. II, but the Oldworld Bow Mk. I is technically much better for newbie crossbow users, so probably keep that too. And the Oldworld bows basically have better stats than the Ranger, so I sell Rangers too. The Eagle's Cross is exquisite when used by a trained sniper, though, so definitely keep those.
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Beak Thing Egg - Avg. Price 4,200

WARNING: Highly Dangerous to even try and obtain.

I would be remiss in my duties of being as exhaustive as possible if I failed to mention one of the most lucrative cash items you can find. Beak Thing (also known as Gutters) eggs spawn in clusters in Beak Thing nests. I feel like that's all I really need to say, but let me go on to explain the dangers.

So not only does the item in question weigh a ton, not only will you be surrounded by extremely dangerous creatures, actually escaping will be very difficult if not impossible thanks to how fast these animals are and how relentlessly they chase you.

They also eat you, if you fail. So I only recommend even trying if you have a very capable squad, ideally armed with weapons that give % bonus damage to Beak Things, such as the Heavy Polearm or maybe Falling Sun. Think about gathering eggs only when your group can reliably kill Beak Things in pairs or more without anyone being downed
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AI Core - Avg. Price c.25,000(!)

While it looks kind of like a hard candy, and you could probably finance several wars just by selling one of these things, you absolutely should not. You need, in order to research absolutely everything, 32(!!!) AI Cores. However, almost half of this count is purely for robotic limbs research. This in my view is what makes that research almost pointless, at the point you can research robotic limbs, you could simply sell a couple of swords and then use that money to simply buy the limbs you want.

There are only a few more than you need scattered across the world in guaranteed locations, and there are VERY few renewable sources, so I highly recommend you do NOT sell AI Cores.

Ancient Science Books - Avg. Price c.5,000

While they sell very well, you need a total 154 of them to research everything, more than you'd think. I wouldn't bother purchasing since you will easily find enough simply via exploration, but don't sell them either until you're done with research entirely.

Books - Avg. Price c.300

Do not underestimate the lowly book! You'll need 306(!) to research everything! Once I have my base going I tend to start buying books every time I see them in stores, and if you want to evolve your base smoothly, I recommend having a fair few on hand before you even lay the foundations of your first small shack.

Engineering Research - Avg. Price c.8000

The mighty red square of progress. You need 19 total, but they actually aren't as rare as you'd think. There are several locations scattered around the world that are guaranteed to spawn at least one or more, and they are locations that are easy to find, so I usually fill my Engineering quota faster than I expect.

- Buy a Garru or Pack Bull. It may seem like a hassle, but the amount of space available is just absurd. You basically won't leave home without one of these again. Actually buying one is kind of a pain since you generally just have to stumble on the nomads and hope they're selling Pack Beasts. Sometimes they show up to your base to sell them at you, so that can be useful too.

Bull Backpacks stack items up to 5, and Pack Beast Backpacks stack to 6, but it doesn't generally matter which animal you buy, as long as you have one of them at least. They are also extraordinarily easy to feed, since while in the wild they are often labelled as 'herbivorous' I've found you can feed them a range of things, including foodcubes.

- Buy stuff you need while you offload your trash. If you're at some weapons trader and you can't dump all your CPUs into his pocket, maybe pick up some other stuff while you're there. Like blueprints, they always go over well. Sometimes, securing a useful blueprint early on can pay off later when you don't need to go on an excursion to find it elsewhere, particularly if it's an item you like.

Other items you might want to pick up include Books, Ancient Science Books if you have a real surplus of cats, as well as maybe Engineering Research. The best part of buying artifacts like these is you can also usually sell them back for the same price you paid if you bought too many.

- Buy Thieves Backpacks, not the small ones, but the big ones. You can take a -2 to combat skills in exchange for a bunch of extra inventory space, and these are the only ones that have such a minimal penalty to combat skills. They're rare to chance upon, so don't think about it, buy 'em up.

All members of your squad should have one. This is particularly important if you're planning on raiding any location with a lot of combat gear (swords, armour, helmets, etc.) because it will not stack in your Garru's backpack. If you have too many, worst case scenario, you can use them to store a bunch of heavy items, then put the now-full impossibly heavy backpack in your regular inventory (not your backpack or backpack slot) to train Strength.

- Buy Wooden Backpacks! While at first, yes, they bring your combat stats down a ton and obliterate your combat speed, which is very bad, you can stack a ton of items inside them. Now, I propose you do not use them for the intended purpose of 'trading' - but instead, use them for 'training'. STRENGTH training. Like above, you can fill them with a stupid amount of iron ore, then put one in your regular inventory to train strength.

Alternatively... use them for trading.

- Don't worry too much about markups or markdowns in vendor price, but take advantage of them when you can. If you have a bunch of Skeleton Eyes and they're going for near 120%, maybe offload those first even if it's not immediately as much cash as selling your CPU Units.

It's not worth it going out of your way to scour the world for the 'best' possible values in trading, when you could instead vendor now and then head to the nearest ruin or whatever, and simply find even more loot to sell.

- Once you've got your Weaponsmith set up with a reliable source of metal, craft Katanas! Guardless Katanas are also valued at the same price, Foreign Sabres as well, so whichever blueprint you get your hands on, get crafting!

This is one of those things that to me really establishes the difference between an adventurer playstyle and a builder playstyle. In the short term, I think 'adventure' and exploration in general can earn you more cats up-front, but in the long-term, when you can crank out dozens of swords out of rocks you found in the ground, you'll have so many things to sell you won't be able to sell all of them, you just won't have the time, and vendors will not have the budget to buy them all from you.

Hopefully you learned something, if I forgot something or other I might add it in at a later date.

V.1.00 24/03/2023 - Guide posted
V.1.01 28/03/2023 - updated Skeleton Muscle & notes