Toughness Training Intermediate
Toughness is the one stat you cannot train by winning. You have to be willing to lose.
Build Toughness by surviving defeats — get downed in survivable conditions, recover, and repeat until your squad stops dying.
Why Toughness Is Special
Toughness rises when a character takes damage and survives. Winning fights cleanly barely trains it — you have to be hit, and hit hard.
Safe Defeat
Get characters downed where they will not be killed or carried off — near town guards, who drive enemies away once your character falls. Then heal and repeat.
The Slavery Route
Captivity reliably trains Toughness through hardship and beatings. Many players treat a stint of enslavement as deliberate Toughness training.
Why It Pays Off
A high-Toughness squad gets back up instead of dying, keeps limbs, and turns every lost fight into progress. It is the stat that makes Kenshi's "fail forward" loop work.
“Fight at chokepoints. Being surrounded, not being outmatched, is what kills squads.”