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[Cthulhu]

Here's something very important that I didn't know and it screwed me over when it comes to the multiple endings:

Spoiler: I'm not going to leave out any names or locations, and pretty major spoilers lie within, so don't read if you don't want that, although failing to read could make it impossible to get the good ending.  Choose your destiny (click to show/hide)

The Agroprom mission early in the game.  In order to get the good ending, you have to go down into the Agroprom Underground, get Strelok's flash drive or whatever, and then exit through the manhole in the Agroprom base.  When I played, I got it, backtracked, came out the way I came in, and did some awesome commando stuff to infiltrate the military base.  Since the people who made STALKER have no idea how to do proper quest triggers, the Strelok's Flash Drive quest (Which is required for the best ending) only completes if you exit through the manhole in the base, as mentioned before.  Because I went a different way, the quest never completed, I never continued that questline, and I got the "I want the zone to disappear" ending, which was anticlimactic, retarded, and didn't make any sense.

Another example of the game's terrible quest triggers is Skull and the Army Warehouses.  You know that area to the east (I'm pretty sure it's east.  If you look toward the army warehouses from his cabin, it's to your right) and between Skull's cabin and the freedom base, with the electro anomalies and wrecked vehicles?  If you walk into that area after receiving the quest to kill the Freedom Sentry, the sentry (And if you're not extremely careful, the whole Freedom base) becomes hostile, even if you've already killed Skull's team and made friends with everyone in the Freedom base.  It's extremely frustrating, and unless you're hardcore, you're unlikely to be able to wipe out the whole Freedom base on your own which means you suddenly have 30-odd people shooting at you whenever you go near the army warehouses, and several of them are quest-givers and vendors, which hamstrings your income/gear.

What I'm trying to say is that the people who made STALKER are very lucky it turned out as good as it did, and made some serious rookie mistakes that greatly hurt the experience.

[Uber dwarf2.0]

Becareful Of Some MODs Dreams v2 Steals your CD-Key

[Sowelu]

And may I suggest reading "Roadside Picnic", maybe before playing? Dunno. But stalker is inspired by that book, and it's a great read, not very long tho, you can finish it in a few hours.

That...was great.  Thank you, Puck!

[DeKaFu]

I just bought this, though I won't be able to install it and play it for a while.
For when I do, I'm sorta undecided on the mod front. Normally I never install mods on my first playthrough, since I want to see the game as it was intended. Therefore I'd want to avoid any mods that add a lot of completely new features/objects/people/whatever to the game.

But on the other hand, I'm a big sucker for atmosphere and anything that would make the game more immersive/creepy is sorely tempting for me...

What would you guys recommend?


I'd been interested in this game back when it first came out, but ended up avoiding it due to SecuROM. Now I have it SecuROM-free for $5. <3 Steam, so much.

[Cthulhu]

The game as it was intended isn't very good, because it didn't come out as intended.  There was a mod, I can't even remember what it was called anymore, that made the game more immersive.  It made guns way stronger, bandages and food didn't heal you, a lot of the anomalies were invisible, you had to buy a detector, and some other stuff.  I stuck with that one until I found out about Oblivion Lost.

If you change your mind about the first playthrough thing, get Oblivion Lost.  The enemies don't show up in the exact same spots anymore, and you'll occasionally find really strong mutants in really weird places, which is scary.

[chaoticag]

Playing the game mod free. I have to say, I really hate it when my lack of foresight binds me to eternally dying. I got to a point where I have 500 rounds for the pistol, but have to fight about ten people, who all seem to have SMGs and shotguns.

[Servu]

I have had Stalker for a year now, and still play it frequently (Mostly with my friend who is a serious fan.) Never installed Oblivion Lost, but I have tried it and it seems pretty cool, although I dislike the way the enemies are easier to kill and

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

zombies

can no longer shoot properly.

When I first played the game, I went with the unpatched, unmodded version and had a pretty decent run. The only serious problem was Yantar that crashed frequently. Too bad the game got way too easy after

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got the SEVA suit and Vintorez. Red forest and Pripyat were just cakewalk. And when the game started to get uncomfortably linear.

I stopped playing for some time.

Later I started over with my friend (playing in turns), this time only using the sweater and no artifacts. Now even the later parts were pretty exiting since even the moderate enemies could pose some threat. We actually played all the way to the NPP, but

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 to me the power plant was a huge disappointment: The outside was hastily made and lacked any detail and the inside (at least the part I saw) was boring. I would have gone all the way, but the enormous amount of radiation placed around made it virtually impossible to advance with just the shirt on. My last save was in a little staircase room with just one clip in my pistol, 20% health left, no bandages or medkits and bleeding heavily. With exoskeleton clad enemies in both sides getting shots at me after 2 seconds.

I warmly recommend playing the game without any armor/artifacts, not only are the enemies actually scary, but you can also carry more other stuff. The lack of protection doesn't feel uncomfortable when packing a full set of powerful guns and plentiful amounts of ammo and medkits.

Some fun bugs I found:

Spoiler: Yes, these are spoilery. (click to show/hide)

- There was a bandit in the cordon's car park that can walk on air.
- If you stun a zombie (so that he falls over and twitches there, unable to get up) he drops all his guns. If you grab them all they can no longer attack you when he gets up. He just stares at you with a retarded expression.
- Do the above, get RPG/laser, drop RPG/laser. Profit. Extra points if the zombie has an exoskeleton. (Rifle grenades are good for this) and more if he is headed to the duty guarded research bunker.
- The AI is retarded when they are firing sniper rifles in close range.
- The AI is hilariously retarded when they are firing RPG anywhere outside the few intended places.
- If you have armed a friend with an awesome gun, he will instantly drop it if there is a sawnoff shotgun lying around. Or just use the fucking Makarov.
- (my friend had this) The Yantar story mission is completely broken. The best part was when the scientist was inside the pipe, said "We need to go deeper" and walked into the ground.

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Zombies

shouldn't be able to shoot, that completely defeats the purpose.  It's not like they hit anything anyway.  As for being easier to kill, the people in vanilla STALKER act like they're made of Kevlar they take so much damage.  That's not fun.

What's really awesome is the tracer ammo.  You can see just how great the bullet dynamics are when you use tracers.  Try shooting a guy in an exoskeleton with one.  The bullet will bounce right off the plates and fly off into the sky.

[Toady Two]

I'm playing with only Oblivion Lost 2.2 on Hell difficulty and so far I'm having a blast.

Gunfights were frustrating until I raided the military and got all the Ak-74 ammo I needed.

Mutants give me the creeps especially Bloodsuckers and Controllers.

The only part that irked me was the Agroprom document raid in which after entering the base via the underground I get spawned IMMEDIATELY in sight of a guard that triggers the alarm... up to that point I tried to do insane assignments like these by means of a nighttime stealth approach. I ended up having to sprint OUT of the base with the alarm howling and then infiltrate it AGAIN by means of a completely unprotected hole it the concrete fence. Even with mods and Hell difficulty the game doesn't really force you to strategically plan combat like I hoped it would... Thats a shame but its still excellent fun due to the exploration and atmosphere.

[Cthulhu]

When I did that mission I sprinted through the front gate into an alley between the barracks, then hid in the bushes until the coast was clear and ran into the main building.  At that point I just ran through, emptying whole clips into everyone I saw, grabbed the briefcase, went up to the roof and shot the alarm, and then went down the ladder and out the back door.

[Sowelu]

I followed the plot, rescued a guy, and went down a ladder into a dark basement.  Now it's too dark for me to see anyone even with my flashlight, but they sure can see me, and there's like four guys that love popping out around corners and one-shotting me with a shotgun.  I'm only playing on the second difficulty, and I'm finding this part absolutely impossible.  I'm on about my thirtieth try getting through this room; even chucking all my grenades around doesn't help.

I would like it if the anomalies were harder, but combat was easier.  Not a lot easier, but like, people should die when you shoot them, and guns should shoot where you aim.  (I know I have crummy starting weapons but that's no excuse.)

[chaoticag]

Does anyone know how to install mods on steam? It looks complicated.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Does anyone know how to install mods on steam? It looks complicated.

LURK installed how you would typically install any mod, just the destination folder had to be the Steam one, buried in program files/steam/steamapps/common/stalker shadow of chernobyl

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Ok I got this and it's downloading, quite slowly.  Is there any website where I could easily find these mods or should I just use google?  Do they work together?

What sort of multiplayer does this have?

[3]

Been playing this with OL + RC1 for a few days now. I had played Clear Sky in the past, but had never got round to playing the original (broken plot ahoy, but I suppose that's to be expected).

Just finished Yantar and not run into a single significant bug yet. No crashes, nothing. Runs perfectly.

Spoiler: For those who aren't concerned about developing their own play style, also minor spoilers (click to show/hide)

As in the sequel - prequel - long-range headshots seem to be immensely overpowered, or are at least once OL's enemy rebalancing kicks in. I personally spent almost the entire of CS just using a modified MP5 to snipe people - yes, an MP5. So far, the same's applied here, with Strelok's "rapid" AK74 + scope and silencer (with a machine pistol as backup) easily powerful enough to deal with most situations on the hardest difficulty setting. The only enemies I have trouble with are some of the mutants, notably Controllers, who I can just kill with long-range grenades anyway.

Still, the game's atmosphere remains, and the sequel is blatantly inferior.