Ashot!! . Dear christ he was annoying in Clear Sky.. It was so therapeutic to install a mod that allows you to draw weapons in faction bases and just unload a Desert Eagle in his face time and time again... However, I'll give him that he isn't as annoying as Hawaiian in Call of Pripyat...
^^ Yeah, Wolf pretty much always dies in that barrel. I guess it has to do with the fact that GSC made it that the A.I could avoid anomalies but for some reason that ability was disabled in vanilla and since campfires are anomalies... Well, that has lead to more 'an a few hilarious sightings of human barbeque in Stalker encampments
. Oh, and Aqizzar, don't get put down by the initial difficulty. SoC has a weird difficulty curve in that it's actually harder in the beginning than anywhere else in the game, save for the last 15% or so. I actually liked it this way since I don't like games that pamper the player for the first few levels and hold the players hand like an extended tutorial or something. And Master difficulty is recommended since even if you take less damage, you'll also dish it out more as said previously.
I'm currently rocking out with SoC Super Mod Pack 2.4 and lovin' it so far. I'm experiencing crashes after around every 5 or so savegames(mostly when saving the game, whether it be a manual, quick or autosave) but it's no biggie since SmP has all the best features of AMK mod, some good A.I mods and Arsenal mod which adds like a hundred or so well done weapons to the game which really adds some much needed variety and improvement to gunplay which was a little disappointing in vanilla. I made a friend by healing a loner that got wounded in a firefight in the Garbage, gave him a Vintorez and brought him along to Dark Valley to hunt some bandits and soldiers with..
In the future I'm eagerly waiting for Stalker: Lost Alpha to be finished and AMK: Narodnaya Soljanka to be translated so I can check out those as well..