Down in the Zone (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

[neonrev]

What changes do you mean? Admittedly, I only played an older version, and after hundreds of hours of the series, so I would have a hard time judging what it feels like to someone without all the self-enforced roleplay stuff I do unthinkingly now. I remember the shooting feeling much, much better, which might be less STALKER in feel I suppose. Besides that, I just thought the main deal was AI changes and a couple of quality of life changes like the sleeping bag and repair services?

In retrospect, I do remember it feeling more like a 'western FPS' style game in a stalker setting than the original, 'slavic harshness' of the vanilla, but I honestly can't discern stalker memories between mods and games so well anymore.

Edit: If you're feeling ambitious, the game's config files are fairly readable and editable, and you can modify most of the actor attributes and mechanics. Things on the order of run speed and encumbrance scaling, or anomaly resistance or medicine effectiveness, etc. If you find yourself getting frustrated by either the laxness or harshness of, say, stamina and running, you can tune that to either taste fairly painlessly. Although its tempting/possible to make yourself a god/completely unplayable, I always think of stalker as an ethos and setting rather than any one or system of mechanics.

[feelthedarkness]

Oh man, I didn't know Lost Alpha was released. I'll need to check that out. 

 

Also, I just want to say that Clear Skies is a unfairly maligned, and still a really good time. The Complete mod for that one does a bit of heavy lifting. 

[neonrev]

Yeah, the faction stuff in clear sky is what really put the stalker series over the top for me. It is, to be fair, irredeemably broken in vanilla, but its easy to find mods to fix it. It's handled somewhat better in Pripyat, but I'd have really liked to see a more fully fleshed out A-life/faction based game. If someone could somehow just stick A-life into something like DayZ, and then define areas into different zones of different values that the faction AI could understand and act upon, I think I just very well may die of joy.

[Gatazhk]

Agree that Clear Sky is unfairly maligned.  It's probably my favorite of the three. 

[eot]

What changes do you mean? Admittedly, I only played an older version, and after hundreds of hours of the series, so I would have a hard time judging what it feels like to someone without all the self-enforced roleplay stuff I do unthinkingly now. I remember the shooting feeling much, much better, which might be less STALKER in feel I suppose. Besides that, I just thought the main deal was AI changes and a couple of quality of life changes like the sleeping bag and repair services?

In retrospect, I do remember it feeling more like a 'western FPS' style game in a stalker setting than the original, 'slavic harshness' of the vanilla, but I honestly can't discern stalker memories between mods and games so well anymore.

It noticeably increases weapon accuracy, decreases enemy aggro range, decreases sound propagation range, automatically applies bandages for you at low health, adds NV that lets you see almost perfectly, increases carry load, adds fast travel, I think it decreases enemy damage etc.

 

Those are things that a lot of people will appreciate, because S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does have notoriously punishing combat, but it presents itself as mostly a graphics / bugfix mod, which I think is disingenuous. If you're going to install it for your first playthrough you should at least know what it does.

[Dewar]

I'm at the point where I've already tried playing STALKER and quit a couple hours in, so easier might not be all that bad. I'll keep it in mind however.

[Trip Hazard]

Like Lazarus from the dead. I suppose that would make me Jesus, eh?

Fucking...ohmygod, I just played 2 of the most intense hours of gaming in my life just now. Heart is racing. So, STALKER, I've bounced off it in the past, and that has been with the complete mod installed. I figured, right, stop being a nob and just play the vanilla game. Afterwards, you'll know what you like and what you don't like, and can start tinkering with mods. I've read that Complete makes both your weapons and those of your enemies do less damage, which I wasn't into at all. I'd also read that even in vanilla stalker, some bullets just won't find their target - will literally vanish in thin air - depending on whether you go for an easier difficulty or a harder one. Now, I wanted all the bullets to be there, and to do lots of damage, so I booted it up and put it on master mode. The only mod I'm using is the ZRP mod, which I think is more bugfixes than anything else. I also turned off the crosshair for Maximum Insertion Immersion

So, right, I meet up with some other stalkers and advance towards a farm to rescue a USB stick, and the person carrying it as well I suppose if you want, whatever. (I get the distinct feeling he's incidental). I manage to take down one bad guy, and then get slaughtered by his mates. Poor planning on my part I reckon, so next time I stick closer to the shotgun wielding guy, who I've decided to view as the leader of our merry band. He alerts the entire camp by firing from a distance, gets shot to bits, and before I can so much as steal all of his things I'm dead too.

Drop the difficulty. Try again. Same thing. Drop the difficulty again. Notice with some chagrin that I'm now on the normal difficulty. I always suspected I was shite at games.

This time, I'm successful! I rescue the stick, steal everything I can get my hands on, and hightail it back to camp for my reward. Flush from my victory, I tell Sidorovich I'll take any job, no job too big, no job too small. He gives me some jobs which sound really difficult, but while I'm walking around the camp, one of them - to kill some boars - gets completed for me, by god-knows-who (I heard gunfire and shouting), so I lie and tell Sid I did it and he gives the reward to me like a chump.

(This is when I'm starting to fall in love with STALKER)

I find some great body armour stashed in the rafters of a building, and set off again. At an abandoned factory, I spot a shiny in a nook, behind a terrifying looking anomaly, and wonder how I can get it. Dashing through very much does not work. Throwing bolts at it doesn't work. Shoot the shiny to move it? That works, kinda, and I'm impressed that it does, but I get it lodged into a corner.

I scratch my head for a bit, determined not to give up on my prize. I throw some more bolts in frustration, but I notice that I can throw two bolts in quick succession and the anomaly doesn't go off for the second bolt. Huh, so the anomaly needs some time to recharge. I quicksave, of course, chuck a bolt, and dash in to grab it. It fucking worked! I run back to the road, clutching my prize, stone something, who cares, it's mine now.

Rescued a wounded fox from some mean hounds, shot a boar in the face, and then shot a second boar in the face, got too close to some guys with machine guns...yeah, really enjoying it so far. I think a big part of why I'm sticking to it this time is immersion. I'm not using the crosshair, and I'm wearing surround-sound headphones, so I'm picking up on so much directional sound coming from anomalies and mutants. Directional sound is the best thing, you guys.

[Roswell47]

Have you played CoP? It was the first Stalker game I played and I did it without any mods. Did almost all of the side missions and not a single bug. Thanks for pointing me to ZRP, I might actually finish SoC now.

[eot]

I also turned off the crosshair for Maximum Insertion Immersion

My man!

That is the advice I always give people. The difference it makes is quite dramatic.

I'm glad you're getting into the game it gets even better from where you are in my opinion. I hope you give us an update because there are some great places in store! Just don't get stuck doing too many side quests because some of them will have you running all over the place which gets to be quite tedious.

[Trip Hazard]

I will update you on the hour, every hour.

 

 

Have you played CoP? It was the first Stalker game I played and I did it without any mods. Did almost all of the side missions and not a single bug. Thanks for pointing me to ZRP, I might actually finish SoC now.

 

I bounced off that one too, so, although I must concentrate on SoC for now, I will revisit it later on down the line. And it was the very useful PC Gaming Wiki which told me about ZRP in the first place. It's now my first stop whenever I get a new game.

[Trip Hazard]

Am I being thick or is there just not much to do in Garbage the first time you're there? So much of it is irradiated and I simply don't have enough anti-rad stuff to explore properly. Also, does radiation go away by itself over time? I had a green level of radiation, went to sleep for an hour assuming that'd shift it (okay, I'm no nucular physicist) and when I woke up...my pillow was gone! Oh, and I was dead.

[eot]

There's a lot of stuff to find in pretty much all the areas but some of it is damn well hidden and yeah a lot of it will get you irradiated. Radiation does go down over time, just very slowly. If you don't want to waste anti-rads though you can also consume vodka, that will also bring down your level of radiation poisoning.

[neonrev]

The garbage is particularly bad for radiation, I'd wait until you have a stash or something marked there before you go exploring to much. There's not much that I remember being hidden explicitly in a really irradiated area, and you'll be passing through later with better gear and more anti-rad stuff anyway. The garbage is also one of the more buggy areas in the game (mostly related to a cut faction system that was later in Clear Sky), and I'm not sure how well various bug fixes deal with things, so look out for that I guess. 

Yeah, rads reduce over time, but they also reduce health at about or more than the same rate as health, so waiting it out is only really a good option if you just stumbled into a bad area for a second or such. Vodka is more efficient than anti-rads for small things for sure, being much cheaper and available, so if you can stomach the screen effects go for it. Personally they're the only video game thing that gives me motion sickness to watch.

Everyone play Stalker games. It makes me so happy.

[Trip Hazard]

I'm all out of vodka, but I'm clear of the Garbage (for now) and heading for Agroprom. There were some pretty intense firefights in that area, which was great fun. And now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho

[Trip Hazard]

Just a quick update, if anyone is interested. On my phone so gritting my teeth in anguish.

Agroprom had me on tenterhooks. I'v never been so scared playing an FPS.

Got the documents in a not-very-stealthy way. Good thing the gunplay is (mostly) extremely satisfying.

Made it to the bar and sold some things. I am quite the hoarder, it seems. Is it safe to stash things here, or will it be half-inched?

Now, many options are open to me. I seem to have aligned myself with Duty, who may be the baddies but I don't think this game really deals in moral absolutes.

Have been going to bed much too late and have skipped two meals so far

[Cordeos]

The only true evil in STALKER is snorks. CURSE THEM!

[eot]

Just a quick update, if anyone is interested. On my phone so gritting my teeth in anguish.

Agroprom had me on tenterhooks. I'v never been so scared playing an FPS.

Got the documents in a not-very-stealthy way. Good thing the gunplay is (mostly) extremely satisfying.

Made it to the bar and sold some things. I am quite the hoarder, it seems. Is it safe to stash things here, or will it be half-inched?

Now, many options are open to me. I seem to have aligned myself with Duty, who may be the baddies but I don't think this game really deals in moral absolutes.

Have been going to bed much too late and have skipped two meals so far

The first time I went down in those tunnels I ended up going back up and after about an hour of exhausting all other ways to proceed I reluctantly went down. They do horror very well.

 

As for storing, there are some boxes that are blue which can be used for storage but I've forgotten exactly where they are. If you store them on bodies or just on the ground they'll probably disappear, unfortunately.

[neonrev]

Yep, the blue boxes that look somewhat like footlockers are safe storage, as is any stash, incidentally. Containers never reset in stalker. 
Duty/Freedom is one of the only interesting faction situations I've ever found. I've usually tended towards Freedom, but mostly because of the weaponry I liked more. Duty has typically warsaw pact stuff, heavy hitting and fast firing, and Freedom uses NATO weapons and ammo, lighter and more accurate but weaker.
On the narrative side though, neither side is 'good' or 'bad' at the end of the day. There are darker things in the Zone than mere humans fighting over what to do with the zone. The zone decides what to do with you.

Also, snorks are good only for target practice. Skeet shooting really.

[feelthedarkness]

i think there are some chests in the bar you can leave things in. 

 

you get armor with more artifact holding slots, so hold onto your artifacts, until you get upgrades. also, you'll need anti-radiation artifacts to counteract the other good ones, like passive healing artifacts or anti-bleeding artifacts. 

[Syd]

Just a quick update, if anyone is interested. On my phone so gritting my teeth in anguish.

Agroprom had me on tenterhooks. I'v never been so scared playing an FPS.

Got the documents in a not-very-stealthy way. Good thing the gunplay is (mostly) extremely satisfying.

Made it to the bar and sold some things. I am quite the hoarder, it seems. Is it safe to stash things here, or will it be half-inched?

Now, many options are open to me. I seem to have aligned myself with Duty, who may be the baddies but I don't think this game really deals in moral absolutes.

Have been going to bed much too late and have skipped two meals so far

The labs in Shadow of Chernobyl, like X-16 and X-18, are some of the creepiest and most atmospheric locations in gaming that I've ever explored. I think you'll have fun with those places once you get to them.

 

 And yeah, the Bar should be a safe place to store your stuff.

 

Personally, I don't side with any of the factions in SoC when I play through it, since it makes traveling around the Bar or Army Warehouses a bit of a pain, depending on who you joined. On the other hand, you do get some really nice goodies when you join a faction, so that could make up for it.

 

Neither Duty nor Freedom are necessarily bad, as they both have legitimate reasons to do what they do and why they oppose each other (in short, Duty sees the Zone as a dangerous blight and wants to destroy it, while Freedom wants to preserve the Zone for scientific and societal advancement).

[bakelite]

 Afterwards, you'll know what you like and what you don't like, and can start tinkering with mods. I've read that Complete makes both your weapons and those of your enemies do less damage, which I wasn't into at all.

 

 

If you're still unhappy with the damage values you can go to game folder/gamedata/configs/creatures and tweak the numbers in the text files.

[bakelite]

I have spent 53 hours playing CoP but never got anywhere close to completing it, haven't even made it to the actual city yet.

[Nachimir]

Compared to SoC, I found it disappointing when I got there. I suspect a part of that was that I found a way to make money, then a route between Zaton and Pripyat that let me buy loads of batteries for the railgun. Even burers get taken down with a few shots. After that, none of it ever felt as spooky or dangerous as the zone should.

[Roswell47]

I have spent 53 hours playing CoP but never got anywhere close to completing it, haven't even made it to the actual city yet.

I took me 57 hours to finish CoP doing all but like 4 or 5 side missions. Pripyat is pretty quick which was disappointing.

[Nachimir]

Yeah. I did loads of prep for a final arc in Pripyat, then found it was over after a handful of missions.