S.T.A.L.K.E.R Thread

[LightDragonman1]

I only played a little bit of SOC, and am now thinking about actually playing it to completion soon. Mainly because, as a huge fan of Breath Of The Wild due to how it blended an open-world setting with tons of emergent gameplay elements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to be quite similar in that regard.

Any tips? I know that it is extremely difficult, doesn't hold one's hand, and that you should play on the highest difficulty to make the combat encounters more balanced. Should I play it vanilla, or use a mod to fix some of the bugs?

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

I only played a little bit of SOC, and am now thinking about actually playing it to completion soon. Mainly because, as a huge fan of Breath Of The Wild due to how it blended an open-world setting with tons of emergent gameplay elements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to be quite similar in that regard.

Any tips? I know that it is extremely difficult, doesn't hold one's hand, and that you should play on the highest difficulty to make the combat encounters more balanced. Should I play it vanilla, or use a mod to fix some of the bugs?

If you find a rifle with a scope, keep it. Those things are rare.

 

[Admin Dissipate Swordfish]

I am excited for STALKER 2 but I will pirate it

 

[Kill a Troon for Pikamee]

I only played a little bit of SOC, and am now thinking about actually playing it to completion soon. Mainly because, as a huge fan of Breath Of The Wild due to how it blended an open-world setting with tons of emergent gameplay elements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to be quite similar in that regard.

Any tips? I know that it is extremely difficult, doesn't hold one's hand, and that you should play on the highest difficulty to make the combat encounters more balanced. Should I play it vanilla, or use a mod to fix some of the bugs?

Vanilla SoC is not difficult.

Use the ZRE mod. It doesn't change anything, just fixes bugs, you can also use it for very small cosmetic improvements like adding real life weapon names. You can also use it to manually improve the accuracy of guns, because even with the highest difficulty you still won't hit anything with early weapons unless you're standing next to the guy. You can also turn weapon degradation off for unique weapons because this stupid game has weapons that can break but no repair system lmao

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

I liked the Autumn Aurora mod.

Adds some good stuff like weapon repair and modifies the graphics. But overall is a faithful mod.

Mod Features

 

[Truman the Jewman]

I liked the Autumn Aurora mod.

Adds some good stuff like weapon repair and modifies the graphics. But overall is a faithful mod.

Mod Features

Autumn Aurora is a mess, just fancy game-breaking shit on top of a good vanilla experience. AA2 corrupts quicksaves and might not play along well if folks have AMD graphics cards. Everything is dark and brown instead of nuanced and unique. The gunplay isn't bad but isn't a huge improvement over vanilla.

For anyone looking for an AA-like experience, but more stable and with more features, I recommend a merge of AMK offered on the STALKER General on /vg/. I can assure that for most people it'll be a more sane experience.

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

Autumn Aurora is a mess, just fancy game-breaking shit on top of a good vanilla experience. AA2 corrupts quicksaves and might not play along well if folks have AMD graphics cards. Everything is dark and brown instead of nuanced and unique. The gunplay isn't bad but isn't a huge improvement over vanilla.

For anyone looking for an AA-like experience, but more stable and with more features, I recommend a merge of AMK offered on the STALKER General on /vg/. I can assure that for most people it'll be a more sane experience.

That doesn't reflect my experience at all. It ran fine and nothing was corrupted or broken. The general atmosphere was a marked improvement over the original.

And if you're using AMD hardware you get what you deserve.

 

[Admin Dissipate Swordfish]

For someone going in for the first time, the ZRE mod (is that the lightweight mod that is all bug fixes? It's been so long since I've played) is enough for you to play through the game without encountering any game breaking errors. However, Shadow of Chernobyl is still eurojank in nature but can be incredibly fun and deeply atmospheric.

Some tips include conserving ammo by going for headshots when possible, wear the best armor you can get until it breaks, use "Master" difficulty (the technical details of this has been debated for decades but it wont hurt not to put it there), don't go into the final mission without good rad protection, and SAVE OFTEN!

On second or third playthroughs, mods like Autumn Aurora or the AMK mod that adds extra content and tiny quality of life features is a good way to feel refreshed with a new playthrough. Although the third game, Call of Pripyat, introduces a lot of nice QoL changes like equipment upgrading, more STALKER relations, and a more sandbox-y nature.

Overall, the game and the franchise isn't for everyone, but if you can grapple with its difficulty and clunkiness, the story and atmosphere of STALKER is really something worth experiencing.

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

For someone going in for the first time, the ZRE mod (is that the lightweight mod that is all bug fixes? It's been so long since I've played) is enough

Definitely. Just enough to keep things working as intended without piling on more bells and whistles.

Anyone here play Escape from Tarkov? It taps into that STALKER vein pretty well.

 

[Admin Dissipate Swordfish]

Definitely. Just enough to keep things working as intended without piling on more bells and whistles.

Anyone here play Escape from Tarkov? It taps into that STALKER vein pretty well.

I'm excited to give it a shot, but the system requirements are way beyond my system right now, but from what I've heard, it's very fun for multiplayer, has a similar feel to the Zone in STALKER, but can be rather toxic

For the meantime, Im scratching that Tarkov itch by modded playthroughs of STALKER Anomaly

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

I'm excited to give it a shot, but the system requirements are way beyond my system right now, but from what I've heard, it's very fun for multiplayer, has a similar feel to the Zone in STALKER, but can be rather toxic

For the meantime, Im scratching that Tarkov itch by modded playthroughs of STALKER Anomaly

I never played Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat. How are those games?

 

[Admin Dissipate Swordfish]

I never played Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat. How are those games?

Clear Sky, as a nice prequel as it may be, is rather unpopular and is okay to skip for the most part. Call of Pripyat however is a story sequel to SoC and is a great improvement game wise to what has already been established. You find yourself up on the Northern part of the Zone this time, but you still encounter old allies and old foes as you uncover new mysteries of the Zone. Definitely worth a pkaythrough!

 

[Truman the Jewman]

Definitely. Just enough to keep things working as intended without piling on more bells and whistles.

Anyone here play Escape from Tarkov? It taps into that STALKER vein pretty well.

Tarkov would be great but it has matchmaking and terrible netcode, two things that are unforgivably awful in my book. Otherwise I like the detail and atmosphere, and it runs quite well on my system.

 

[Jordi El Nino Polla]

Tarkov would be great but it has matchmaking and terrible netcode, two things that are unforgivably awful in my book. Otherwise I like the detail and atmosphere, and it runs quite well on my system.

I thought "netcode" was a buzzword and didn't actually exist?

 

[Fireman Sam]

I fucking love S.T.A.L.K E.R.
For all its faults, it has some of the best atmosphere, it is also fun and has more mods than you'll ever need.
Cautiously optimistic for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 but it could be pretty good, we shall wait and see.
Been playing some Anomaly and for a standalone mod, it's pretty good. I think the most impressive fact is that it is 64bit and therefor crashes a lot less!

Still. I'm fucking terrified that a lot of mods will be soon unobtainable due to how google is changing their docs downloads, a lot of shit has fallen out of archives in the past, I haven't got a personal collection of mods on my PC so fuck knows what I'd do if some good mods become impossible to download. Shit like that has happened to some real old games I used to play.

 

[Truman the Jewman]

I thought "netcode" was a buzzword and didn't actually exist?

When I say "netcode" I'm referring to the architecture the game uses for it's online gameplay, which is piss-poor. Ghosting and shot registration issues abound in Tarkov no matter how much folks complain about it. And if you live too far away from the servers? Good luck having fun.

 

[Kill a Troon for Pikamee]

I never played Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat. How are those games?

Call of Pripyat is great on the mechanic level, it adds a lot of shit that should be there already in SoC, but atmosphere-wise it's not as good as SoC. There's also the Misery mod for CoP which adds a shit ton of items (Stalker games just feel better where there is an autistic number of items and you can change between 12 different brands of vodka to cure radiation), weapons, improves gunfights and pretty much everything in the game, while still allowing you to play through the vanilla CoP story. CoP is a really easy game and Misery fixes that by forcing you to meticulously plan every venture out of Skadovsk up ahead (no headlamp at night? die instantly. no lead container going for an artifact? die instantly etc)

As for Clear Sky, we don't talk about it

 

[Had]

I bought all 3 of the games on the cheep on steam
Honestly I've never really had that much fun with them and not been able to pick up and play them for more than a few hours.
However stalker got me into a bunch of stuff like cooking, I lived off Plov for like a month at one point and I went on to read Roadside Picnic and the metro books and had a lot more fun with those.

 

[McAfee'sCorpse]

I only played a little bit of SOC, and am now thinking about actually playing it to completion soon. Mainly because, as a huge fan of Breath Of The Wild due to how it blended an open-world setting with tons of emergent gameplay elements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks to be quite similar in that regard.

Any tips? I know that it is extremely difficult, doesn't hold one's hand, and that you should play on the highest difficulty to make the combat encounters more balanced. Should I play it vanilla, or use a mod to fix some of the bugs?

Somebody might've said this, but player SoC on Stalker difficulty like I did on my first playthrough isn't hard. Playing in lower difficulties just makes gunfights last longer due to enemies having more health. Veterans usually play in higher difficulties to make gunfights go faster and to make it more realistic. I played with no mods on my first couple of playthroughs but you can add them. Here's a tip, in the rookie village, on the farthest left house, if you scale the roof of the house in front of it and look around the roof, there's a box with a merc suit in it, very nice to have for the beginning of the game.

 

[big ups liquid richard]

Your fist playthrough of the first stalker should be unmodded. That way you can appreciate how much the game is already near perfect and the mods simply help it over the finish line.