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So, playing STALKER for the first time, mods

Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
7,308
Something you won't see in SoC:


Yeah I didn't see sneaking actually working in SoC, during day or night. Never used this pistol though, zombies taking so many hits to the head is indeed new to me.
 

Elthosian

Arcane
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Mar 14, 2012
Messages
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@DraQ: Well, about LabX18, I didn't feel so much quality while exploring them, dunno, the level design wasn't that good and the atmosphere, while great, isn't something I consider way above what Call of Pripyat offers, meanwhile COP's lab had an amazing level design with many routes, exploration, some neat information you could read from the documents descriptions (though I would have liked to read them), zero freaking arrow hand-holding (not so sure on this tho) and even some secrets room, and that scary moment... damn, easily the best closed location of the entire series.

Also, walking through the Jupiter Factory was quite a thrill with the place being almost totally deserted, and my first time in Pripyat was even better, night, rain, zero visibility except for the thunders, pockets of Monolith troopers in some areas... and then, a freaking Chimera appears and follows me into a building, damn!!

About headshots when fighting zombies you are totally right, but I never noticed any exaggerated resilience from mutants nor such "berserk mode", and I remember anomalies as deadly as always... anyways, I will be sure to look into it next time I play the vanilla version :P

@Multidirectional: Take a look at this one:

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/CoP_PLUS_Medicals;106083

Makes medical items much less effective.


P.S.: While Clear Sky doesn't seem to be liked around here (I would consider it superior to SOC if it didn't had so many bugs), I have to say the Red Forest is one of the most scary areas in the STALKER "triilogy", even though due to some stupid bug my A-Life got destroyed (no kidding, NO ONE moved from their "areas" unless they were scripted to/they were hostile to me and I got near of them), hearing the roars of bloodsuckers or pseudodogs was more than enough to get me running like a little kid, stumbling into anomalies in the most idiotic ways.
 
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@Multidirectional: Take a look at this one:

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/CoP_PLUS_Medicals;106083

Makes medical items much less effective.

Thanks, that's something, I guess, but still not exactly what I need. Ideally I'd like a mod that reduces most or all of resources, including ammo, and makes bandages not have a healing effect. But I'll use this if I don't find anything better until my itch to replay COP becomes too strong.
 

Elthosian

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
1,138
Is the music your only gripe with MISERY or does it have some other things that bother you? Maybe you could play it with music off if you don't like the new themes... aside from that one I don't remember any other mods that do what you want, SMRTER seems to add lots of stuff but at least in the readme they don't say anything about reduced resources.

Then again, you said you were looking forward to MISERY 2.0, so maybe it would be better to wait until it gets released... gah, if I come across anything interesting I will tell you.

Edit:

http://www.moddb.com/games/stalker-call-of-pripyat/downloads/ceanos-mod-call-from-pripyat-cfp-v10

What about that one?
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
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Hehe, I don't even know if I like new themes in Misery or not, I haven't heard them. It just something that pissed me off in principle because there was nothing wrong with COP's music to begin with. And no, playing it without music wouldn't be the same, I absolutely love STALKER's minimalistic ambient soundtracks.
I'll keep ceanos mod in mind too, thanks for trying to help. So far Complete mod does seem the least intrusive, the problem with it is that it makes game even easier, as far as resources go. I was replaying with it sometime before and ended up with money blowing out my ass with not much to spend it on so I stopped somewhere in second map.
 

CorpseZeb

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By the way, speaking of hardnesses, Stalker SoC version 1.0 (The Unpatched One*), was a bizarre and tasty combination of many "bugs", which were made gameplay rather difficult and challenging. E.g, IIRC, armors doesn't degenerate at all but most of "medical" artifact worked strangely weak (or had reverse effect - instead stopped bleeding, accelerate it), enemies had unforgivably precise aiming and wears tons of armor, not to mention about very scarce ammo resources). Very recommended experience.


Ps. Original, first polish edition was 1.0.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
I just got to the bar and i've already accumulated over 100000 rubles which i have no idea what to spend on. I'm considering starting over with AMK. I got a decent gun now plus scope which has also made the game a bit too easy. Would have been even easier if stealth actually worked, which it doesn't.
 

Wyrmlord

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Feb 3, 2008
Messages
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I just got to the bar and i've already accumulated over 100000 rubles which i have no idea what to spend on. I'm considering starting over with AMK. I got a decent gun now plus scope which has also made the game a bit too easy. Would have been even easier if stealth actually worked, which it doesn't.
Save up your 100,000 rubles.

You'll need them for buying an Exoskeleton, the best armor in the game.

Just keep checking in stores regularly after each main quest mission, since the stores update based on your progress through the game.
 
Self-Ejected

AngryEddy

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For the people complaining about aiming in this game, Complete 2009 actually fixes some of the aiming problems: It makes both you, and your enemies more accurate.
 

Utgard-Loki

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
1,869
i would have recommended lurk 1.5 with the ballistic fix. it removed the absurd recoil lurk introduced which made fights against human enemies more deadly and the slightly buggy stealth mechanics lurk introduced more rewarding, as a bonus bloodsuckers and other mutants no longer took 5 direct headshot blasts to the head to bring down. alas, it's no longer available.

but even without it i think lurk 1.5 would be worth it, for the weapon porn alone. but then again, i'm one of those people that couldn't stomach vanilla stalker weapon models and animations.
 

Darklife

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Mexico of Europe. The northern one.
Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera
Don't buy any armor. If you look around carefully in Wild Territory you'll find a SEVA suit in a stash. Later on in the game you'll get a Bulyat suit. Those two offer the best mix of protection and mobility IMO.
 

Elthosian

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
1,138
By the way, speaking of hardnesses, Stalker SoC version 1.0 (The Unpatched One*), was a bizarre and tasty combination of many "bugs", which were made gameplay rather difficult and challenging. E.g, IIRC, armors doesn't degenerate at all but most of "medical" artifact worked strangely weak (or had reverse effect - instead stopped bleeding, accelerate it), enemies had unforgivably precise aiming and wears tons of armor, not to mention about very scarce ammo resources). Very recommended experience.


Ps. Original, first polish edition was 1.0.

Not only that, but many armors that you were supposed to get just... disappear, for example, the Merc Suit in Agroprom and the Bulat Suit in Pripyat didn't appear the first time I played it, so I had to get into the final area with a pretty much useless SEVA suit, and as if that wasn't enough, the PDA map (not the minimap) in the outer CNPP got fucked up and I wasn't able to check my position properly.

On the other side, I could destroy choppers with a single handgun bullet, yeah, not kidding, it was like... "what?!".
 

DraQ

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Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Yeah I didn't see sneaking actually working in SoC, during day or night.
If by sneaking you mean enemies forcing themselves to think that guy in full military gear that stared at them from behind corner was just them seeing things then no, there was no 'sneaking' in SoC.

It didn't stop me from ghosting the Agroprom mission though (It's helluva hard to not have your ghost attempt fall to shit at some point, admittedly, especially if you kill anyone someone is bound to stumble upon body even if killing itself was unnoticed).

There was one thing that was buggy about stealth in SoC - when reloading either AI didn't reset fully, or it could catch a glimpse of you before occlusion kicked in, so reloading at shot stealth attempt would result in stealth autofailing, but ZRP fixed that.


@DraQ: Well, about LabX18, I didn't feel so much quality while exploring them, dunno, the level design wasn't that good and the atmosphere, while great, isn't something I consider way above what Call of Pripyat offers, meanwhile COP's lab had an amazing level design with many routes, exploration, some neat information you could read from the documents descriptions (though I would have liked to read them), zero freaking arrow hand-holding (not so sure on this tho) and even some secrets room, and that scary moment... damn, easily the best closed location of the entire series.

(...)

my first time in Pripyat was even better, night, rain, zero visibility except for the thunders, pockets of Monolith troopers in some areas... and then, a freaking Chimera appears and follows me into a building, damn!!
Outdoor locations are nice in CoP, and Pripyat is pretty freaky even in full sun, my only problem is that you never get the "OMG Dafuq will I find... OMG dafuq have I found!!!1..." moments in latter STALKERs.

I liked documents and I liked nonlinearity, but X8 simply lacks atmosphere. It has no mindfucks and you're fully familiar with all you encounter.

Compare X18: Dark, 2-3 previously anomalies, new artifacts, remains of unencountered faction, unexplained phenomena driving your SAN down, four unencountered kinds of mutants, glimpeses of fucked up stuff (alien/mishapen tube fetuses).

About headshots when fighting zombies you are totally right, but I never noticed any exaggerated resilience from mutants
It's much harder to put mutant animals down in CoP IIRC, even if you're accurate.

nor such "berserk mode"
New behaviour and tactics notwithstanding the animals in CoP are definitely after your ass. In SoC they did attack you because you're full of delicious meats, but typically ran away after finding out you were also full of hurty/killy bullets and not afraid to dispense some.

P.S.: While Clear Sky doesn't seem to be liked around here (I would consider it superior to SOC if it didn't had so many bugs), I have to say the Red Forest is one of the most scary areas in the STALKER
Red forest was definitely the high point of CS, but CS itself was buggy, broken, too much action focused, had wildly inaccurate weapons in their base state, shit ballistics (pistol rounds and shotgun pellets literally vanishing in mid air), shit aiming (pistols, underslung GLs) and the ending was visibly made over few days by a single guy with a laptop and a crate of vodka.

I liked how lethal the anomalies were, though, and how lethal enemy fire was. I also liked that you were always low on money.
 

Elthosian

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2012
Messages
1,138
DraQ said:
Outdoor locations are nice in CoP, and Pripyat is pretty freaky even in full sun, my only problem is that you never get the "OMG Dafuq will I find... OMG dafuq have I found!!!1..." moments in latter STALKERs.

I liked documents and I liked nonlinearity, but X8 simply lacks atmosphere. It has no mindfucks and you're fully familiar with all you encounter.

Compare X18: Dark, 2-3 previously anomalies, new artifacts, remains of unencountered faction, unexplained phenomena driving your SAN down, four unencountered kinds of mutants, glimpeses of fucked up stuff (alien/mishapen tube fetuses).

Tho I did feel that X8 did it greatly by surprising you with certain scary moment, I do agree that I didn't expect to get any WHAT THE FUCK MAN moments like the ones I had when going through X18, although I also believe that the other underground areas in SOC are way under what X8 offers, Agroprom aside from the bloodsucker wasn't that great, and the lab at Yantar was pretty much shooting everything in sight and then backtracking while you... gun down everything in sight, and then you have the CNPP underground which is an almost exclusively firefight zone with the added bonus of being able to get a different ending.

It's much harder to put mutant animals down in CoP IIRC, even if you're accurate.

I have to say though that my mutant combating tactics are pretty much running for my life/spray and pray, I never tried to headshot dogs or other mutants so maybe that has something to do with it.

New behaviour and tactics notwithstanding the animals in CoP are definitely after your ass. In SoC they did attack you because you're full of delicious meats, but typically ran away after finding out you were also full of hurty/killy bullets and not afraid to dispense some.

I am going to check that when I install COP in my laptop, I probably didn't notice it because I played with Alundaio's AI mod when I got the game.

I liked how lethal the anomalies were, though, and how lethal enemy fire was. I also liked that you were always low on money.

While I appreciated the sense of discovery that the first game offered, it also had a lot of dumb errors that destroyed much of the experience, for example, the retarded stash system that makes exploring by yourself really unrewarding and the horrible as hell secondary missions which are a mix between Fedex, stupid Fedex and kill kill kill with the added annoyance of having a time limit not only to finish the tasks, but to get your reward too, gah! By the end, the only thing I really liked were the "hardcore as hell" shooting parts... thankfully, starting from Yantar Lake I was pretty much killing Monoliths/Soldiers/Mutants every five minutes and I got a lot of fun from that.

Then, you have CS, a game that, while replicating almost every thing SOC did wrong, also gave me much more of that intense shooting experience, which added to the fact I installed a mod that removed the stupid stash system along with some weapon tweaks and lots of bugfixes made me enjoy it much more than the first part.

Until the fucking A-Life system got destroyed by some stupid bug that didn't get fixed, and as if that wasn't enough, the final boss fell from a bridge and got stuck, making the last moments of the game as anti-climatic as they could be, sigh.


Anyways, right now I am playing SOC Oblivion Lost 2.2 with the anti-stash system mod+weight reduced to 40.0 kg and I have to say it has become a much better game, though I am getting a lot of Game Over screens thanks to the military at Agroprom, I left half of my ammo at the car park at Garbage, and while I wasted most of the other half killing the dozen bandits in the way to Agro, five of them attacked the park and massacred Gus along with the other guys that were guarding it, damnit :cry:

Edit: I forgot to mention the stupid percentage that made some of your shots fail even if they hit the target, but thankfully I discovered that while in the Cordon and installed a mod that fixed it.
 

Carrion

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Red forest was definitely the high point of CS, but CS itself was buggy, broken, too much action focused, had wildly inaccurate weapons in their base state, shit ballistics (pistol rounds and shotgun pellets literally vanishing in mid air), shit aiming (pistols, underslung GLs) and the ending was visibly made over few days by a single guy with a laptop and a crate of vodka.

I liked how lethal the anomalies were, though, and how lethal enemy fire was. I also liked that you were always low on money.
I think SoC and CS were two really good games that could've been made into two awesome games had they put all the horror/survival aspects into the other game and the action/faction stuff into the other (and actually made the latter work instead of it being the broken mess that it was). Some of the missions in SoC had an incredible atmosphere that you never really found in the other parts of the Zone, and the survival aspect of the game was kind of lacking. On the other hand I really loved the pitch-black nights, the lethal anomalies and trying not to get blown up when searching for artifacts in CS, but then the actual missions didn't have any of that atmosphere since you were mostly just running around and shooting stuff with a bunch of other guys. It was like they didn't fully know what kind of a game they wanted to make so they just kind of mixed different elements and hoped that it would be good. SoC was undoubtedly the more focused and better of the games, but I've got a soft spot for CS as well.
 

Darklife

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Clear Sky could have been a real gem, had they put more time and effort into creating it. Most of its ideas and improvements were for the better. Artifact hunting was laughable in SoC and it could have arguably also used a more refined faction system. On the first part they did a really good job, making actually getting some of the more rare ones an actual challenge. I do think that they went overboard with the factions though. Most of the Zone became really bloody cramped and felt more like a gameworld from The Elder Scrolls than STALKER. The fact that it was a buggy mess didn't really help either.

But if there was one thing CS did great, it was the visuals. Most of that crap was really and still is cutting edge. The god rays, and wet surfaces come to mind. Even though the latter never worked on nVidia cards for some reason, it looked and still looks stunning.

All of this could have produced a much better game, had they not altered the feel of the gameworld so much. Take for example the Swamp. It was a new map, pretty damn big and desolate, thus it wasn't so overcrowded like the other old ones. Even though there were plenty of NPC outposts around, they felt more precarious and exposed compared to the ones in say, Cordon. I remember walking around those reeds at dusk, always mindful of those special bloodsuckers was a terrifying experience. Had they kept it that way, the game wouldn't be so divisive now.
 

Gerrard

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I love how even after people made extensive mods for CS no one was able to actually fix the remaining bugs in vanilla game.
 

GreyViper

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The only reason to play CS is for The Faction War Mod other then that no point what so ever. Its kind of sad that it did not make into COP, because the idea worked, it just wasn't used for full effect. The Faction war does make it better, but it still need lots of work to get the best out of it. CS buggines also dose not help.
For me COP mod leaving S.M.A.R.T.E.R aside, is SGM still the only mod to play with AtmosF. There is just to much content, that outweighed the bugs and not perfect translation. Its just so much fun to discover new stuff and quests that weren't in vanilla, implemented or activated. One thing that did piss me off was that running back and forth between cordon and swamps, before you get to Zaton, the fracking quest mines. :x That quest line better be gone in next version.


 

pakoito

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Bump to this thread. Misery 2.0 coming at the end of the month. Steam Summer Sale starts tomorrow. Which game should I buy and with what mods must it be played?
 

ArchAngel

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Mar 16, 2015
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sorry for Necro but I need Codex advice. Playing Fo4 a bit just reminded me I could play a real post-apo FPS like Stalker that I tried once but never got far. I played SoC for about 1 hour, got into a fight with that Spetnatz patrol that goes near your starting camp and after managing to kill them rage quitted the game once another one respawned from the edge of the map (this was at the time I hated any FPS with respawning enemies with a passion). Never got back to the game.

So I want to get back to it now. I was thinking of playing SoC with Starter Pack and this AMK. What version of the game is better for this (GoG or Steam)? Is there something I need to be especially careful about?
What is the main difference between SoC and later two Stalkers? I doubt I will play all 3 as I don't have time, should I rather play one of the later ones with some mods?

I am not really into most challenging FPS combat, I am more interested in good gunplay and plenty of options for discovery, looting and if possible an interesting story. I don't want bullet spoonges gameplay like in Fo4, I want humans to die from one headshot unless they got best protective head gear.
 

ArchAngel

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GoG reviews are saying CoP is the best one out of the 3 games. Should I play that one instead? Any good mods for that one?
Seems it is on sale on Steam right now, 50% off for another 7 hours.

So if anyone will tell my why I should get SoC over CoP they got about 7 hours to do it. Or if you know that good mods don't work with Steam version.
 
Last edited:

Baron Dupek

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Jul 23, 2013
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ArchAngel

Let's start with mods for the first playthrough.
First - don't use mods.
Second - don't install Complete mods, even though a lot of people advise for it. They're idiots. It make game bit more pretty, but game is dumber, some ideas are also dumb (carry limit increased, bigger than Exoskeleton in vanilla).

I might recommend either play with ZRP - Zone Restoration Project (Complete have it but obsolete version) which is used in some mods.
Or this one http://www.moddb.com/mods/amk-autumn-edition/downloads

Differences between games?
Clear Sky is linear, just like ShoC but you can feel it more. Also it have wasted concept of Faction War, some mods fix that. I like the game anyway.
Oh, and Clear Sky have best performance from all Stalker games.
Clear Sky have own version of ZRP called Sky Reclamation Project, which is also included in some mods.
Call of Pripyat is game with only 3 huge maps (compared to dozen smaller one in CS and ShoC) and don't need mods for the first playthrough.
 

tred

Augur
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Jan 2, 2012
Messages
241
my 2 cents:

Call of Pripyat with Misery Mod is much better than vanilla. If you play without mods first you'll get bored to return and repeat the game with mods, so I suggest you use Misery from the start, it is great.
SoC has the best atmosphere. With mods it gets even better and less buggy. A mod that I find very minimalist but game changer is Old Good Stalker Evolution, but there are other mods that are also very good.
Clear Sky I've never played.
 

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