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STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

Silva

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How does this "Provak" compares to that "Escape from Pripyat" modpack?

After further playing I decided it was mostly garbage. A lot of the guns that are ported are hackjobs with lots of unfinished things like broken mod trees and even the inability to repair the weapon outside of mechanic which is a deal breaker considering the costs. There was also a load of other junk that started to grate on me like the chosen sound effects and I found that I really hate the HD models that everyone touts. In the end I went throug the arduous process of merging mods and making personal patches to get everything I wanted running together.
Any tips for an Anomaly first timer?

Btw, do you think an i3 + 16gb RAM + GTX970 gpu + SSD can handle it?
 

Tweed

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Any tips for an Anomaly first timer?

Btw, do you think an i3 + 16gb RAM + GTX970 gpu + SSD can handle it?

Should. The game will probably chug though on maxed out settings, but those are always unoptimized anyway. First time you should probably just play the game as it is so you can get an idea of what you want to change as you go along, there's way too many mods and its a rabbit hole, I was running 144 different mods and a handful of those were personal merge patches. I spent about a month or so just tweaking my selection. Once you decide you do want to mod the game use Mod Manager 2 to keep everything in order. Eventually you'll probably want to turn off the item use animations because they slow everything down, forget muh realism where wasted time is concerned.

EDIT: Oh wait yeah there's one mod to install, the purge blowout siren, it's way better than the original.
 

Tacgnol

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So, after a long time I'm feeling the urge to go back to he zone....

I see this Anomaly mod is the new hot. It's apparently a big sandbox thing with all 3 games maps and factions and quests.

But how is this faction thing? Can I join factions and rise through the ranks and gain access to new toys as I do so? Also, do the other factions turn hostile on me? Are there enough quests for each faction to avoid getting repetitive?

Other than that, any other mods out there worth taking a look?

Thanks bros and sis.

Edit: in before DraQ suggest some weird unpronounceable potato shit like Zonarolibskaya Mod or something thats incomplete, full of bugs and untranslated but insists it's the best in the world.. :lol:

Yes to the faction stuff, you do repeat generic missions to build rep which unlocks new gear from the faction store and harder missions. Each faction has unique versions of the main outfits, for instance Clear Sky outfits lean towards anomaly protection over combat, but provide more combat protection than ecologists for instance.

There is a story mode, but they are highly cut down versions of the main missions from SOC/CS/COP with most of the set pieces removed. There are a couple of original pieces of story content that you can play after the "vanilla" story quests but they are super short and not very interesting.

tl;dr How much you'll get out of Anomaly depends on how much you like freeplay. The story content is pretty shit. Warfare with a high alife population can be quite fun if you enjoy big shootouts and lots of combat.
Thanks. More questions if you don't mind:

1. Is the economy retarded artificially harsh as in Misery 2.x where you risk you life for an artifact that's worth a loaf of bread? I like a good sim (loved the old Misery 1) but that's too much.

2. Are Factions quests lore-coherent? Say, if I go with Ecologists, does that mean I will spend more time on anomalies hunting artifacts instead of shooting people?

3. Even if the new story is shit, at least the writing (for quests) is okay/decent, or utterly shit amateur stuff? To be honest the original Stalker SoC was pretty meh in story too, felt like amateur stuff IMO, and I played the shit out of it anyway (CoP was better). I don't mind the plot being weak, but if how the characters speak through dialogue is nonsensical it kills the game for me.

Sorry, missed this post.

1. There are separate difficulty settings for gameplay and economy which can be further customised in the settings menu individually. Anomaly generally has the flow of early game being hard to get by and end game being super easy. Artefacts in particular are worth a shitton of cash if you sell them to the ecologist professors. Economy is definitely a lot easier than Misery on the first two economy difficulty settings.

2. Yeah each faction generally has a particular mission focus. Military/duty give you more combat oriented missions for instance.

3. Writing is generally non existent on the story content. You get a bit of exposition/explanation from some characters like the Swamp doc then go loot Strelok's stash etc. None of it is really the focus of the mod. The original content (two bonus storylines) they made is a little more interesting, but super short. Main reason to do the story content is to unlock some interesting factions like SIN or the UN's expedition which you can then play as on subsequent playthroughs.
 

Tweed

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I though the story even with the Director's Cut was horrible and entirely pointless. Also if you intend to play as the UN group you'll want mods to fix their broken questline and merchant files which seriously messes stuff up in Warfare mode.
 

Tacgnol

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I though the story even with the Director's Cut was horrible and entirely pointless. Also if you intend to play as the UN group you'll want mods to fix their broken questline and merchant files which seriously messes stuff up in Warfare mode.

Yeah if you go into Anomaly with expectations for story/set pieces like the trilogy, you'll be disappointed.
 

Silva

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I though the story even with the Director's Cut was horrible and entirely pointless.
15328688455b5db8ed5d1ae_1532868845_3x2_md.jpg


Oh man, that's a shame. The summary at their lore page sounded interesting with the return of Strelok and Degtyarov etc. Gave the impression they did their homework.

EDIT: not related to story but found this "dialogue expansion" addon. Seems to increase diversity of speeches for every faction.
 

Tacgnol

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Anomaly looks really interesting. Has it been improved upon continuously?

It's probably the most active mega mod and has a very active modding community. The devs generally do at least one major release each year. For better or for worse it's basically become the new Call of Chernobyl in terms of how the community sees it.

Anomaly is generally a bit controversial, it seems to fall into people who love it, people who think it's alright (probably where I sit) and people who hate it.

Best thing to do is to give it a go without a ton of mods and see if you enjoy the basic gameplay. There are about 20 million mods for Anomaly that change various aspects of it, but none really change the main gameplay loop.
 

Silva

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Honestly, after finishing SoC and CoP at least a couple times each (and starting new playthroughs a ton more), Anomaly sounds like a good option to return to the zone.
 

Tweed

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Silva

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What GFX mod you guys & gals use for Anomaly?

Downloaded it yesterday and tried the Cordon area but it's ugly as fuck. Except when it's a clean day and the sun shines, of course, because then the engine lighting carries everything else. But the cordon seems particularly cloudy, grey and low-poly most times for me, no matter max settings. I'm using "reincarnated reshade" or something but it doesn't seem to change much? I see people have great skyboxes but mine seem low res.

EDIT: now with more time I tried different factions starting in different areas and the GFX are fine. Cordon looks like shit, don't know why. Maybe it's environment tables dictate it's always foggy or something. Or maybe it's the textures, I don't know. But starting both in Rostok (Duty) and the swamp (Clear Sky) the visuals are much better.

On another note, the engine is surprisingly stable and fast running. I'm almost max settings and it's butter smooth. WAY different from my previous experiences with these games. Kudos for the Anomaly team (?) for making it x64.
 
Last edited:

Silva

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Okay, I've found a good setting for making the game pretty:

- In advanced GFX options, under lighting, increase the "base sun ray" valeu to around 0.2 (it defaults to 0). This brings the godrays back in beautiful fashion but not exagerated.

- Use this 1k skyboxes resolution mod addon which makes skies beautiful again (there's a 2k one around but seems too fps costly): https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/anomaly-skyboxes

- Reincarnation Reshade (I use middle set). Which makes GFX more grounded.

This made the game looks almost like the Misery 1 mod that I remember. Pretty yet gritty.
 

cretin

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What GFX mod you guys & gals use for Anomaly?

Downloaded it yesterday and tried the Cordon area but it's ugly as fuck. Except when it's a clean day and the sun shines, of course, because then the engine lighting carries everything else. But the cordon seems particularly cloudy, grey and low-poly most times for me, no matter max settings. I'm using "reincarnated reshade" or something but it doesn't seem to change much? I see people have great skyboxes but mine seem low res.

EDIT: now with more time I tried different factions starting in different areas and the GFX are fine. Cordon looks like shit, don't know why. Maybe it's environment tables dictate it's always foggy or something. Or maybe it's the textures, I don't know. But starting both in Rostok (Duty) and the swamp (Clear Sky) the visuals are much better.

On another note, the engine is surprisingly stable and fast running. I'm almost max settings and it's butter smooth. WAY different from my previous experiences with these games. Kudos for the Anomaly team (?) for making it x64.

You may like to check out addons like enhanced shaders
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/enhanced-shaders-and-color-grading-for-151

This pretty dramatically changes how the game looks, for the better in most cases but it needs some fiddling. Personally I just used
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/100-groks-optimized-graphics-patcher
and increased the saturation value until i was happy with the image.

There's also stuff that adds glossy surfaces and water SSR.

Alternatively, a lighter option that keeps the classic look is
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/michikos-weather-revamp

Anyway yeah, cordon is almost always overcast and the art assets show their age when they aren't being helped out by dramatic light and shadows. Although I too feel there is something "off" with anomaly's visuals, like it lacks depth. I always fuck with their lead graphics guy by telling him COP vanilla looks better. I'm only half joking -- it does. It's got a great color and depth to the imagespace. I'm not sure why.
 

Silva

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Thanks cretin , I'll take a look at those. Though I found a sweet spot with that Reincarnation reshade plus the 1k new skyboxes I talked above, which made the game similar to Misery 1e palette which I loved back in the day. Game is funny in that some features are almost photorealistic (like some surfaces under the right lighting conditions) while others totally show their age. I guess it only shows how advanced it was for it's time. :obviously:

And I agree that CoP had some sweet visuals by default. I'm waiting judgement until I go back to Zaton in my current Anomaly run to see how it compares (started as Ecologist, on the Truck Cemetary trying to sneak by 2 Chimeras to finish a quest).
 

Tacgnol

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Well that's whatever. How is the gameplay though? Mutants and enemies more difficult?

It's the usual stalker difficulty curve (slightly smoother depending on difficulty setting) but hard at the beginning and super easy at the end. It's a little more extreme in Anomaly though, so early game can be very brutal. At the beginning you'll be scrounging for ammo, making every shot count and avoiding combat as much as possible as even a group of bandits can be super lethal.

It starts to get easier once you get a better outfit and better weapons. Late game is a cakewalk.

Even on the highest eco setting, I usually mod the high end outfits to cost more to prolong the difficult phases of the game.

One thing Anomaly does do superbly is allow you to customise a lot of aspects of the game in the Anomaly gameplay settings menu.
 

Silva

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Does Anomaly have a limit on concurrent quests or something?

Got a quest with Barkeep in 100 rads bar to "clean a mutant nest nearby". I took it but even before exiting the bar I received a notification saying "quest failed. You'll lose reputation with the Loners".

WTF? Did some duty patrol killed the mutants that spawned (in 5-10 seconds?), or does the mod puts a limit of 3 concurrent quests and, anything you get beyond that auto-fails??
 

cretin

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English NLC is out
https://www.moddb.com/mods/nlc/downloads/nlc-7-build-375-2911-english-edition
anyone tried it?

Boredgunner's machine translation into english.
eh

as expected

^
Outragerous bait articles to gain clicks and views by shitting on classics?
Or that you need to be not-right-in-the-head to translate big mods?
what else is new?


This is just a repack of the same (shit) machine translation we've always had, with some bug fixes.

I've resigned to the reality that we will probably never see a hand translation released for NLC7. Supposedly there are two dorks still working on it, but that means fuck all.
 

Tweed

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You may like to check out addons like enhanced shaders
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/enhanced-shaders-and-color-grading-for-151

This pretty dramatically changes how the game looks, for the better in most cases but it needs some fiddling. Personally I just used
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/100-groks-optimized-graphics-patcher
and increased the saturation value until i was happy with the image.

There's also stuff that adds glossy surfaces and water SSR.

Alternatively, a lighter option that keeps the classic look is
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/michikos-weather-revamp

Anyway yeah, cordon is almost always overcast and the art assets show their age when they aren't being helped out by dramatic light and shadows. Although I too feel there is something "off" with anomaly's visuals, like it lacks depth. I always fuck with their lead graphics guy by telling him COP vanilla looks better. I'm only half joking -- it does. It's got a great color and depth to the imagespace. I'm not sure why.

These are what I use along with aggressor weather changes and classic skies.

Looking over my modlist, one QoL you want to install right now if you haven't is https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/keep-crafting-window-opened. A ridiculously simple but life enhancing mod that makes crafting tolerable.
 

Silva

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You may like to check out addons like enhanced shaders
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/enhanced-shaders-and-color-grading-for-151

This pretty dramatically changes how the game looks, for the better in most cases but it needs some fiddling. Personally I just used
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/100-groks-optimized-graphics-patcher
and increased the saturation value until i was happy with the image.

There's also stuff that adds glossy surfaces and water SSR.

Alternatively, a lighter option that keeps the classic look is
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/michikos-weather-revamp

Anyway yeah, cordon is almost always overcast and the art assets show their age when they aren't being helped out by dramatic light and shadows. Although I too feel there is something "off" with anomaly's visuals, like it lacks depth. I always fuck with their lead graphics guy by telling him COP vanilla looks better. I'm only half joking -- it does. It's got a great color and depth to the imagespace. I'm not sure why.

These are what I use along with aggressor weather changes and classic skies.

Looking over my modlist, one QoL you want to install right now if you haven't is https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/keep-crafting-window-opened. A ridiculously simple but life enhancing mod that makes crafting tolerable.
Should I care about crafting? I'm avoiding it so far, except for those items that fix stuff >70% or something like glues and tapes.

And playing on "campfire mode" ( save on bonfires only) has been interesting. It forbids savescumming so I can't bruteforce my way through challenges. I just got to the 2nd quest on main story (enter underground to find clues on Strelok) and I've been raped bad. So I'm back doing faction jobs until I can improve my gear to try again.


P.S: do you have some pictures for that classic skies mod? I really liked the original CoP skies but the addon I'm using now lacks it I think?
 
Last edited:

Tweed

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Should I care about crafting? I'm avoiding it so far, except for those items that fix stuff >70% or something like glues and tapes.

And playing on "campfire mode" ( save on bonfires only) has been interesting. It forbids savescumming so I can't bruteforce my way through challenges. I just got to the 2nd quest on main story (enter underground to find clues on Strelok) and I've been raped bad. So I'm back doing faction jobs until I can improve my gear to try again.


P.S: do you have some pictures for that classic skies mod? I really liked the original CoP skies but the addon I'm using now lacks it I think?

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/classic-moving-clouds-151
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/anomaly-skyboxes
These two together.

If you're using campfire mode you may be interested in:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/cozy-campfires
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/calming-campfires-for-anomaly-151
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/yetanothercampfiresaving

The first one is just handy and balanced. The second one makes it so you don't have sit around for half an hour after tussling with psi damage before you can see straight again and the third is just QoL for campfires and iron man mode.
 

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