STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Curratum]

Anomaly is hideous bloatware.

 

[Tacgnol]

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]

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

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.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

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

 

[Tacgnol]

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]

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.

 

[zool]

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

Link? Is this for the base game or Anomaly?

 

[Tweed]

Link? Is this for the base game or Anomaly?

Anomaly, it's a fluff mod for immersuns.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/dialogue-expanded-v4

EDIT: And no, despite the nice looking descriptions for the storyline it's poorly written and very corndog, especially the stuff dealing with the sin cult. The faction's backstory itself is fine, but the actual plot is crap and the various missions you go on are a trudge.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

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

 

[Silva]

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.

 

[Silva]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

 

[Baron Dupek]

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?

 

[ferratilis]

boredgunner, haven't heard that name in a while. If you want to know who you're dealing with, read this:
https://gnd-tech.com/2020/09/why-isometric-2-5d-rpgs-should-have-never-come-back/

:D

 

[Silva]

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]

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]

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]

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?

 

[Tweed]

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.

 

[Silva]

Tweed you faggot, that's the same skybox I use. Those campfire mods are neat though. Thanks.

About crafting...? Would you recommend using it and if so why?

 

[Tweed]

Tweed you faggot, that's the same skybox I use. Those campfire mods are neat though. Thanks.

About crafting...? Would you recommend using it and if so why?

You use it mostly to make drugs so you can keep a steady supply of scientific medkits and strength boosters running through your system. Nothing staves off sleep like snorting five pounds of cocainum. I recommend Grok's Craft and Repair Overhaul, it's one of the few mods of his I actually like, but I also have the ammo maker mod and my own personal mod merge patch so the two play nice with each other and so that crafting ammo actually makes at least some bit of sense.

 

[Silva]

Is Ecologists easy mode? Friends with military, fairly safe spot with good anomalies, Sakharov pays well for artifacts, etc.

In fact, Sakharov pays TOO well for artifacts. It makes sense that he pays more than others, but it feels a tad much. I would probably reduce it by 15-20%.

And what is this quest "I want to help with Ecologists research" that only Sakharov gives? Are there faction-specific story quests in Anomaly?

 

[Silva]