STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Tweed]

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?

Yes and no. All they really are is an excuse to get the player moving across the world and the rewards are okay.

 

[Tacgnol]

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??

Normally the only reason you get mission failures in Anomaly is the quest giver or target (if it's a mission to deliver an item or the like) dies.

Not quite sure what happened in this instance. If another squad kills the mutants you still get quest completion/credit usually.

 

[Silva]

This shit makes me want to try warfare mode as Monalith. How is it?

 

[Silva]

Almost had a stroke this night. Hearing ASMR (been addicted to this stuff lately) and falling asleep with earphones on... man... some commercial entered with high volume and jumpscared the shit out of me. As I was playing Stalker on one of those underground X-labs before bed, my brain associated the noise with a bloodsucking shout. It was terrifying.

TL;DR: don't mix Stalker with ASMR.

 

[Silva]

Anomaly is probably the best Stalker game you can play right now, especially if you're into modding the experience even further.

Strong disagree. Anomaly is doing very very good things but it still fucking DOESNT GET IT. Still has a retard economy based around being a professional trash collector and artifacts and artifact hunting (the very essence of stalkan) are still close to worthless... the lack of urgency towards changing this shows anomaly is made by guys that fundamentally dont understand stalker and thats right because a lot of these guys loved MISERY and hated vanilla. I get the feeling a lot of the anomaly fanbase would be deliriously happy if they turned it into escape from tarkov at this point.

Every time i play anomaly im impressed by the visuals and especially the audio and all the neat new features and thennnn..... i drop it after about 30 minutes.

Conversely i am 10 hours into yet another NLC7 playthrough in spite of its AWFUL translation.

Just so you know: Anomaly at this time (version 1.5.1) rewards artifact hunting / bartering, as well as trash-collecing/crafting if one wishes, so it's the best of both worlds. I'm playing it now as an ecologist totally ignoring the trash-collecting and focused on artifacts. It's been nice (a bit too nice actually - I had to reduce paying price from traders).

Also, I share your problems with Misery but only from 2.0 forward. Misery 1.x was great and not a trash-collector as later versions. If there's a way to merge 1.0 with Gunslinger it's probably my favorite CoP run package.

 

[Tweed]

This shit makes me want to try warfare mode as Monalith. How is it?

Warfare by itself is extremely boring. A nice idea with poor execution.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/warfare-alife-overhaul this is your best bet for more engaging Warfare and it even got an update recently, no idea what changed. This is what I use and I tack on Warfare now to help keep things interesting.

 

[Silva]

This shit makes me want to try warfare mode as Monalith. How is it?

Warfare by itself is extremely boring. A nice idea with poor execution.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/warfare-alife-overhaul this is your best bet for more engaging Warfare and it even got an update recently, no idea what changed. This is what I use and I tack on Warfare now to help keep things interesting.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind after I finish the current (story) playthrough.

Btw, I'm on the quest to turn off the Brain Scorcher now but decided to visit Zaton first to see how Beard is going - but as soon as I step on the Skadovsk, I'm raided by wave after wave of zombies and monolith. It was hilarious as they entered the boat and killed everyone except Beard, Owl and the guittar dude. I'm going to reload and try turning off that Brain Scorcher first. It makes me sad seeing the Skadovsk like that.

 

[flyingjohn]

Any good mod that makes weapon actually accurate without making the game too easy?
Or should i just tweak zrp?

 

[Silva]

Back to my Anomaly adventures as an ecologist..

Those Monaliths guarding the Scorcher are kicking my ass. That means I'm back to faction grinding for better gear. I found out that 500 reputation is the first threshold for new gear, and 800 is the next one. Don't know if there is more after that. I'm looking for good ballistic armor but Ecologist ones are shitty at that, only caring for anomaly protection. I hope Freedom has something as I'm working my rep with them right now (Duty should have for sure but I don't like the guys).

Any good mod that makes weapon actually accurate without making the game too easy?
Or should i just tweak zrp?

I find these games hard as fuck, but then I never played vanilla much. The mods I played (Autumn Aurora, Misery and now Anomaly) all fix that weird default shooting where you unload clips in enemies but only a couple bullets hit. Those mods usually have enemy's accuracy sliders that you can adjust to compensate. Never tried ZRP but if it fixes it, chances are it also has those sliders hidden somewhere.

Edit: found this post with tips for doing it manually and with ZRP.

 

[Baron Dupek]

If you don't want to wait then check debug menu where you can see every item available in the game, maybe it shows item properties too?
I think that there is some sort heavy armor (not exo) but forgot where you can buy it. Good armor combined with decent anomalous protection, it might be good enough to walk through toxic and fire anomalies?

And you can fight in Monolith territory with any weapon, just aim to the head and try to not expose too much.
You can even go there with some WW2 weapon. You might need better armor to save yourself from random shots.
AI in this game is vicious and some elite forces like Monololo are not laughing matter. How you don't have weak heart and aren't prone to heart attacks, they like to sneak around.

 

[Tacgnol]

Those Monaliths guarding the Scorcher are kicking my ass. That means I'm back to faction grinding for better gear. I found out that 500 reputation is the first threshold for new gear, and 800 is the next one. Don't know if there is more after that. I'm looking for good ballistic armor but Ecologist ones are shitty at that, only caring for anomaly protection. I hope Freedom has something as I'm working my rep with them right now (Duty should have for sure but I don't like the guys).

Freedom armours in Anomaly tend to focus on low weight, artefact slots and combat protection. Clear sky equipment tends to be a good combo of combat protection and anomaly protection.

If you want to see the exact stats on everything, do as MotherMachinae suggested. Enable debug mode and press f7 during main menu with a game loaded. Only thing is I don't think the debug menu lets you see armour stats correctly so you'll probably have to add them to inventory to compare.

 

[Silva]

Fuck this Scorcher. I did it but it was grindy and frustrating as hell.

I took the long range scope advice, thanks MotherMachinae . Even with this I had to cheat by reducing the enemy accuracy in the options (I guess my aiming is poorer than I thought) and still needed twenty reloads or something (in Campfire mode, meaning it became a checkpoints affair). I also had a Saiga shotgun that allowed me to cheese "Commandos 2" style - enter a small room and kill enemies as they cross the doorway. Took a dozen or so of them this way.

I was lucky that a pseudogiant appeared in the forest besides the road, attracting lots of monolith and letting me infiltrate farther; and a psy-storm hit right when these guys detected me. I managed to climb in that small room over the fence while the enemies stayed outside and vanished after the storm ended. Love this kind of emergent thing in the game.

So, Red Forest next. I hope it's less frustrating than Scorcher. I already decided to go back and "faction grind" for better gear (I'm befriending Clear Sky now, thanks Tacgnol ).


P.S: I find this one of the areas where CoP is better than ShoC, less waves of enemies thrown at the player and more focused, well-thought set pieces instead. BUT the atmosphere of ShoC remains unbeaten - the Scorcher is fucking insane, the alien sky above (while the antenna is on), weird sounds fucking your head from inside, the enemies shouting at you like fanatics. Amazing shit.

 

[Baron Dupek]

So, Red Forest next. I hope it's less frustrating than Scorcher.

Ohohoho
Not on the Scorcher level but it's far from safe, both fauna and humans alike will give you hard time. And in some cirumstances it's pure hell when either of them spawn in big number...

 

[Tweed]

Fuck this Scorcher. I did it but it was grindy and frustrating as hell.

I took the long range scope advice, thanks MotherMachinae . Even with this I had to cheat by reducing the enemy accuracy in the options (I guess my aiming is poorer than I thought) and still needed twenty reloads or something (in Campfire mode, meaning it became a checkpoints affair). I also had a Saiga shotgun that allowed me to cheese "Commandos 2" style - enter a small room and kill enemies as they cross the doorway. Took a dozen or so of them this way.

I was lucky that a pseudogiant appeared in the forest besides the road, attracting lots of monolith and letting me infiltrate farther; and a psy-storm hit right when these guys detected me. I managed to climb in that small room over the fence while the enemies stayed outside and vanished after the storm ended. Love this kind of emergent thing in the game.

So, Red Forest next. I hope it's less frustrating than Scorcher. I already decided to go back and "faction grind" for better gear (I'm befriending Clear Sky now, thanks Tacgnol ).


P.S: I find this one of the areas where CoP is better than ShoC, less waves of enemies thrown at the player and more focused, well-thought set pieces instead. BUT the atmosphere of ShoC remains unbeaten - the Scorcher is fucking insane, the alien sky above (while the antenna is on), weird sounds fucking your head from inside, the enemies shouting at you like fanatics. Amazing shit.

The Red Forest is one of the most dangerous areas in the game aside fron the CNPP, have fun.

Freedom armours in Anomaly tend to focus on low weight, artefact slots and combat protection. Clear sky equipment tends to be a good combo of combat protection and anomaly protection.

Clear Sky really gets screwed on good armor overall though and if you want to fix that you'll have to go down the rabbit hole of mods and mod mergers, which I did since Clear Sky is my favorite faction. I use M.A.O. Exoseva and the Exoseva Clear Sky patch for more gear.

 

[Silva]

Clear Sky really gets screwed on good armor overall though and if you want to fix that you'll have to go down the rabbit hole of mods and mod mergers, which I did since Clear Sky is my favorite faction. I use M.A.O. Exoseva and the Exoseva Clear Sky patch for more gear

That would be good. Are those compatible with Trader Overhaul?

 

[Tacgnol]

Clear Sky really gets screwed on good armor overall though and if you want to fix that you'll have to go down the rabbit hole of mods and mod mergers, which I did since Clear Sky is my favorite faction. I use M.A.O. Exoseva and the Exoseva Clear Sky patch for more gear

That would be good. Are those compatible with Trader Overhaul?

Trader Overhaul does have a lot of compat patches available. Worst case it probably wouldn't be ultra difficult to merge them manually if they modify the same trader inventories.

 

[Tweed]

That would be good. Are those compatible with Trader Overhaul?

Trader Overhaul does have a lot of compat patches available. Worst case it probably wouldn't be ultra difficult to merge them manually if they modify the same trader inventories.

Can't say on my end. I hated Trader Overhaul and got rid of it quickly.

Merging most mods isn't difficulty, just tedious. You need to grab a copy of winmerge and then find what you're looking for in each modified file. Usually all it takes is a quick merge so all the changes work together in one big file, but sometimes you have to pay careful attention or you can break shit. For example I like having full upgrades on my weapons and armor, but the full upgrades mod was out of date so I had to go in and meticulously edit each weapon to make sure they worked properly, especially since I use B&S. If there's an easier way to simply enable full upgrades on everything I never found it.

 

[Silva]

Why do you hate Trader Overhaul, Tweed ? I thought it just made traders more faction-thematic?

 

[Tweed]

Why do you hate Trader Overhaul, Tweed ? I thought it just made traders more faction-thematic?

All it did was gimp a lot of traders and add even more tedium to a game that already has too much. Plus if you insist on bolting on that mess it means even more merging to get it to play nice with everything else.

 

[Tacgnol]

Yeah I'm not a big fan of TO, it adds a lot of tedium to finding items. Also as Tweed says it causes a ton of mod incompat.

There are patches for most of the big mods, but still.

 

[Silva]

About Trader Overhaul, I can't comment as I started with it. I don't have much problem, but I can see how the traders inventories become bloated fast. Next playthrough I'll start without it to see what it changes.

Two add-ons that are purely aesthetical but I like anyway are faster animations (food, drug etc) that comes with Boomsticks, and the Radio expansion one with volume increasing. It's still weird, it seems the radio sound does not propagate correctly as it did in original CoP, but at least now it's louder when you're near it.

_ _ _

Anyway, Red Forest was much easier than Scorcher. I had a Guardian of Freedom armor (the one adapted from Spetsnaz) with a good helmet, and a sweet VSS "Savant" from the ecologists. 9x39 rounds are way stronger than the 5.45, meaning that even when I miss the headshot, enemies go down with a couple more body shots. I also managed to avoid danger by sneaking through the left side of the map and away from the forest as much as I could. When I had to fight I was halfway through the map already.

About Zaton and the Skadovski: I faced the same initial hordes of zombies + monolith when I arrived as before, BUT now once I finished the initial wave they didn't re-spawn. So I guess taking down the Scorcher did improve things.

 

[Silva]

Tweed you faggot, I just unlocked this nice Clear Sky SEVA custom tailored by Novikov or something. It shows up on Spore shop after you reach 1000 goodwill with them. You were probably drunk saying Clear Sky has no good armor.

Edit: actually, I remembered I'm using Trader Overhaul, so there's that. Speaking of which, I'm starting to understand the patterns and I'm liking it. It makes different traders specialize in different merchandise, offering better and cheaper kinds of goods. This promotes the same mindset one has for Sakharov and artifacts, but for other traders too (I.e: Butcher at the Garage sells the cheaper shotgun rounds). Aka more trips for strategical barter or resupply.

 

[Tweed]

As I recall CS's SEVA still isn't as good as the others and enjoy being riddled full of holes. SEVAs are only good for artifact hunting.

 

[Baron Dupek]

IIRC Mercenaries have some good SEVA-like suit that have p. good stats. Good reason to hunt mercs down...

 

[Tweed]

Mercs usually have the best gear outside of Monolith or UNISG. At least unmodded. The CS ExoSEVA is really nice, but very expensive.