First Time STALKER? Try Vanilla First
Before playing any mod, you should try out the game in its pure vanilla state, to understand how the mods change gameplay and other game aspects.
Why Complete 2009/2012 Is Not Vanilla 2.0:
- All weapons have their accuracy increased by 10-20.
- Damage done to everybody is decreased by various percentages.
- Weight limit is increased by 10kg, the maximum being 70kg. In vanilla, the Exo-suit enabled up to 80kg!
- Limits NPC's eye sight distance so they can't spot you from beyond ~100 meters. Said to remove enemies skill to spot you from "unrealistic distances," but really means you always see them first every time.
- Sound radius of the knife and other critical sounds such as death cries, falling dead bodies, night-vision goggles, grass, and footsteps are greatly reduced.
- scientific suits with 90% rad protection now feature an anti-rad injection system.
- Bandages auto-apply at 10% health.
The following features are also available in other mods, but are usually balanced out with other forms of difficulty:
- You can bribe hostile factions to leave you alone.
- A repair kit that lets you service your armor and weapons without the need for a trader can be bought from traders.
- The bar trader and Screw now sell weapons and armor repair services.
- Elite Nightvision, essentially the black & white night vision based on the psy_antenna postprocess effect, replaces the original UV-based blue NV. Perfect vision in the dark is now possible, even without a real light source.
In short, it makes the game a bit easier than vanilla, which may be fine if you are a pure-FPS type of player.
An older version of ZRP is used for Complete 2009's bug fixes. It lacks the Permanent Radiation Bug fix but you can add that. Just search for the fix if you need it.