STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Maschtervoz]

Been playing some Misery these days and it's kinda meh.

Since starting it up I had been under the impression that its supposedly "hardcore" difficulty is just a bunch of gear checks. Bothered looking it up yesterday, and it seems I was right and the lead dev actually admitted that's what the mod was all about. Apparently, the idea was to try and make it have more of a hard RPG progression with areas being deathtraps at the beginning and you having to work hard to be able to take them on, citing Gothic as an inspiration. That's a nice thought, but we are talking about a game designed as a FPS that simply lacks the systems to support such a progression. So, the end result is that the mod just forced the entire idea of progression into a matter of equipment only, which just doesn't manage to make up for the lack of actual RPG systems, and just ends up nuking the economy and turning the pacing into a clusterfuck.

Actually playing the thing feels grindier than a crappy MMO. I did all the easy missions, followed stalkers around so I can loot them when they die and genocided the local boar/flesh/snork/bloodsucker population until I gathered 120k slavbucks for a SEVA suit. I figured I could use it to go artifact hunting make some easier cash and repair the nice guns I have stashed away, but artifacts don't sell for much and I'm really not looking forward to more hours of farming boars and bandits, just so I can get a gun that reliably kills mercs and the modders gonna mod around the Iron Forest and Jupiter, then farm some more for an exoskelly for skirmishes with the Monolith in Pripyat.

It's kinda funny reading the cringe inducing tough stalker fanfics in the mod guide after actually analyzing the design work though. More entertaining than grinding out a living in-game for sure.

Remember kids, don't try to make mods that attempt to force games to play like other genres. It is a dumb idea and it will make you look bad.

 

[ultimanecat]

Some of that is definitely true - artifacts are barely worth the trouble and their "explanations" for some mechanics just frustrate me more than if they admitted they wanted to punish the player.

That said, skill still plays a pretty big role (not always twitch skills, either, but exploiting the environment and AI), and you can get pretty far with a bit of care, an accurate rifle, and some drugs.

 

[Maschtervoz]

I managed to clear out the bandits at the container warehouse in Jupiter with the starter sniper guns plus a basic smg mostly by hit and run at first and then constantly running between containers to disorient the AI. It felt less exciting than taking on the Zaton mercs with starter gear in vanilla CoP. Dat grenade aimbot tho.

The problem is with the basic ideas explained here.

Spoiler

First and foremost please undestand that what is crucial for the gameplay is that I wanted to take the control over the experience out of the player's hands and make it so that its the world which enforces reaction rather than the player who can all the time choose what he wants to do.
Inspiration here was mainly taken from two games:
* Fallout 1 / 2 - go to wrong part of wasteland at the beggining of the game and you wont survive
* Gothic 1 / 2 - same as above - certain parts of the map / enemies were impossible to take out until the player progressed

2. Since Stalker is not an RPG game and the is obviously no leveling - the only way to make above happen is by restricting certain possibilities equipment-wise. In other words - it was my principle to restrict certain actions until you equip yourself adequately to be able to do certain stuff without frustration. I have assumed here that if certain thing makes you save / reload 30 times - you will refrain from doing this and rather think about doing something else for a while and returning to the 'impossible' activity once you can do it without frustration. So frustration is a tool I wanted to use to achieve and enforce above-mentioned sand-box restrictions and game progression.
Inspiration here is for ex.
* X series / EVE on-line - you begin in very tiny ship and its not a really good idea to try to destroy a mamoth ship with it right? On the contrary - thru the first 20+ hours of gameplay you should totally avoid combat and only do trading / scavenging.

3. So very large portion of gameplay desing has went into creating impossible situations (generating endless frustration) and then >>>> placing tools in-game and charging those tools properly which can make those impossible situations very much possible, non-frustrating or even easy.
This is an attempt to move the difficulty accent from the difficulty of the certain situation (which still should be challanging but deffinately not impossible and frustrating) into difficulty of preparing to certain situation (progressing enough withing allowed boundaries to aquire equipment allowing to takle cerain odd).

Above is also connected with breaking of regular game-proggresion - I did my best so that first clearing Zaton fully >>> moving to Jupiter is no longer the proper way.
Proper way - is to first clear all 'easy encounters' on both maps >>>> moving to clear 'hard encouters' on both maps when they are no longer impossible.

4. Below is the list of general areas to which sand-box gameplay in Misery has been divided to with 'tools' which make turn them from being impossible / frustrating ones into manageble / easy ones:

I. Hunting light mutants >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires shotgun / pistol with anti-tissue ammo

II. Clearing light anomaly fields (radiation, electrical) >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires gasmask (actually electrical ones dont require anything at all)

III. Clearing medium anomaly fields (acid) >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires SSP Headgear Set (screen helmet) or articats supporting the gasmask which is inadequate on its own

IV. Hunting lower-ranked humans >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires at least light combat armor (Sunrise Suit and derivative) and a weapon of choice with a supply of armor-piercing rounds (also supply of pain-reducing drugs is usefull, especially for recon)

V. Clearing heavy anomaly fields (fire) >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires SSP suit or SEVA suit (with SEVA being also the combat armor allowing to earch anomalys and fighting during a single expedition)

VI. Hunting heavy / psi mutants >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires explosive weapon / mines / supply of anti-tissue ammo. For psi mutant also headgear and anti-psi drugs are essential

VII. Hunting high-ranked NPCs / doing heavy-combat quests / going to Pripyat >>>> impossible / frustrating until player aquires heavy combat armor and hi-tier customized rifle with AP ammo

It has been made absolutely sure and it has been tested - than once appropriate 'tool' for certain stage of proggresion is attained the activity can be conducted in non-frustrating, fluent way. However trying to go against it - and tackle certain stage without the tool is to be almost impossible.

This concept has succeded - you can rely on this mechanic - just try it in-game or test it with this notion in mind.

Apart from what the over reliance on gear as a replacement for leveling does to all aspects of gameplay connected to it (everything related to NPC guns is a clusterfuck of how many silly things you have to force into the game to comply with the ideas behind the design), all it manages is to be a binary on/off switch for certain segments of the game which can only be either relatively easy or frustrating. It gives a very primitive sense of progression, compared to the much more organic and granular one found in a game like Gothic. The stuff you are supposed "do for a while" while preparing for the next batch of challenges is repetitive and unfun and getting the right gear makes whatever comes after in the linear sequence of play designed by the modders ultimately too easy to feel any satisfaction from overcoming it.

 

[ultimanecat]

I think ultimately I agree with you - the reliance on gear does mean that the mechanics surrounding the gear are too forced. There's no lootable armor and guns are almost universally in irreparable condition (it would make sense to at least be able to give multiple copies of a gun to one of the gunsmiths and get a usable one back, for instance). The main thing I was saying is that it is possible to get through at least some stuff with a bit of experience even if you are "undergeared" - I've cleared out the Iron Forest, for instance, in a Sunrise Suit just by smoking some weed, sniping the controllers and dwarves with a SIG550, and pulling bloodsuckers by dipping in and out of their aggro radius (luckily on that run there were no chimeras). It wasn't easy and it involved exploiting wonky enemy behavior, but it was its own sort of fun for what it was.

 

[Silva]

Misery 2 is a mess.

Misery 1 is perfect.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

What are some good mods for Clear Sky?
Is Complete still beginner tier?

Complete is actually a very tough mod for both Clear Sky and Pripyat. I would call Complete essential to the entire series, even if it's your first play through.

I couldn't bump up the difficulty past Veteran on either game; Clear Sky was damn near unplayable at that difficulty. It was a never-ending ant crawl while I spammed Quick Saves. TBH though, Clear Sky just plain sucked and I don't think any mod can make it better. The soundtrack, lame characters, and entire last act was really disappointing. As a huge fan of the series, I wish I would have skipped Clear Sky altogether.

Besides, I'm willing to bet that most of the overhaul mods target Pripyat since it uses the latest X-Ray engine (version 1.6).

 

[Baron Dupek]

I tested some mods from nashathedog. They got something in common - changing difficulty setting does not change bullet resistance for enemies that much.
I'm playing AMK Devolution 2.0 for CoP and I got chuckles with difficulty. Both lowest and highest setting remove the necessity of medkit use. On Rookie you barely get any damage. On Veteran you die too fast to use any medkit.
How is the mod? Ok so far. You start in the CS Swamps. They removed detector from northwest corner of the map, but the one in Kopachy village was still there. Now we can play. And maybe even drop the mod.
There're new quests, remind me SGM in that term.

I would call Complete essential to the entire series, even if it's your first play through.

How hard is to understand that Complete change too much to be a choice for 1st playthrough?

 

[Obama Phone 3]

How hard is to understand that Complete change too much to be a choice for 1st playthrough?

The HD visual overhaul is well worth any negligible changes to the game itself if you played the series on the hardest difficulty you could handle on your first run, like me. Does Complete make Chernobyl "easier?" Well, I had a tough time beating it on Master but not tough enough. I had to bump gameplay difficulty down to Veteran for both Clear Sky & Pripyat Complete, and both were MUCH tougher than Chernoblyl Complete cranked up to the hardest difficulty.

I'm used to playing my games by inching along through quick saves, which ruins the experience for some. Fuck, if I could go back in time and replay my first PC game in 2002, I would. It was Quake 1. I wasn't experienced enough to search the internet for walkthroughs, use default quick save/load, or install mods for that matter. I remember playing the first Quake on Normal difficulty by starting each level at the very beginning and each mobs scripted movements which were the same every time. It took me months to beat it.

 

[Silva]

Complete is actually a very tough mod for Pripyat

With that amount of bugs it must be really tough indeed.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

Complete is actually a very tough mod for Pripyat

With that amount of bugs it must be really tough indeed.

The only bugs I ran into were in Chernobyl. The NPC AI was absolute shit.

 

[Silva]

Lucky of you. I ran into the "infinite respawn" bug, where NPCs spawned right in front of me everytime I loaded the game.

But serious now. Complete for Chernobyl makes things too easy, and Complete for Pripyat is broken beyond repair. There are much better mods out there, both from a graphical and gameplay standpoint. Have you tried Autumn Aurora, Lurk, Misery 1, or Arsenal Overhaul for example ? Pripyat is specially playable out of box, just use Cromm Cruac mods if you want prettier gfx.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Speaking about Misery - I'm currently playing Misery1.2 and get some good blast with it.
Artifacts prices bothered me at first, but then I reminded myself that there's no shitload of items like Misery2.
One repair box to fix till 85%? Cool. And price of repair is huge but not ridicilous like Misery2, where repairing gun cost 2x-6x more than the gun basic value.
And my first contact with PSI monsters wasn't that painful and dumb like 2.1.1, enemies die fast and I die fast. Stashes are fine, these with guns are removed (in the obvious spot) or remained (if hidden well).
PS. what's the use of Survival Guide? They cost like 500r, using them give no visible effect. Can't google the answer for it.

Now I truly understood why the Misery2 suck so many dicks in so many aspects.

PS2. do you remember about Stalker ShoC conversion on CryTek engine? Well, there was lot of changes since then.
http://www.moddb.com/games/survenge/news/survengeprologue-official-announcement
Info about previous project - Neya
http://www.moddb.com/games/survenge/news/survenge-neya-died-march-update
September - demo of the project. Can't wait.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So whats the difference between misery 1.2 and misery 2?
Which one should I use for COP?

 

[Obama Phone 3]

le ? Pripyat is specially playable out of box, just use Cromm Cruac mods if you want prettier gfx.[/QU

Speaking about Misery - I'm currently playing Misery1.2 and get some good blast with it.
Artifacts prices bothered me at first, but then I reminded myself that there's no shitload of items like Misery2.
One repair box to fix till 85%? Cool. And price of repair is huge but not ridicilous like Misery2, where repairing gun cost 2x-6x more than the gun basic value.
And my first contact with PSI monsters wasn't that painful and dumb like 2.1.1, enemies die fast and I die fast. Stashes are fine, these with guns are removed (in the obvious spot) or remained (if hidden well).
PS. what's the use of Survival Guide? They cost like 500r, using them give no visible effect. Can't google the answer for it.

Now I truly understood why the Misery2 suck so many dicks in so many aspects.

PS2. do you remember about Stalker ShoC conversion on CryTek engine? Well, there was lot of changes since then.
http://www.moddb.com/games/survenge/news/survengeprologue-official-announcement
Info about previous project - Neya
http://www.moddb.com/games/survenge/news/survenge-neya-died-march-update
September - demo of the project. Can't wait.

What is Survenge? Is it Stalker related? I see that it uses Unreal 4.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

So whats the difference between misery 1.2 and misery 2?
Which one should I use for COP?

I'm wondering the same thing myself. Since I've already beat CoP Complete, I'm most interested in a total conversion, and I was led to believe that this is what Misery 2 provides.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

Lucky of you. I ran into the "infinite respawn" bug, where NPCs spawned right in front of me everytime I loaded the game.

But serious now. Complete for Chernobyl makes things too easy, and Complete for Pripyat is broken beyond repair. There are much better mods out there, both from a graphical and gameplay standpoint. Have you tried Autumn Aurora, Lurk, Misery 1, or Arsenal Overhaul for example ? Pripyat is specially playable out of box, just use Cromm Cruac mods if you want prettier gfx.

Autumn Aurora makes the game look worse, Lurk is no longer in development (it only fixes weapons), Arsenal Overhaul (same deal as Lurk). Complete only nerfs Chernobyl, NOT the sequels.

 

[DraQ]

Is there any version of misery that doesn't make everything brown (vanilla or SoC style looks are acceptable), doesn't perform any bullshit voodoo with enemy resistance to headshots/gunfire or to restrict availability of enemy equipment and doesn't require swapping out files to choose character class (preferably is just classless)?

Hard or semi-hard gear gating of anomalies, radiation and psionic mutants is acceptable.

Also, I liked it how pistol rounds were nearly impotent against body armor in SoC.
Blamblaming everything with a handgun/SMG like it was a fucking AR in CoP was decline.

How hard is to understand that Complete change too much to be a choice for 1st playthrough?

The HD visual overhaul is well worth any negligible changes to the game itself

Graphicswhore detected.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Lucky of you. I ran into the "infinite respawn" bug, where NPCs spawned right in front of me everytime I loaded the game.

But serious now. Complete for Chernobyl makes things too easy, and Complete for Pripyat is broken beyond repair. There are much better mods out there, both from a graphical and gameplay standpoint. Have you tried Autumn Aurora, Lurk, Misery 1, or Arsenal Overhaul for example ? Pripyat is specially playable out of box, just use Cromm Cruac mods if you want prettier gfx.

Autumn Aurora makes the game look worse, Lurk is no longer in development (it only fixes weapons), Arsenal Overhaul (same deal as Lurk). Complete only nerfs Chernobyl, NOT the sequels.

I wasn't a fan of Lurk either.
It made the game look a bit cartoony, took away hunger and had an odd habit of spawning 20 or so guys in Agropom.

I was quite fond of AA, though I felt the attempt to make it like AMK (blowouts and DNS) was sloppily executed.

 

[Obama Phone 3]

Is there any version of misery that doesn't make everything brown (vanilla or SoC style looks are acceptable), doesn't perform any bullshit voodoo with enemy resistance to headshots/gunfire or to restrict availability of enemy equipment and doesn't require swapping out files to choose character class (preferably is just classless)?

Hard or semi-hard gear gating of anomalies, radiation and psionic mutants is acceptable.

Also, I liked it how pistol rounds were nearly impotent against body armor in SoC.
Blamblaming everything with a handgun/SMG like it was a fucking AR in CoP was decline.

How hard is to understand that Complete change too much to be a choice for 1st playthrough?

The HD visual overhaul is well worth any negligible changes to the game itself

Graphicswhore detected.

Nope, no graphics whore. Complete fixes the shitty look that GSC readily admits to (Chernobyl visuals were dated even in 2007).

 

[DraQ]

Graphicswhore detected.

Nope, no graphics whore. Complete fixes the shitty look that GSC readily admits to (Chernobyl visuals were dated even in 2007).

Shat all over Oblivion which was considered cutting edge in 2006 (at least by clueless journos).
Had really nice dynamic lighting and shadow system from the very start.
All it really asked for were godrays and rain effects CS added.

Works for me.

 

[Baron Dupek]

LURK exist in 2 good mods that make if better choice than original. It's Kingo's64 mod pack and Doom's Mod Merge, both in Stalker mods repository on Nashathedog's moddb page.

Obama Phone 3
Long story short - it started with project, where people tried to convert Shadow of Chernobyl into different engine (CryEngine), then they dropped it, then game inspired by the ShoC went into developement.
I though NEYA was dropped, just like LURK mod, but they decided to keep it alive. They should focus on one project but I'm not them so whatever.

CthuluIsSpy
Misery1.2 and Misery 2.1.1? Lot of them. but I got not that good memory to list everything. Generaly speaking - Misery2 add more bullshit to game already filled with bullshit. Period.
Misery2 add enormous amount of items (food and repair system with tools+addons) and make everything more tedious. Want go outside? Check your inventory for few minutes. Cook food and maintain weapons and armors. Think twice or more about every step.
They created situation where repair price went to the sky.
Also in Misery2 specialization went too far, creating situation where Assaulter exhaust faster wearing leather jacket than heavy armor full of plates.
They wanted to make character progress without XP and level, only to make things worse and tedious.
Go with Misery1, Misery2 is for advanced Stalker players that like to waste time on lot of stuff and like to deal with enormous amount of bullshit.

DraQ
Misery1.2? Or maybe try SGM + Misery (is classless iirc) combo mod (or not cause they make it grey, but not brown at least), you may try to install AtmosFear by CrommCruac that's supposed to work with most mods unless they state otherwise.
And I don't know what are you shooting with but in Misery1 enemy bullet resistance is low, in Misery2 shotgun shred everything except choppers (or even them?), not to mention revolvers a'la Magnum.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Ok, where do I find a copy of 1.2? Moddb just has 1.2 rework or something, which apparently isn't finished.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Ok, where do I find a copy of 1.2? Moddb just has 1.2 rework or something, which apparently isn't finished.

There, the whole repository with it.

 

[DraQ]

DraQ
Misery1.2? Or maybe try SGM + Misery (is classless iirc) combo mod (or not cause they make it grey, but not brown at least), you may try to install AtmosFear by CrommCruac that's supposed to work with most mods unless they state otherwise.
And I don't know what are you shooting with but in Misery1 enemy bullet resistance is low, in Misery2 shotgun shred everything except choppers (or even them?), not to mention revolvers a'la Magnum.

I haven't played much and would need to check which version.
The "everything is brown and foggy" bullshit got on my nerves (given that SoC was based on actual look of the Zone, and CoP wasn't far off from that).
I'm averse to pointless cosmetic replacers.

I do know that there was some heated discussion when one of the Misery versions allowed NPCs to endure headshots to make the game harder or more balanced or whatever, but I don't remember which version it was.

 

[Silva]

DraQ, just play Misery with Absolute Nature Lite over it. I've always did it and its works fine.

Also, its really easy to import Misery2 improved helmet HUDs to Misery1 if you want. Just overwrite a handful of files and that's it. (don't remember the files names now, but I can see into that if anybody wants)