Trave's Stalker 2 Modding Bible
---- [WIP] ----- All the information I've gathered so far and will be Adding as i go. ----- [WIP] ----
This Guide is sponsored by Dyslexia™, yes i know there are typos! Don't forget that ctrl f
exists and if you click on the Table of contents it will take you to the section of the site.
Im eventually going to migrate this site to a less claustrophobic, more navigable and less free host.
-- Very Useful links -- [List of Npc ID's] [List of Quest ID's] [list of CONSOL Comands] [base weapon stats] [Every Major Cfg File] [Vurtual Textures/Texturing Guide] [UE Pak File Load order Documentation] [ how to make a Mod that loads as a DLC ] [Teleport Coordinates]
Table Of Contents
Click and it will take you to the segment.
Modding your game
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Installing a mod
Installing a mod is not very difficult basically if you read the descriptions the mod developers write you should be good.
mod not working? ---- read the description!
Game started crashing? ---- read the description!
Confused on how the mod works? ---- read the description!
(The comments are also a fun place to look)
Right now the central hub for all S2 mods seam to be nexus but there are 2 or 3 on moddb.
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl
For the most part unless the Dev says otherwise you are going to want to make a folder "~mods" in your root directory
mod file path For steam
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~mods
mod file path For game pass
XboxGames/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2- Heart of Chornobyl (Windows)/Content/Stalker2/Content/Paks/~mods
Also keep in mind there may be differences and mods you will not be able to use if you are playing on game pass because of "Microsoft™"
As for mod loaders ive seen some people are using Vortex.... but that would mean that you would have to use vortex so that's a huge downside.
Modpack developer Rage has shared his plugin for Mo2 to get that working for you if you would like
Your Engine.ini and you.
Its natural everyone has one and its nothing you should be ashamed of.
So the best way I "a laymen" can explain it is your engine ini is like the hidden settings menu for unreal. you can set parameters on a bunch of things to do with visuals and how the engine itself runs. everyone and their mother has "the cure" just try what's best for you and experiment.
If you don't have one from a specific mod on nexus you can simply create one by making a text file named engine.ini
For Gamepass
%localappdata%\Stalker2\Saved\Config\WinGDK
For Steam/gog
%localappdata%\Stalker2\Saved\Config\Windows
Notable Settings ( ill add more or make its own page in the future )
- [SystemSettings]
r.PSOWarmup.WarmupMaterials=0
1 enables shader warmup on start 0 disables it. if you disable it its a good idea to turn it on from time to time or after changing any settings to let your shaders compile.
- [Engine.InputSettings]
bEnableMouseSmoothing=False
bViewAccelerationEnabled=False
RawMouseInputEnabled=1
to turn off mouse smoothing
Also you can adjust a lot of these same settings live in game if you have the in game console enabled just instead of r.visual.setting=1
use r.visual.setting 1
without the =
and just a space
Mo2 for S2
Install a portable instance of Mo2
Download that .py file and place it in \modorganizer2\plugins\basic_games\games
Disclamer!
Mods can break
with updates! Mods that add things to the game Can break saves!
mix those together and you can get fucked harder then a bloodsucker in Rostock. If you play with any mods that may seam like it could break your save if it suddenly stopped working you may want to turn off automatically updating in Steam/GOG
, and then checking to see if its safe or if the mod has an update.
How to Disable Steam Auto Updates & Prevent Mods Breaking!
good tutorial video (havent tested it myself on stalker 2 yet )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8F4dQ_QF48&t=8s
Some updates may also change things in .cfg configuration files most mods right now are changes to these files.
If GSC changes anything to these files in an update the changes they made will be overwritten by a mod. A Mod will Take Priority Over an update Since its Loaded Last
The game may not break but you dont get any of the official game changes and will be playing with old values.
Your backup saves
Patch 1.1.2 GSC introduced a system where it will backup your saves automatically and last for 4 days
You can find the back-up saves here: C:\Users\%username%AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Backup
Packing, unpacking, repacking and .PAK
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Pack! there I was able to squeeze the word in again.
Mods are very different then what you may be used to. You cant easily see what's inside, extract them or check for conflicts like in anomaly and creation games with tools liks 7z or Winrarr. You are going to need to use some tools to make sure everything works together.
Disclaimer! there are many ways to do this this is just how I do it and may change in the future.
Checking for conflicts
First Lets check to see if you have a conflict. this tool i use runs a simple script to check your mods and see if they modify the same files.
mod conflict detection script
Refer to the mod page for more detailed instructions if you need any extra help.
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/290
1. Download & unpack UnrealPak Tool
- Download the powershell script from nexus, unpack it & place it into the UnrealPakTool folder next to the UnrealPak.exe
- Edit the first line of the script itself with something like notepad++, so that the folder matches your installation for your game.
- run it in PowerShell:
.\find-conflicts.ps1
- If you have conflicts it should look like this.
And now you know If there is a problem and what the problem is!
Packing and unpacking PAK files
"This is my pack tool. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My pack tool is my best friend. It is my tool of choice." - someone somewhere 20204
There are a tone of different tools flooding the nexus right now but this one so far has been the most simple and straight forward tool I've personally used to manually pack and unpack your files, and im sure as time goes on more ways will pop up.
RePak Tool by Saymonn - Enhanced and User-Friendly PAK Management
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/398
Download the tool from the link above extract it somewhere and done its all set up! and to use it its super straight forward.
Its that simple! obviously you are going to want to make sure file structure is all correct by following the original mods structure or how it is laid out in Fmodel but you should be good to go!
NotePad ++
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
if your still using windows plane jane note pad its time to dich that thing for something better. Not to mention this is going to be very helpfull for everything in the future for this particular use we want a plugin called compareplus
and you can install the plugin directly from the aplication itself. super easy.
it will look at 2 files and tell you exactly what is Different between the two.
- Download the program, install it and open it.
- Open the Plug in Admin
- Search for
compareplus
and install. the program will restart and you will be good to go.
Comparing Cfg Files with Notepad++
Keep your files separate so they don't overwrite each other for being in the same folder but load them into notepad++ by either using the right click drop down menu or dragging and dropping [you can also set notepad++ to be the default program to open filetypes]
Tweekie all the breekie you like, save and then pack this bish into your new mod and you did it!
here is an auto merge tool, i dont have experence with it but here is the link.
Stalker 2 Configuration FIle Merge Tool
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/326
Extracting Assets From Unreal Engine With FModel and what you need.
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Before you get all tweekie breekie your going to need the files from the game. right now since we dont have mod tools we gotta take what we need by force.
to do so you need 3 things
- Your AES key
To put into fmodel decrypt the files - your
Mappings.usmap
file
so thatFmodel
can tell where the files are - and
Fmodel
to explore the files
Getting your Mappings.usmap
Mappings.usmap
Tool
UE4SS
Injectable LUA scripting system, SDK generator, live property editor and other dumping utilities for UE4/5 games
https://github.com/UE4SS-RE/RE-UE4SS
The easiest installation is via downloading the non-dev version of the latest non-experimental build from Releases and extracting the zip content to /S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Binaries\Win64
.
Run the game once then press ctrl+numpad 6 ingame and it will make your Mappings.usmap
file.
- [note] if your keybord doesn't have a numpad you can change keybinds in
UE4SS_v3.0.1\Mods\Keybinds\Scripts
and change the key inmain.lua
to something else. - [note] note your antivirus may freak out because of the nature of the program, for me windows quarantined my shortcut so make sure to restore any files that windows defender decided to suck up
It may be good to hold on to in the future but after your done making the file close the game and delete the UE4SS.dll
file you just added in. The game can crash randomly if you don't.
Your AES KEY
so far its been questionable the legality on sharing this key, and i think its still useful to know how. for example i used this same exact process on another UE5 game (gray zone warfare) in hopes of porting stuff in the future.
AESDumpster
AES Key dumper written in C++.
Works for Unreal Engine 4.19 -> 5.4 Windows exes.
https://github.com/GHFear/AESDumpster
Same as with UE4SS
you are going to want to navigate to /S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Binaries\Win64
. and put the executable file you just downloaded from the github in that folder.
simply drag the Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe
file onto the AESDumpster-Win64.exe
A command window will pop up, do its thing and spit your key out. copy and past it somewhere for latter, and your done.
Extracting files With FModel
FModel
FModel is an archive explorer for Unreal Engine games that uses CUE4Parse as its core parsing library, providing robust support for the latest UE4 and UE5
https://github.com/4sval/FModel
- Boot Fmodel for the first time
during this fmodel may restart a few times - Go to Directory at the top and Select the file path for your game
\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2
and then the version of UE5GAME_UE5_1
- Then go back to the directory tab and select
AES
and enter in your aes key
Go to Settings at the top Set Local Mapping File Enabled and navigate to the usmap file you created. then again set the game UE version to UE5_1.
After that you should be all good to Start browsing the paks files and using FModel and yoink out all the anomalous code and Tweekie Breekie to your hearts content.
Some tips for using Fmodel
Select all of the game's pak / utoc files in FModel [Shift+click / ctrl+click, like in other programs] at once and press "Load" to load them all, then use Ctrl+Shift+F to search for likely words you might expect in the file names
Using FModel
https://github.com/Dmgvol/UE_Modding/blob/main/TheBasics/UsingFModel.md
My Current Stalker 2 modlist
Various Tools & Useful Links
My Current Stalker 2 modlist
I will expand apon alot of this stuff in the future but for now if i find a cool thing or tool or resorce i think will help with modding i will dump it here.
- ZonePaq Toolkit
A user-friendly GUI application for unpacking, repacking, and solving conflicts by creating a merged mod.
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/807?tab=description - Maklane's Better Scripts
Tired of balancing line by line by hand? Would you like to be able to balance thousands of variables in a few seconds? Then this is for you!
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/805 - HerbatasDLCModLoader
A Tool for automatically parsing what Custom DLC's you have installed and generating a custom .pak file for your installed mods.
https://github.com/herbatka/HerbatasDLCModLoader - This is a full tutorial on how to make a Mod that loads as a DLC.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dlH18CWkIuBjdzZJbeuH0pFcji3JNdv336uHq1KsDR0/edit?tab=t.0 - HOW TO MAKE YOUR MOD ULTRA FUCKING COMPATIBLE (kinda)
by Herbata, load your mods as DLC
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dlH18CWkIuBjdzZJbeuH0pFcji3JNdv336uHq1KsDR0/edit?tab=t.0 - JsonAsAsset
Unreal Engine plugin to allow conversion between JSON to Unreal Engine.
https://github.com/JsonAsAsset/JsonAsAsset/ - Mo2 for S2
not really too necessary right now but Rage made a plugin to load S2 in Mo2
https://github.com/ModOrganizer2/modorganizer-basic_games/pull/167/commits/0ce0d2f636050f7280c60875a13ece0c1502323a - rm-NoobInCoding/UnrealReZen
UnrealReZen is a modding tool for packing utoc and ucas files (Unreal Engine IoStore archive files)
https://github.com/rm-NoobInCoding/UnrealReZen - RePak Tool by Saymonn - Enhanced and User-Friendly PAK Management
Unpack, Edit, and Repack .pak files for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl. With intuitive scripts and an organized folder structure, it simplifies modding workflows and ensures efficient file management. Ideal for both beginners and experienced modders.
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/398 - repak
Unreal Engine .pak file library and CLI in rust
https://github.com/trumank/repak - NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction DLL
NVIDIA's AI model that creates higher quality ray-traced images.
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-3-ray-reconstruction-dll/ - NVIDIA DLSS DLL
"upgrade" the DLSS version of many games, simply by replacing its nvngx_dlss.dll with a newer version, which you can download on this page.
Go to your game's folder, looks for a file "nvngx_dlss.dll", and overwrite it with the downloaded file. Be sure to backup your original file before replacing it.
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/ - Console Commands
By [BSB] Cpt.CODYT
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3370986723 - Stalker 2 Configuration FIle Merge Tool
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/326 - mod conflict detection script
https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/290
Other Pages
[Modding and Making Mods For Stalker 2 Guide] - [ My Current Stalker 2 Mods I Play With ] - [ My Current Radiophobia 3 Mods I Play With ] - [ Og Stalker Mod Mega Thread ] - [ My Anomaly TTP ModPack & Modlist ] - [ Stream / Content Creation Related Stuff ] - [ Free to own Games List!]