NOTE: THERE'S ALSO A WIKI NOW, WITH ALL SPREADSHEETS, GUIDES, AND DETAILED INFORMATION. https://op-2.fandom.com/wiki/Cumulative_Pack_2_Wiki

Cumulative Pack 2.2 (Joint Pack, OP)

welcome, you're fucked edition

Links to other resources similar to this one:

• old /sg/ paste for 2.1
• newer version of the same 2.1 paste from dvach' stalker general, in Russian. It has some info on how to get the best guns and armors quick, something that haven't made it into this paste yet.
• new /sg/ paste for 2.2

This page focuses on fully completing the game on nightmare difficulty and increased spawns without any edits or addons, and getting all main achievements. (however links to edits are there, so it's up to your taste). It will be updated regularly with new info. The latest change date is at the bottom. This is NOT a substitute for a full-fledged guide. I mostly collect tips that are obtained through code diving directly, or hard to come by with Google.

Installation and technical issues

The mod itself is here, the latest patch is here. Install in the same order, change language in the settings. The mod is standalone, doesn't require SoC installed, but also doesn't interfere with it.

The page from the devs with download links and official addons is there (in Russian). Be sure to check other threads on that board.

This thread on AMK forums has a bunch of edits to unfuck things you dislike or consider too tedious. Don't go overboard with them as they might be too overpowered or crash/softlock the game, install and test what you need one by one.

Turn the auto saves on. Always hardsave into a new slot each time instead of quick saving, and/or bind a hotkey on the "save game at level" in options and use it to create a unique dated hardsave every time. That way you will have a save log you will need in the name of your own sanity. Remember to also save before any significant action, not just after it.

Micro-stuttering "fix": set objects_per_update=2 in config/alife.ltx. Not really a fix as it will destroy A-life and might break something else in a multiple hundreds of hours solyanka. The default value is 6. Unfortunately, the stuttering is innate to A-life, and there's plenty of stuff happening offline in OP-2.2.

Another hint is to limit FPS to just below your monitor refresh rate in the settings. Stuttering at the start of the game is expected as the game lazily initializes for several minutes after the start, this is related to the magic that makes OP-2.2 stable.

Turn off the head bob in settings, otherwise your head will spin like crazy on hit, and when waking up.

The very late game Chess Player quest is still untranslated. Use Yandex Translate on screenshots, or any online OCR service, then Google Translate and DeepL, or Google Translate on your smartphone (it has OCR built in).

A lot of stuff in the mod is downright impossible to find/reach without guides, and they are all in Russian. Use Google Translate or DeepL. There's thousands of hours of content on OP-2.2 on Youtube, from streams to tutorials, use auto-translated captions. Check these resources out as well:

• the guide from the players on official forums. Be also sure to check other boards on these forums, there are different ones for OP-2 and OP-2.1, they have their guides which might still be useful.
• third-party guide from Stalkerportaal (navigation is on the right)
• the jumping tutorial (turn auto subtitles on)
• this Youtube channel has dozens of videos for OP-2.1 and for things that have been changed in OP-2.2
• another good channel
• one more channel
• Google spreadsheet item table for OP-2.2 in English. Auto-generated from game files; weapons and ammo only for now, will be updated.
• XLS spreadsheet with cyclic and chain quests and a macro, in Russian only, can be translated with online tools
• Google spreadsheet with editable notes, kind of the same but different
• Artifact list and recipe locations
• Bonus stashes 1, Bonus stashes 2. You are guaranteed to miss them otherwise.

Known sources of breakage - watch out!

• Traveling to another location while the blowout or horror hour is in effect.
• Interrupting quest dialogues mid-talk with Escape, F, or X. Always finish them properly, as some internal state might fail to trigger otherwise.
• Some essential characters may fight each other while traveling, an example being Kostya walking to the Dump and killing Kuznetsov in process, or Messer picking fights with the bandits from the base, and getting to Hog eventually. Walk away for 160m+ so the NPC could walk offline without entering combat.
• Putting RPO-A rocket launchers into custom stashes (backpacks) breaks them to 0% durability, making them unusable. Keep them in standard vanilla containers instead.
• Teleporting out of some advanced location after completing the objective, instead of walking out normally; you can fail to trigger something important.
• Chickening out of large fights by running away without killing all enemies. Most often they will remain there, or worse, start roaming around. This can add up to terrible effects (getting instagibbed on entering the location, quest givers dying etc)
• Ensure you don't owe Doctor any quests before walking into Dead City in the late NS questline, otherwise they'll fail much later.

General gameplay tips

Neat early game exploit (might be patched though): when you get taken to the Cave for the first time at the start of the game, do not take anything out of the stash except the exoskeleton, USAS, Desert Eagle, the artifacts and the map. Unload the weapons and put ammo back in the stash, that is the bare minimum you need to speak to Miner (And the Monolith shard, obviously). Return to the world of the living. The sight and hundreds of rounds and grenades should be waiting for you once you return there.

The mod is humongous, anything below 300 hours for 100% can be considered a speedrun or at least a highly optimized playthrough. Because of that, there's zero point in collecting all the loot in the world and rushing every quest right off the bat, many of them are lingering and you'll complete them far down the story, some even a couple hundred hours into the game. Examples are the photographer quests, hoarding/hamster quests etc. However, certain quests are timed and will fail or lead to worse outcomes when not completed in time.

You'll visit every location hundreds of times eventually, so don't mind delaying any quests you'd like to delay. There's always something else to do in this game.

It's more efficient to beat the vanilla SoC questline first, ignoring the sidequests (within reasonable limits of course, e.g. bringing the tools to repairmen to unlock upgrades is better, etc). You'll get to the sidequests later anyway, with better armor and weapons, locations and traders unlocked, more money, carrying weight, and infinite sprinting. However, you won't get to use many of the weapons along the way and you'll probably end up getting drowned in hundreds of sidequests all at once.

Enemies start dropping exosuits after X-16, so avoid large fights till then, as exosuits sell for a good price at Petrenko, or even the better one at the swamps.

All essential NPCs are necessary for the plot. If an essential NPC dies, you get the beeping red message so you won't miss it. They have huge amounts of HP so they won't die easily. Some are even invulnerable.

Weapons and mutants without parts in them despawn when go offline (160m distance), that's a nice way to filter out the empty bodies and collect the guns that fell through the floor. Human NPCs only despawn on location change, except those who have some whitelisted items like Monolith dogtags in their inventory. Armor, artifacts and some other items don't despawn at all.

OP-2.2 has some scripting magic that makes some NPCs to be online past the 160m switching distance, which makes quests with NPC snipers or sniping targets possible.

You can use suits, artifact containers, sleeping bags, rucksacks, even piles of ammo boxes as stepstools to get out of sticky situations. For example, the AW collector's stash in the rusty pipe and the pair of Strelok's stashes inside concrete pipes.

Don't ever get caught by the military patroling the railway at Cordon, revert to the earlier save immediately if they see you. They will be permanently hostile until you bribe them through Sidorovich for 250k. The checkpoint under the bridge is fine, you can bribe them with vodka to pass.

You can cross it without paying with vodka, in three ways:

• vanilla way, through the electra tunnel. When crossing towards Sidorovich, discharge the electras with a bolt.
• jumping over the fence under the bid loud sky anomaly. Easy when crossing towards Sidorovich, needs a crouchjump when crossing towards Dump.
• crossing at the far side with the locomotive also works. Be ready to deal with the radiation.

Keep in mind that most patrolmen sleep under the bridge at night. You can accidentally wake them up when doing quests related to the bridge underpass.

There's three achievements related to saving people who aren't necessary for the plot. Every achievement yields a Living Heart artifact which is nice to have early in the game, as one will be required to revive Chemist in the Forgotten Forest. You don't have to do any of this if you aren't aiming for the STALKER achievement.

• saving the Duty quad in Dark Valley. Remarkably buggy. Use this video for an alternative way to save them without any fuss and without paying 40k ransom. Quick version:
  • enter Dark Valley through the Forgotten Forest the first time
  • save Max Lyuber from two bandits, he will run and stop, being temporarily unable to talk
  • kill all bandits on the base except for Hog and the trader (watch for the two remaining Dutyers to stay alive on your minimap!)
  • save the two remaining Dutyers, you can also save Messer at the gas station while you're at it
  • wait for the Dutyers and Messer walk to their respective targets
  • finally, trigger Mongol script by touching the Dump transition and selecting No
  • heal Mongol, watch him punch Bullet into face
  • speak to Max and Bullet to finish the quest.
• saving four scientists from Kruglov's team at Wild Territory. This achievement is pure pain. Keep in mind you need to wait for all scientists to exit the area before speaking to Kruglov after getting to safety.
• trying to save Psycho at the Army Warehouses by wounding him and then offering a medkit.

No point in trying the Living Heart at every body you find. It can only be used on essential NPCs (those who give the red beeping SMS on death) and Chemist in the Forgotten Forest.

Find Collector's stashes as soon as possible. There are many good artifacts and weapons there, especially for the early game (e.g. you get a huge stamina boost in Dark Valley), but it will be useful even in the late game. (the final reward is really outstanding)

Try not to waste your sledgehammer early on. You'll need it in pristine condition (95%+) at Radar, to start Syak's quest line, and the only other place to get one is as a reward for Akim's chain quest.

You'll get roughly 600-700 backpacks after the 100% completion. You'll need to give about 150 or slightly more to NPCs during this.

NPC steal your placed backpacks if they can get within a couple dozen meters on an imaginary 2D grid, both online and offline. They don't care about height or cover. You'll able to get your backpack back for money, but better store it in a place with no NPC travel routes, preferably out of level boundaries. OP-2.2 devs claim that NPCs also steal from vanilla containers like they did in 2.09, but upon testing it doesn't seem to be the case, so the lock and the GPS tracker isn't needed for them. (GPS trackers are useful to track NPCs if you sell it to them, or they can be dropped on the ground and activated to create a ground mark, they also mark containers and their contents).

The exchanges at traders are limited, with the exception of repair kits, vodka and medicine. Save the limited ones for something meaningful, like hamster quests. Unique exchanges (those that aren't marked in PDA) are unlimited.

Never sell any items you don't know how to get in large quantities. You'll need practically everything in this game. Never throw your broken knives out, there's a chain quest for them (you'll need one broken version of each knife in the game). Gas canisters and jerry cans is the exception - they aren't needed for chain quests, so you can use them to blow friendly NPCs or spend them on cyclic quests as you wish. You can fuel the first flamethrower from them, but it's not very useful, compared to late game flamethrowers.

If you see an NPC with a cool weapon, you can sell a gun to them and they will offer their currently equipped gun up for sale. For example, trading Barmaliai (Freedom exo guard on the bridge) a rifle means he will put his FN F2000 <Old> up for sale, which can only be obtained by giving him 3 rare Soul-type artifacts otherwise. You could get Miner and Sepator to sell you their unique Hunter SPAS and AKS Stormtrooper this way too.
Each NPC has the list of preferred weapons defined in the configuration files, so you need to dive into code to know which one prefers what weapons.

You can use cars and trucks to move a lot of loot between locations at once. They don't need fuel. Keep in mind that they aren't repairable, though. The minivan you find at the entrance of the ATP has infinite durability (probably because it's practically required for a quest later on). Galaxy brain hack: drop your backpacks onto the vehicle, you can travel with them on top. Also, if you wonder why the handling is so bad, that's because devs made it bad intentionallly, to make players suffer. That was their official answer. I wish I was kidding.

Defence cyclic quests are often bugged. Don't bother with them.

Zombies in the Darkscape and their controller can walk under the level geometry. They eventually pop up at the road almost at the DV transition and slowly walk back to the tunnel, so if you can't find them, just wait. I'd advise not to get that cyclic quest from Petrenko at all.

There are three ways to murder neutrals and friendlies without losing the reputation:

• explosives (mines don't work; use those which can be detonated by hitting them, e.g. gas canisters)
• lure them into danger or vice versa
• the Drunk Master style. Take off your armor, drop and pick up a Sea Urchin two times with your bare hands. You are now temporarily zombified for a minute, good luck! Not advised near essential NPCs or inside the Freedom base.

Don't give ordinary medkits to Fox. Give the scientific ones for a better reward when you have them (bought at Akim, Adrenalin, Sakharov for 3100 each, found in the Darkscape and labs etc).

The military trader at Agro (Sherstyuk) sleeps at the base from 8pm to 6am, and is hostile during that time. Don't visit the base at night.

Controllers which can drop brains only start spawning after completing Lukash's ATP Controller brains quest.

Don't take the missing sergeant quest from Kuznetsov right away. He's at the Radar, and you won't be able to tell the difference between him and ordinary Monolithians if you don't clear the Radar first. Don't kill him, convince him to return home for the best outcome.

Lanky in the bar basement offers weapon upgrades. If you can upgrade your weapon (they drop a note with eligible weapons into your PDA), do it - it's always worth it. Do the accuracy upgrade first and weight reduction second, you won't be able to do it the other way around. To unlock the upgrades, you have to complete the quest to bring him the tools from Agro Underground. As you take the quest, there will be a bunch of pretty hardcore bandits at the southern checkpoint in the Bar, so don't take it until you have at least a sniper rifle or something.

Due to how the SoC engine works, exosuits always protect better then ordinary armors, even if the resistance numbers are worse. However, ordinary armors do have their advantages (closed loop systems, huge carrying weight of the upgraded nanosuit, specialty features like nanosuit modules or silent running or ability to survive the blowout).

Rat plague can be avoided by using closed loop suits, or cured by consuming the serum. Closed loop also lets you avoid the shock when picking artifacts up (the suit durability still decreases though).

Don't buy Bar-AW transition from Snitch. You'll get it from the Barkeep after X-16 for free anyway, also somebody reported it broke their game (I guess devs never tested it since it's a fairly dumb waste of money). Buying the cave map is also not necessary, you'll get it for free later, and the map doesn't seem to be terribly useful anyway. Same with the blowout map (on early locations you can just follow NPCs sprinting to cover, and on later ones you'll have a free copy anyway).

Buy the Sakharov's recipe for Plasma Caterpillar early on, as it has the best sum of resistances out of all early artifacts, albeit it's a bit heavy.

Exosuit batteries can be bought from Sakharov for 16500 a piece, and recharged at any trader. Your reputation affects charging time and price. Typically you want at least 4 batteries in your rotation - you use two while the other two are recharging. For some long-range travels like the SoC CNPP finale, or for power-hungry exosuits like the bandit one, 2 batteries might be uncomfortably low.

The Ear transmutation recipe is a lie, it actually requires a Bright Dummy and not a lunar one, which is a good thing.

Before taking the first quest from Lukash at Army Warehouses, be sure to visit the mercenary checkpoint to the north of the bloodsucker village. Bring a sniper rifle and lots of ammo, you will need it. That way you won't miss the AW-WT transition.

Freedom armory opens after bringing 100 Monolith dogtags to Lukash. The guard will walk away, just shoot the lock and enter. Loot it immediately, or other NPCs will steal your shit.

In the Bar defence quest, keep in mind that Voronin doesn't accept upgraded and unique versions of machineguns. Bring him either an ordinary one or Zulu's PKM.

WWII weapons quest can be given in to Raven directly instead of the bandit trader. There's no consequences, and the outcome is slightly better.

"Black" diggers quest ends with finding sick Grom at Yantar. This is a timed quest and he can die if you can't cure him in time. Don't meet with him (don't advance the final stage) if you haven't met Doctor in Pripyat yet.

Don't hesitate with the cure for Cat either.

RPO-A is bugged: durability drops to 0% when placed into a backpack. Keep those in vanilla containers instead.

Before going to CNPP, be sure to take Strelok's PDA quest from Doctor and obtain the note located next to the Wish Granter, because the blowout countdown at CNPP-1 keeps ticking after you initiate it for the first time and every time you visit the location, eventually starting the blowout and rendering the location impassable. The timer shuts down when you pick the Strelok's PDA up.

The bandit basement in Dark Valley will open up after giving Krysyuk's PDA to Hog. There's 30 bottles of vodka there, besides the other stuff.

After completing the Doctor's quest to help people, keep helping the wounded guys, you'll get an achievement. After that, keep it up as well, you'll get another one and people will pay you money for this.

If you listened to the advice above and rushed through vanilla SoC quest line immediately, you won't have the transition to CNPP-2 just yet, and you'll need it for quests. You can get there with one-time Monolithian teleports instead. Those look like skulls and are obtainable for some quests:

• 4 teleports for Lukash's quest to get two controller brains
• 1 teleport for a cyclic quest from Skinflint
  The permanent transition is given from Ghost when you'll find him, for a quest for Golden Chunks from CNPP-2. The door to the C-Con room will open somewhere during the NS quest line.

There are several pointless time waster quests in the game:

• Screw's chain quest to bring him upgraded weapons. If you're going to do it, it makes sense to take a look at the weapon list in advance (see above for the spreadsheets) and start doing those upgrades immediately.
• Cardan's Saiga blueprint. Same story with upgraded weapons. The list is below.
• vodka for the little controller at the swamps. You can only get him drunk once per 12h, and he needs 30 bottles total. If you don't plan your gameplay in advance to visit the swamp at least once per day (ideally twice), you'll never get this done, mark my words.

In the late game, when you'll have the recipe for anomalous underbarrel grenades, be sure to order Vasily to make about 120 vortexes in advance - they'll make the Wave of Mutants substantially easier. They aren't needed anywhere else due to being too freaking powerful. Problem is, every batch of 6 grenades needs money, some simple artifacts, and more importantly, a day of work - so you'll need to regularly travel to these cursed swamps again.

Don't bother using artifact handling gloves from Collector stashes. They are considered "melee weapons" and repairing melee weapons is nearly impossible. You can avoid the artifact picking shock with a proper suit.

After getting the Black Hole artifact in the late game, don't use it on Grabbers immediately. Visit Arkhara on Zaton (he's on Schevchenko), he'll give you a quest for that.

Cardan's weapon list to exchange for his Saiga blueprint:

• FN F-2000, caliber and weight
• Tavor CTAR-21, caliber and weight
• Colt M4 CQBR, caliber and weight
• SVD, weight
• HK G36, accuracy and weight
• Colt M16A4, accuracy and weight
• Knight's SR-25, accuracy and weight
• HK 417 "Sniper", accuracy and weight
• АN-94 "Sniper", accuracy and weight
• AEK-973, accuracy and weight

Combat

You will die in one hit at first, until you get some bulletproofing artifacts. Be sure to max both your armor and artifact-based resistance. The resistance formula is non-linear, so the closer you are to 60%, the more important every percent is - 55% to 60% is like 20% to 40%. 60%+60% will save you from half a mag from a 5.56 rifle, and will stop the head kick on hits (it happens when you lose lots of HP at once).

NPCs usually miss when you're moving sideways. That makes the hipfire-while-strafing tactic viable. For that, you'll need the gun that is accurate while firing from the hip. Best guns for this are P-90 and Gyurza 9x21 pistol, they are also the snappiest ones (extremely fast drawing and ADS).

There are certain moments in the plot where NPCs will become hostile right after dialogue, drawing their guns immediately and killing you before you can draw yours.

• don't rush through the dialogue, they will holster the gun after several seconds when the dialogue window is open
• use pistols in those cases, as they're much quicker to draw

Melee combat is very important skill to master in OP-2.2 as you don't waste the shotgun ammo which is somewhat hard to come by; also some mutants are naturally resistant to the "wound" type damage but fall easily to a single melee hit.

The best melee weapons are:

• fighting gloves. Sold by Akim for 7500 a pair. Always carry several pairs because the damage output drops with the durability. Gloves can take down weak mutants in 1-2 hits but have short reach.
• baseball bat and ice pick. Capable of taking a librarian down in 1-2 hits. Found at random stashes, sold at Kurchatov-37 and Scientific Station.
• crowbar. Has the longest reach, which makes it extremely convenient. However, some mutants are resistant to this type of damage. Sold at the swamp.
  Don't bother with bladed weapons and axes as many mutants are resistant to them. (however the double bladed axe is strong for those who aren't)

Typical melee fighting tactics for mutants, using fighting gloves:

• bloodsuckers and other enemies using their skeletons, also izloms and deathclaws: sprint towards them looking 45° downwards (because bloodsuckers love low punches), timing your hit properly to hit them head on before they hit you.
• fleshes, zombies etc: just hit them head on while sprinting. Watch for explosive zombies, though. (they aren't different from ordinary ones, but will change their skin on save/load)
• chimeras, snorks and other similar: let them jump you, sidestep for them to miss, turn 180 and sprint towards them, hitting them in the back.
• AoE chimeras (e.g. electro): same as above, but discharge them before the jump with a ranged weapon hit.
• dogs, rats, tushkanos, insects and other small swarming creatures: don't bother, too hard. Packs are best fought with weak grenades like RGD-5 or UBGL.
• burers, controllers: don't bother, too dangerous. They easily fall to 1-2 headshots. (vanilla controllers are too inept so melee is fine with them, though)
• pseudogiants, splinters: run around them and hit him in the back, they're too slow.
• librarians: same as pseudogiants, but use a bat or an ice pick if possible, killing them with gloves is a pain.

The easiest way to pick off straggler hornets is by standing still, waiting for a few to catch up and backing away from them as they attack, they will be stuck flying up in a straight line for a few seconds for you to shoot them.

Keep in mind that grazing hits in this game severely reduce the damage done, so you have to hit the central part of the enemy or a hitbox. It makes hornets, rats, tushkanos and other small enemies withstand several hits as they have small "central part", even though they have very little HP and techically any bullet should one-shot them.

Certain enemies are nigh invulnerable unless you shoot them in the head, SEVA Monolithians and helmeted bandits in particular have deceptively resistant body hitboxes.

PTRD is your best friend when dealing with turrets and APCs. It has a small explosive damage which the armor doesn't like at all. Same goes for the Fenrir's sniper later on - it blows up APCs in one shot while an ordinary Cheytac can't even scratch them. RPG-7 is much heavier (considering that you'll have dozens of turrets in some missions) and its grenades often detonate while flying through bushes.
If you don't have PTRD yet, AN-94 Sniper is efficient enough for turrets. Their swivels are small and using anything less accurate would waste lots of ammo.

Shotguns are super strong in OP-2.2 in general, for both mutants and armored NPCs. Use them for NPCs you think are too strong. For some reason, .410 is stronger than 12ga.

The most heavily armored NPCs die after 3 headshots from a 5.45/5.56 rifle, 3 body hits from the M60, 1 hit from F&D 338. Blackwater mercs have their head hitbox broken, it's actually somewhere around their necks. That's why some people think they are tanky - they just aim for the visual head model and miss the hitbox.

Don't bother with bolt-action rifles however powerful they might seem, they are slow and OP-2.2 enemies tend to violently overrun you.

Target auto-detection seem useful but is actually pretty underwhelming as it's slow. You'll get a bullet into your head way before the brackets converge. It's still useful for static or hiding targets though.

Vortex and Napalm grenades are extremely good. The former has insane radius and very powerful blast, hoard them and save for harder encounters. The latter has almost zero radius (makes it safer to use indoors) but is the most powerful in the game, so it's very good against single tough mutants (read: librarians).

Late game flamethrowers are heavy but also the ultimate weapon against tougher mutants, you can easily kill a horde of librarians using them. Buy the catalyst from Dimak and use it as attachment, amplifying the damage output 1.5x.

On average, you will need about 45 packs of ammunition for cyclic/hamster quests in total, some ammos for whatever reason need less, (You only need 30 7.62x51 AP boxes in total, for example) some need a lot more (You need about 95 boxes of 5.45 fmj)

How to make money

To have more money, don't spend money. Simple. You get ammo mostly for free, just use weapons for the caliber you have the most. Most of the good stuff you receive for free as well. However, you'll need a lot of money later - Contributions, hamster quests, chain quests, teleports and much more.

Sell NATO weapons to Skinflint and Eastern Bloc weapons to Petrenko. Shotguns go to Sakharov or the trader at Swamps. Exosuits are best sold to Petrenko.

Don't bother with AKSUs, TTs, MP40s, double barrel shotguns and other low-tier scrap. Only some loot is worth hauling across locations:

• any exoskeletons
• any machine guns
• anything chambered in 9x39
• any snipers (L85A2 Sniper and SVD are the most abundant and expensive)
• any non-shit-tier shotguns
• GSh-19 pistol (unexpectedly expensive per kg)
• AK-74s, AKMs, M4A1s - worth hauling across locations only at the very beginning of the game, probably; later on, only worth it when there's also a suitable trader on this location.

After reaching certain points in the story, more tougher enemies start appearing, and of course they will drop more expensive loot. Keeping that in mind, don't bother grinding them too hard early on as it will be easily surpassed later.

No point in hauling all the loot from Ironworks, sell it right there for almost the same price. Same with Pripyat, sell this scrap to Bourbon (the trader who appears in the hotel after destroying C-Consciousness) for almost the same price, and be done with it. Which makes Pripyat a central place for making money.

No point in making dedicated runs across locations to sell the loot. You can just store everything in a backpack at the location you obtained it on, then take some items off the top as you come across this place again. If you absolutely need to make dedicated runs, use a car.

Do not transmute artifacts en masse to sell them to Sakharov. It looks appealing, but after extensive testing I can definitely say this is a mistake. There's simply no reasonably profitable transmutation chain that is worth your time.

Fighting in the Arena yields several dozen grand a time. To unlock the full Arena, you have to be at least Veteran and beat the vanilla Arena. After several rounds, people will start refusing to fight with you one on one, and you'll be fighting against a team of hardcore masters every time, which will make Arena less effective. Fighting mutants is still profitable at all times, though. Don't bother with bets, they don't pay much and are often bugged.

As soon as you have 2000000 RU, go visit Sidorovich for the Contributions quest, which is very profitable.

Where to get the good stuff in an optimal way

You can find a Walther P99 with some ammo early at the start. It spawns at the northern Cordon checkpoint, on the windowsill at the 2nd floor.

Vodka, medkits, repair kits

Your main source of repair kits throughout the entire game is the bandit trader in Dark Valley. Stock up on every food item you can find at traders, and exchange them for vodka, medkits and repair kits.

As for vodka specifically:

• 16-17 are scattered over the starting locations: Cordon (at the farm in a box, also there are about 10 in the newbie village), Agroprom (at the main building where the stalkers are), Bar (on the tables, be prepared to get punched in the face for that though).
• about 15 bottles are located in the SW corner of the Forgotten Forest, along with some bloodsuckers corpses. It's an easter egg referring to one of the dreams in the game. Appears after you find the Golden Fish for Kostya.
• 30 bottles are in the bandit base basement in Dark Valley. The door is opened after you bring Krysyuk's PDA to Hog.
• 30 bottles are given for the botched vodka quest from Kalinin at ATP
• Bourbon, a trader in Pripyat, sells 5 bottles per day for cheap after beating the vanilla SoC questline
  etc etc etc

Sakharov sells medkits for cheap. Akim, Adrenaline, Sakharov sell scientific medkits as well.

Don't steal vodka from Kuznetsov's checkpoint, they will tear you apart.

Miscellaneous

Artifact transmutation device - rewarded by Kuznetsov for his vodka quest, you'll need about 18 bottles total and Agroprom unlocked

Jump height artifacts - the first one is found at the collector's stash in X-18 during the early game, others will be available much later. Always have it with you, it makes many places much more accessible. (such as the roof where SKAT-15 is found)

Melee weapons

First knife is offered for free by Kuznetsov to kill a bloodsucker nearby.

Stamina regen

• Snowball (+500%) and Bur (+1000%) in Collector's stashes up to the Dark Valley
• Moss (+2000%) for the one-time cyclic (!) quest from Adrenaline: SKS, Sawn-off Browning Auto 5 (both can be bought at the Swamp), 10x HK MP5K-PDW (looted from bandits then repaired). Be sure to collect those early on.
• Moss (+2000%) for the Den's chain quest (1 optical sight of each type). All sights can be bought from Adrenaline, although not every sight is in stock every day. This is an easy chain you could complete early on, and Saiga .410 is nice to have as a reward as well, as it uses the .410 ammo.
• Moss (+2000%) in the second Collector stash in Pripyat.

Bulletproofing artifacts

Only the ones easily obtainable at the start are listed.

Cyclic quests:

• Deacon (Swamps), kill a military
• Akim, bring 12x Zombie hand (available after finding old documents)

Chain quests:

• Tolik (ordinary ammo), 2nd and 9th tasks in the chain
• Cross (machine gun ammo), 4th task in the chain
• Chemist (special ammo), 9th task in the chain
• Fima the Charcoal (Cave, melee weapons), 1st task in the chain for a simple crowbar; also the 6th task in the chain

Collector stashes, as always.

Plasma Caterpillar recipe is obtained from Sakharov for 50000.

Antirad arfifacts

Electric Porcupines (blue ones) are much lighter and have almost the same effect as more advanced modificates.

Cyclic quests:

• Sviblov (Swamps), kill mutants, the second quest will give you an Electric Porcupine
• Messer (Dark Valley), kill mutants, the third quest in the chain
  Chain quests:
• Chemist (rare ammo) has Electric Porcupine as the second reward, and Snotty Porcupine as the fourth.
• Tolik (ordinary ammo) has a Snotty Porcupine as a reward in the 7th tier.

Plasma Caterpillar recipe is obtained from Sakharov for 50000.

Some early Kostya's and Collector's stashes have Porcupines as well.

"Black diggers" quest has Elysium artifact as a reward. It doesn't need to be in the slot to reduce the radiation level, it's enough to have it in your inventory. Later on, you'll encounter Bubble, a more powerful artifact with similar properties.

Psi protection

The recipe for Symbion (+30%) is in X-18 near the documents.

Clear Sky SEVA is the best psi-protecting armor among the early non-unique suits, use it if you struggle with biomasses. You can use cigars as well, just drop them into a quick slot.

Armor

Gravsuit allows you to haul lots of loot, at the cost of not being able to shoot. It's obtained through Skinflint's quest. In earlier versions it was available from the start but it doesn't seem to be there before the quest in 2.2. Gravsuit can also be upgraded by Vasily much later in the game, although it's somewhat a hidden feature. After visiting the lab under Kurchatov-37, speak with Vasily while wearing gravsuit.

Guns

Other missions

DON'T take cyclic/chain quests you aren't 100% sure you will fufill in time or you can seriously screw yourself over. Having too many active regular missions can lead to save corruptions.

Cyclic quests can reward you with very nice stuff down the line. Sidorovich offers a ppsh, aa12 and bulldog for his artifact and hit missions, one of the miners in the Cave gives a unique knife for mutant parts and Kalinin can give you an AN-94 Assault, just to name a few.

Some of Voronin's documents are impossible to collect without using a grenade or wallbanging, many are out of bounds and some fall under the map upon loading a save. The Garbage has the most of these sorts of documents scattered about.

For the anomaly photography mission, only the vanilla burner variant can be photographed. You can find it in X18 or the Wild Territory tunnel.
When you visit the Forgotten Forest for the first time, I recommend taking two shotguns of different calibres (Remington 870 Wingmaster and the Murka, for example) and a sniper rifle for Inferno and Miner's book.

In the Mole's PDA quest, if you choose the peaceful way, don't pay all that vodka yourself. After Sherstyuk demands the vodka, find Mole and tell him what happened; he will compensate it partially. However, if you can do it, the fight is preferred as enemies drop a fuckton of loot.

Don't bother looking for Raven Eyes for Akim, do it the hidden alternative way:

• find some of Kostya's stuff: the first stash and the Goldenfish artifact at the Cordon, the second stash at the Garbage
• advance the SoC plot to the point where you bring the case from the Cordon military checkpoint to Barkeep
• talk to Barkeep, there'll be a new option, something like "has somebody been looking for me?"
• talk to Kostya again, get the quest for another stash (finding it is not necessary), then you can tell him that Akim wants three additional artifacts. That will start the hidden Flight Log quest, after which you'll get a great SMG from Kostya.
  For the same reason, avoid visiting Labyrinth before the Flight Plan, as there are several Raven Eyes there, and by picking three at once you might botch the Flight Log quest. (I never checked if it's really true to be honest, I just suspect it; I wouldn't risk it anyway).

Arnie's pistol test is a gruelling challenge requiring that you get 30 human kills with a dozen different pistols found at varying points in the mod, they can be done in any order. The best locations to farm kills are the Agroprom Military base, Voronin's Bar Defense quest (Bring one of the higher calibre pistols for this one) and the ATP Bandit hq (Go to the left entrance and take cover behind the barricade, this messes with the AI and means they walk at you through the chokepoint without shooting). You can buy all the other pistols between the Cordon and Warehouses but the easiest way to get the USP-40 is to repair a looted one from dead Mercs.

Assaulting the Mercenary checkpoint involves fending off a hundred Mercs at once, I would recommend taking an LMG or shotgun, a sniper rifle and/or ammo for the Sniper LR300 in the checkpoint. Pick them off with the rifle until there's too many to handle, then retreat behind the bus stop and mow them down as they filter through. Don't start looting until the surrounding area is completely safe.
The earliest and easiest way you can complete Akim's bait quest is getting on the roof of the top left swamp hut by jumping on the fencing and dropping capsules down below for one of Clear Sky's quests (You will know when the time comes, believe me).

100%-ing the game

The mod has neither a definite main quest nor finale (although the Chess Player irreversibly ends the game in a certain sense), so completing it just means beating all the content. Three main achievements include most of the content of the game, and getting them all can be considered 100% completion:

• STALKER
• New Game (complete all chain quests), it's a gate for everything that isn't included in STALKER
• Card Player (find all Kuznetsov's playing cards), a gate for everything that isn't included in both above
  Additionally, end-game quests like Professional or Chess Player, and several tiny optional quests here and there throughout the game, don't belong to any achievement.

There are only two points in the game where the STALKER achievement could be triggered: at the end of Video Archive quest line, and at the end of Chess Player quest line. Be sure to complete all requirements before the trigger, or you'll miss it. Due to technical reasons, you're much more likely to get it after Chess Player.

Exact conditions for the STALKER achievement

• find all stashes from Kostya, Old-timer, [Strelok], Volazar, Collector. Kostya has several quest lines related to stashes throughout the game.
• find all documents for Voronin in his quest.
• obtain all handheld teleports available in the game. The locations are listed below, you're guaranteed to miss some of them without guides.
• obtain all transitions between locations available in the game. The AW-WT transition is easy to miss, see the tips above.
• craft all existing mutant embryos at least once. The recipes are mostly locked behind quests.
• get the Armory Baron achievement (find all rarest weapons in the game). Having them in the inventory at the same time isn't necessary, it's enough to touch them once. The weapons are obtained in stashes and as a reward for quests, they are listed below.
• have the PDA scoreboard rating of at least 30000.
• give 30 medicine items to Garik at the bar (Pharmacist achievement).
• complete 99% or all marked quests in the game. (excluding cyclic and chain ones)
• help people "selflessly":
  • save all four scientists from Kruglov team at Wild Territory.
  • save the Duty quad in Dark Valley.
  • try saving Psycho in Army Warehouses by wounding him and giving him a medkit.
  • resurrect Chemist in the Forgotten Forest.
  • give medkits to 20 wounded people (the Doctor's quest needs 10, so just keep doing it).

STALKER achievement is blocked by:

• cheating (or more specifically, tripping the anticheat script and getting the Cheater achievement, you won't miss it).
• spawning more than 4 items through the spawner feature natively built into game options. It's meant for debugging, not for free stuff. My advice is to use it as intended because unsurprisingly, a gigantic soup might contain bugs.
• bribing military on Cordon through Sidorovich. (even once, according to the game files)
• pacifying a hostile faction by bribing them through Sidorovich more than 2 times.
• chickening out of the Voronin's document search quest by buying the location info from him.
• obtaining 30 million rubles at once.
• drinking 70 bottles of vodka in about three months.
• failing ANY non-cyclic quest.
• failing 10 or more cyclic quests (in that case all chain and cyclic quests, and of course the New Game achievement become blocked).
• letting ANY essential NPC die, even if you resurrect them with the Living Heart afterwards (those who die during the Chess Player quest line don't count).
• refusing to do photography quests (technically this won't fail them) or giving the camera to Sidorovich.

Technically, all blocking achievements can be received after STALKER if you desire so.

Kuznetsov's playing cards

Shamelessly stolen from the C-Consciousness di×××rd

1 The defense of the complex
2 Rubik's cube
3 Raiders
4 Secrets of scientists
5 Detection Sensors
6 Decrypting the PDA - (On one of the bandits' bodies when you go pick up the stash in Garbage.)
7 Tools for repair
8 Army tools
9 City clearing operation
10, 11 Arc of fire - (Two cards. First spawns on one of the mercs while destroying the APC and mortar. Second one on merc when you come out of the bunker.)
12 Escape from the Zone
13 Thermal viewer
14 Rabbitfoots - (On Cayote's body.)
15 Carrier
16 Lost
17 Hidden threat
18 Executive decision
19, 20 Combat - (Two cards. First one's on a soldier near where you came from, second on a monolith fighter further in.)
21 Laseraims
22 Hello from Sidorovich
23 Miner's book
24 Reserve stash
25 Among strangers
26 Dark digger
27 "Monolith" fighter's diaries
28 Fire Support
29 Hunting for controllers - (In Radar.)
30 Documents for Sakharov
31 Computer
32 Environmental problem
33 Tricky stash
34 Illegal order
35 Confrontation
36 Survival lesson - (Given by Den after completion.)

List of all weapons required for the Armory Baron

List of all handheld teleports