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(Image credit: GSC Game World)
You’ll need STALKER 2 tips if you want to successfully battle mutants, avoid anomalies, and stay alive in the harsh and unforgiving regions of the Zone.STALKER 2can be quite rough, but with that said, there’s plenty you can do to stay alive - and that doesn’t always mean sticking around and fighting it out. It’s really important that you know what you’re doing, largely because everything is trying to kill you all the time. You might just need to run, and that’s okay. We’ve laid out a range of STALKER 2 tips that’ll make surviving the cruel and ever-present threats throughout the game a little more manageable. Heck, if you use all ten, you might even feel like you’re excelling - until a bloodsucker takes you out.
If you’re on PC and wondering aboutSTALKER 2 Compiling shaders, we’ve got a guide for that, too.
1. If anything looks dangerous, it is. If it doesn’t, it probably still is
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
STALKER 2 is a game that loves to kill you. A lot. But in a very ‘you stuck a fork in a toaster what were you expecting?’ kind of way. Basically be prepared for anything and everything to kill you. Suspicious noise? Probably death. Suspiciously quiet. Also death. Hidden in a cupboard in an empty house thinking you’re safe? You better believe that’s death. Basically approach everything inStalker 2like it’s going to suddenly and mercilessly tread on you in an instant, and you’ll be better prepared for whatever you do actually encounter.
2. Save before doing ANYTHING
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
STALKER 2 is generous with its saves, so use them all the time. It’s an incredibly unforgiving game and while it does have autosaves they are not always as regular as you might like, and can leave you with a fair bit to retread if you die or dislike an outcome. Because there are also a lot of choices as well, you can use saves to test what the results are. Things like whether tohelp or kill Squintor decidingwho to give the sensors to in STALKER 2have very different outcomes you might want to play around with before you decide what to go with
3. Always unload any weapons you find to take the ammo
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
You’ll be killing a lot of people in the zone and they all have guns. If you select an enemy’s weapon when you loot their bodies you can press L2 or G to unload it, separating out the ammo in their loot. Get used to doing that all the time and you’ll never run out of bullets. I’ve had so much ammo because it this that selling it a useful way to earn a little money on the side.
4. Repair your guns and gear whenever you can
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
5. Look for the crosses on your compass, which mark corpses you can loot
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
6. There are no grenade indicators so just run!
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
One thing you’ll probably learn quite quickly is that there are no grenade indicators or icons. If you hear an enemy saying they’re going to use one that will be the only warning you’ll get. Your best option at this point it to just run away from where you are as quickly as possible. Grenades will easily kill you instantly and you can’t always be sure a wall will save you if you don’t know where the blast will be. Just be as far away from where you were as possible when someone talks about throwing one.
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
You’ll see three important indicators near your health and stamina that will give you some important info:
8. Hearing gunfire means danger but also loot
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
9. If you’re heading back to base carry as much back to sell as you can
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
Generally you want to travel light in STALKER 2, as its encumbrance system can leave you slogging along at a crawl if you go so much as a bullet over weight. However, if you’re heading back to base and don’t mind some impaired sprinting it might be worth grabbing all the guns and other gear you can comfortably carry to sell at a merchant. You can make a fair bit of cash selling what you can loot and, because it costs a lot to repair things, that cash can keep you fighting fit.
10. Always grab the Journalist Stashes when you can
(Image credit: GSC Game World)
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