STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread

[Baron Dupek]

Anyone here played Road to the North? I booted it up, talked to Sid, then got gunned down by the loners in Rookie Village for some reason.

Probably the best pre-Anomaly version of the game with The Armed Zone. Some hideous parts happens too (women and their models, that was before Hip was a thing) but overall worth the time.
You have to gear up a bit before doing main questline - they send you to Agroprom underground and the Zaton shortly after. Main questline is the only reason to play this mod anyway.
No idea why people attacked you. Maybe it's like in some Shadow of Chernobyl mods, where you have to finish some job for Sid before they let you in? Or there was some warning you missed/game didn't show? Or maybe some faction went inside the camp and sniped you?

 

[vibehunter]

Anyone here played Road to the North? I booted it up, talked to Sid, then got gunned down by the loners in Rookie Village for some reason.

Probably the best pre-Anomaly version of the game with The Armed Zone. Some hideous parts happens too (women and their models, that was before Hip was a thing) but overall worth the time.
You have to gear up a bit before doing main questline - they send you to Agroprom underground and the Zaton shortly after. Main questline is the only reason to play this mod anyway.
No idea why people attacked you. Maybe it's like in some Shadow of Chernobyl mods, where you have to finish some job for Sid before they let you in? Or there was some warning you missed/game didn't show? Or maybe some faction went inside the camp and sniped you?

I vaguely recall someone in the camp saying I needed to do something before I was allowed in the bunker. Or else it's just an isolated bug. Either way, I'll be giving the mod another shot.

 

[luj1]

Any reason to buy STALKER games from Steam?

I heard the best mods are standalones

 

[ferratilis]

Any reason to buy STALKER games from Steam?

I heard the best mods are standalones

Most of those standalone mods are for survival experience/gunporn/roaming around. If you want to experience the story or play vanilla+ mods, having them on Steam is nice.

 

[luj1]

vanilla+ mods

Where can I get some vanilla+ recommendations please? Thank you

 

[ferratilis]

vanilla+ mods

Where can I get some vanilla+ recommendations please? Thank you

Shadow of Chernobyl: for first playthrough, I recommend just Zone Reclamation Project, which fixes bugs and adds some qol features. It has a nice tweaker where you can toggle those features. If you really want better graphics and weapon models, you can use Starter Pack 2019 from moddb. It enhanced weapon models, textures, shaders etc. while also including ZRP. From there, you can look into Autumn Aurora or AMK Autumn Edition for harder gameplay and pretty graphics.
There will probably be some butthurt Codexers saying OGSR is the best vanilla+ experience for SoC, but I don't agree. It has too many quirks of its own.

Clear Sky: the best is Sky Reclamation Project to fix bugs and reduce some retarded things CS introduced. You can also add mods recommended here for weapons and graphics: https://gnd-tech.com/2019/07/essential-mods-for-the-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-series/

Call of Pripyat: One of the best vanilla+ mods is ABR imo. Not only that it enhanced the graphics and made the game more balanced, it made the game run infinitely better than vanilla. It's my recommendation. Probably the smoothes experience in Stalker one can have.

Whatever you do, don't play Complete series of mods. The completely ruin the game and make it casual. Also, they haven't been updated in a decade.

 

[luj1]

Thank you a lot brother

 

[Tacgnol]

Yes good recommendations from ferratilis. I would seriously never go beyond ZRP and graphics mods for first playthrough of SoC.

AMK etc is fun but definitely 2nd playthrough material.

 

[jebsmoker]

AMK is one of the few mods i'd consider timeless but you'll have to downgrade your steam copy of soc to 1.0004 - there's a drag and drop patch for that here:

https://mega.nz/folder/M4BmDRCL#vfze70GSJDyv-HzWn7Dwww

 

[Tacgnol]

Yes, definitely downgrade to 1.0004 for AMK variants. I think AMK Aurora technically "works" as in loads on 1.0006 but it's buggy as fuck.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Standalone, yes
Better mods are mostly in rusian and only translated by small communities nearby, like Potatoes who recently managed to translate legendary OP 2.2
Also NLC is worth a try

 

[cretin]

A question for experienced Stalkers: does AMK Autumn Edition have the same problem as AA where saves get corrupted if you have more than four quests active?

I never had corrupted saves in AMKAE. That said it is generally considered good practice in SOC mods to use hard saves only (protip: just hit the console key and type save sssfsfsfsf or whatever you like) and limit the amount of quests you have active.

 

[luj1]

Most of those standalone mods are for survival experience/gunporn/roaming around.

Your opinion on Anomaly mod?

 

[jebsmoker]

it's worth sharing what you expect or want out of a stalker mod

some people like gunporn with endless repeatable faction quests in call of chernobyl (and its millions of forks, like anomaly), i don't care for the endless repeatable quests. i much prefer story total conversions

 

[luj1]

i don't care for the endless repeatable quests. i much prefer story total conversions

Same

 

[jebsmoker]

if that's the case then you probably won't get enjoyment out of anomaly. except for doctorx's mod, all coc forks are the exact same

 

[ferratilis]

Most of those standalone mods are for survival experience/gunporn/roaming around.

Your opinion on Anomaly mod?

It's one of the biggest mods out there, with a huge community that is constantly making new addons. Also, it's very stable and runs well.

But at the same time, it's just a huge world that feels empty. You can around for hours, collecting random garbage to craft something or just hunt for mutants. Basically, you have to make up your own story, because it has none. It can never match story total conversions. Anomaly is good if you're into taking screenshots, or just fucking around with the engine, seeing all the different guns etc. I'd say just stick to vanilla+ for now, then go for some story total conversions later.

 

[ferratilis]

Forgot to mention, most of the addons for Anomaly these days are trying to turn Anomaly into Escape from Tarkov. The community has a weird obsession with that game, for some reason. Just look at Expedition modpack, they even try to make Anomaly look like Tarkov. Modders are putting a lot of work into it, and it seems impressive. It's just a shame the community seems to be focused only on survival experience, when Stalker games are about more than just that. A lot of ambiance has been lost in these new mods.

 

[cretin]

Anomaly is an extraordinarily well put together and polished mod. That really has to be said, to give credit where credit is due.

Beyond that, I have nothing nice to say about it, it is quite stupid, uninteresting and boring, which is odd because it actually often seems like there is TOO MUCH going on in any given instance, giving the zone a theme park feel. It also suffers from that Skyrim delusion, where people say "yeah but you can mod it into what you want it to be" which 1. Takes too much fucking time - there are some 2.8k addons listed on moddb 2. Like skyrim modding there are exceptionally few mods that actually do anything to change the big issues with it.

I'd like to say it will be good when they finally get around to working on a story, but given the kind of redditors working on it who came up with Hip, probably not.

 

[Gerrard]

I don't think they will ever "get around to working on the story". Anomaly devs claim that the aim was to make a platform for future mods, and yet they included tons of dumb shit as the awful Misery artifacts in it, or the cooking system (who in their right mind would eat anything from the zone? the only thing that could be remotely edible are the boars).

 

[ferratilis]

There's a lot of zoomers getting into Stalker who have never played the original games, their only experience is playing Anomaly and addons. Those are not really the people who can design a good story-driven experience. A quick look at moddb will prove this. Youtubers and streamers also add to this problem. It is what it is.

 

[cretin]

Funny that we started talking about AMK again all these years later.

If someone were to ask what my favorite mod is, without reservation I'd say NLC7.

But if someone were to ask me what the best SOC mod is, I'd have to say AMK autumn edition. The difference is that NLC7 is definitely not for everyone, whereas AMK just takes whats good about OG Stalker and enhances it. It's a nearly perfect mod.

I'd like to see an updated AMK package, with a less grossly outdated weapon pack, maybe one of the new weather mods and some bugfixes. Alas, OGSR seems to have taken over the focus for that kind of mod and that's sad because OGSR is really quite a departure from the OG game, lot of whackadoo shit and time-wasting content. Doesn't help that the latest iterations of OGSR are pretty shit, like OGSR Gunslinger with its janky ass half implemented animations and non-existent balance.

 

[jebsmoker]

i've been fixing the badly translated weapon descriptions in ogsr: gunslinger by salvaging the original xml lines from ogse or fixing the badly translated ones. i'll upload my work in like a week or something after i finish it

 

[Silva]

Most of those standalone mods are for survival experience/gunporn/roaming around.

Your opinion on Anomaly mod?

It's one of the biggest mods out there, with a huge community that is constantly making new addons. Also, it's very stable and runs well.

But at the same time, it's just a huge world that feels empty. You can around for hours, collecting random garbage to craft something or just hunt for mutants. Basically, you have to make up your own story, because it has none. It can never match story total conversions. Anomaly is good if you're into taking screenshots, or just fucking around with the engine, seeing all the different guns etc. I'd say just stick to vanilla+ for now, then go for some story total conversions later.

This is bullshit? I played Anomaly last year and it does have a story. I know because I followed it through to the end.

If the story is good or not will fall on each one tastes. But it's there, and it's serviceable enough.

 

[ferratilis]

This is bullshit? I played Anomaly last year and it does have a story. I know because I followed it through to the end.

I wonder, have you played the original game, Shadow of Chernobyl? Or Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat?