Reply With Quote1. What difficulty level are you playing at?
2. If you're wearing anything less than merc armor, you're screwed.
Tried to get back into this on Friday night, I don't think the glass or two of wine I had impaired my abilities too much but I was basically getting my face owned every three seconds or so.
I was retrieving the documents from that ex-hospital or whatever and was dying CONSTANTLY. I avoid conflict wherever possible and in entering the place I had forced a bunch of soldiers to follow me around the outskirts of the building where I ran past an anomoly that pretty much wiped out 4 or 5 of them. Thank Christ, because these fuckers can take a few bullets to the head before they drop.
After picking up the doco's I exited the building to find a fresh fuckton of troops waiting to one-shot kill me, so I legged it for the nearest manhole and backtracked through the emptied sewer system and took - I imagine - the long route to the bar.
Well, enroute to the Bar I essentially got my ass kicked about thirty times trying to pass by the factory that I'd help liberate earlier - there was a squad of rebels or whomever waiting near the traincars at the cross-over point between levels, meaning sneaking past them was impossible. Ugly midnight firefights eventually made me ragequit and I'm wondering:
Do I drop difficult levels?
How do I shotted bad guys?
Is this game really difficult or am I just sucking after months of nongaming?
1. What difficulty level are you playing at?
2. If you're wearing anything less than merc armor, you're screwed.
If you want to avoid getting your ass shot at, keep distance from the nearest enemies. But if that is unavoidable, then use trees, cars, etc. for cover when under fire and run like hell when the enemy has to reload.
One up for middling, whatever that is. Veteran?Originally Posted by ZylonBane
Uh, I'm still using the armour that I found in that attic roof at the start and it's at half-strength. Where do I get better/more?
And I am using cover Bjossi, just getting hard-owned whenever I do get shot.
The damaged armor you use is the reason why you get owned all the time. The developers changed the armor in the attic from a stalker suit to a merc suit in one of the patches, a merc suit at half strength doesn't allow you to get hit often before you die.
If you got enough cash and can't find armor anywhere, buy a new one from Barkeep. I think Sidorovich sells them too.
If it's at half-strength and you're already in Agroprom, then it's not giving you a great deal of protection against bullets I'm afraid. You should have found at least one new armor inside the Agroprom institute where the stalkers are initially being attacked by the soldiers. It's inside the small house to the left of the main entry.
Also, which artifacts are you wearing? I'm sure that you should have at least a few Stone Flowers (+3% bulletproof cap) or Jellyfishes (+2%), so you could wear them, along with an artifact that purges radiation, in order to give yourself a better protection. Please don't tell me that you're wearing stuff like Meatchunks or Stone Bloods all the time. People have a tendency to do that. They should be used after the firefight, to recover, and not during it, because one of their adverse effects is -10% bulletproof cap, so if you get shot while wearing them you'll get major damage.
This sounds like getting through to the bar the first time (documents from the army at Agroprom south) and yes it's really damn hard, particularly on veteran.
Once you get there though much more of the game opens up and you can get more stuff if you know where to look. That's not much help. As said, if your merc suit is down that low it's not protecting you more than a bandit jacket, maybe even less. Try and get a few healing and bleeding artifacts then at least you can back off and recover in a pinch. I've had good success with surprising and scattering guys with a grenade or two and then sprinting for my life when I haven't got much ammo or decent weapons.
(I's too slow)
Be sure to snag a Vintar BC as soon as possible. Once you get to the Bar area you can make a quick trip to pick it up from the Army Warehouse area. Don't even need to fire a shot.
Also, never play above "Stalker" difficulty unless you hate yourself.
Ah, here's where I admit with embarassment that I've no idea how to use the artefacts and that so far I haven't really thought about them. I have a collection in my inventory, maybe four different ones, not sure if I have an anti-radiation one which was really putting me off using them as I have few antirad hypos.
But if you say I can suit up with a new armour at the Bar, I'm almost there and can slog through this final stretch. I actually made it to the Bar but timed it in a bad way so that I couldn't help out a faction getting mobbed by mutants and without thinking, reloaded so that I'd get the chance - forgetting how hard it had been to get beyond that firefight.
The perils of not being a frantic quicksave-loader.
Thanks for the advice, guys. I had more or less been approaching battles in the surprise attack-retreat-heal-regroup-resurge attack method, but without utilising any artefacts and sticking to whichever meaty automatic weapon I'm using at the moment.
You should have found a Fireball artifact in Strelok's Hideout in the tunnels. Hard to miss, it's about the size of a football and glows bright red/orange. That gives you -20 radiation, but saps your endurance (You can't sprint as long). Using that you should be able to equip a few of the radiated artifcts. I wouldn't recommend relying on anti-rad and vodka to stem the tide of radiation from artifacts.
The Barman will give you a Stalker Suit for free when you first meet him. That should last you a good while.
If you find yourself running low on armour, have a look here, I've listed the location of some armours that are just laying about for the taking.
:edit:
As far as artifacts go, get ones that reduce bullet (Stone Flower, Mama's Beads, Night Star), rupture (Jellyfish, Goldfish, Kolobok) and bleeding (Slime, Slug and Molok). Ones that increase susceptibility to things like Electric or Burn aren't so bad. Such anomolies are easy to avoid, gunfire less so.
Artifacts that only give positive effects are very rare, so you're going to have to strike a balance whatever you choose.
Last edited by driver; 24th Feb 2008 at 23:43.
Check this thread to get some tips about artifacts, the artifacts really help when picked wisely. +20% bulletproof or +600% health regeneration speed or possibility to sprint virtually tirelessly etc. aren't useless
As for difficulty - yes, it's very difficult when compared with majority of modern games, but don't worry, with skill, better weapon, armour, and artifacts you will get eventually, it will become considerably easier. On my second play-through I did like 10-15 side quests in post-Yantar Wild Territory (you'll see what it is
Don't overweight yourself, equip a Moonshine or two, and learn to sprint. It will help to cross hostile areas and get to your destionation very quick.
I played STALKER OblivionLost on Master, it's insane. the first mission you get to raid the bandit camp felt like the most desperate firefight I ever had in my FPS career.
When I got to the strelok hideout and had to fight the controller I died 20times before reverting to Master which did not make ANY fkn difference. So I decided that I'm just too much of an newbie stalker for controllers and used the STALKERS best ability: SPRINT.
then I got to apgroprom and had to restart the level (I do only save between sections, no quicksave spamming here) about 12 times, getting owned by practicly everbody around. Now I'm in the bar, healed up, armored up and just run around puttin up fights with everybody
Regarding the Controller, all you have to do is sprint towards him and stab him in the face. That's usually the most effective way of getting rid of him. Otherwise just wait for him to get closer, without ever getting in his line of sight, and lob a few grenades in his direction.
I found hiding behind trees with underbrush to be very useful. Sometimes the AI seems to be unable to spot you even in broad daylight from only a few steps away. I was able to just hide behind a tree, lean out and kill a couple of bandits with this cheap (non-silenced) pistol. They came my direction after spotting me, all conveniently lined-up in a row and none of them even fired a single shot although it was raining bullets. That was on second hardest difficulty and 1.0005.
Doesn´t work all the time but can make outdoor fights a lot easier.
Dropped the difficult to STALKER and got up to the Bar, am now in the process of getting stocked up. Rather hilariously I queried my inventory for some time - wondering why I was so heavy when I had relatively little items.
Turns out I had about 2000 rounds of 9mm ammo that were contributing some 20 odd kilos.
Re: combat responses, I am familiar with tactical firefighting from my OpFlash days so that wasn't so much the issue as a bad situation coupled with bad management.
How? As far as I can tell, Controllers are completely harmless.
???? harmless ???
I'm speaking of the funny guy spawning at the end of the Strelok tunnel b4 you exit to get the x16 documents. he uses psi-attacks (in the oblivion lost mod he is accompanied by 10 rats) from afar and even with nades, ironsight or scope I was never able to get him. on STALKER-diff I just sprinted back the hallway and gave him 2 shotgun rounds in the face. instant dead.
On master I NEVER get to reload. once I start reloading my brain is toast.
and I seriously emptied a whole magazine of AK into his face.
they are the toughest enemies. there's a ueber-controller in X18 and the reactor in the OblivionLost mod, i had to use 6 RPGs into his face to down the first one. I hope the other ones is not harder.
Well, your fault for using mods then. In vanilla Stalker all they do is shuffle toward you and make your view wobble.
No, you'll end up dying after a while, if you keep letting him pull you.
You are wrong, they use psi attack that hurts seriously. On master if you aren't quick enough to find and kill the thing or escape, you'll be dead in about 10 secs.
I guess every single encounter I've ever had with them has been glitched then. Worst-case I'll get one of those EXTREME ZOOM attacks from the first one in the tunnels, then... nothing.
Maybe there's a suit or artifact I've been wearing that protects against those guys.
There is a hidden 'telepathic' armour type which protects against the controllers but I'm sure no armour or artifacts protect against it in the unmodded game (if they did, it would show up with all the other protections). The only attack (other than disorientation) controllers seem to have is the psychic pull thing but only the ones that are set encounters (Agropom and yantar underground) seem to use it.
On the harder difficulties, controllers can very tough since they grab you quickly, do lots of damage and you can't use a weapon for a few seconds after each grab.
I have no such artefact and scoured the tunnels twice and could not find this.
Also, did I encounter a bug when I tried to do the Arena fighting? When I first tried it, after each fight I had absolutely nothing left - no ammo, no weapons, no armour, nothing, totally wiped out - so even if I wanted to stop fighting then I had lost everything. What the fuck? Luckily the entry-level autosave was still around so I reverted to that but jesus christ, that's a fucking horrible bug. I ended up dumping everything I had outside, doing the fights then picking it all up again.
You didn't check the box right next to where you enter/exit the Arena, I presume.
Shit like that's supposed to be clear? I just sort of freaked out when I didn't automagically get all my stuff back.
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