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[King Zultan]

I did notice that there wasn't much going on in the wilds of Lost Alpha, but I wasn't sure if that was on purpose or not.

Also do any of the other STALKER games have derivable cars like lost alpha does because even though they're kind of shit I still enjoyed driving around in them.


To bad they still explode at the drop of a hat even with the mod that gives them more health.

[Robsoie]

Lost Alpha original plan (they managed to get the OK from the publisher from what i remember) was to make Lost Alpha a commercial game, but an early version of it was leaked so they abandonned their plan, maybe that explain why most maps feel so empty as they probably lost motivation after the leak.

Vector of Alienation (and probably the mod it comes from , Oblivion Lost Remake) has drivable cars, i got one from Barkeep for 2500 rubbles, never tried to enter any of the cars you find around the maps so no idea if they're all drivable without having to buy one.

Just don't forget to bind the key to turn on the car, it nearly drove me mad as i couldn't figure out why the car wasn't working. Some maps are large enough to be good for vehicles.
From my terrible driving stunts, the car seem to be able to take some hits without breaking.

[King Zultan]

Sounds interesting I'll try it out later. Also good to hear they got cars better because in Lost Alpha I had one at full health and hit a few blind dogs and the car exploded.

[Robsoie]

I tested the car in Vector of Alienation :
drove over an unfortunate stalker : no car exploded
drove into a pack of mutated boars : no car exploded

Seems like the car is much more resilient than the Lost Alpha one (but be carefull, you're not impervious to damage in your car, those boars were angry at me and i felt that

A note of importance about the difference between Vector of Alienation and Oblivion Lost Remake.
Originally VoA is an addon for OLR , it's just made standalone now (both VoA and OLR are fully standalone, no need any other Stalker game installed).

VoA is based on a slightly older OLR version, so OLR have a few more side quests that aren't in VoA
VoA has much better dialogues and all its OLR missions are reworked to fit much better into the overall plot, the much improved story is the big strength of Vector of Alienation, making it to me the best story driven Stalker game.

If you are interested to play the Oblivion Lost Remake repack (that include also the english translation in it) i linked, it is missing the last official patch (though you may play without it if you want) , so in case you want the very latest OLR, you'll need to download the patch 46 and the english translation for patch 46, they can be found there :
https://www.gameru.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=54066
as the page is in russian, the downloads are actually there :

Code: [Select]

patch 46
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/GrVF/fNay4UMQP
english translation for patch 46
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/3ct5/232yN8URZ

Note : while Vector of Alienation is just a matter of extract, launch the JSGME.exe to enable the addons you want (only do this before starting  new game, as adding addon on your existing saves may do unexpected things), then launch the game with ...\bin\XR_3DA.exe (you can make a shortcut to it if you want), for Oblivion Lost Remake before and after the patch you will need to run a "Configurator.cmd" and follow the instructions, so the game will create the necessary folders for it to work correctly.

Note 2 : the guy that did the Oblivion Lost Remake repack accidentally included by default his minimap remover addon, so here's how to re-enable it

Whoops, I accidentally removed it from the main download it looks like (minimap remover is to be an addon). You should be able to fix it by deleting gamedata\config\ui\zone_map files but back them up just in case).

Note 3 : in case you like to play VoA (and maybe OLR) windowed, if you want the window to be in the middle of your screen instead of being in the upper left of the screen, add to your shortcut

Code: [Select]

-center_screen

[JimboM12]

annnnndddd that makes OLR install number 8 lol. i may have a problem but such is life don't just stand there stalker, come cheeki breeki

[Robsoie]

Something i found helpfull in both OLR and VoA , when someone gives you a mission, the task description is not very elaborated in your PDA -> Task section, it just does not write all the hints that the task giver gave to you.

Go then to your PDA -> Diary and switch from "Log" to "Message History" (or "History" in VoA) so you can check the dialogue with the guy that gave you the mission so you can find what's missing from the PDA -> Task summary (very good for when you get a code for a special locked door and forgot about what it was and the Task section does not help )

Now something OLR has that VoA does not : from then in case you have lots of dialogues and pda news coming and you fear the task giver dialogue may disappear, you can then go to PDA -> Notepad and "Start writing" to add yourself the hints

[Robsoie]

I think i'm starting to get near mid-story in Vector of Alienation.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After a lot of things, i am now working for the scientist science lab in the lake of Yantar, trying to build a protection against the psy emitter located in the big buildings in center of the map.

Once i completed a few missions, one involving to travel to the Dead City to find some stuff , and additionally complete some quests from the faction located there, i finally got everything the prof needed to complete the psy protection helmet.

But it needed time so he gave me another task, finding the 5 mutant scanner that were lying all around the lake, each in dangerous places.
One was very funky to fetch as it was located in a ruined house in which there was a very odd gravity screwing anomaly, making it a huge pain to navigate.
The most dangerous one was in a bunker that was half buried in the very northerneast of the map , dangerous because there was a damned burer in it without me knowing it.
Lucky i was i still had 1 grenade left, as burers aren't able to deflect the grenade explosions, as my previous encounters with burers proved that they can deflect bullets annoyingly. I'll have to buy some more grenades for future burers encounter.

Take that grenade !

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh one of those psy damaging illusion due to all those psy field just went into my screenshot

At least they have clothes.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyways, after getting my helmet completed and entering the underground labs from an away entrance, i was very happy to have obtained a SVU sniper rifle from one of the Dead City faction after i made some quest from them, because i could see from above that on the bottom of the entrance ladder in the big room and large corridor below  there were 2 chimeras, yeah good luck in such area to face 2 of those beasts if you dont kill them from safety.

After some more monsters in the underground facilities, i finally discovered the source of the psy emitter

I can't imagine the pain of that poor thing headaches.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It gave me a vision of his creation after that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once dealt with , a funny (well not so funny) controller was waiting on my way back and blocked the way i was coming from with a bunch of things that i can't move. I had still bullets for my SVU and could then take that damned  usually resilient things with a couple of bullet in the face.
So i was forced to go for the other exit, the one that i couldn't get into because the psy emitter was previously working.

And then i faced it, the worst enemy of the game : a broken elevator that you climb into a ladder, but with said ladder having collision detection issue , making it an absolute pain to reach the top alcove in order to then jump into the exit path.

So if you get there, a good idea it to save before trying to climb the elevator then ladder, once on top try your best with crouching, walk+crouhing to crouch lower and mini jump to get into what should have been an easy to reach alcove if the ladder was correctly configured like all the other ladders in the game have been.

Oh well, i was really happy once i finally managed to reach the exit path, no more problem, didn't even took any caution to kill the few monolith troopers that were in ambush in the surface, they didn't stood a chance after all my problems with the damned ladder of doom.

[Robsoie]

After doing a lot, and getting all my quests done to be ready for the final part of Vector of Alienation, i have finally reached the CNPP.

The less i can say is i wasn't expecting this defense system from the zone being that different from what happens at that point in Shadow of Chernobyl, it's very original and fits nicely the VoA stories as there were some quests made to prepare for this.
But i found this a bit annoying, i think i would have prefered the warzone that it is in SoCH.

Anyways, after you're out of Pripyat and enter CNPP make sure to have a few "weak gravitational artifacts" before going there, as you'll need them to power the device you've been given at some point of the storyline, as you will really need all the "anchor" you can generate to teleport around after what happens with the defense system that surround the whole map.

So far this Vector of Alienation has been a lot of fun, a hint : it's better to leave a car parked before exiting a map (it will stay where you park it), as i noticed in some maps if you enter with your car, it can become permanentely stuck due to where you're spawning.
Make sure to save before entering a new map with a car in case it's going to happen to you.

[Robsoie]

Vector of Alienation.

Similarly to Oblivion Lost Remake and Shadow of Chernobyl, there's the same multiple ending system.
Having past experience of them, as during my long trip around the labs i unlocked the way to the true ending, i decided to try it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So i bypassed going into CNPP as the true ending wasn't in there, i moved all around the whole plant to the next map,  still i had to use a lot the wormhole anchor device many time to be able to be able to get there, as the whole CNPP defense of making regular emission to teleport you back to the map start was super annoying.

Good that Vector of Alienation is not as populated as other similar Stalker games, as the fights with the few monolith troopers and mutants were already making me lost time between emissions, in OLR that has more similarity to what Shadow of Chernobyl in that area the challenge was more a big fight than this emission teleporting crap.

Anyways, finally arrived at Generator


Does not look that different from other games Generator maps, anyways, went right to the C-Consciousness bunker , explored the empty area to find the 5 usb sticks from scientist corpses required to stop the gaz (and it didn't stopped as it should have, i had to save and reload to have the gaz really stopped).
Then went right to the annoying ladders in the broken lifts to finally reach after a lot of annoying collision detection issue the opening to the exact floor i needed.
Encountered the C-Consciousness representative, talked to have the whole plot explained (the explanation is not different from Shadow of Chernobyl) .

Then i decided to refuse the offer, leading into a super bad annoying fight against the entity. It was horrible.

The thing run even faster than the Bloodsuckers (in Vector of Alienation they run faster than in other Stalker games already) it was so stupid to see that, hit their repeated slaps faster than them (letting you less time i move out of repeated strikes) and the worst of the worst is that it can take an utterly insane amount of punishment.

Nearly all my -many- grenades , most of the armor piercing ammo (i had stockpilled them since the beginning, using only normal ammo) and absolutely all the healing packs i had (and i had a huge lot of them) despite exploiting every possible corners and solid items (to resist those non-stop flying steel tables and other items thrown at my face, the biggest weapon of the entity) , i finally took the thing down.
And only because it stuck itself in a stair

And man, the true ending is really bad, i reloaded and took the other true ending in which i take the offer , so there's no fight and it's directly the end movie... and it's as bad.
I guess the author of Vector of Alienation really like depressing stories end no matter what the characters do.
Explaining probably the "Man made Hell" thing you see in the mod description, that's exactly what the true endings are.

It was a very good mod, it was more desolate than its parent mod Oblivion Lost Remake (but still more alife in it than in Lost Alpha) as you meet less people around, has some slightly different missions (and some very different, like the whole CNPP emission teleporting ordeal that isn't in OLR) to fit the more elaborated story and dialogues so it may be worth playing even if you already completed OLR.
To note that the latest version of Oblivion Lost Remake has more side quests, and a notepad in your PDA so you can note those door codes that the PDA does not automatically write in the tasks menu.

[Robsoie]

For people interested in the Anomaly standalone, since the last official update work on the next version has never stopped and it is currently at Release Candidate 21 (the RC are apparently only available through the devs discord) .
Some nice people uploaded the whole thing for people wanting to try without going through RC patching process and registering on the discord thing :
https://www.moddb.com/addons/stalker-anomaly-rc21

I tried a bit and it's great, in fact i had performance problem in the latest official anomaly that lead me to just ditch it, but i'm impressed how this RC21 run smoothly. Though i was very annoyed by some oddly laggy camera movement that i never noticed in any other stalker game, that i found could be disabled by typing in the console

Code: [Select]

cam_slide_inert 0

[JimboM12]

thanks for the heads up, i was under the assumption that they were working on an update to anomaly and waiting for the release, so this is good to hear.

i never really had any issues with 1.50 with the update 4 and hotfix 8, but im always willing to update. for now, though, ill probably have this as a separate install next to my "official" anomaly install

[Robsoie]

You should be able to have multiple Anomaly games at the same time, so you can still keep your old version of 1.5

In case of performance issue with Anomaly RC21, you can try this addon :
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/performance-alife-settings

And to improve the immersion in Anomaly RC21, this addon bring visual animations of most of the player actions, rather nice to have :
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/food-drug-and-drinks-animations-for-anomaly

Oh and still on their road to make Anomal 1.6 they released a RC22 with a lot of fixes and improvement, there's a link to upgrade from RC21 to RC22 here :

Code: [Select]

https://www.mediafire.com/file/gwxt4tgfpxocc1b/Anomaly-1.5.0-RC21-to-RC22.7z/file

[Robsoie]

Noticed on reddit that Call of the Zone has been updated to version 1.2 :
https://www.moddb.com/mods/doctorx-call-of-the-zone/news/stalker-call-of-the-zone-12-update-released
Not all addons may be compatible, but i see that several have been already updated for 1.2

Other than that, some tips for Anomaly RC22
Money comes hard, but everything is silly expensive (probably due to Anomaly being based on the Last Day mod that was an update on Call of Misery, that itself was an adaptation of the Misery mod for Call of chernobyl).
Solution : focus on getting artifacts and mutant body parts, then bring both type of loot to Yantar, find Prof Sakharov in the bunker lab, he is your very best friend in the Zone as he will pay a lot more than the other traders for artifact (even the useless ones) , don't make the mistake to sell such thing to other traders.

But be carefull the non useless artifacts are radioactive and you need to place them in container to not get killed over time , the useless artifacts (the ones that give no bonus anywhere) are safe to carry without containers.
Problem : artifacts are very heavy (some more than other) , and containers are not light themselves, meaning if you don't want to run out of stamina regularly and wait until you can move again, be sure to not carry too much.
It's always tempting to carry 2 weapons and their corresponding ammo like you do in every Stalker mods, but that only adsd more weight, so to make way for an extra artifact, only carry a weapon and its ammo.

Oh and before going into an underground lab, make sure you have a lot of ammo for your guns, it's incredibly easy to run out of them as labs are more populated than the surface usually in term of things to shoot at before they eat or shoot you.
Not all trader are selling ammo, it's a huge pain (especially if you make your main base in Yantar to be close to your best money friend Sakharov, the only way to get ammo there is to give the food trader a specific type of vodka (3 or 4 bottles) in exchange of a few packs of ammo.

Other way you'll have to go to a trader that have ammo (the Duty guy in Rostok, the Mercenary guy in Dead City once you shut down the miracle machine, the guy in the Cordon farm next to the mechanic, etc..), that's not a short walk from Yantar.

Also don't give the specific vodka to the Yantar food trader too early, wait you have at least found 7 bottles, he will give you a very good military armor (that has better rupture stats than most of the armor you can get by then, rupture is the reason why you die so fast from mutant strikes and biting in most armor, this military armor will take much more claws in your face to have you killed)

[Ulfarr]

Not exactly about the video games but InrangeTV posted a stalker-themed gun match video.

It's nice to see certain pieces of "stalker" gear (like the GP-5 mask) in "action" but it's mostly just an excuse to larp/shitpost on their part so don't take it too seriously

[Robsoie]

There have been a lot of fan movie around the Stalker universe, some are of rather good quality like this very well done one (you can enable the english subtitles) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA4oowN4kII

Often fan movie suffer from the fact they use clothes in near mint condition.

Anyways, after playing so much of Vector of Alienation, i took a liking to static lighting , so i started to play Anomaly in DX8 (that has been visually improved and fixed in the RC serie) and found it really great even if it does not have all the bells&whistles of higher DX
DX8 also has mask textures (what higher DX does not have, they use some shader instead), that i found actually more immersive.

And performance skyrocket in DX8 , didn't expected that much of a difference with higher DX