Useful Tips and Tricks for New Players
General Tips
Cap your own items, sell what you’re not using or don’t need. No reason to carry 50 med kits or 800 rounds of ammo. Most enemies drop quite a lot of ammo/meds/food and I’ve been getting along just fine with a cap of 10 med kits/bandages, and around 200-300 rounds of ammo, and only around 5-10 food items (of course these caps change depending on where I’m going or how far I’m traveling, just be smart about it!)
Sell most of everything you find. And its not that I’m not spending money, I do quite a lot (this games prices are crazy high) Its just that I know I’m not gonna use half the stuff I get. Any cool unique guns I find either go in my stash or I use them, I don’t sell those for personal collecting reasons. But random guns/gear/use items that I wont need I just sell. (Found two uniforms recently one Duty the other Ecologist, and sold both for around 15k IIRC.)
Use your detector often and search anomalous fields frequently, especially after a Blowout/Emission. This ensures a steady flow of Artifacts. And most of the time I sell them, but I only sell specific kinds. Rare one of a kind Artifacts I keep for personal reasons (I like collecting, I’m basically a crow, me like shiny lmao) But others I will sell regardless. For example any Artifact that grants resistances to acid/electric/fire/etc anomalies I sell. I don’t see a point in having such items as if your careful in anomalous fields you should rarely get harmed, and most of the time you do get harmed you can just heal up and go back to it. I do however keep artifacts that remove radiation, allow you to carry more items without being encumbered, or have extremely good benefits to your health/stamina/etc.
Do story side quest and repeatable side quest. This is the easiest and most simple way to make money in the Zone, hundreds of Stalkers need your help all the time! From getting their friend out of an anomalous area, to killing annoying mutants, this is one of the most surefire ways to get some cash.
- Try to keep the wear down – avoid fighting mutants if possible, waste of ammo and wear, go for headshots on humans, use cover, don’t walk into anomalies. Vastly reduces the rate at which you have to repair.
- There is external wear – taking damage from mutants, humans, anomalies and normal wear, which comes f.e. from magdumping something.
- On top of artifacts you can also find guns, suits etc. through exploration that sell for quite a bit.
Theres a universal stash in the garbage area that links with your one at zalyssia, its by the trader named Huron.
If you find Gilka/Branch artefact detector – do not sell it. It has the highest artefact detection radius, so have it equipped when you’re running around and only grab the Bear/Veles when you’re close to the artefact for easier pathing.
- Repair gear as often as possible the price to repair is, im pretty sure, exponential relative to the durability. Repairing something at 98% may cost 300. Repairing something at 88% may cost 3000.
- All of your equipped gear, weapons included take durability damage when you take damage. Unequip weapons you may not need at the moment or are not using to avoid just getting them damaged.
Weight / Value Management Tips
I now do this all the time and it’s easier for me to choose what weapons no to pick up instantly. Look up the weight and the value. If it “weights more than its value” dont pick it up.
Example:
- 3.6KG – 8,578$? Worth.
- 2.5KG – 3’000$? Value above weight but not very worth.
- 4KG – 2’000$? Very not worth as it “weights double the value”.
Rostok Arena Tips
If you want to really earn a reward, not that tiny amount they pay you for surviving the death fight, then just loot enemies and follow these steps:
- Before approaching the guy near the entrance, drop everything on the ground, talk to him, then collect your stuff back.
- When you leave to the room with the safe and your belongings, you need to drop them once again, as the room has an invisible loot-confiscating barrier as you reach the safe.
- Once done correctly, go upstairs and enjoy your true rewards by selling stuff to local traders.
Trade Tips
Quick tip, move stacks of bread for example when you sell artifacts, and when you bring them back, instead of pressing the button to drop the entire stack off, press the confirm selling button with your mouse, gives you full price.
Instead of 20% of the price you get 100%.
Zalissya Tips
They way I permanently saved Zalissya: Save before triggering the battle ~100m outside the town. NO LOAD/SAVE after that. Go in, kill all waves, get all side quests (weapon, surgical equip, kill scouts (from black clothed guy outside, passive talk no dialogue menu), get trader out of basement (I bribed the guard); SAVE before turning in the last side quest.
Quest finishes and disappears. Wait INSIDE the house with all the npcs until the next attack wave comes. Kill all enemies and RUN back into the house before NPCs block the entrance. If they block, load the save before handing over last sidequest and trigger fight new.
Repeat until you make it inside and the npcs assemble for big victory speech. SAVE. Speak to everyone, then walk outside of town and hope you get the victory message without the fail message.
(And yes, even 30 hours later my Zalissja is still okay with guide (destination, no departure npc sadly) and trader and fully functional).