Black Stalker

[The Lone Badger]

Does he effectively function as a time limit on missions? It appears impossible to avoid him or lose him once he spawns, and fighting him would consume an immense unsustainable amount of resources, so I guess I just need to get the mission done faster?

[crmarlow2874]

I made a habit of building the machines needed to delay the storm, every time I do a mission. These machines will also delay the Black Stalker coming through by a little bit each time. When you place a few of them around the maps that the overall delay will stack up so The Black Stalker wont appear so quickly. If you do a mission quickly enough that you will have time to look around to gather resources without the Stalker ever making an appearance.

[Legileg]

Black Stalker's strength scales with NAR's strength, so if you didn't upset them too much then he should be fairly easy to defeat. If you can beat him, it's over until the next day. He is also worth a lot of experience points...

The frequency of its appearance scales with the difficulty of "survival". If he irritates you excessively, lower this difficulty level and he will appear MUCH less often.

[EVILE-VON-OVERKILLE]

Still think if you defeat him you should get to explore as you like with no more stalker for that mission...Time constraints wreck video games...The sense of urgency with time constrains when weighed with the sense of defeating a foe and gaining peace for a mission is an inferior type of game mechanic...Defeat and Gaining are old and tried and just work...it will not change regardless.

[Crypto Gamer]

You can build anti storm devices to delay his timer,usually 5 is enough on normal and you will almost never meet him,on insane survival difficulty you might need to build 20+ to get a decent timer.

He can appear more than once in a mission if you only flee from him and outlast the timer.
Only likely to ecounter him more than once on insane difficulty.
If you defeat him he will be gone for that day on every difficulty and give good exp.

On higher combat difficulties(where NAR by default is highly active and enemy has double the normal HP)he is not worth the resources/ammo to kill him,unless you are already in lategame and have highly upgraded weapons.

In few cases he is scripted to appear and you are forced to fight him.
You can use sneaking to avoid him for a while and outlast his timer,you can dodge his shots too.You can run in circle and dodge most shots or use the enviorment especially early game so his shots hit the enviorment.

He barely takes more dmg in the head,so torso shots are better to down him unlike other enemies.

[IamConor-]

Originally posted by Crypto Gamer:

You can build anti storm devices to delay his timer,usually 5 is enough on normal and you will almost never meet him,on insane survival difficulty you might need to build 20+ to get a decent timer.

He can appear more than once in a mission if you only flee from him and outlast the timer.
Only likely to ecounter him more than once on insane difficulty.
If you defeat him he will be gone for that day on every difficulty and give good exp.

On higher combat difficulties(where NAR by default is highly active and enemy has double the normal HP)he is not worth the resources/ammo to kill him,unless you are already in lategame and have highly upgraded weapons.

In few cases he is scripted to appear and you are forced to fight him.
You can use sneaking to avoid him for a while and outlast his timer,you can dodge his shots too.You can run in circle and dodge most shots or use the enviorment especially early game so his shots hit the enviorment.

He barely takes more dmg in the head,so torso shots are better to down him unlike other enemies.

Helpful tips, i've been playing on max difficulty blind and Black stalker has become a real issue for me. I don't find myself worried about him being hard to deal with but more of an annoyance of having to sit around for X amount of time walking around geometry losing LOS with him as he teleports in and out i've noticed health/timer increase and i think his appearance has become more frequent. i haven't explored much into the storm blockers but judging by your description they are almost not worth it at insane difficulty. Realistically is there anything i can do about it because its starting to feel a bit of a drag. other than that i love the game.

[Crypto Gamer]

The zone gets worse overtime,the speed,lower and upper caps defined by "survival difficulty".
In other worlds you have to build devices to keep up or even outpace the zone.(very easy on normal and below).

In practice:Radiations basically lowers your max health,can live with it and do not use those devices until late game.

Monsters if you have semi decent weapons/upgrades monsters give good loot so you might want only a few anti wormhole/monster devices.Scripted mission spawns are not effected.Those spawns are rare tough.

I usually build close to 30 anti storm devices on insane and 10-15 from the other 2.

I think the lower cap for Black stalker is 5 minutes to appear on insane after mission start.
.At insane you start around 20 minutes at day 1 and it slowly gets worse.I usually aim for 30-45 minutes for him to appear.
As "insane combat" also has more NAR enemies with double the normal hp you need more time.

If you do not build devices basically he will appear insanely fast on insane:) and you are forced to kill him.
If you are doing primary missions chances are that you increase his stats via NAR influence increase and he gets more hp.

His timer is also slowly grows not sure what effects it the days or nar influence or both,but it starts at around 45 seconds and can go above 4 minutes maybe even 5.So eventually his timer will be very high.

So strom blockers are the most important on insane.
NAR patrols can destroy devices if they find them.Not sure if monsters can destory it.
So you need to build them in secluded locations usually inside buildings especially past lockpicked doors which are never visited by NAR.

Monster and anti storm is global it will affect all 6 maps,no matter on which map you build it.
Radiation device seems to be map specific but you need less to lower a map to 0,can not go above zero.All devices take effect on the next day,not the current one.

[IamConor-]

Originally posted by Crypto Gamer:

The zone gets worse overtime,the speed,lower and upper caps defined by "survival difficulty".
In other worlds you have to build devices to keep up or even outpace the zone.(very easy on normal and below).

In practice:Radiations basically lowers your max health,can live with it and do not use those devices until late game.

Monsters if you have semi decent weapons/upgrades monsters give good loot so you might want only a few anti wormhole/monster devices.Scripted mission spawns are not effected.Those spawns are rare tough.

I usually build close to 30 anti storm devices on insane and 10-15 from the other 2.

I think the lower cap for Black stalker is 5 minutes to appear on insane after mission start.
.At insane you start around 20 minutes at day 1 and it slowly gets worse.I usually aim for 30-45 minutes for him to appear.
As "insane combat" also has more NAR enemies with double the normal hp you need more time.

If you do not build devices basically he will appear insanely fast on insane:) and you are forced to kill him.
If you are doing primary missions chances are that you increase his stats via NAR influence increase and he gets more hp.

His timer is also slowly grows not sure what effects it the days or nar influence or both,but it starts at around 45 seconds and can go above 4 minutes maybe even 5.So eventually his timer will be very high.

So strom blockers are the most important on insane.
NAR patrols can destroy devices if they find them.Not sure if monsters can destory it.
So you need to build them in secluded locations usually inside buildings especially past lockpicked doors which are never visited by NAR.

Monster and anti storm is global it will affect all 6 maps,no matter on which map you build it.
Radiation device seems to be map specific but you need less to lower a map to 0,can not go above zero.All devices take effect on the next day,not the current one.

Cheers for this just now started making the anti storms beacons i went to day 14 without it and yeah like you say he shows up instantly and over and over id end up seeing him a good 5 or 6 times a mission each at 5 minutes hide time but hopefully ill start slowing him down reading what you said about hiding them i think i've placed them in bad spots but we will see

[Sabaithal]

As already stated, certain machines delay the storm. And if the player is quick enough they can easily finish the mission before the storm as long as it doesn't get too severe.

If however you are in a pinch, there are places in every map where the black stalker cannot spawn, even when the timer pops up. A lot of them are crawlspaces. Find one of those areas if you have to, and wait for the timer to end, then resume your normal business.

And you can tell when its coming, when green lightning starts to hit, find a place to hide.

One thing to note though, there is one particular companion mission where the black stalker, and consequently the storm, will always spawn no matter what. Its not a usual encounter, he doesn't spawn in as normal. He's waiting for you to come to him in that one.

[hekoone]

Black Stalker encounters need to be less "mechanical". Just think about this: in Pripyat Residential Area it would be good if the Black Stalker CAN'T enter the Igor+Tanya apartment for obviouos reasons (desperation).......he really needs to act not as a powerful "elite" NPC but as......you, just remembering the "original" timeline reality.

[13LACK ORDER]

Why everybody so afraid with black stalker? just bring molecular plasma thrower with you. and blast him with it whenever he appear. you can beat him in less than 5 seconds and he gave ton of xp. don't need to build that anti storm or whatever

[hekoone]

That's the problem, fighting him it's too much simple and mechanical......

[Crypto Gamer]

Fighting him on all sliders insane is not worth the resource/ammo spent to kill him early-mid game.If you do not build devices on insane eventually he will appear every 5 minutes and stay for like 5 minutes so you can not really avoid him.

By the time you get the molecular plasma thrower you already in latergame so due to anti devices you will rarely meet him or yes you can kill him relative well in lategame even on insane difficulty.

On normal and below you will rarely meet him and he is MUCH easier to kill.
I never run run out of strorm timer on normal by just building 5 devices on a early mission.
Even on hard he is rarely an issue.

[Yosharian]

There are many locations in the game where you can, during missions, build the items which delay the Black Stalker's appearance, and those items will never be destroyed because enemies cannot reach those locations.

E.g.

- Pripyat Central in the tower where you can reach the top using the elevator
- Most tunnels/underground areas

Place the items there as much as you can and eventually the delay on the Black Stalker appearing will be like 30+ mins, and you'll never see him again.

To build the item I think you need:

Mushroom 4
Circuits 2
Herbs 2

I could be wrong but it's something like that

[Yosharian]

If you want to kill the Black Stalker, the shotgun is the best way to do it IMO

Unless you have unlocked the OP endgame weapons ofc