Best mods for the game - and before you say Misery?

[Mad_House]

I tried misery and felt like the AI was significantly reduced in number. Normally there's a fair number of bandits and stalkers near the freighter, and they all come rushing inside when one happens. I played through one blow out with misery, and the place wasn't just a ghost town - I managed to get killed on the second deck because I guess the blowout glitched through the wall.

So apart from the lols, I did a full reinstall since I'm thinking the issue itself was caused by Misery. If I'm wrong, it's not like I deleted the file, but is this supposed to be the case? AI ghost town, nobody really running around outside? I like having a fair number of AI to offset the loneliness.

[xchrisx88]

try Anomaly, its a standalone, highly customizable mod, with all STALKER maps and 3 main plot lines + some handmade new main missions afterwards with 2 new factions

inb4, you have to ask and look around to start the main quests

[Nick Vascuas]

Originally posted by Rasputin, Saint-Martyr:

I tried misery and felt like the AI was significantly reduced in number. Normally there's a fair number of bandits and stalkers near the freighter, and they all come rushing inside when one happens. I played through one blow out with misery, and the place wasn't just a ghost town - I managed to get killed on the second deck because I guess the blowout glitched through the wall.

So apart from the lols, I did a full reinstall since I'm thinking the issue itself was caused by Misery. If I'm wrong, it's not like I deleted the file, but is this supposed to be the case? AI ghost town, nobody really running around outside? I like having a fair number of AI to offset the loneliness.

I am 30 hours into a Misery play through cause the grind for money is nuts. I had to edit the file for mutant parts because it was taking literal hours to make any kind of decent money.

There is a lot more mutants then bandits in Misery. You'll see a lot more people in Yanov. You have to do quests in Zaton to get more bandits and mercs to roam around. I believe if you clear the substation workshop where the mercenaries stay then they start roaming the map. Stuff like that.

It is a lot more empty human wise then the base game I feel though.

Anomaly is a great mod. I have had some issues with stability and the friendly AI but its got a lot of stuff to do.

[Nite69]

No mods are good for the vanilla games anymore you want to move to the standalone made games to be honest such as Lost alpha, CP 2.1 / OP 2.1, Anomaly, etc

I'm playing CP 2.1 / OP 2.1 now and its awesome, it was originally in russian text and the english translation just recently got completed for it.

[Nite69]

Originally posted by xchrisx88:

try Anomaly, its a standalone, highly customizable mod, with all STALKER maps and 3 main plot lines + some handmade new main missions afterwards with 2 new factions

inb4, you have to ask and look around to start the main quests

anomaly doesn't have all the maps, you want to play CP 2.1 / OP 2.1 if you want all the maps, it will take a long time to get them all unlocked though cause missions are tied to the transition points for them.

Image here of the surface maps

https://external-preview.redd.it/thtVrklnRkXTS0tDZoYfIV9UWmyeqtTk_WugL6BOxcE.jpg?auto=webp&s=c6961f5449e4283fc9e17e020db65824df7f576e

complete list here including underground ones:

atp_for_test22
aver av_peshera
dead_city
generators
hospital
jupiter
jupiter_underground
l01_escape
l02_garbage
l03u_agr_underground
l03_agroprom
l04u_labx18
l04_darkvalley
l05_bar
l06_rostok
l07_military
l08u_brainlab
l08_yantar
l10u_bunker
l10_radar
l11_pripyat
l12u_control_monolith
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
l12_stancia
l12_stancia_2
l37_kurchatov
l38u_labx5
l39u_lab_x14
l40_dshor
l41_darkscape_ogse
l42_predbannik
l44_perimetr
l45_forest
l46_science_station
l47u_lab_x17
l48_promzone
l49u_damned
l50u_katakomb
l51_lostvalley
l52_swamp
l53_anomfields
l54u_labx9
l55u_basement
l56_rostok_factory
l57_outskirts
l58_forgotten
l59_east_cordon
l60u_utilities
l61u_d6
l62u_collector
l63_massive
l64_railstation
l65_polesie
l66u_labx19
labx8
limansk
lost_village
marsh
peshera
pripyat
puzir
red_forest
warlab
zaton

[Ray tracing is faster]

Atmosfear 3 + Absolute Nature 4.04 + Absolute Structures + STCoP 3.2 for a first time playthrough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qg4MSwLCJc

After that, as far as CoP mods go:

Valley of Whispers (OWR 3 edition on ModDB) - This feels like an official expansion

Anomaly 1.5 Beta (currently Beta 2.4 but 3.0 is coming soon, might as well wait for that) - The ultimate freeplay mod. STANDALONE

Dollchan - Current version 7 is very interesting but unfinished, Dollchan 8 should be very nice. I think it's standalone, hard to keep track these days since Stalker games are all DRM free

Most of the best mods are SoC based though. Also keep an eye on A.R.E.A. but the current version is just not worth it next to Anomaly.

[Vegan Friendly Rolling Papers]

Soudns like you had a blowout at the start. WHich means you wont be seeing alot of NPCs outside. The spawns and patrols are extremely dynamic in Misery.

The population is very high. I have seen 5 different squads of stalkers, bandits, duty and mercs fight it out at the ship beside Skodovsk. There can be literally 5 four man bandit patrols in the marshes of Zaton.

The waste processing station can spawn anywhere from 1-5 squads of bandits and or mercs.

The Jupiter area above ground is borderline insane and has the most density of hostile mutants you will ever see in any version of stalker.

Whats good other than Misery? Not much.

Anomaly is based on alot of elements of Misery but is more friendly combat and a harder economy (if you wish). Or you can make it as easy as you want more like COC so its highly customisable to your style and desired playthrough.

Autumn Aurora for SOC. Still the best mod for any stalker game.


And thats about it.

[Ray tracing is faster]

Misery is a real love it or hate it mod. I'm in the latter group. Its weapon quality is also really poor compared to other mods... it's just really obsolete from a shooter perspective and is full of insane inventory clutter. Then on top of that, it's just CoP's story and maps which are the worst in the series.

Originally posted by Heresy:

Autumn Aurora for SOC. Still the best mod for any stalker game.

Er, you need to play a lot more mods. Autumn Aurora is just a vanilla+ mod and not even the best one really.

I'll start with a conceptually somewhat similar mod: have you played OGSE 0693? It is feature and content wise far ahead of any version of Autumn Aurora. Of course there's also AMK 1.4.1 Autumn edition, if you like Autumn Aurora (I don't). So you get most of the features from Autumn Aurora 2.1 and everything from AMK 1.4.1. I also rank AMK 1.4 alone ahead of Autumn Aurora.

[Vegan Friendly Rolling Papers]

I find Autumn Aurora to be the most stable best looking version of SOC that changes very little from vanilla. It simply will not crash on my rig at max settings and max fps. It has no stutters or nothing. As a content mod it brings only graphical improvements and a few weapons but they look and perform great.

For a mod to be that stable for stalker from 2014 was unheard of and there is still nothing to this day that surpasses it in terms of playability, smoothness and challenge. It even comes with its own installer.

I have heard good things about OGSE but it looks sort of like Lost Alpha or whatever to me and the majority of stalker mods are notoriously unstable and poorly optimised as if they pushed the engine passed its physical limitations.

It all depends what you are looking for if you want more content check out some of the fan made big mods. If you want vanilla content redone better then check Misery and AA.

One of the only reasons why Misery and AA are the best mods imo is because they are a single file that converts your game. You dont have to mess around with individual mods installing them in a certain secret sequence so they are all compatible. Misery might take a year + to optimise to your rig but once you do its worth it.

They are also the only two mods i can think of that are 100% complete in an end state which cannot be said for 95% of stalker mods.

[Ray tracing is faster]

Originally posted by Heresy:

I find Autumn Aurora to be the most stable best looking version of SOC that changes very little from vanilla. It simply will not crash on my rig at max settings and max fps. It has no stutters or nothing. As a content mod it brings only graphical improvements and a few weapons but they look and perform great.

For a mod to be that stable for stalker from 2014 was unheard of and there is still nothing to this day that surpasses it in terms of playability, smoothness and challenge. It even comes with its own installer.

I have heard good things about OGSE but it looks sort of like Lost Alpha or whatever to me and the majority of stalker mods are notoriously unstable and poorly optimised as if they pushed the engine passed its physical limitations.

It all depends what you are looking for if you want more content check out some of the fan made big mods. If you want vanilla content redone better then check Misery and AA.

One of the only reasons why Misery and AA are the best mods imo is because they are a single file that converts your game. You dont have to mess around with individual mods installing them in a certain secret sequence so they are all compatible. Misery might take a year + to optimise to your rig but once you do its worth it.

They are also the only two mods i can think of that are 100% complete in an end state which cannot be said for 95% of stalker mods.

While you're entitled to your opinion, there's an overwhelming amount of misinformation in your post:

- Autumn Aurora isn't any more stable than some other vanilla+ mods like AMK 1.4, Mod Pack 2013, Oblivion Lost 2010 and 2.2, even Complete 2009, which are all older.

- OGSE is nothing like Lost Alpha, this is made up slander. Totally different mods conceptually and in practice.

- OGSE 0693 is no less stable than Autumn Aurora, more stable if anything, and runs better since the current version doesn't push the engine past its limits, it uses its own version of the engine that is 64-bit (hence the improved performance and stability). Details can be found here: https://github.com/OGSR/OGSR-Engine

- Just to clarify what OGSE 0693 is: it keeps the original SoC story intact until later where it expands on it a bit and introduces some new maps, so yeah it's not exactly the same in that regard. It also contains many times more side quests, lengthening the game significantly, and some of the finest quest design in the series, superior to vanilla SoC in that regard. It also has better graphics than any version of Autumn Aurora, and much better gameplay (and I don't think AA has any gameplay elements that OGSE doesn't have).

- Almost every mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a single mod like Misery or AA. This applies to all of AA's competitors like AMK, OGSE, Mod Pack 2013, Oblivion Lost. Multiple-mod installations are rare since X-Ray doesn't like this.

- Misery will never be 'optimized' because it's guilty of something you pointed out: pushes the stock 32-bit engine beyond its limits. Misery literally has no competition though.

- Your last point is the most misleading one of all. There are lots of incomplete/work in progress mods yeah, but there are also tons of finished mods beyond just those two. And OGSE 0693 (which is finished) honestly makes AA look mediocre in general. Misery is complete but like I said is perpetually unoptimized due to the engine limitations.

[Vegan Friendly Rolling Papers]

X-ray is notoriously unstable. There are no universal settings that work for everyone since everyone has different specs and rig.

Everyone seems to have different experiences with the mods that are available in terms of enjoyment and performance.

When i play Misery or Anomaly or any other version of stalker its accepted and expected to get at least 1 crash per session. Maybe more but its part of the game and i learn to live with it.

On the other hand i cannot get AA to crash. It just wont and it also has the best fps and looks better than both Misery and Anomaly.

I dont doubt OGSE Its one of the only other decent looking mods.

You should prob try AA before you nock the graphics as they are superior to OGSE from what i can see. You can even just look at the screen shots on Mod DB for proof. THey are fairly similar but OGSE seems to have less ENB idk. You can also turn off DOF because its bad lol.

https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/19/18131/wb3dxeK.jpg

https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/20/19185/96B392DD5AA1-1.jpg

OGSE has that out of place colour pallet from vanilla. AA is more autumnal and hazy with stronger more natural colours.

[Ray tracing is faster]

Originally posted by Heresy:

X-ray is notoriously unstable. There are no universal settings that work for everyone since everyone has different specs and rig.

Everyone seems to have different experiences with the mods that are available in terms of enjoyment and performance.

When i play Misery or Anomaly or any other version of stalker its accepted and expected to get at least 1 crash per session. Maybe more but its part of the game and i learn to live with it.

Misery probably has out of memory crashes due to the 32-bit engine, Anomaly 1.5 Beta 2.4 has some known issues that should be resolved in the full version so expect no more crashing then.

Originally posted by Heresy:

On the other hand i cannot get AA to crash. It just wont and it also has the best fps and looks better than both Misery and Anomaly.

Wild misinformation here. You just REALLY like autumn themed vegetation apparently, but technically speaking Autumn Aurora is considerably behind even Misery in technical graphics, due to DX9 limitations. And it's being OGSE 0693 for the same reason: due to its close-to-vanilla SoC engine limitations.

Anomaly and Dead Air objectively have the best technical graphics in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series by far. They made some nice improvements to the DX11 renderer.

Originally posted by Heresy:

I dont doubt OGSE Its one of the only other decent looking mods.

Saying that as if there are very little, when in reality S.T.A.L.K.E.R. almost has too many to keep track of: OGSE, the promising CoC forks (Anomaly, Dollchan, A.R.E.A., Stason's), Oblivion Lost Remake, Goldsphere, NLC 7, Valley of Whispers, NS2016 and OP2.1 if you're into soups but I don't personally recommend them. I don't even consider Autumn Aurora and Misery part of that list, especially Autumn Aurora which is just obsolete at this point while Misery is flat out poorly designed.

Just realize you're making claims on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modding scene while being clearly ignorant to the majority of it. If you want to actually learn about it, then do yourself a favor and acquaint yourself with thewolfstalker on YouTube, and follow the communities on ap-pro, stalker-worlds, amk-team, even Vk groups. Moddb hardly receives any new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods.

Originally posted by Heresy:

You should prob try AA before you nock the graphics as they are superior to OGSE from what i can see. You can even just look at the screen shots on Mod DB for proof. THey are fairly similar but OGSE seems to have less ENB idk. You can also turn off DOF because its bad lol.

I've played Autumn Aurora 2 and 2.1, while you haven't played OGSE. I've played all of the mods in discussion, I've been playing the series and its mods for over a decade, and I've been a modder in the series myself for about 9 years.

AA2's graphics are considerably beneath OGSE 0693 from a technical perspective. AA2 might as well be considered vanilla SoC engine (it just has some new shaders, like every other generic vanilla+ mod) while OGSE is now on OGSR 1.0007 x64 engine. OGSE 0693 adds way more features to the R2 renderer than AA2 does, such as:

- Its sunshaft system which is far beyond what normal SoC engine is capable of (which means AA2 cannot technically get to this level due to engine limitations)

- Dynamic wet surfaces (impossible in AA2)

- An improved dynamic lighting system in general with volumetric effects that are absent in AA2

- More post processing effects

- Much better ambient occlusion than AA2's wonky shader implementations (including SSDO and HBAO)

- Significantly improved shadow rendering with bugfixes that AA2 lacks

- Much better draw distance that can be configured

- Better texture quality

- Better vegetation models

- Better first person textures

- Better weathers

- Overhauled animation system - new first person inertia and weapon bobbing

Better in every single objective way.

Originally posted by Heresy:

OGSE has that out of place colour pallet from vanilla. AA is more autumnal and hazy with stronger more natural colours.

OGSE's color palette is closer to vanilla, but still very different (and versions 0692 and 0693 differ from each other). Autumn Aurora 2 is not more natural, it's just autumn. A seasonal difference, exaggerated even. The stupid ENB haze seen in your screenshots is highly unrealistic but you're praising it.

You really need to download OGSE for yourself. Your inexperience leaves you in no position to argue. Granted I'm sure you'll still prefer Autumn Aurora 2's art style because you seem to love it, but that has no bearing on technical graphics fidelity.

[Vegan Friendly Rolling Papers]

If you are defending it to that extend then it must be decent. Anomaly is so smooth because it has 64 bit engine.

I just know that the game is unstable as is then certain mods make it even worse. I do love the autumn vibe i think its suits soc much better. I think it has different foliage as well and much more pronounced shadows. People have different tastes and i can respect that.


For some reason in all the OGSE screenshots i see no shadows. Or very basic structure ones only. Every single shrub has a shadow in AA and just by looking at the screenshots they look much more detailed and dynamic. However like you said i have not played it and those must be beta screenshots or something. Otherwise what you say about graphics is proven otherwise just by the screenshots of both mods.

The weather, the sky, the vegetation also all looks better to me in AA. I will have to see for myself because the screenshots must not be correct for OGSE or they are from a much older version than what you are talking about.

[Ray tracing is faster]

Originally posted by Heresy:

If you are defending it to that extend then it must be decent. Anomaly is so smooth because it has 64 bit engine.

I just know that the game is unstable as is then certain mods make it even worse. I do love the autumn vibe i think its suits soc much better. I think it has different foliage as well and much more pronounced shadows. People have different tastes and i can respect that.


For some reason in all the OGSE screenshots i see no shadows. Or very basic structure ones only. Every single shrub has a shadow in AA and just by looking at the screenshots they look much more detailed and dynamic. However like you said i have not played it and those must be beta screenshots or something. Otherwise what you say about graphics is proven otherwise just by the screenshots of both mods.

The weather, the sky, the vegetation also all looks better to me in AA. I will have to see for myself because the screenshots must not be correct for OGSE or they are from a much older version that what you are talking about.

Not sure if you're getting the memo or not, but OGSE uses a custom 64-bit X-Ray engine too you know. The only 64-bit SoC based mods are OGSE and New Arsenal 6. Otherwise, the only 64-bit mods are indeed CoC forks such as Anomaly and Dollchan.

I just want to point out that for vanilla SoC engine (which AA2 uses) there is generally one series of mods that improves stability: ZRP. But it's the latest ZRP that really matters. However, mods on customized versions of X-Ray (e.g. OGSE on OGSR engine) are generally more stable because they include cleaned up original source code and tons of bug fixes.

ModDB screenshots for any mod are pretty much worthless. OGSE's largely consists of 0692 screenshots, but most of all, just about all these mod developers have potato PCs and their screenshots aren't even on max details. So don't pretend to be able to judge just by ModDB screenshots.

Every shrub doesn't have a shadow in AA. Notice the complete lack of them in the screenshots you linked, which also show some vanilla grass models. Grass shadows were removed from SoC before release, the console command that controls it (r2_sun_details) doesn't actually do anything in SoC nor in Autumn Aurora. Its functionality is removed from the current version of OGSE as well. Few SoC mods re-enable it (NS2016 is one).

Note I have both AA2.1 and OGSE 0693 installed right now (and 12 other copies of the games with different mods). Also note that OGSE 0693 is fully standalone, so you can leave your AA2.1 intact. Look at the lack of shadow rendering, inferior lighting, and lack of anti-aliasing in AA2.1 here:
https://i.imgur.com/AyaUR7Q.jpg

Compared to OGSE where more objects are casting shadows (I forgot to mention, OGSE has built-in anti-aliasing for dynamic renderer unlike AA2):
https://i.imgur.com/jnyApAC.jpg

And all those shadows in OGSE are dynamic.

Here's some of the newer, higher quality and more varied vegetation models in OGSE.
https://i.imgur.com/q8e6wRI.jpg

Fake dynamic puddles, impossible in AA2:
https://i.imgur.com/efAHGH6.jpg

Also, if one were to use Autumn Aurora today, they'd be better off using AMK 1.4.1 Autumn Edition anyway (it's AMK 1.4.1 + most features from AA2.1 but not the features they disliked).

And we're just talking graphics. Gameplay is most important, and OGSE is lightyears ahead of AA2 there too. Granted I didn't want this conversation to turn into an AA2 vs OGSE comparison, rather I just had to point out the blasphemy about Misery and AA2 being the only complete and stable mods in existence, when there are better examples of complete and stable mods than both of them.

[Vegan Friendly Rolling Papers]

Ill have to play it then sounds good.

[Draescan]

Just came to say, OGSE's animations are all butt, autumn aurora's don't make me want to skewer my eyes out with swiss army knives. OGSE is also the same level as narodnaya soljanka when it comes to xray engine hackery that just makes it unpleasant. I'm thinking the EU community is more accepting of this sort of stuff but the US stalker community seems to be more critical of it. Not sure why that is, just an observation. OGSE has a lot, and I mean A LOT of very poor animation work. Which is enough to turn some people away from it.

I'd prefer the gun animations to be slick as possible since it's the central focus of the game's combat.