Pro-Tips for new players: the Sawn-Off shotgun is your friend

[H a l]

First off, I don't claim to be as knowledgable and as badass at the Stalker franchise as some of the people in this game's community who've been around since the previous decade. But I have put at least 500 hours into Shadow of Chernobyl alone since my first year playing it in 2011, 200 hours on steam, and many more from back when I owned the retail CD version.


Before I begin, everything I'm about to tell you is based on my experiences playing the game on Master difficulty. Moving on to the topic of this thread, the Sawn-Off shotgun is your best friend for many of your combat experiences throughout the majority of the game. While this weapon is limited in its ability to put a high volume of fire downrange (due to it's 2-shot only capacity and moderately slow reload time), it has many uses and is an all around versatile choice to carry with you at all times. By itself, the gun does not weigh much, so it will not take up too much of your carrying weight capacity, and by the way, if you are one of those players that mod your carry weight capacity to be higher, than I really must insist that based on that issue alone, this game is NOT for you at all, and you're really missing the point of what makes Stalker's gameplay unique. Moving on, the sawn-off takes some practice to use it right, the buckshot rounds that are most common are excellent for taking down mutants like Boars, Flesh, and Bloodsuckers. Pack mutants like Blind Dogs and Snorks are more difficult to pick off with the sawn-off, as you may get overwhelmed and killed in no time if you don't have good movement reflexes. For NPC combat, I recently came to discover that when using slug rounds, the sawn-off is surprisingly accurate and deadly for medium range use. A single headshot with a slug round out of the sawn-off will kill any enemy in the game from my experience, with the exception of maybe an NPC wearing an Exoskeleton suit. These rounds can be found as early as the Cordon (beginning of the game) so long as you do proper searches of buildings and stashes. Dart rounds are even deadlier for NPC combat, and with the added advantage of being the most accurate of all the shotgun rounds. I've literally sniped enemies in the game using Dart rounds out of the sawn-off, while it feels unrealistic and a bit silly, hey, it works. Going back to buckshot rounds, if you happen to get within a few meters of any lightly armored enemy like Bandits, Military grunts, or Stalkers, you will be able to wipe them out of existence with a well placed double-tap (2 shot) hit using buckshot, it's the same way with mutants really, Bloodsuckers however take at least 3 shots to kill, but even then that's still pretty awesome. In my last playthrough of the game, I wiped out the entire Bloodsucker Village in the Army Warehouses with just the sawn-off without being injured once.

Lastly, you can modifiy the .ltx file for the sawn-off shotgun to make it used in the pistol slot rather than the primary weapon slot, this is really the backbone of my entire argument in favor of the sawn-off. If you do this, then trust me, there will be no reason at all to carry a pistol for the entire game, as you will have the sawn-off readily available for when things go south to pull out at any time, and waste a mutant waiting for you around the corner, a mutant that your assault rifle would otherwise take a beating (and lots of ammo) trying to kill. I also must add that in general, pistols in the Stalker franchise are totally forgettable and useless once you start to progress in the games, I really don't think their benefits outweigh their disadvantages at all, regardless of the fact that they take up minimum inventory space.

To make this modification, you must have a copy of the weapons file "w_bm16.ltx"
If you don't have this file in your game directory, you can extract it along with all the other files in the game by using the gamedata extractor tool for Stalker. You can find this tool by googling it and following the instructions for how to use it.

Once inside the file, look for the line that says
slot = 2

and change the number to 1, then save and exit the file.

That's all I have to say on this topic dudes, thanks for reading and I hope you'll have some fun with this weapon. It adds a nice little touch to the gameplay, it's the little things that matter in life the most. Good hunting Stalker!

[H a l]

An alternative way to get the w_bm16.ltx file would be to simple ask me for my copy, and I will happily email it to you after you provide your email address to me via a private message.

[HunterKiller]

Originally posted by cyka blyat:

and by the way, if you are one of those players that mod your carry weight capacity to be higher, than I really must insist that based on that issue alone, this game is NOT for you at all, and you're really missing the point of what makes Stalker's gameplay unique.

This is so true. I hate come to a topic for the game and everyone is new to it and all they want to know is, which mod to use or, how do I change this or, that value. I tell them to, play the game on Master in Vanilla only, for the first run-through and then, decide what mod to use if you must.

Also, I didn't know about being able to swap slots for the weapons like this. Thanks for that info, I'll check it out if, I can ever get the game to run again without crashing on stratup. I too, have better then 500 hrs, in the game and haven't been able to play it for the last two years due to ,it crashing all the time. I don't know what happened to the game during one of these microupdates Steam has for games all the time but, it will not play for me, anymore.

[H a l]

@Mr. HK

Try buying the game on GOG.com instead. The steam version has always been unstable. If you do that however, you may need to download the 1.0005 patch on the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. website, because I don't know whether or not the GOG.com version of the game comes pre-patched.

[HunterKiller]

Just a note: due to your name, the qoute function doesn't work properly.lol

I may do that, Idk yet. Thanks. I think I have it there already, not sure. Back when they done all that DRM free stuff for games.

[PsyWarVeteran]

Every weapon is your friend if you modify the files.

[HunterKiller]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

Every weapon is your friend if you modify the files.

So true.