Tips for Seekers and Stalkers Alike

This will be a list of tips, some of which the game does not tell you, and some of which may be considered spoilers. If you like to learn things the hard way, go play the game instead.

I will add more information as time goes on, as I learn more, or as things change. Comments providing additional info are welcome.
If this helps you, make sure to leave a like and a rating so others can see it.

Also, remember, while this game is surprisingly fair compared to other Stalker MMOs, it's not a walk in the park. Your patience will be challenged. You will die a lot. PVP is a constant concern. You have to be persistent and clever to succeed.

Last edited 8/24/2023. Added more tips, mostly about artifacts. Up to 138 tips.

Edit: I appreciate the awards ya'll are giving me! Happy to help. ^^

1-10

1. The tutorial teaches you some basics, but a bad lesson it teaches is that you get guns off of enemies. You don't. It's to let you try out some various guns. You can even mess with all available attachments too if you modify the gun before you take it off a body.

2. Every zone has sets of resources needed for progression. In the swamps, they are Green Mold, and Swamp Stones. There are "packed" variants too that you can unpack for 20 units of the respective resource. One is tied to mutants, one is tied to people, and one to caches.

3. If you die, you only lose what's not bound to you. If it's bound, it will say so in the item popup. Progression items will also drop, but in the form of a lost backpack. Mold, Stones, Seeds, Wire, Roots, and so on are progression items.

4. You cannot loot other people's lost backpacks. You have to earn these resources through events, looting containers, or quests. You can also buy them from a merchant in the Cordon, if desired. However, you can sell the backpacks to the fence, or auction them off, or mail them back to the player.

5. Anything equipped to your person cannot be dropped on death. However, don't forget to get ammo and meds before you head back out after a death. Pouches are heavier, but are bound items, and provide multiples of the above resources.

6. In the barter menu, where you see the paths of progression for gear, you can change what you want to see at the top left. You can check what attachments are compatible with weapons if you modify them within the barter menu. Armor, weapons, attachments, devices, backpacks, and so on.

7. You will come to hate black holes, otherwise known as whirligigs - I promise you.

8. Some armor sets come with plate bags that you can put an armor plate into. Steel lasts longer but protects you less. Ceramic protects you completely but breaks fast. Composite is a mix of the two but is expensive. Armor is the health of the plate and Damage Reduction is what it'll take away from an incoming round.

9. If you're moving through an unfamiliar space, don't be afraid to spam your bolts to detect anomalies early. If you see moving air, heat waves, or some disturbance, check it with a bolt and avoid it.

10. Vortexes can be escaped if you sprint away in a single direction. If you type /suicide after being caught in a black hole, you will drop your backpack instead of getting your items scattered in a meaty shower. The black hole may be too big to retrieve the bag though.

11-20

11. Bandits control the north portions of the Swamps and Cordon, while Stalkers control the southern portions. Be cautious when traversing in enemy territory, and don't be afraid to kill if the opportunity arises. If you see someone, but can't kill them quickly, don't take the shot. You can revive them if you feel merciful.

12. Grenades are your friends. Use them to flush an enemy out of cover or to punish someone for camping.

13. Safe zones like Shaman's camp (otherwise known as Machine Yard) are often camped by folks who abuse the safe zone radius. Be careful on approach and when leaving.

14. If you've played the stalker series of games, a lot of locations will be familiar to you. The people have changed, but the areas haven't been messed with too much. A lot of mechanics are faithfully recreated too.

15. The number on the top left of your minimap tells you how many PDAs, IE players are within 50m of your position, regardless of affiliation. Your PDA will beep to notify you when players leave or enter this radius.

16. The green bar on the bottom left of your minimap tells you when you're making noise.

17. Some sounds are ambient, and don't really indicate anything, but gunfire always originates from players or NPCs fighting. Be cautious of nearby gunfire. Also be cautious of starting a gunfight - if you can hear it, others can too.

18. Give the borders and walls of the Swamp and Cordon a wide berth. If they're not surrounded in landmines, they have NATO patrolmen guarding, and those bastards are accurate.

19. Quests will frequently provide you items that you would've otherwise bought, like weapons, armor, metal detectors, and so on. Do not ignore quests, especially the main story.

20. Every 100 units of Protection - be it radiation, bioinfection, thermal, or psy - will grant you immunity to progressing tiers of intensity. Tier 1 radiation is blocked by 100 Radiation Protection, but Tier 2 will still affect you, just not as quickly. Later areas require higher tiers of protection to survive more than a few minutes at a time.

21-30

21. You can find Shrek's house in the Swamps, due east of the bandit Boathouse. You can get achievements for bouncing a bolt between two anomalies, or bouncing twice on a trampoline (springboard). There's one for leaving the game during an emission.

22. Study your weapon's stats carefully. Things that boost damage are always good. Spread, Recoil, Damage over Range, Magazine Size, Reload Speed - all of these dictate how well your gun will serve you in combat.

23. Use shotguns or pistols for mutants and weak enemies. Use automatic weapons or marksman rifles for strong enemies and other players. Aim for the head if possible.

24. You could keep an alternative suit of armor, or weapon on you in case a situation changes. It's a little extra weight, but that can be remedied by being careful of what you pick up.

25. To that point, don't carry a bunch of ♥♥♥♥ on you. Carry as much as you need for a skirmish, and nothing more. Also, when looting enemies, don't take all their medkits, ammunition, grenades, or armor plates if you don't need them. Being able to sprint is what keeps you alive - if you can't sprint, you're as good as dead.

26. Emissions, or blowouts, are the red storm that comes every 3 hours across every server, and it lasts 5 minutes. If it's incoming, you have a minute to get underground and shield yourself from the psy emissions that will turn your brain into mush. A house is not always sufficient, you need dirt overhead. You can leave during the last minute and be fine.

27. Quests can sometimes be context sensitive. They will ask you to keep track of particular information that you relay later. Some quests are also puzzles, asking you to investigate an area, or apply critical thinking. It's a good change of pace from nothing but fetch and kill quests. Don't hesitate to take notes. The game is not afraid to say that you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up a quest and give you a pitiful reward.

28. If you're trying to group up with a friend, make sure you're on the same mega-server (NA, EU, etc.) and that you have eachother added in the PDA. The names are case sensitive.

29. Armor and weapon paints are only applied once. Once applied, they are consumed. If you trade in the armor for barter, you get the paint back. You can buy paint stripper, but the paint stripper won't give your paint back.

30. You can create collection tasks for barter items you want to create. It will help you track them, and tell you where to get the resources. You can delete them too if accidentally made.

31-40

31. Some areas are heavily anomalous, and are very risky to explore without proper gear. They are the best place to go after an emission, however, since emissions respawn artifacts. Black Holes are by far the most dangerous kind.

32. Holding the quick item, reload, or quick grenade button will open up a wheel that lets you select from the various flavors of item in question. You hotkey them by pressing your number keys while hovering over the item in your inventory. You can hotkey consumables and weapons. Hotkey pouches to open them quickly mid-fight.

33. The PDA has a lot of sections that can help an aspiring stalker. Don't be afraid to explore the tabs and click on buttons to see what they do. There's a guide too.

34. Keep mutant parts and junk to sell. Food is mostly useless and can be discarded. Discard plates too if they're mostly broken or steel. Check the fence to see what's valuable and worth keeping or ditching mid-run.

35. Quests you do early on can have knock on effects with quests in the future. A quest with Gnostic will check to see if you've completed certain quests in the Swamps, and reward you accordingly, for example.

36. Agroprom and Dark Valley (bandit and stalker respectively) are easier to farm Seeds in compared to the Cordon. There are less players of the opposing faction present.

37. The early game combat armors are a noob trap. If it doesn't have 100 Radiation Protection, you won't be able to go into areas beyond the Cordon and progress.

38. The Ghillie Suit gets an 4% movement speed bonus. I keep it in my backpack for some trips to make deliveries and errands go quicker. Some armors come with integrated night vision that's rather good.

39. The last quest involving Shaman in the Swamps/Cordon will give you Shaman's Boomstick. it's basically a free full length Mosin. Because of its high damage and two times headshot multiplier expect to be killed by this fairly often. The only way to prevent a one tap is to wear better armor that gets you above a 160-170 health threshold.

40. Half the game, honestly, is teamwork. Cooperation. It would be rather difficult to get through this game solo, so don't be afraid to use chat, squad up, and make friends.

41-50

41. Here's a helpful map highlighting emission shelters, metal detection spots, and much more. https://en.stalcraftmap.net/maps/general

42. The currency needed to buy barter items from the merchant who sells them is not the kind you purchase with real world money. It's provided through the daily login reward system.

43. Your body can counter 0.50 points of rad, thermal, and bio, as well as 1.5 points of psy from artifacts. If your container eliminates 80% of an artifact's radiation, and it emits 1.99 radiation or below (for example), you're fine. Other artifacts factor into this, armor does not.

44. In order to receive mail from daily rewards, quest rewards, or auctions, talk to the Courier NPC in your respective base.

45. As a stalker, I have gotten these items from quests: Swamp Zarya, Seeker's Hawk, Gasmask Berill, Tactical AKS-74u, Shaman's Boomstick, Hunter's MP-133, Hystrix's RPD, Leglet Metal Detector, ZS1 Container, and some other goodies.

46. The rings that emit from a world event on the HUD tell you if there are players participating in it. You can also see this from the map. Others can see it too, so be cautious.

47. There can be multiple offers available for a barter item. Some require a trade up of the previous tier of item, some don't.

48. Some contracts and delivery missions let you choose the reward you receive. Choose items that are hard to get a hold of, like Copper Wire, Pickles, and so on.

49. You get a good metal detector by helping Junkman in the Dump. Once you have it, you can find caches, which include Aluminum and Copper Wire. It just has to be in your inventory for it to beep. You can hotkey it, and equip it when it beeps, using the radar to locate a cache. Caches are shared, so only one person can claim it. Once you've dug it up, it's yours.

50. Decline the contracts and delivery missions you don't want to take. It frees up that slot for another contract to replace it on refresh.

51-60

51. A safe bet for Tank Man is to simply tell him everything went fine. Don't take anything except bound items into the Beast quest area - it's a large parkour puzzle and falling to your death is likely. You get a keychain from Goldsmith if you bargain with Archaeologist too hard. You get a better RPD if you side with Hystrix over Firebrand. Don't take anything unbound with you to fight Minstrel with - more pits of death.

52. Melee damage resistance is what reduces damage from gravitational anomalies like Trampolines and Vortexes. It makes trampolines significantly less dangerous, but Vortexes stack damage fast in an exponential fashion, so it's less useful for them. Doesn't save you from a Black Hole.

53. Don't forget to claim your weekly rewards from the courier, and don't be afraid to use them either. Revival injectors rez you if you go down, MREs boost your vitality/stamina, and the anomalous dust or protoartifacts can be given to the scientist who identifies your artifacts for you - feed them to the fission machine.

54. You can charge your jump up if you need to get someplace higher, or you're stuck. Hold your jump button while standing still.

55. Stabilization is how quickly your gun can reset after recoil. A gun with higher stabilization will have better, tighter shot placement on a recoil graph than one with less. Laser sights and stocks help with this.

56. There will be a nightmare right after the Orderly base, when you have to rescue someone. It makes the section - base and nightmare - very tedious. Set aside a few hours, some caffiene, and lots of patience.

57. After the nightmare and heli crash, don't suicide to go back to the Bar - Shaman isn't far away.

58. I wouldn't recommend pursuing the Exoskeleton or Centurion branch with your resources since the story gives you an Exo variant after you finish it. Work on either the Jaeger tree or the Saturn tree - combat and scientific respectively.

59. Armor, Plates, and Nightvision that's being worn is considered weightless until you take it off. You will also gain the improved carry weight if your armor has it. These items, when in your inventory, have weight still. Backpacks and containers are not weightless when worn.

60. RPD / Beretta 93R meta. High, consistent damage output, large mags, fantastic for the story missions. You get a free RPD but need to buy the 93R. Meta changed, but RPD is still fairly good. Pink F2000 and red F200 Tact. are the undisputed meta late game. Pistols lost their damage bonus on weakened enemies, so now Shorty 590 is one of the best secondaries early game. Pick one up before you leave Swamps.

61-70

61: The South, IE The Bar and down, are best explored with Rad 1 protection. The Center, such as The Forest and Graveyard, or Dead City and Fool's Path, require Rad 1 protection. The North, such as Red Forest, requires Rad 2 protection. Bio 2 also frequently pops up in the Army Warehouses and adjacent zones. Thermal seems to be restricted to specific spots. Psy is even less common.

62. Hercules and Energy Drinks are your friend. Buy a bunch before you head to The Bar. Use them on delivery missions. Keep bound Hercules/Drinks in your inventory and use them for emergencies only - like when you're overweight and can't sprint.

63. Be picky of where you take deliveries. A bird in the hand beats two in the bush. Some are inherently safer based on their destination.

64. You find Cheap Tools for upgrading gear in containers. You also get them from quests, and one as a login reward.

65. Save your tools for later game armor, since the effect will be more pronounced, and they are not exactly cheap in terms of rubles. The Seeker's Hawk or Mockingbird, and the Exoskeleton you get are good choices for them. +5 is a dramatic improvement. Weapons aren't as dramatic and shouldn't be upgraded right away.

66. Use your trade coins - the ones you buy progression items with - as a way to save time when you need like.. 10 Pickles (for example), and would rather not run out to get it. Using trade coins alone to make progress with will be painfully slow, but they're good for a quick shortcut.

67. Don't forget to check what the value of the stacked items are - stuff like Burning Crappite, Chernobyl Chamomile, and Data Logs. They can go for a lot on the auction house. Sometimes the rubles are more useful than the item itself.

68. If you can't buy premium with real money, you can buy it with rubles. 30 days is about 500-900k rubles on the Auction House.

69. Learn the routes of safety, the hot spots of foot traffic, and where conflict often happens. Don't take routes that are risky if you're carrying precious cargo.

70. Later in the story quests, a doctor will give you a scanner and a detector for finding stashes and signals. On the scanner, check if the green light on the left is flashing. If it is, there's a stash within range. Set the scan radius to medium, then flip the switch - it will "charge up" and take some time to locate the stash. Once all red lights are on, you can hit a button on the left that will pair it to your detector. You have to follow a route that lights up the detector brightest. At the end, you can find the stash, which has data, loot, and trackers used for side-grades and paint.

71-80

71. For the Beast quest, ignore the dogs, but kill the Wisps if you're up on a precarious ledge. For Minstrel, you can get him stuck on some corners, and I was able to prone in a hole where his pathfinding broke. The Ghillie Suit can be useful for the Guard fight since speed is important here for dodging his bull rush.

72. For anomalous rifts you need installations, which you get from the barkeep. When you're at the location of one (careful about touching the bubble), you select it in your inventory, and place it with RMB. I would suggest placing it as far away from the bubble as you can, then either run around distracting the wisps, or kill them as necessary. They will prioritize you over the installation, but if the installation is closer they will attack it.

73. When scanning for signal stashes, you can close the scanner and it will still work in the background. However, it will pop up when it's done, so be careful. You can turn the scanner off at 6/10 red bulbs lit and it will let you search, conserving battery. Most areas have 5 waypoints you need to follow, places like the Graveyard only have 1.

74. To my understanding, all suppressed weapons will hide enemy death skulls when they are killed.

75. Most lasers will gave away your character very easily. They can be seen around corners, through bushes, and from a far distance away. Be careful when equipping them on your guns. The first tier of laser is the most subtle and hardest to see.

76. The Forest ravine looks ominous as ♥♥♥♥, but it's actually rather safe - only a stasis bubble or two. It is very foggy, and there's water at the bottom that you can swim in for the most part. Getting out is the hard part. Like all things in the zone, change is a constant. The Forest ravine is now a toasty hell-pit rife with Burners, so be careful. The river dried up along with them.

77. Armor plates only protect your chest from bullets. Melee, or shots to any other body part will ignore it - both bypassing the protection, and preserving its durability.

78. If you lose a package you were supposed to deliver, you can grab the contract again, you just lose the deposit. The package you were carrying when you died will stay put, and will swap servers with you. IE: You died in Forest 2, gear up, go to Forest 3, the package will "leave" Forest 2 so you can pick it up in Forest 3. Backpacks work the same way.

79. Lava kills you if you fall in. Don't fall in.

80. Stopping Power is how much flinch/slow you can inflict on a player, and acts as additional damage for mutants. 100 stopping power is equivalent to 10% more damage for mutants.

81-90

81. If you step on a landmine, it may be better to stand still and heal, since they normally don't kill you in one blast, but two usually will.

82. Some more anomalous installation tips. The wisps tend to despawn when they float through the floor. Rifts that limited player movement, like being on a ledge, will be much harder. The wisps check your melee resistance. You can shoot them, avoid them, or heal through the damage they do. Also, the installations can take friendly fire damage.

83. Routes are only safer than one another, but no route is truly "safe." You will find enemy players in areas that are normally controlled by friendlies, usually because of quests that send them there, so keep your guard up. It IS in the name STALKER afterall: Trespasser.

84. Proto-electro clusters are fairly easy and good for money making. Electric resistance will make them more forgiving, at the cost of being more vulnerable to an ambush by players. Sell the junk you get, and if you don't want the anomalous dust or proto artifacts, sell those on the Auction House.

85. Players are on based on their timezone, so if you have quests that require going into enemy territory, go when most folks are asleep in real life.

86. Events appear to spawn 300m away from any player. They can even spawn on top of you, if you're not careful.

87. Protoartifacts are used to "repair" artifacts after they've been reduced by overcharging.

88. A cheesy method for clearing anomalous rifts, that I think is hilarious as ♥♥♥♥, is to use RGO impact grenades. Carry a bunch of them on you - 15 is all you need, but 20 to be safe. Throw them as soon as the cloud of wisps appears. Watch them get deleted. I laugh every time.

89. Don't join a faction unless there's nothing left for you in the Center of the Zone, at the Bar, in the Fool's Path, or Army Warehouses. Being in a faction puts you at odds with the opposing faction, so it creates more enemies for you to fight. When you need to go North to progress is when a faction makes sense.

90. When you bid on something in the Auction House, it will debit the money and hold it until the auction concludes, or someone outbids you. You don't lose the money if you're outbid. If you want to increase your bid, it will simply take what's needed to cover the remainder. Since there's no maximum bid system, you have to balance a bid that saves you money, vs a bid that'll get you the item.

91-100

91. Limansk has a LOT of mutants, NATO, Monolith, Zombies, and gravitational anomalies. It is an awful place and will test your patience, so stock up on ammo and meds. Rad 2 and Bio 2 have been the worst infectors I've seen thus far, so I'd take a combat suit like an Exo here.

92. Buckshot has been the only thing to let me solo pseudogiants, chimeras, or the Lim bosses with any frequency. The Hunter's MP133 and the Shorty 590 are your best friends for cheap, but effective mutant killing.

93. Some of the late game armors, weapons, and attachments have alternative offers that require resources from Limansk instead of the northern areas like Yanov and Red Forest. Most common to least is Bitterleaf > Lim > Lambda Data > Airdrop Batteries > Limboplasma.

94. (Limansk) Identify the emission shelters and space bubble locations in advance, since the latter move, and the former give you little time to react. The space bubbles rotate which are active and which are not.

95. (Limansk) For the anomalous installation in the central plaza (not the one by the half-ruined house on the hill), you can climb onto a wall that hugs a ghillied box, and standing on the box prevents most of the mutants from reaching you. For the one in the large dug out with irradiated water, climb onto the small head-height cliff.

96. Make sure to keep a few injectors on you to revive yourself. It's saved my loot run numerous times.

97. Sound is really important, and gunfire is like a dinner bell. If you know players are nearby, don't be afraid to dig in and find a spot that covers your flank. You can get really cheeky with some spots, and it's not only let me counter-ambush a bandit, but let me avoid a group of 4 that would be impossible to take on solo.

98. Your inventory can actually fill up without being overweight, so be careful of the clutter you carry around with you. Also, getting so encumbered you can't sprint is a very good way to die.

99. (Limansk) Airdrops can be an excellent way to gear back up if you're running dry, giving you consumables and ammo. If you're solo, you should have 100% rewards. Anything less means either squadmates or enemies who've hacked the airdrop too.

100. When you're gearing up for a Lim run, set aside a few hours, since they can be time consuming to get in and get back out again. I've gotten out with just a Crowbar and no ammo thanks to the plaza installation.

101-110

101. Lim, the resource, is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HEAVY. Be aware of that if you're aiming to collect a lot of it.

102. Other player's backpacks CANNOT be taken out of Limansk - they disappear when you jump into a space bubble with an ID card in hand. Leave the backpacks for the players to retrieve, though their consumables and ammo are free game.

103. I use the Seeker's AK + Bee for players or NPCs, and the Hunter's MP133 + Shorty 590 for mutants. RPD and 93R are also valid for NPCs. They got nerfed hard so they're not as good against mutants.

104. Chimeras hate it when you get into a tight space that it can't fit into, like a house, a crevice, or a gap. They also don't like you circle strafing them. Pseudogiants hate it when you get any higher than their face, because then their smash can't reach you. Psydog clones barely do any damage, their eyes are blue, and they make a different sound than the actual psydog itself - shoot the black dog instead and quick melee the clones. Do not stop moving around bloodsuckers, or they will pin you down with their grapple.

105. Joining a sub-faction with automatically reskin all of the applicable armors that you have to that faction's color schema. If you join Freedom, and have a stalker SEVA, it'll become a Freedom SEVA automatically.

106. Consumables don't stack on top of eachother like you might expect. Things like energy drinks, stim shots, steroids, and food have their own categories, but within those categories there is a hierarchy of best to worst effects that take priority. Lower priority effects are inactive. Eating a bunch of different food won't make you into superman.

107. (Limansk) The chimera is the easiest boss, followed by the rat king, then the psy-bloodsucker. The chimera can be killed in a few magazines of buckshot from on top a wall, then there's often a bubble about 50m to the southwest of where he spawns. Rat King requires either camping a doorway or getting on the concrete blocks like the floor is lava (it's rats, it's all rats!). Psy-bloodsucker requires killing a very specific blue-speckled bloodsucker that often acts like a binch and runs away.

108. One of the biggest benefits you get from a sub-division (a clan) is that you can see all the members on the map of the area you're currently in. You can think of it as a 30 man squad. This makes locking down Backwater, which requires a squad to have any friendlies in it, safer to explore.

109. Backwater is a risky, and dangerous place to explore, often hitting you with level 3 and level 4 infections at a moment's notice. That said, any events you do there have tripled rewards. Instead of ~20 red ferns, you get ~60, for example, as well as more loot to sell to the fence. Bring large lead-lined pockets.

110. Bullet and Melee resistance will give you effective HP against that particular threat. 200 bullet resistance and 100 vitality is, in essence, 300 HP that has to be shot down before you can go down. Armor gives you a lot higher values than artifacts can. Use artifacts for stats you can't boost as easily, like movement speed. Protection artifacts make you incredibly fragile.

111-120

111. The right side of Limansk's border is one of the safest ways to traverse the area from top to bottom. The most concerning thing is the occasional chimera, pseudogiant, or player spawn.

112. Consumables have a priority in which they take effect, and some overwrite other ones. Some interactions are weird: for example, ATLAS steroids take priority over JIDEN drinks, not Hercules. Generally speaking, stronger effects are prioritized.

113. Anomalous (wisp) rifts are significantly easier if you have objects to hide behind. The wisps can't travel through solid walls. Beware that people can loot the machine if you get too far away from it. Anomalous (mutant) installations are easier if you have objects to stand on, or enough move speed to not get hit.

114. Faction members can't see their own NPC squads being attacked on the map or HUD. That doesn't mean they can't hear the gunfire, however.

115. Some of the late game deliveries to the north have rewards that cannot be ignored, like 70+ Psy Trackers as a reward. Keep an eye out for them and do them when possible.

116. As you progress through the game, don't be afraid to fission junky white artifacts to the scientist in your given base. Most artifacts will not be used in your build, or are not worth much to be sold. Their "freshness" determines how much energy they'll be turned into. You need the energy to upgrade the artifacts you do like using.

117. Each faction gets its own route from the bar to their respective base. This route is safe and fairly straightforward, if a bit time consuming. It's great if you need to go to the bar for a task or to buy something, without risking your neck by running through the open world. Duty benefits the least from it I feel, because they're the closest.

118. For plants that you can pick up off the ground, you can pick up multiple of the single unit variant (in green) if you spam the interact key while picking it up. Multi-unit variants (in pink) don't benefit from this glitch.

119. If you get shot through a limb into another body part, like your chest or head, the shot will penetrate through the limb and the game will take the higher of the two damages - you don't take damage twice. Arms and Legs are both considered limbs, and therefore get the same multiplier.

120. When you get shot, stopping power is usually the first thing to take effect, removing your stamina regen temporarily for a few seconds. The second thing that happens is the game checks to see if you bleed, and if so, your health regen will be nullified, and your healing effectiveness is dramatically reduced. You have to stop bleeding to get your healing back to normal.

121-130

121. Health regen is best described as an out-of-combat heal. It is most dramatic and most effective when you have not been damaged by entity in the past 5 or so seconds. Healing effectiveness has nothing to do with this - instead, it dictates how efficient your medkits are at healing you. When you're getting shot out, healing effectiveness is better. Health regen lets you manage groups of mutants, anomalies, and fall damage.

122. Incendiary ammo has a chance to deal either a bleed, a burn, both, or neither. It is the worst ammo to use in snipers or marksman weapons, but fantastic in automatic weapons with high rates of fire. The burn and bleed can stack together to do more than they would've done separately. Burn lasts a short time but does more damage to armor with low fire resist. Scientist suits take hardly any burn damage.

123. When you mark an enemy player, your character will make a callout. Enemies cannot hear this callout. Feel free to spot enemies without fear of giving away your position.

124. Bleeding behaves like the 4 types of infection (Rad, Bio, Psy, etc.) and works off of thresholds that accumulate as bleeding is applied to a player. You can have minor, medium, and major "wounds" - tiers of bleeding - that dictate how severe the penalties are. A minor wound might cut your health regen to 0 and your healing effectiveness to -23%, but a major wound will make your HR -23% and your HE -125%, it's scary how low the numbers get. Deep wounds are far more likely with a sniper rifle headshot.

125. Armor Penetration is what helps determine your damage against a human, be it player or NPC. Expanding is BY FAR the worst ammo type to use, dramatically reducing your ability to deal damage through armor, regardless if you hit the head or limbs and miss the chestplate. You are better off using Armor Piercing in all your guns if possible, especially since it is so cost effective. Sniper Ammo has more stopping power than SBP, but it has the same penetration value of +27.5%.

126. You are significantly easier to bleed in scientist armor than in comparable levels of combat armor. It is unclear if bullet resist is playing a part, or if each armor has its own innate "bleeding resist" that is separate from bleeding protection, which just reduces the time spent bleeding.

127. In terms of damage to target, the order goes:
Incendiary (Bleed + Burn) > SBP > AP > Incendiary (Burn OR Bleed only) > Standard > Expanding > Incendiary (No Bleed OR Burn). Incendiary can either do the most or the least damage depending on RNG. SBP and Armor Piercing are far more consistent.

128. If you're using a shotgun (which you should), buckshot is the best kind to use against mutants, with live ammo having similar damage and better performance against NPCs. Incendiary is best against players that can burn and is more consistent in general.

129. If you are on the part of gathering notes for the Rune AR, there's a crane bubble you need to jump into to get the 4th Note to Beard. I've found that instead of jumping straight onto the square O ring, you should jump at an angle towards the crane claw itself. If you are far enough onto the trampoline, it'll get you lift and get you onto the claw, while having something in the way to protect from overshooting the jump. Also, having too much movement speed will cause you to overshoot.

130. If you're a stalker or freedom affiliated, an easy way to farm Gamma fragments is to use the freedom underground. 5 rifts spawn, and you can place 5 installations all at once, then run and clean them all up. Hide them behind objects if possible.

131-140

131. I HIGHLY recommend getting Alpha Trackers early on while you're still in the Cordon and adjacent areas. You need the Buryat scanner later on for artifact farming up north, and getting 125 Alpha Trackers is a pain in the ass if you try to do them all at once. Took me 5-ish hours to collect about 100 of them - it's tedious work.

132. As you get near end-game (North, Backwater), you'll want to find some artifacts to stick with and upgrade using fission and overcharging. I do not recommend upgrading a white unless it's a frost artifact, which is rare to begin with, or a Bracelet. +5 and +10 will significantly improve an artifact's stat, or even add a new stat altogether.

133. With experience, you learn which artifacts to fission, to fence, and to sell. If it's fresh and a trashy artifact (stone blood, stone bile, crystal, etc.) then fission it. If it's old and trashy (freshness III), fence it. If it's a good artifact, keep it or auction it.

134. Upgrading artifacts requires energy that you obtain using dust, proto-artifacts, fissioning artifacts you don't want, or Unstable Anomalous Batteries. I recommend the latter two for accumulating energy since that's their purpose. Failed attempts to upgrade an artifact will damage it, and reduce its max charge. Lower max charge reduces chances for upgrading successfully, so repair the artifact you're upgrading with protos every 10% or 20%. You also improve your chances of a successful upgrade if you use catalysts in conjunction.

135. You can repair any tier artifact with any tier proto-artifact, but the % repaired is much higher with protos of same or higher color. Pink repairs the most, Blue is half of Pink, Green is half of Blue, and White is half of Green.

136. Popular artifacts at endgame include: Bracelet, Sun, Firefly, Prism, Atom, Helium, Snowflake, Mama's Beads, Battery, Spiral, Shard, Flame, Heel, Whirlwind, Goldfish, Gold Gravi, Polyhedron, Steel Kolobok, and a few others. Colors are often Blue and Red, but sometimes greens are used for rarer artifacts.

137. https://stalcraftdb.net/na is your friend. Use it. Helps you plan and check prices of items that sell on the auction house.

138. It's pretty much agreed upon that your choice of armor is not as important for endgame if you have an F2000 Tactical. The time to kill with that gun is so small relative to all others that having the higher bullet resistance of something like Centurion is negligible. While the weapon meta is fairly strict, but armor meta is more broad and artifacts play a larger role.

139.

[Calza]

If were given the gun from a quest it won't allow you to trade it in. Same is true of containers as well. You would have to buy the gun or container from the merchant to use it in bartering.

[🔥 Raid Boss Rowe 🔥]

Why cant I upgrade the PM Pistol to the TT? It says i have 1/1 PM but then when i "Go to trade" it says 0/1 even thought its right there in my inventory?

[Barrett]

Nice little tutorial for new players!, doing the community some good service

[Calza]

I use Maximum Aggro's videos as guides where possible.

[*Tell/r]

How do I hack the laptops and things.

[Calza]

You have to be more specific.

[*Tell/r]

How do I hack stuff?

[Malus]

i got bugged into freeman warehouse i cant exit even if i finished the mission
how do i exit?

[FALLA]

no piensan ponerlo en español ganarian mas poblacion

[Calza]

Auction House. Sorry, thought it was obvious.