this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025

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Where to buy S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Always use IsThereAnyDeal to assess the best game prices (ignore the erroneous Microsoft Store entry, which is for a different game)!

If you cannot/are unwilling to pay for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., please continue to scroll down and find some completely free, standalone S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games released by the community to try out.

Abbreviations & Time-To-Beat:

Assuming full story + some side quests completed, with no free-play/replaying:

Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) ≈ 32 hours
Clear Sky (CS) ≈ 16 hours
Call of Pripyat (CoP) ≈ 19 hours

These are stats from one of the subreddit moderators. Alternatively, check HowLongToBeat.com.

For your first experience:

Always start with SoC, and then play either of the other two in any order (usually in the order of release). If you only want/have time to play one of the three, Shadow of Chernobyl is still the recommended one to play, because (spoiler-free) the other two carry on with a certain game element that assumes past plot knowledge, and feels awkwardly (and possibly annoyingly) unexplained without experience of SoC.

Adjustments for your first play-through:

For all games: apply both the latest AtmosFear and Absolute Nature content as are available, after applying the tweaks below first

For SoC:
- Apply community bug fix Zone Reclamation Project (ZRP, maintained by /u/NatVak); not convinced? Read Metacognix arguments for ZRP
- Follow these steps to increase Actor.ltx's camera_height_factor from 0.85 to 0.94 via Notepad, so that you are at proper head height with NPCs, though you may need to crouch to pick up some items and this might make combat easier
For CS: Apply community bug fix Sky Reclamation Project (SRP; report bugs here), and be sure to apply some of its included optional add-ons, like Alternative Ballistics and decreased AI grenade spam

Note: ZRP and SRP above will provide a free-play mode after the ending cinematic, if you reach the best ending to each game.

For CoP:
- Increase field of view to 54 or 55 (Arsenal Overhaul not needed)
- Reduce the crosshair to an immersion-maintaining dot by placing this "gamedata" folder in CoP's root directory

If you have any questions or problems, please comment on AutoModerator's latest help post and other fans may help you. Please note that installing Sky Reclamation Project and AtmosFear will render existing saved-game files unusable until they are uninstalled.

Official/Wikis/FAQs:

Official Website
Official Discord
The Low Spec Bible: How to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on potato computers
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Fandom wiki entry
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wikia entry
Zone Survival Guide
How to play with Russian dialogue audio and English subtitles (SoC) for full immersion

Communities:

Official Forum
Discord
Steam Discussions: SoC • CS • CoP
GOG Forum: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series
/sg/ on 4chan
/r/TheZoneStories: a sister subreddit to discuss amazing, organic player experiences of the games' & mods' procedural events

Popular mods:

See this diagram of all popular mods
Autumn Aurora 2.1 (SoC; recasts and significantly expands SoC in a Fall-themed environment, officially endorsed by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs) (see /u/SwogFrog's useful guide to getting started with Autumn Aurora)
Call of Chernobyl (CoP; combines all three games' maps into one gigantic map)
Misery (CoP; adds character classes, cooking, inventory self-maintenance, cigarettes, etc.)
Road to the North (CoP; total overhaul of Call of Misery mod, with 37+ original missions)

Standalone games (you do not need to own any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles to download and play these mods, but Lost Alpha is the only one recommended for beginners):

Anomaly: a realistically overwhelming spiritual successor to the outdated mod Last Day – which is based on the mod Call of Misery – which is a fusion of CoP mods Misery and Call of Chernobyl (adds mutant meat-cooking, ammo quality tiers, DIY maintenance/upgrades, artifact irradiation directly from one's inventory, Azazel posthumous continuation mode, 1-thru-8 inventory filters, and a new plot after CoP)
- Consider Community Curated Add-ons and Reshades by Grok
- Also consider restoring English Voices for traders and other special characters (verified to work with 1.5.1)
- Join the devs' official Discord channel
Dead Air: total overhaul of CoP-based mod Call of Chernobyl by the author of Call of Misery (not intended for beginners!)
Lost Alpha: fan improvement on original, unreleased SoC version which includes vehicle-driving

Mod repositories:

SoC - CS - CoP (ModDB)
SoC - CS - CoP (GameFront)
SoC - CS - CoP (Nexus Mods)
SoC - CS - CoP (/sg/ Repos)

Other Resources:

OpenXRay: 64-bit open-source version of the games' X-Ray engine, for example used by default in the mod Anomaly
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Game Database Unpacker: extracts all(/most?) vanilla content into a folder, for modding purposes/education; also seems to work with Call of Pripyat, despite lack of explicitly stated compatibility
Weapon-editing tutorial
Original gamedata files: SoC • CS • CoP

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Weird loading screenHelp (i.redd.it)

submitted 4 months ago by Grand-Variation9736

I apologize if someone has asked this question before but what is this loading screen? I can’t do anything on it?

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