S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chernobyl

Awesome that the patch fixed many issues, but I'm wondering what it also broke?
Guess I'll find out tonight.
 
I think these are the most important things fixed so far (besides crashing for some).

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1643320/view/4455844537830474617?l=english

  • Weapons and armor repair cost is decreased.
  • Significantly increased cost of artifacts (more revenue from selling).
  • Money reward for most missions is increased from 2 to 3 times.
  • Rookie difficulty armor and weapons buffs.
  • Damage from mutants is moderately decreased on Rookie difficulty (more mutant health balance changes in Combat Balance section).
  • Damage to player's weapon is decreased by 23 percent on Rookie difficulty.
  • Armor durability is increased by 12.5 percent.
  • Added silencer attachment for PTM to specific stash on Lesser Zone.
  • Fixed sell prices for Exoskeletons, they are now more expensive to sell.
  • Fixed sell price of upgraded weapons.
  • Rebalanced Hercules consumable: player speed debuff removed; increased the effect parameters (now more weight could be carried by player after consuming).
  • Reduced some mission items' weight (including weight of scanners)
  • Slightly rebalanced Bloodsucker’s damage.
  • Decreased Bloodsucker’s strike protection rank (more damage from guns).
  • Reduced Boodsucker’s HP regeneration outside the combat.
  • Controller HP is moderately reduced.
  • Burer HP is moderately reduced.
  • Boar HP is moderately reduced.
  • Flesh HP is moderately reduced.
  • Damage to Boar from headshots changed to 100% of body damage.
  • Damage to Boar from shots to the limbs is increased.
  • Damage to Flesh from shots to the limbs is increased.
  • Significantly increased weapon melee distance.
  • Slightly increased knife melee distance.
 
Only thing I've noticed so far is Bloodsuckers take a shot or two less to kill now.
And it seems my issue where performance goes to crap after a few hours of play is still occuring. Restarting the game fixes it and i'm back to normal.
 
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I don't expect this to run well on my old rig, but black Friday deals under $40 for S.2, so why not.
 
That is a nice patch with many fixes. Seems like they're on top of things and the patching will be quick. I would like to see better shadows and some A-Life changes, seems those are the biggest complaints about what this game lacks compared to the originals.
 
Post patch I went through the
mission to save Zalissya and its still broken. I really wasn't sure what was happening but I did everything that was asked and still failed to protect the town. So now its just gone as a base/hub town, all NPC's gone.

Meanwhile, in the patch notes:
  • Fixed multiple issues in the
    On the Edge
    mission, including idle NPCs, stuck doors, and the Monolith attack progression.

By the time I had realized what happened it was over an hour later and I wasn't going back to a previous save. Oh well.

Looks like i'm not the only one. Exactly what happened to me. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981579416151602/
 
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if you temper your expectations for settings you can probably run it just fine.
Yes, indeed lowered my expectations due to some of my outdated rig specs. Pleasantly surprised for the most part. Right off the bat, ran into a slide show, but once I got outside during the first hour, ran pretty well. Still tweaking settings (translation.... lowering) Going to be extremely patient until I can upgrade the rig with new....everything. This is all post patch and looking forward to the improvements in the months to come.

Just glad STALKER is back!
 
Well, according to the patch notes the memory leak and flickering textures are fixed which were my main issues. Hopefully I can stop restarting the game every hour because my system memory has filled up :cautious:
 
Second patch is live. Time for another 8GB download and extraneous installation process.

https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791470242890/announcements/detail/4455844537830474747

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WTF. Just saw that Steam downloaded the update to and is installing from my HDD when the game is installed on one of my NVME drives? The drive the game is installed to has 300GB free. Anyone run into this issue before?
 
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hopefully they didn’t nerf anything important with the latest patch…I hate when games lose difficulty…if anything they should make all games harder
 
Post patch I went through the
mission to save Zalissya and its still broken. I really wasn't sure what was happening but I did everything that was asked and still failed to protect the town. So now its just gone as a base/hub town, all NPC's gone.

Meanwhile, in the patch notes:
  • Fixed multiple issues in the
    On the Edge
    mission, including idle NPCs, stuck doors, and the Monolith attack progression.

By the time I had realized what happened it was over an hour later and I wasn't going back to a previous save. Oh well.

Looks like i'm not the only one. Exactly what happened to me. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981579416151602/
1.0.2 says it fixes this mission again, so hopefully its good for everyone else. I think on my save that area is just gone forever, there is no way i'm going back that far.
 
I started getting crashes after this last patch. Haven't had any before. Hopefully I can get past them
 
I played last night around 4 hours and can confirm that they indeed did nerf the Bloodsuckers and the boar.
No crashes but I used up to 24GB of system RAM which has never happened before. Still only using 11GB of VRAM.

Some parts of the game felt better where others felt worse. Only had to restart once due to performance.
If it's 2 steps forward and 5 steps back after the next patch, I won't be surprised.
 
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I haven't noticed any difference but I didn't have any problems in the first place. I have noticed that mutants are easier to take down. They are closer to how they were in previous games now. I don't have a problem with that but I think the veteran difficulty mode needs to be rebalanced concerning loot. I have way too much loot and plenty of money even with the high wear rate and high repair costs. Got a perfect condition spaz 14 and a Vintoraz. I upgraded the kingpin viper and skif's pistol to the fullest. I decreased wear rate on my armor and have so many bandages and med kits that I started selling them. I have never purchased anything from any traders in the game outside of a few scopes for weapons. I have 100,000 coupons and I'm playing on veteran mode. After the patch, wear is slower and repairs cost less. Weaker mutants means less ammo and gun wear as well so it's only getting easier. If they don't rebalance veteran mode then I will be downloading misery style mods in the future but I would probably do that anyway to be honest.
 
Finished the prologue. To me still feels very much like a STALKER game, bugs and all for those who remember the original when it first came out. That first mutant....holy hell that was hard. (playing on Stalker)

At this point though, i'm going to put the game away for a couple months for it to be patched more, and to finally upgrade the PC. It's fun, but the settings are so low for me, it's taking away some of the experienc.

I feel this is going to be a great game, just not there yet.
 
My crashes were probably caused by the out dated trainer I was using for infinit stamina. I broke down lads.....
 
Wow, post patch the Gamepass version of the game is running buttery smooth now, even in the towns! The difference is night and day between the pre-patched version on my 4090. It is running far smoother without Framegen than with it enabled before. Even in the main hub I'm getting a solid 75-80+FPS with DLSS quality at 4k.
 
Performance doesn't really seem any better or worse for me in the latest patches, but I hadn't had any crashes or anything in the first place. Framerate is still awful in the towns, it's okay-ish anywhere else though.
 
System memory leak is still there for me with the patch :-(
Performance is about the same, I'm generally satisfied with how it runs but the memory issue introducing stutter after an hour or so sucks.
I'm almost wondering if it's an AMD driver issue (since 3090Ti in same machine doesn't have the problem) but rx5700 in a different machine also using the 24.10 AMD driver doesn't run out of memory...
 
I'm almost wondering if it's an AMD driver issue (since 3090Ti in same machine doesn't have the problem) but rx5700 in a different machine also using the 24.10 AMD driver doesn't run out of memory...
I don't necessarily see a "leak" per say (4090) (what are you seeing?) but after a few hours I hit a brick wall and performance drops to single digits. Restarting the game brings me back so given how long it is between issues I've not been that bothered. Gives me an excuse to get up and get a drink.
 
I don't necessarily see a "leak" per say (4090) (what are you seeing?) but after a few hours I hit a brick wall and performance drops to single digits. Restarting the game brings me back so given how long it is between issues I've not been that bothered. Gives me an excuse to get up and get a drink.
I'm seeing system memory usage continuously ticking up from the time I hit the main menu... Once it gets over 31,000MB or so (32GB system) usage drops to a bit over 28,000MB and stays there and I get a cyclical stutter that gets worse and worse the longer I continue to play in that state. I haven't gotten the drops to single-digit fps that some are seeing though. Performance seems to hold, I just get frametime spikes at regular intervals.
 
This might be the first game I can feel the low fps on my 3080 at 3840x1080.

It looks good, so I can't tell if its just poorly optimized or not.
 
I'm seeing system memory usage continuously ticking up from the time I hit the main menu... Once it gets over 31,000MB or so (32GB system) usage drops to a bit over 28,000MB and stays there and I get a cyclical stutter that gets worse and worse the longer I continue to play in that state. I haven't gotten the drops to single-digit fps that some are seeing though. Performance seems to hold, I just get frametime spikes at regular intervals.
Hm, yeah i'm not seeing that after many hours and when I get this sharp performance drop, system memory usage hasn't really changed from where it started. Something different, I guess.
 
New patch is nice, of course my mods borked something. Now to spend an hour or two figuring out which ones, lol. Such is life being early to the zone. Worth it though, this game is AWESOME. Finally a good, gritty, modern FPS. I don’t hate third person RPG, but FPS is my original love and we are sorely lacking options in the modern era.
 
New patch is nice, of course my mods borked something. Now to spend an hour or two figuring out which ones, lol. Such is life being early to the zone. Worth it though, this game is AWESOME. Finally a good, gritty, modern FPS. I don’t hate third person RPG, but FPS is my original love and we are sorely lacking options in the modern era.
Yup I’m super enjoying this one. It looks great, plays great. Love the mechanics of how everything works and a wonderful open world… I’m almost always out of ammo, though, so I have to loot absolutely everything I can. Still loving the modded pistol and boomstick.

I played all night with a browser in the background running YouTube for music … I normally don’t do that but it felt right last night when the edibles kicked in lol. It played smoothly the whole night.

Oh and one of the storms last night the whole sky turned red for a while, lighting crashing down everywhere… it was wild.

So far no mods for me, but I’m eyeballing some.

Edit: I was in so many crazy situations last night lol. Like I thought no way I’m making it out of this.. then got out of it… sometimes you have to sneak / dash out of places … just too many enemies … and other times just fight your way out. Super fun!
 
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