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

I keep having issues where I'll hear enemies, and they'll just be...not there. Like once I encounted a polterguist, and I know they're difficult to see, but I searched everywhere for this fucker and never could find him. I kept moving past where I heard the noises and there was nothing there.

Later, I was moving through some houses and I heard stalkers talking...but they were just not there. I moved around trying to locate them based on sound but they were literally just non-existant. I guess it has to be yet another bug.
 
MavericK said:
I keep having issues where I'll hear enemies, and they'll just be...not there. Like once I encounted a polterguist, and I know they're difficult to see, but I searched everywhere for this fucker and never could find him. I kept moving past where I heard the noises and there was nothing there.

Later, I was moving through some houses and I heard stalkers talking...but they were just not there. I moved around trying to locate them based on sound but they were literally just non-existant. I guess it has to be yet another bug.
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It's not a bug, it's a feature. :LOL:
Some anomalies can cause the voices, especially when the screen starts to shift and blur on you, plus Controllers and Bayuns can cause you to hear voices from all directions and there not be anyone around.

Also sometimes and enemy will clip through the ground or building and you can't see them. I've experienced all this shit and thought the game was fucked.
 
Finished this up last night and got the Ward ending after 104hrs..
The game really cranks things up a notch towards the end. The AI cheats so bad, it can be sometimes rage inducing if I was a lesser man.

If you're doing the Ward ending, my advice is to equip a sniper rifle like the Super 700 and bring plenty of med kits and ammo, and at least another suit if you can manage it.
On Stalker difficulty, shit can get ruthless.

I will revisit this with a modded out play through next time. Playing vanilla was fun but grates on your nerves, I commend them for making and actual Stalker game.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Finished this up last night and got the Ward ending after 104hrs..
The game really cranks things up a notch towards the end. The AI cheats so bad, it can be sometimes rage inducing if I was a lesser man.

If you're doing the Ward ending, my advice is to equip a sniper rifle like the Super 700 and bring plenty of med kits and ammo, and at least another suit if you can manage it.
On Stalker difficulty, shit can get ruthless.

I will revisit this with a modded out play through next time. Playing vanilla was fun but grates on your nerves, I commend them for making and actual Stalker game.
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^^^ This is the exact reason I stopped playing most games on insano mode first time through. AI enemies do not get better strategies.. they just become bullet sponges with accuracy and damage off the charts while your resources are cut to the nub. I'm not into paying for frustration any more. :D

No thanks. I play through once in tourist mode than decide whether or not it's worth playing again for a diff ending while ratcheting up the difficulty.
 
If you can snap off head shots with the Super 700, it's more or less a one hitter quitter. Never go for center mass.

The Monolithians towards the end can shoot you through walls with Gauss rifles, chuck nades exactly on top of you and don't communicate so you have no idea where they are. Plus the game turns into a corridor shooter, and not the good kind either.

There is a couple of elite squads called Granite-3 that will fuck you up also.
 
CAD4466HK said:
If you can snap off head shots with the Super 700, it's more or less a one hitter quitter. Never go for center mass.

The Monolithians towards the end can shoot you through walls with Gauss rifles, chuck nades exactly on top of you and don't communicate so you have no idea where they are. Plus the game turns into a corridor shooter, and not the good kind either.

There is a couple of elite squads called Granite-3 that will fuck you up also.
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I've already noticed most cover-N-move strats in this game are null and void as the enemy just shoots you through the ground and or solid objects like concrete walls. Their accuracy ranged even with shotguns is some kind of stupid. Move to cover and try to take good shots, they just chew up the durability of your armor. Close fast and mow them down seems to be the most effective when possible.

I have 2 sniper rifles currently EMR and SVDM. Have use both sparingly. Don't even carry one at this point in the game. Ranged I hose enemies down with 45ACP until I can close and finish with the shottie if needed.

Taking it slow and easy up to now and barely gone beyond the zones adjacent to the lesser zone. Have shelved the main story line for days now.. lol. A few guys tried to sell me a used car last night.. felt good to loot their corpses. :D
 
Evil Scooter said:
I've already noticed most cover-N-move strats in this game are null and void as the enemy just shoots you through the ground and or solid objects like concrete walls. Their accuracy ranged even with shotguns is some kind of stupid. Move to cover and try to take good shots, they just chew up the durability of your armor. Close fast and mow them down seems to be the most effective when possible.

I have 2 sniper rifles currently EMR and SVDM. Have use both sparingly. Don't even carry one at this point in the game. Ranged I hose enemies down with 45ACP until I can close and finish with the shottie if needed.

Taking it slow and easy up to now and barely gone beyond the zones adjacent to the lesser zone. Have shelved the main story line for days now.. lol. A few guys tried to sell me a used car last night.. felt good to loot their corpses. :D
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Keep a clear head and a extra magazine handy Stalker.

The real fun hasn't even begun yet for you.
Do the main quest line up to the signal and a whole new game will unfold for you difficulty wise.
 
CAD4466HK said:
It's not a bug, it's a feature. :LOL:
Some anomalies can cause the voices, especially when the screen starts to shift and blur on you, plus Controllers and Bayuns can cause you to hear voices from all directions and there not be anyone around.

Also sometimes and enemy will clip through the ground or building and you can't see them. I've experienced all this shit and thought the game was fucked.
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I don't think it's any of that, there's no indication that anything weird is happening. Knowing this game it's probably just some weird bug.
 
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One ai bug that I cheese whenever possible is the fact that whenever there's something to jump on top of during a mutant dog attack you'll find me hiding there. The scripting seems to break and they'll scatter.

On an unrelated note. After dozens of hours since the last time it happened, I had the game lock up. I had to sign out of my windows session in order to recover.
 
Anyone else wish there were fewer stashes with better loot? My map is littered with purple stash icons and most of them are just ammo, nades and medkit which are all in abundance just laying around the zone. Leaving SIRCCA I did find this tunnel with this absolutely terrifying mutant that had a Vintar. Only way I was able to kill that thing was to jump up on some barrels where he couldn't get to me and it still took most of my ammo.
 
Andym22 said:
Anyone else wish there were fewer stashes with better loot? My map is littered with purple stash icons and most of them are just ammo, nades and medkit which are all in abundance just laying around the zone. Leaving SIRCCA I did find this tunnel with this absolutely terrifying mutant that had a Vintar. Only way I was able to kill that thing was to jump up on some barrels where he couldn't get to me and it still took most of my ammo.
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Meh. Stashes are just jump mazes to pad hours in the game. The ones that have a phantom tossing items at you while you try to jump I just walk away from. Sometimes they are worth the effort.. most times not as you say. There is one outside of Concrete factory I have given up on. You climb up on a trailer and are supposed to jump through a hole in the wall up over the locked door. Cannot get the timing down. Grabbed the SEVA-D suit last night on top of the concrete jungle jump maze. The constant PSI attack and drunk effect was pretty annoying but the suit traded in for decent coin. I'd trade in the stashes for more bandit attacks with better loot drops. I really don't care for jump mazes at all. If I wanted to play Donkey Kong.. I'd play Donkey Kong.

Game still freezes and crashes pretty frequently. Sometimes after a few hours... other times not so much. I'm still banging about areas adjacent to the lesser zone exploring all. Hopefully another patch will drop before I get back to the main story line in earnest.
 
Just want to give everyone a heads up. Rostok has a massive memory leak once you are inside that city. So eventually you will crash. I can confirm this as I was always crashing in rostok and could not figure out why.
 
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Andym22 said:
Anyone else wish there were fewer stashes with better loot? My map is littered with purple stash icons and most of them are just ammo, nades and medkit which are all in abundance just laying around the zone. Leaving SIRCCA I did find this tunnel with this absolutely terrifying mutant that had a Vintar. Only way I was able to kill that thing was to jump up on some barrels where he couldn't get to me and it still took most of my ammo.
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You can get mods to have better stashes, but I think it adds artifacts and weapons and stuff, which might disrupt the normal gear progression a bit.

It looks like this one is configurable to have artifacts, weapons, or neither: https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/832
 
Brackle said:
Just want to give everyone a heads up. Rostok has a massive memory leak once you are inside that city. So eventually you will crash. I can confirm this as I was always crashing in rostok and could not figure out why.
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That was where I was for my last post. It was getting framier, but I refuse claim that it was a memory leak. If for no other reason than too many people who are maybe slightly more informed than the regular gamers bandy that term about in lieu of more precise language....
That and the game started to drop frames(now I'm doing it) as soon as I got back to the newbie area after the signal went out.
Before that I avoided the wild island because that place ran like absolute shit. Like 15fps no matter what I did.
 
yap, Rostok is also HEAVY CPU limited. I would drop to the mid 40's evertytime i went to rostok.

Once I avoided that city, my crashing stopped.
 
I'm trying so hard to like and play this game, but the constant crashing and performance issues/bugs are making it really hard.
 
Brackle said:
Just want to give everyone a heads up. Rostok has a massive memory leak once you are inside that city. So eventually you will crash. I can confirm this as I was always crashing in rostok and could not figure out why.
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Go back a page... I posted a video of that memory leak in action.
 
MavericK said:
I'm trying so hard to like and play this game, but the constant crashing and performance issues/bugs are making it really hard.
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Recent Steam reviews seem to be worse. For most people it seems like the recent patch caused more issues. Hopefully the next patch comes soon. I'll be waiting a bit longer for this one.
 
MavericK said:
Nothing major, mostly just cost tweaks and stuff like that. Nothing heavy, or that should be causing crashes.
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I would say try running without them, but some people say you should also wipe your cache if you have been running any type of mod to stop the crashes.
My son tried a trainer utility called WeMod so he could get unlimited coupons (I know) and his game would crash every 5-10min like clock work, but he got his coupons smh.
 
CAD4466HK said:
I would say try running without them, but some people say you should also wipe your cache if you have been running any type of mod to stop the crashes.
My son tried a trainer utility called WeMod so he could get unlimited coupons (I know) and his game would crash every 5-10min like clock work, but he got his coupons smh.
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It seems to come and go, sometimes I get consistent crashes at a random area (not even a large settlement, it'll just be some random house in the middle of nowhere), and then later it'll run just fine through larger places, so I don't really know.
 
MavericK said:
It seems to come and go, sometimes I get consistent crashes at a random area (not even a large settlement, it'll just be some random house in the middle of nowhere), and then later it'll run just fine through larger places, so I don't really know.
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It's so strange how some people have zero issues and others are plagued with them.
I had 2 crashes the whole time that I played and they were one after another at the end of the game.

I jumped into a gravity anomaly and the game went to a pastel blue screen and locked me out of everything, had to kill it with task manager, glad I run dual monitors.
And as soon as I reloaded the save, I tried it again and bam, back to blue screen. Seems to be a known issue on Steam and the best way to stop it is to avoid the gravity anomalies all together. :p

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981579416148311/

But I heard too much gear in your stash can cause crashes, low latency mode in the NV CP as well, PBO and undervolting settings on 3D VCache CPU's, and it goes on and on.
I hope you figure it out. :)
 
Stalker on the back burner since I'm in the group where the game won't start due to shader issue. I'm patient and expect to jump back in in about a couple months. (maybe new PC, which is needed) I would like to see more patch activity over a week into Jan. Hopefully something drops in the next week.
 
CAD4466HK said:
It's so strange how some people have zero issues and others are plagued with them.
I had 2 crashes the whole time that I played and they were one after another at the end of the game.

I jumped into a gravity anomaly and the game went to a pastel blue screen and locked me out of everything, had to kill it with task manager, glad I run dual monitors.
And as soon as I reloaded the save, I tried it again and bam, back to blue screen. Seems to be a known issue on Steam and the best way to stop it is to avoid the gravity anomalies all together. :p

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981579416148311/

But I heard too much gear in your stash can cause crashes, low latency mode in the NV CP as well, PBO and undervolting settings on 3D VCache CPU's, and it goes on and on.
I hope you figure it out. :)
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I went back to playing this and my frame rates were through the floor and the game was a stutterfest. I tried every in game option possible trying to improve the performance with no luck, and then I went into my Nvidia Control Panel and set low latency to ON from Ultra and my game became buttery smooth again. I am running Frame Gen = On in Stalker 2 with DLSS enabled, and I found that I had the same stutter issues with Indiana Jones with the same graphics settings combination and Low Latency enabled at all under the Nvidia Control Panel. I wonder if this is a driver issue as I have not had this problem with any other titles?
 
loafer87gt said:
I went back to playing this and my frame rates were through the floor and the game was a stutterfest. I tried every in game option possible trying to improve the performance with no luck, and then I went into my Nvidia Control Panel and set low latency to ON from Ultra and my game became buttery smooth again. I am running Frame Gen = On in Stalker 2 with DLSS enabled, and I found that I had the same stutter issues with Indiana Jones with the same graphics settings combination and Low Latency enabled at all under the Nvidia Control Panel. I wonder if this is a driver issue as I have not had this problem with any other titles?
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It very well could be a driver issue when it comes to the low latency mode. I had issues with it in a couple of games, so I've had it turned off ever since, which has been around a year.
Maybe that is why I'm not having any issues? There is a thread about it on Steam. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/594011786520343012/

As for FG, I had to turn it off in Indy since it made everything look like shit with the strobe effect. It ran good on Stalker 2. From my experience it's pretty hit or miss depending on the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 was another one that it wasn't that great in to me.
 
I've noticed that the slow down "effect" that happens during some mutant encounters, notably with the bloodsuckers really mess with the stability of a given session. Though it might have more to do with those encounters being tied to scripted moments during the story.
CAD4466HK said:
It's so strange how some people have zero issues and others are plagued with them.
I had 2 crashes the whole time that I played and they were one after another at the end of the game.

I jumped into a gravity anomaly and the game went to a pastel blue screen and locked me out of everything, had to kill it with task manager, glad I run dual monitors.
And as soon as I reloaded the save, I tried it again and bam, back to blue screen. Seems to be a known issue on Steam and the best way to stop it is to avoid the gravity anomalies all together. :p

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981579416148311/

But I heard too much gear in your stash can cause crashes, low latency mode in the NV CP as well, PBO and undervolting settings on 3D VCache CPU's, and it goes on and on.
I hope you figure it out. :)
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I was just about to speculate about how the game was tied to the frame rate but instead read your link. I haven't had that exact experience with anomalies...yet.

The memory leak stuff is giving me flashbacks to playing Icarus. In that situation the devs originally designed that game to have less persistent session lengths and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the traditional open world survival that their customers thought it was going to be.
Basically the longer you play and the more complex your Basecamp gets, the slower it performs. Unless you want host a server.
 
Tactlesss said:
I've noticed that the slow down "effect" that happens during some mutant encounters, notably with the bloodsuckers really mess with the stability of a given session. Though it might have more to do with those encounters being tied to scripted moments during the story.

I was just about to speculate about how the game was tied to the frame rate but instead read your link. I haven't had that exact experience with anomalies...yet.

The memory leak stuff is giving me flashbacks to playing Icarus. In that situation the devs originally designed that game to have less persistent session lengths and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the traditional open world survival that their customers thought it was going to be.
Basically the longer you play and the more complex your Basecamp gets, the slower it performs. Unless you want host a server.
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Yeah the slow down effect struggle is real. Almost feels the same as walking in the swamps sometimes, but it varies in speed and duration depending on the mutant encounter, I really do not like it.
Never played Icarus.
 
CAD4466HK said:
It very well could be a driver issue when it comes to the low latency mode. I had issues with it in a couple of games, so I've had it turned off ever since, which has been around a year.
Maybe that is why I'm not having any issues? There is a thread about it on Steam. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/594011786520343012/

As for FG, I had to turn it off in Indy since it made everything look like shit with the strobe effect. It ran good on Stalker 2. From my experience it's pretty hit or miss depending on the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 was another one that it wasn't that great in to me.
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Interesting.. low latency was off in NV CP. My game had been crashing infrequently so I don't think that was it. Setting it to ON seems to smooth frames in the wild. I'll report back after a few more hours.
 
Just started playing this and got to a bunker and now am heading out to look for an anomaly. Is this mostly exploring stuff? Thus far, I have killed one deformed pig or something. Might be too early in the game?
 
KickAssCop said:
Just started playing this and got to a bunker and now am heading out to look for an anomaly. Is this mostly exploring stuff? Thus far, I have killed one deformed pig or something. Might be too early in the game?
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Honestly I'm finding the exploring to be a lot more enjoyable than the main storyline to this point. Went to a few places early that maybe have narrowed future choices on ending options... lol. Don't care. 51 hours in and I spend more time clearing stashes, optional side missions and collecting rando artifacts than the mainline story.
 
Evil Scooter said:
Interesting.. low latency was off in NV CP. My game had been crashing infrequently so I don't think that was it. Setting it to ON seems to smooth frames in the wild. I'll report back after a few more hours.
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I've tried with it Off, On and Ultra - didn't make a difference for me as far as crashing. I've just gotten used to spamming F5 so I don't lose progress.
 
MavericK said:
I've tried with it Off, On and Ultra - didn't make a difference for me as far as crashing. I've just gotten used to spamming F5 so I don't lose progress.
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Just wrapped up a few hours.. not 1 crash. Don't think it's related to the latency setting. I did just upgrade to 64GB RAM. Watchin afterburner my system used to report 20GB+ being used in game. I saw it settle at 32GB the entire time I was on tonight. Rostock will still crash I'm sure tho. Hope they fix it soon. I miss dumping trashed guns on the trader there.. lol.
 
MavericK said:
I keep having issues where I'll hear enemies, and they'll just be...not there. Like once I encounted a polterguist, and I know they're difficult to see, but I searched everywhere for this fucker and never could find him. I kept moving past where I heard the noises and there was nothing there.
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Might have been a Burer or Burers that were out of line of sight. Like Poltergeists, those guys will toss items around trying to get to you. Usually, you can hear their feet noises when they're actively seeking a target.

Some enemies with telekinesis abilities fight each other too. You could have just been nearby one actively seeking a target.
MavericK said:
Later, I was moving through some houses and I heard stalkers talking...but they were just not there. I moved around trying to locate them based on sound but they were literally just non-existant. I guess it has to be yet another bug.
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Sounds like the effects of a psy-cat when it's nearby. Their psy-effect isn't nearly as potent as a Controller or the full-on psy status effect where it will manifest enemies to attack you, but it works the way you've described.
 
^^^ What are the enemies that manifest enemies to attack? Still have not figured out that one.

FWIW I played a bit more last night. No crashes and memory usage was still in excess of 30GB.
 
Absalom said:
Might have been a Burer or Burers that were out of line of sight. Like Poltergeists, those guys will toss items around trying to get to you. Usually, you can hear their feet noises when they're actively seeking a target.

Some enemies with telekinesis abilities fight each other too. You could have just been nearby one actively seeking a target.

Sounds like the effects of a psy-cat when it's nearby. Their psy-effect isn't nearly as potent as a Controller or the full-on psy status effect where it will manifest enemies to attack you, but it works the way you've described.
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I already suggested that it was a Bayun (psy-cat) but he said it's not.

Evil Scooter said:
^^^ What are the enemies that manifest enemies to attack? Still have not figured out that one.

FWIW I played a bit more last night. No crashes and memory usage was still in excess of 30GB.
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Controllers make you "hallucinate" enemies that disappear once dead or vanish when you go to loot their corpse.
 
Absalom said:
Might have been a Burer or Burers that were out of line of sight. Like Poltergeists, those guys will toss items around trying to get to you. Usually, you can hear their feet noises when they're actively seeking a target.

Some enemies with telekinesis abilities fight each other too. You could have just been nearby one actively seeking a target.

Sounds like the effects of a psy-cat when it's nearby. Their psy-effect isn't nearly as potent as a Controller or the full-on psy status effect where it will manifest enemies to attack you, but it works the way you've described.
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It's not, I literally scoured the entire area and there was nothing. I know what those enemies look like, there just literally was nothing there.

It's the same with the stalkers, where I can hear them talking and I can pinpoint where they're supposed to be using surround audio, but there's just nothing there. I haven't had it happen again so far in several more hours of gameplay, so I can only assume it was a bug of some sort.
 
I haven't had a crash in awhile, the only thing I can think is that I was running at DLAA most of the time, whereas now I kicked it down to DLSS Quality for extra performance. I've still gotten crashes with DLSS Quality, but it seems far less frequent.
 
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