Walkthrough
On Side Missions
We've made a deliberate choice not to cover most of the side missions that are offered to you in Stalker, and will concentrate solely on the main storyline quests that come your way. There are a few reasons for this, including the fact that many of the side missions are either largely irrelevant (in that they offer cash in a game with very few things to buy), are easily completed (as when you're told to kill someone and are told precisely where he's located), or are kind of broken. We've encountered missions where we were told to find an item and pointed to a location, only to discover that there was no item to be found; we also had one mission where we successfully recovered an item and brought it back to the questgiver, only to discover that he didn't offer us any way to complete the quest in his dialogue box. Fun!
Anyway, feel free to attempt these side quests as you like. You can find them at Sidorivich's hideout at the beginning of the game, from a couple of stalkers in the camp nearby, and at the Bar in the middle of the game. You'll also occasionally run across side missions as you run around the game world; usually these are "defend the camp" missions which require you to kill a number of incoming enemies. Sometimes these can only be turned into characters like Sid who are going to be inconvenient to reach.
Cordon Quests
After watching the opening cinema here, you wake up in front of a character called Sidorivich. You owe him for saving your life, so you’re going to have to help him out. Sidorivich is the only trader you’ll run across for a while, meaning that he’ll be the only one you can sell guns to. Every bandit in the area will buy health items from you, but guns have to go through Sidorivich (at a marked down price, of course). We're going to refer to Sidorivich as Sid for the bulk of this guide.
If this is your first play-through, tell him to treat you like a rookie for some tutorials. Otherwise, listen to what he has to say and accept your first mission, aside from the overarcing Kill Strelok goal.
Special Mission: Get Information From The Scout
Talk to Wolf
Wolf is located in the small camp near where you start the game. He’ll be marked on your map with a target icon. Find him and talk to him and learn about your next goal. You can talk to him again for another mission afterwards.
Meet With Wolf’s People
After you accept the second part of this mission from Wolf, he’ll give you a pistol, some ammo, and tell you to meet his friends near the bandit hideout to the north.
Follow the road to the north, and you’ll come to Tolik, who’s lying by the side of it, writhing in pain. If you pick up the first aid kit next to the nearby corpse and give it to him, he’ll go back to camp and tell the people there that you’re a good guy at heart. Aww....
Anyway, search any grey dots on your minimap for items, assuming you can shoot off the animals that usually surround them. You may want to preserve your ammo until you meet up with Wolf’s folks. They should be denoted on your map by an arrow. Head there and talk to Petruha.
Eliminate The Bandits At The Car Park
Ah, your first taste of combat. There are six or seven bandits in the car park, and you have three teammates here, so you’ll have to help out a bit if you want to take them out. Your pistol is a decent weapon, but it’s not very accurate, so you’ll need to get in rather close to make it work. Luckily for you, there are plenty of holes in the walls here that you can take advantage of. Try to flank some of the first soldiers you face off against while your teammates are firing away at them and pop them a few times in the back to take them down. If you’re in the clear, you can search the bodies until you find more pistol ammo or a shotgun and use that to sweep through the rest of the camp, killing bandits as you go. You do have support here, so if you need to, simply wait back in the back and let the soldiers and bandits kill each other off before cleaning up the mess.
Get the Flash Drive from Nimble
Nimble is hidden away in the multi-story building here. Find him and retrieve the flash drive from him. He’ll offer you a mission; you can either get it now, or later, when he returns to camp.
Take The Flash Drive To The Trader
Return to camp. Wolf will offer up a Jellyfish artifact as a reward if you speak to him. You can affix artifacts to your belt to net their benefits, but in this case, the radiation will slowly kill you, so just hold onto it for now, or sell it if you like. Return the flash drive to Sidorivich for his reward as well. You should have enough cash to buy a Fort12MK2 pistol from him, which is an upgrade over the guns you have now.
After you complete this mission, Sidorovich will offer you both "special missions" (which advance the plot of the game) and normal missions, which are simple objectives done for profit. The special missions are required to advance, while the normal missions will generally have a one-day timer on them. None of them are particularly difficult, but sometimes you may find yourself stuck with an uncompletable mission, if our experiences are any indication.