S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl

[Necromancer]

General Tips


Stashes

Stashes are going to be the source of a lot of loot for you during your time around Chernobyl. The basic process is this: you kill an enemy, then check their body. You’ll get a PDA message indicating that they had information about a stash on them. You check your map and look for a purple triangle marking the location of the stash, look around a bit for a backpack or some other item that could hold loot (sometimes it’s a rusty pipe, for instance), then open it up and grab the loot.
Unfortunately, stashes are kind of wonky and weird in this game. Since you’re going to be killing hundreds of enemies during the game, and there are only so many stash locations to go around, sometimes you’ll be heading to the same stash twice. Sometimes, if you don’t take everything out of a stash, it won’t be refilled, even if you find the stash indicator on another soldier. Sometimes you’ll empty out a stash and the icon will still be there on your map, for whatever reason. Sometimes you’ll be pointed towards stash locations only to find nothing at the marker.
If you want to make the most of stashes, you should try to make your way to them as soon as possible after they become available to you. Don’t let them distract you from your storyline quests, though - stashes aren’t that important. But when you do reach one, open it up and take everything inside. Even if you don’t need any of the items in there, it’s better to nab everything then dump anything you don’t need on the ground, rather than keep it in the stash. That way, if you nab the same stash’s location on another body, it might wind up getting refilled with new goodies.
As noted, stashes aren’t particularly worth tracking down if they’re going to be well out of your way. Early in the game, they’re worth checking out, since they’ll net you more first aid kits and ammo, but later on, you’re going to be able to find everything you really need off the bodies of your enemies (ammo, first aid supplies, weapons) or floating around on the ground (artifacts).

Money And Supplies

After playing a game like Oblivion, which is superficially similar to Stalker in many ways, you may think that money will wind up being important in Stalker. Unfortunately, it really isn’t; as mentioned above, you’re going to wind up finding most of the stuff that you really need on the bodies of enemies that you’ve slain.
There are only three main traders in the game: Sid near the beginning, Barkeep in the Bar territory, and Prof. Sakharov in Yantar. Each of these fellows will be willing to buy most of what you’re capable of selling, and will have unlimited funds to buy what you offer, whereas the neutral and friendly stalkers and soldiers throughout the realms will generally only buy your first aid kits and, helpfully, the artifacts that you find.
Still, though, it’s worth building up a little bankroll for emergencies, or for when you happen to spot a 30,000 RU suit for sale at Professor Sakharov’s. The most profitable items to sell are artifacts, which you’ll find in greater quantities when you finally make it north into the Garbage sector and into the sectors beyond. Each artifact will net you at least 1,000 RU, with the more valuable ones being worth 5,000 total. Luckily, most stalkers and soldiers will be willing to trade for them, so you don’t have to lug them back to a trader.
Luckily for you, in most cases, either something will be useful or it won’t be, so there’s no real reason to keep supplies hidden away. If you want to do so, though, find an empty stash box near your stomping grounds and keep your supplies in that. They won’t disappear so long as you keep them in a box. Even if you decide to dump them on the ground somewhere, they seem to be persistent for a good long time.

Sprinting And Endurance

One of the most useful abilities you have in the game is the ability to sprint. It’ll let you move much more rapidly than you normally would, which is going to be important when you consider that you move glacially slow at default speeds. You won’t, however, be able to run forever, since your endurance meter will drain as you do so.
The endurance meter’s draining will depend on a couple of factors, the most important of which is how much weight you’re carrying around. If you’re carrying almost nothing in your pack, then you’ll be able to run for a long distance before you tire out. If you’re carrying close to your 50 kilogram weight restriction, though, you’ll tire much more quickly. If you go over the 50 kilogram weight limit, then you’ll be unable to run for more than a couple of seconds before you tire out. If you go over 60 kg or so, you won’t be able to move at all. For most of the early game, you’re going to want to keep your pack down to around 40 kg or less, just so that you’re able to run farther distances without tiring.
Later in the game, you’ll want to keep an eye out for endurance-boosting artifacts, such as Moonlights, Flashes, and Sparklers. These give large boosts to your endurance rating, eventually allowing you to sprint as long as you like without slowing. They typically glow blue or bluish white when seen, so keep an eye out for them!

[Necromancer]

Artifacts & Dealing With Radiation

The main reason the Zone is populated is because Stalkers wish to collect artifacts and sell them for profit. However, the artifacts that you find can be affixed to your belt to net you a constant benefit, but usually at the cost of a constant negative effect, as well.
Early on in the game, you’re mostly going to be finding mild artifacts that typically add a bit of a bonus to your Rupture or Bulletproof Cap ratings at the expense of a constant exposure to radiation. That’s obviously not something you’re going to find useful at all, so sell these when you find someone willing to buy them.
In general, the two types of artifacts that we found most useful were the anti-radiation artifacts (Thorns, Crystals, and so on) as well as the plus-endurance ones. Anti-rad artifacts come with two side effects: increased bleeding, or reduced endurance. Try to stick to the ones that increase the effects of bleeding if possible. You’ll have plenty of bandages to reduce your bleeding when you get struck by bullets, but reducing your endurance will simply cripple your ability to run around.
Plus-endurance artifacts usually come with penalties to your electrical exposure resistance, but that’s a relatively minor worry in the game, unless you’re constantly running into anomalies.

Anomalies

Anomalies persist throughout the Zone, and are going to be a minor annoyance to you throughout the game. There are a variety of anomalies around, which will update in your PDA’s Encyclopedia section when you encounter them, or shortly thereafter. The most dangerous one to you will usually be the Vortex, which is a suction anomaly that will suck you into its heart as you pass by and cause damage through minor explosions. It’s possible to escape from a Vortex after getting caught up, by running or jumping out of its pull, but it’s difficult to do so. It’s best to simply avoid them altogether; they’re tough to spot, but if you look close, you’ll see the air pulsating around them. This is also true of the Whirligig and Springboard anomalies.
Keep in mind that your anomaly detector will start to click when you near an anomaly, even if it’s not of the easily-seen sort. You also have an unlimited supply of bolts (6 button) to throw around to see if anomalies are present, but they’re usually unnecessary.
Artifacts are usually to be found near dense concentrations of anomalies, which can sometimes make it lucrative to explore near them. Just try not to sprint full-bore when you’re near anomalies, as it’s easy to run straight into a Vortex and get killed for your carelessness.

Combat Tips

One of the best aspects of Stalker is its combat; it’s satisfying and challenging, although periodically frustrating, as well. Here are some tips to help you make the most of the game.

Quicksave Often!

You have a quicksave button, as you’d expect. Hit F6 to quicksave your game and F7 to quickload when you die. In tense firefights, quicksaving can save you a lot of headaches. Just don’t forget to make regular main saves, as well; try to make a new full save each time you enter a new zone, at a minimum. And try not to quicksave unless you're absolutely sure you're in a safe spot; if you quicksave just before someone shoots you in the back, then you might not have any option but to reload your previous full save.

Full Auto? Not Always

You also have a button that will allow you to switch the firing mode of the weapons that you encounter. By default, the 9 button will let you switch your firing mode. You'll see the firing mode in parentheses in the bottom right corner of the screen, just above your ammo count. It will either be an (A) or a number in parentheses, like (1). What this basically tells you is how many bullets will come out when you click on the fire button.
Not all weapons will feature firing modes, though; most of them will only let you fire once per each button click. This is going to be most useful when you're dealing with automatic rifles, then, which can generally be shifted from automatic fire (the (A) indicator) to single-shot or burst fire. (If the indicator is (1), then you will fire one bullet per shot; having it set to (2) or (3) will result in burst fire. Not all rifles are capable of burst fire, but all of them can flip between automatic and semi-automatic fire.)
Single-shot or semi-automatic fire will be most useful to you when attempting to take down opponents from a distance, as it's far more accurate than using automatic fire, both in terms of how close your bullets will hit in relation to your crosshair, and in terms of minimizing recoil. If multiple enemies are coming in close to you, though, then you can switch back to automatic fire in an attempt to lay out a spread of bullets for their lunching enjoyment. Make use of this switch often as the situation dictates!

BOOM Headshot!

Stalker has a decently realistic damage model for your enemies; when hit in the head, they'll almost always go down in one shot, excepting advanced enemies with helmets. Still, it's usually better to aim for headshots when possible, as most enemies can take multiple shots to the body without falling over.
If you're firing from long distance with a decently accurate weapon, then just try to get your enemy's head in your crosshair and fire away at them with rapid semi-automatic fire. Clicking rapidly will let you control your recoil better than if you were to use automatic fire. At medium distances, the choice between semi-automatic and automatic fire will usually depend on your weapon's recoil. Some weapons, like the GP 37, will have low enough recoil to make it somewhat easier to use automatic fire while zooming in your scope; there'll be slight recoil, but you'll be able to fire a few rounds at the target's head in the hopes that one of them will connect. At close range, try aiming just below your target's head with automatic fire. If the body shots don't kill him, then the recoil will often lift your gun so that it's aiming directly at your foe's head. Adjust your aiming based on the amount of recoil of your weapon.

[Necromancer]

Exterior Fighting

Fighting in the great outdoors can be a tricky proposition, depending on a number of factors: the number of enemies you're going up against, the types of weapons they're using, the type of weapon you're using, the amount of ammo you have to spare, and so on. That said, here are some basic tips to hopefully keep you alive.
Sprint Between Cover: Run. Not necessarily away from your enemies, but towards cover. If your foes spot you from a long ways away and open fire, then you'll be at a marked disadvantage. While your enemies might not be accurate from long range, they'll have the advantage of infinite bullets and strength of numbers, so they'll be able to whittle down your health from long range while you struggle to hit them.

So, try to close in on your foes whenever possible. Luckily, in the great outdoors, there will usually be plenty of cover for you to use, so get used to sprinting from cover to cover until you get within a decent firing range. If you sprint out from one piece of cover to another, you may get hit by a bullet or two; these will stop you from sprinting, but if you simply hit the button again, you'll resume running. Keep going until you manage to hit a piece of cover that satisfies you and allows you to fire at your foes from a range that will let you actually hit them.
Duck: Well, duh. You have a crouch key in the game here, which will let you crouch down a bit before firing. You also have a second crouch key that can only be activated when you're already using the first, normal crouch key; it lets you crouch down even lower. And that's awesome.
Anyway, ducking down a bit will make you a smaller target, making it more difficult for enemies to hit you. It seems to have a fairly small effect on accuracy, as well. There isn't any way to go prone, as far as we can tell, which is too bad.
Know When To Close In: Some enemies will switch weapons if you get close enough to them. If a soldier with a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher is giving you fits, try to sprint close to them and engage them at close range. Usually this will force them to switch to a pistol and engage you with that, reducing their effectiveness quite a bit.

Interior Fighting

You'll be doing plenty of fighting inside structures and facilities as you proceed through the game, which bring their own unique challenges. Here are some tips to help you out.

Use Grenades: You'll find a fair number of grenades on the bodies of soldiers that you kill. Pick them up and save them for interior fighting. Grenades can be bounced off of walls and around corners, and are especially helpful when you have three or four soldiers to deal with at one time. Soldiers will spread out when a grenade lands near them, so be ready for that by switching to another weapon after throwing your grenade.
Grenades are, by default, bound to the 4 key.

Lure Your Foes To You: When dealing with enemies in tight corridors, it can help to be a little noisy. Generally it's easier to tag enemies as they come around corners looking for you; you'll know approximately where their head will be, and will be able to snap-fire more quickly than they'll likely be able to react to. If you have a shotgun, you can blast them in the chest for an instant kill in most cases.
To lure an enemy out to you, simply fire at them a few times, then duck back behind a corner and wait for them to come. Not all enemies will actually follow you around a corner and let you take them down; if they don't, though, then see our advice about bouncing grenades off of walls above.

Weapon Types

There are a number of different types of weapons in Stalker. Here’s a rundown on the basic sorts.
Knife: You start the game with a basic knife as your buddy, bound to the 1 key. It’s not going to be of much use to you during the game, unless you want to smash crates to see what’s inside of them. You can still use it to get kills on enemies, if you wish; try rushing them while they reload and slicing them. This is most useful on zombified enemies, who seem to be less resistant to knife attacks than normal humans.
Pistols: You’re going to start the game with no weapons at all, save the knife, but you’ll soon find a pistol. You won’t be using it very long, but your pistol will still be a trusty sidekick for the first hour or so of the game, allowing you to rapidly shoot enemies while conserving ammo for your more significant weapons. Go for the headshots when you’re up close with your pistol; at greater distances, the inaccuracy of a pistol will force you to shoot the body if you want to hit your target at all.
After you grab enough ammo to consistently be able to fire an SMG or assault rifle, you can feel free to drop your pistol and all its ammo. You'll find better pistols as you proceed through the game, but they'll almost always wind up being dead weight after you get an assault rifle.
Shotguns: There are only a few different types of shotguns in the game, but you’ll be using the first one, a simple double-barrelled sawed-off shottie, the most. It pops up fairly early on in your first little skirmish, and it’ll be a powerful tool for popping fools from then on. Like you might expect, shotguns exchange accuracy for power; they can’t hit anything farther than a few meters away with any reliability, but when you get someone up close to you, they’ll put him down right quick.
Shotguns are thus best used indoors, in small buildings or in the larger facilities that you’ll eventually be entering. If you can get an enemy’s attention and lure him towards you, you can simply wait for him to come around a corner and blast him a couple times for a quick kill. They work best on the lightly armored foes you'll be encountering early in the game; by the time you start seeing exoskeleton-using enemies from Monolith or Freedom, though, you'll find shotgun effectiveness to be greatly reduced, with many enemies able to shrug off a full clip of six shotgun shells. If you're really good at getting headshots, then the pump-action shotguns available later in the game might be worth your while, but the lengthy reload animations will probably allow enemies to kill you off with impunity.
Submachineguns: Early in the game, you'll run across a number of submachineguns, such as the Viper 5, mostly in the hands of the military or well-armed bandits. These weapons aren't very accurate, but can quickly put down lightly armored enemies with body shots or a well-aimed headshot.
Assault Rifles: The mainstay of your arsenal will be the assault rifle. These versatile weapons can be shifted from semi-automatic to automatic fire, letting you go from accurately getting headshots at medium range to simply blasting fools with automatic fire when they get too close.
There are a huge array of assault rifles in the game, with the highlight probably being the GP 37 that you'll start running across when you reach the Army Warehouses district. With a built-in scope and low recoil, you're going to want to be using that weapon for most of the rest of the game. Up until that point, you'll be finding new assault rifles to use every couple hours of gameplay or so. When deciding whether or not to use a new weapon that you've discovered, check the stats: weigh differences in accuracy and ammunition before making the switch. Sometimes it's best to simply pass up a new weapon and collect the ammo for it until you have enough to ensure that you can actually using it. Dropping your old weapon and 300 rounds of ammo for a new gun that only has 20 rounds in it is usually a bad idea. You'll usually want to have at least 100-200 rounds of ammo for a weapon before you can feel comfortable calling it your mainstay.
Sniper Rifles: You'll start running across sniper rifles in decent quantities when you reach the Army Warehouses and Red Forest districts. These are unmatched for accuracy, usually, allowing you to get somewhere in the vicinity of your target's head from a good distance away. Ammunition will be fairly sparse, though, so you won't want to be using sniper rifles on every foe you see. In most cases you'll simply want to save your ammo for enemy snipers that are hidden up in towers or other high elevations. The only true sci-fi gun in the game, the gauss rifle/railgun, is considered a sniper rifle, but you won't actually find it until it'll probably be too late for you to make much use of it.
When carrying a sniper rifle, your ability to aim will be slowed down a bit (to make it easier to aim at distant targets), and you also will be prevented from running for some reason.
Rocket Launchers: There are very few rocket launchers in the game, with perhaps only a dozen rounds of ammo or so available for them in total. They're powerful, of course, assuming you manage to aim them at a crowd of foes, but they're also heavy and cumbersome to carry around while you wait for the perfect opportunity to use them. We never really bothered with them, ourselves, mostly due to the weight issue.

[Necromancer]

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.

[Necromancer]

Special Mission: Find The Military Documents/Find Strelok

Sid thinks he might know how to track down Strelok, but he wants you to help him out. He wants you to head into a research lab far to the northwest and find some documents for him. This is going to be a lengthy quest, but there’s no time limit, so feel free to do other quests at the same time. Note that these are technically separate quests, but that they advance in more or less the same fashion in the same places, so we’ll group them together.

Meet The Journeyman

You’re supposed to meet a contact at the tunnel leading underneath the railroad tracks, but he’s unfortunately dead. His PDA purports to tell you about how to avoid the anomolies in the tunnel, but all it really says is that they move. Well, duh.
If you save your game beforehand, you can make it through the tunnel without too many problems. The anomolies do indeed move, first appear near the mouth of the tunnel, then slowly moving away from it before disappearing and starting over. If you follow them, moving super slow and not attempting to run through them, you can make it to the midpoint of the tunnel. The second half of the tunnel is the same deal, but the last anomaly here is floating above the ground, making it a bit difficult to see. Be sure there’s nothing there before sprinting out of the tunnel.
If you really don’t want to deal with the anomalies here, you can head to the main military checkpoint underneath the point where the bridge broke in two. If the soldiers there are shooting at other stalkers, they’ll be hostile to you, too, but if they’re simply standing there and minding their own business, you can pay them 500 RU to gain your passage. Be sure to loot their little camp in the middle of the bridge to offset the cost. This might sound like a gyp, but purchasing your immunity to the gunfire of the soldiers will let you watch as they skirmish with the stalkers, and pick up the weapons that the fallen combatants drop.

Tip: You can also find a permanent break in the fence that surrounds the railway embankment if you follow the rail a bit to the west. Don’t go to far, though, or you’ll wind up in radiation country.

Help Fox

When you pass through the railway embankment, Sid will tell you of a stalker named Fox, who apparently knows something of Strelok. He’s in a nearby house, lying wounded on the floor. You need a medkit to heal him, so if you don’t have one, you might have to return to Sid and buy one.

Tip: If you haven’t done so yet, you may want to check the area around the military checkpoint to see if any bandits have attacked and been killed. They’ll drop more powerful weapons for you, such as the Akm 74/2u. The military soldiers themselves will drop things like the Viper 5. Upgrade your weapons if possible.
Although his text screen will probably pass by too quickly for you to see, Fox will point you to a man named Gray, who’s up north in the Garbage zone. Getting there will require you to head north, through a bandit camp. It’ll be a tough fight, so you may want to complete any other missions you’re on (if possible) before heading up that way.

Reach the Checkpoint

The checkpoint leading to the Garbage area, to the north, is covered with bandits that will be hostile to you on sight. There’s no way to really avoid them, so gird yourself for a fight (you may want to buy some first aid kits from Sid), gather your weapons and ammo, and head up north. If you have an smg of whatever sort, be sure to switch it to single-fire mode (with the 0 or 9 keys) to increase its accuracy at long range.
The checkpoint itself is one small building, but there’s a truck in front of it that will provide you a bit of cover as you approach. Depending on the positions of the bandits, you may find your approach to be fairly easy. Many of them will usually be out in the woods to the south of the checkpoint, allowing you to sneak up by sprinting along the western side of the road. They may take a potshot or two at you as you run past, but they usually won’t follow you. We’ve seen anywhere from two to 10 bandits waiting inside the building here, though, so your journey may not be over yet. If you do manage to aggravate the whole bunch of bandits, get inside the building here if possible and start blast them as they come in with your shotgun.
If you find this fight to be overwhelmingly difficult, you may simply want to wait a while and come back, and hope that the bandits are in better positions.

[Necromancer]

The Garbage

The garbage is a zone that’s filled with bandits and other assorted nasty folk, although there are a few spots of civility left. Stalkers have set of defensive camps in some of the areas here, but they’ll be under siege by bandits more often than not, so stay on your guard, even when you think you’re in a safe area. Many of the junkpiles here are highly radioactive, so don’t stray too far from the road if possible. To the north, you can find an outpost of the Duty, a set of military guards for the Zone. They won’t be very friendly now, but you’ll get past them later.

Speak With Gray

The stalker that Fox wants you to speak to is located north, along the road. You’ll probably have to kill off or run away from some bandits to reach him. When you do reach the factory that his marker is located in, you’ll be told to help the stalkers there fight off some bandits that will attack. Do so, and Gray will deign to speak to you. As you might expect from the other guys, he doesn’t have much to offer you at this point, and instead sends you to speak with a stalker named Mole.
Mole is over in the Agropom Research Institute area, so you’ll need to head west from the hangar that Gray is in in order to move out there. There will be plenty of bandits around, and you’ll probably have to fight them solo in order to move on.

Agropom Research Institute

Meet With Mole

As soon as you enter this zone, a stalker will tell you that a military air assault force is about to land near Mole’s group, for some reason or another. If you want to talk to Mole, it sounds like you’ll have to assist him in his defense.
There are a number of quest objectives here, but they all basically boil down to the same thing: you have to prevent mole from getting killed by the paratroopers that are coming in to get him. Why are they after him? Who knows!

Saving Mole

Anyway, heading in via the main entrance is going to be a pain, so you will probably want to head around to the north side of the entrance and wrap around. There are a couple of optional entrances there which will let you sneak into the facility and hopefully find a ladder leading up to a rooftop, from which you can blast the soldiers as they engage the stalkers.

Your goal, again, is to kill all of the soldiers in the area, but take your time; Mole is actually holed up in a building and apparently can’t be killed. All of the soldiers here wield Akm 74/2 assault rifles, which are big and mean, so you’ll want to grab one of them and as much ammo as you can safely carry. It has a lot of kick, so it might not be the best weapon for dealing with distant enemies, but it’ll blast a hole in anything that gets within range.
Anyway, when all of the soldiers here are dead, Mole will exit his building and, when you get near him, move outside to a sewer entrance, where Strelok’s stash is apparently located. Be sure to speak to Mole before heading in to wrap up his related quest and move on to the next section. You appear to be able to screw up your game somewhat if you go into the sewers without speaking to him.

Find Strelok’s Group’s Stash

Head into the sewers, and be ready for some fighting. There should be a group of bandits near the entrance to the zone that you will need to take out, but it can be difficult to see in the dark. Don’t forget that you do, indeed, have a flashlight (default key is L).

After killing the initial batch of bandits, ignore the hallway with the electrical anomoly in it and head west, down the spiral staircase. There’s a bunch of acidic anomolies here, but they’re easy enough to avoid. When you reach the larger room that’s filled with machinery, check out the elevated platform on the western side; you should be able to find an Urchin artifact there, that’ll net you -30 Rad while worn. It’ll increase your bleeding, though, so don’t wear it until you need to.
Near this area there are a couple of nested, curved hallways that have a military-grade guard. When you start to see the number of nearby PDA’s jump up, you’ll know you’re about to face some opposition, so be careful! These guys are clustered around the entrance to Strelok’s stash, which is in the semi-circular inner hallway, near the southern end. If you see a pile of boxes near a hole in the wall, peek in to find a ladder and climb up to find the stash. You’ll find a Fireball artifact here, which also reduces radiation, as well as a small flash drive in a hole in the wall behind the map board, leading to the "Find Ghost" mission. That has the information you need; now you just need to get out of the underground.

Find a Way Out Of The Underground

Follow the path leading on from the stash and fight off more soldiers. You’ll eventually reach the end of the road, but a psi-mutant will attack you before you reach the ladder. Kill it if you want - the psi-attacks are super-annoying - or you can just run to the ladder leading up out of the ground and move on.

Mission: Find The Military’s Documents

The exit to the underground will place you right smack in the middle of the Agropom Research Institute headquarters, which is where you need to be to find the military documents that Sid wants. It’s also populated by perhaps a dozen guards or so, so be careful! We found it best to head into one of the barracks just to the southeast of the exit to the underground and wait there for the soldiers to arrive. Since there’s only one entrance, you can pop them with some shotgun love as they venture in.

The documents that you want are on the third floor of the largest building here. You can also see a loudspeaker on the roof from down below; shoot it, if you like, to turn off the alarms. After reaching the third floor and picking up the briefcase (expect some soldiers to be guarding it), you’ll have to make your way back downstairs. There doesn’t appear to be any other entrances or exits to the building aside from the main one (unless you’re willing to jump off the roof), so fight your way outside, exit the facility, and get the heck out of dodge.
Expect heavy resistance when attempting to leave the ARI zone. Keep in mind that you can switch firing modes with the 9 and 0 buttons. Switching your Akm 74/2 to single-shot mode will help you fire on enemies from long range.

To The Bar

Now that you have the military documents, head back to the Garbage. Sid will have arranged for passage through the Duty encampment to the north towards the Bar. Head that way and approach the Duty soldiers. You may have to help them eliminate the mutants that approach the camp, but when you speak to the guy near the gate, he’ll let you pass through to the Bar area.
When you reach the Bar zone, the first thing you’ll want to do is actually find the eponymous bar, where the Barkeep awaits the documents. He’ll hand you a free stalker suit here, which is a good thing, since it’ll greatly increase your resistance to most forms of damage, and has built-in radiation protection. The Barkeep will give you the next part of the quest: he wants you to find a second set of military documents, locked up in another facility. He’ll give you one of the keys required to enter, but the second key will need to be picked up from Borov. Your goal now is to reach the Dark Valley, which will require you to pass through the Garbage and head east.

[Necromancer]

The Dark Valley

Reaching the Dark Valley will require you to head through some irradiated segments of the Garbage. Your stalker suit will help you resist most of the rads, but you still might want to slip on an artifact that helps you resist the rads if need be.
The Dark Valley has plenty of artifacts lying around, as well as some special non-mission encounters. To the east, above the location marked Lab Entrance, you can find a rocket launcher with one round of ammo on the third floor of a large building. To the south, in the middle of a farm, a stalker will sell you a gauss rifle for 800 dollars, then scam you and refuse to hand over the merchandise. Feel free to kill the stalkers there if you like, but there’s no gauss rifle to be found.
When you reach the Dark Valley, a simple side mission will be offered to you. You can skip it if you like, but it will tie in with your main goal here, so we’ll go ahead and describe it.

Follow Bullet To Ambush Location

The first time you enter the Dark Valley, you’ll come across a Duty soldier who’s incapacitated a bandit. Apparently the gang of bandits have captured one of the Duty soldiers and will be holding him for ransom, but if you ambush them before they can reach safety, you can free the soldier and hopefully get rewarded.
When you reach the ambush point, wait across the road from Bullet, behind the small structure there. His soldier friend will be the first to enter your line of sight; two bandits will follow. Wait for Bullet to open fire, then take out the bandits. Speak to Bullet for your reward. He'll reward you with a PSO-1 Scope that can probably be attached to your rifle, assuming you're carrying the right kind.
After you complete the mission, speak to Borya for some more information regarding the factory where Borov is holed up. If you speak to him thoroughly, he’ll give you the "Free the Dutyer from the Bandit prison" mission.

Find The Documents / Free The Dutyer

Both of these missions can be performed at the same time. Before you head in, you might want to poke around the map a bit. You probably have plenty of stash markers around here, and there’s some decent stuff to be found. One item of particular note that’s not in a stash is an RPG-7u rocket launcher with one round of ammunition. It can be found on the top floor of the structure in the eastern side of the zone, surrounded by bandits.

Sneak Into The Base

The bandit base to your north is where you need to go to find the second key to the lab. There’s a pipe on the western side of it that will lead underneath the wall. Find it and head inside, then take a left to reach dry ground.

Take the Key From Borov

Borov is a bandit, and isn’t going to just hand the key over to you. You’re going to have to fight your way through plenty of soldiers in order to find him; he’s holed up in one of the buildings on the southern side of the little complex. He can be tough to locate since he’s on the second floor of the building, and his marker on your map might actually indicate that he’s outside, but he should be inside the building. It’s laid out like a level from a normal FPS, so you won’t be able to head directly towards him; you’ll have to enter from the north and fight your way through plenty of soldiers in order to reach him. When you reach the stairwell in the middle of the brick building, you can poke around a bit for the stairs leading down to find the Dutyer soldier, who’s being held in a prison in the basement. You need to flip the switch on the wall nearby with your use button to let him out. If you do so, though, he’ll pick up a gun and might help you out in the fights.
Anyway, Borov is located deep within the building here. He can be complicated to find, but you’ll probably wind up just running up some steps