STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is quirky to say the least, come prepared with our top-level guide

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl brings scavengers, trespassers, and adventurers from all over to live their best lives in a faithfully digitized corner of Ukraine. Danger is lurking around every corner, be that from hungry mutants or battle-hardened mercenaries. But much like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the game has its own internal quirks and oddities that you need to be familiar with before you get too far in.

Here are the beginners tips you need to know before stepping off on your first adventure into the Zone in STALKER 2.

Save scumming can be dangerous

STALKER 2 only includes three playable game slots. But in all three of these slots, I’ve only been given the ability to save 50 discrete saved game files on PC. Any more than that, and I’ve had to overwrite an existing save.

Furthermore, the game doesn’t allow you to annotate or otherwise indicate what you’re up to when creating a save file. All you get to jog your memory later on is a stock image from the region of the Zone that you were standing in when the file was created, alongside the time and the date that it was first saved out or last overwritten. That’s fine, if just a little bit inconvenient.

However, when combined with a built-in autosave feature, there is every likelihood of inadvertently saving over a file that you desperately need to revert to in order to move the game forward in your preferred manner. It’s up to you the player to keep careful tabs on your save files, and not overwrite them recklessly.

When you sit down for a session, take note of the save file that you create at the very beginning of the night. Be aware of the ones you create going forward. You just might need them in working order a few hours later when you realize you’ve inadvertently messed something up.

Know you’re being watched

STALKER 2 has multiple endings – four, say the press materials, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more than that. With past iterations of the STALKER franchise, the number of times you die when playing from a given save slot can directly impact the endings that are available to you, and I have a suspicion that that’s the case here as well.

The game is long, with the potential for a hundred or more hours of total gameplay including sidequests and more. So if getting the “best” ending isn’t a big deal for you, then go nuts out there and have fun. Just know that you can’t really undo the impact of that death (or several deaths, depending on where you ended up) on your final score in a given save slot.

STALKER 2 is a game about taking long expeditions through an unforgiving landscape, but the environment itself provides a surprising amount of sustenance to keep you topped up along the way. If you’re heading off in a new direction, where the loot will be fresh, don’t worry all that much about having a six-pack of energy drinks and a dozen loose sausages rattling around in your pockets. Maybe half that number, at most, plus some vodka to deal with radiation is enough to get you through, alongside scavenging.

Keeping your weight down is important, because you won’t be gaining any levels in this game. It’s not an RPG, so you can’t dump a few points in strength to up your carrying capacity. Instead, you’ll need to be able to carry around lots of sellable loot – specifically rifles and shotguns, a half-dozen or more at a time – in order to earn enough money to buy other necessities and repair your favorite gear. So the fewer cans of condensed milk on your person, the more firearms you can lug back to camp.

Finally, don’t waste your time lugging around broken guns, marked with a red icon in the inventory menus. Vendors won’t buy them, and unless they’re especially rare you’re better off buying a new gun than repairing an old one.

Prioritize repairing your gear

Traipsing around in knee-deep river water and stumbling into anomalies – like for instance, a floating field of glass shards, or a nasty gust of phantasmal wind that can throw you for a loop – is a sure-fire way to damage your health. But while you can apply a bandage, the clothes on your back aren’t so easily mended. Even your guns will begin to show wear and tear inside the inventory screen, where you can track the degradation of your gear in real time. That’s right, the game world doesn’t pause when you open up the menus, so check your surroundings before you bust out that PDA.

Speaking from experience, once you’ve burned through say 10% of your suit’s available durability, you’re going to be looking at thousands of coupons in repairs. If you turn on your heel right then, and get home with less than 20% of damage done, you might be able to keep your costs below 10,000 depending on what you’re wearing. Go any further than that – especially with the game’s more exotic, mid- and late-game armor and weapons – and you’ll be looking at a very hefty butcher’s bill indeed. Plan your finances, such as they are, accordingly, lest you get caught out of doors with broken or damaged equipment or, worse yet, a shell case caught stovepiped in the receiver of your previously trusty AK.

Semi- and fully-automatic weapons are fun and all, what with all the mode selector switches and attachments and scopes and stuff. But there is no substitute for a cheap, easy-to-repair smoothbore shotgun and a dozen rounds of 20-gauge slug rounds. Bring 50 or so buckshot just to be on the safe side, and make sure to get in close. Staggering one enemy and then pecking away at another is sometimes the only way to make it out of a STALKER 2 gunfight alive.