Hardcore Realistic Zone Overhaul
v1.0 Compatible with Stalker 2 v1.1.3
A Hardcore and realistic Zone Overhaul with many quality of life and gameplay changes making the game more immersive and hard so you can feel the tension of surviving in Zone everyday.it’s for people that want more realistic and harder than vanilla experience while keeping it reasonable and not spawning enemies in your face every 30 seconds.
All the changes and features in the mod I do manually by myself.
This Zone Overhaul is meant to be played only on Veteran Difficulty
It is strongly advised to only use this mod on new saves
What does it do?
It makes the game much more realistic and hard
Overall:
The Economy is much harder now and your main source of money are artifacts and (optional) Mutant loot so exploring matters.
Npc Ai are not top notch marksman anymore but if they hit you it’s gonna hurt and same goes for shooting them
Hipfire is now more usable
Weapon calibers and ammunition are much more realistic now and also don’t lose damage so quickly over small distances
Explosions are now more realistic and work better.No longer you need to land a grenade at AI feet to hit him.
There are no more scripted ai fight spawns.Now all fight that happen should be natural.World feels more organic and alive with npcs traversing the world and not just spawning next to you fighting mutants.You can find dead bodies from previous npc fights between factions or mutants that happened naturally.
Mutants are now much more agile and fast but they are not concrete walls anymore. Fighting a bloodsucker now is much more intense than just putting 60 bullets into him
Weather is more realistic and smooth
Food and consumable now provide more realistic effects such as energy drinks working longer and food healing a small amount of hp or bandages not healing your health.
There is much less loot in the world
Your stamina is now higher and you can vault higher objects.Game doesn’t zoom in dialogues anymore(as long as you have default fov in settings)
Day and night cycle is 3x longer
This is the intergrated content of the Zone Overhaul Standard download file:
Difficulty and Economy:
Roadside Panic Mutant Module: Mutants are much lessy tanky but much more agile, fast and hard hitting
Roadside Panic Player Module: vault over higher obstacles, reduced stamina costs for jumping and melee attacks and running
Roadside Panic AI module: Merge containing Maklane’s No Aimbot NPCs and WoolGather’s NPC Threat and Sensor tweaks.
Modular Hard Mode Hardcore Economy:
slightly higher weapon durability
much higher buy prices from traders
higher upgrade cost
slightly higher repair cost
lower sell prices on all items
higher sell prices on artifacts
higher reward from side quests
higher bleeding damage and variety
faster radiation gain
higher artifacts spawn rate
Real explosives :higher and more realistic explosion damage making grenades and other explosives much more effective
Maklane’s Better Zone Items Spawns : Drastically reduced the spawn of all types of consumables and ammunition.
Maklane’s Better Zone Time To Heal : Includes changes and balances made to med kits and consumables such as food and drink.
Combat and AI
Better NPC Progressive Loadouts: Changes NPC loadouts to more diverse and logic.
Shay’s Living Zone an A-Life ( alife ): More realistic a-life without fake fight spawning scenarios
Higher and more realistic weapon damage,caliber, range and ballistics with Fully Unlocked Ballistics and Range
Quality Of Life
3X longer days
No Fov zoom in dialogs
Lower staming usage
More and smoother realistic weather transitions
Higher zoom with free hands
This is the integrated content of the Standard Engine file (Required for both standard and full Zone Overhaul version)
Stop NPCs X-Ray Vision and Other Collision Tweaks This is REQUIRED for either version of Zone Overhaul (Full or standard).
No performance/visual changes here.It works great with Shay’s Living Zone an A-Life ( alife ) removing the npc seeing you through walls terrain and other objects.
This is the integrated content of the Zone Overhaul FULL download file which I am using.It includes everything in standard +
Black AKM-74S : Changes AKM74s to black variant
Retexture RNBW X2 Scope Black Changes RNBW X2 scope to black variant
Painter of the Zone Bloody Wounds Adds more realistic wounds
Painter of the Zone Better Blood Wallmarks Adds more realistic blood splash
OXA – Oxide’s eXpanded Armory Allows you to customize weapons with more attachements
Mutant Loot Adds loot from mutants(50% of original prices to make it harder)
SVD – Black and Wood Changes SVD textures to wooden
This is integrated content of the FULL Engine file (optional for both standard and full Zone Overhaul version)
Stop NPCs X-Ray Vision and Other Collision Tweaks
DLSS update and Engine.ini for foliage view distance-best reflections-reduced stuttering-improved shadows and better frame time
Ultimate Engine Tweaks (Anti-Stutters – More Performance – Lower Latency – Better Clarity – Lossless)
This is optional Engine that I am using.The ai can now attempt to flank on their own and will switch to handgun after running out of ammo.It also removes latency when using frame-gen and it improves density and render distances of foliage reducing pop up, greatly improves lumen shading and reflections, removes stutters. Keep in mind that you will lose around ~20 fps when using it.
For reference with this engine.ini on my rtx 3060ti with 16gb ddr4 ram and i5 10600k i can achieve around ~70-80fps on all epic settings except for hair on medium.It is common for your game to freeze/crash when using it for the first time due to the nature of shader loading on startup of Stalker 2.
I would also recommend to install on your own Flashlight Customizer with Eggs Flashlight Customizer Preset following the guide on their nexus mod page.You will then have a realistic flashlight with shadows.
Installation guide
There are 4 files on download page but you have to choose only 2:
One of the Zone Overhaul files (Standard or Full)
One of the Engine files(Standard or full)
After you downloaded it and have one Zone Overhaul archieve and one Engine archieve:
Go to STALKER 2: HOC installation folder, open “/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl/Stalker2/Content/Paks/” folder. If there’s no folder called “~mods”, create it (don’t forget to include “~” symbol!). Final path should look like this:
Steam: /S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl/Stalker2/Content/Paks/~mods/
GamePass: XboxGames/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2- Heart of Chornobyl(Windows)/Content/Stalker2/Content/Paks/~mods
Unzip Zone Overhaul archive, and copy ALL files to “~mods” folder. (in standard version there is just 1 .pak and in Full version you should have 31 files)
Unzip Engine archive and copy 1 .pak file to “~mods” folder.
In total in “~mods” folder you should now have 32 files in Full version and 2 files in Standard version.
If you found any bugs errors or glitches let me know in the comments
Compatilibity and editability
I wouldn’t recommend adding any different mods of your choice because my Zone Overhaul edits a lot of files and you are most likely going to have some errors Proceed on your own risk.Check below file names.
Definitely don’t change day length because Shay’s Living Zone an A-Life ( alife ) is depended on this and i have configured it to values which should equal to his 2x spawn version especially on 3 hour days.Editing day length by yourself is either gonna make the world almost empty or spawn enemies ever minute.
You can edit weight.I didn’t change it because this Zone Overhaul is not supposed to make the game easier.
It is not compatible with mods that edit these files:
WeatherSelectionPrototypes.cfg
WeatherChainPrototypes.cfg
UpgradePrototypes.cfg
TradePrototypes.cfg
StashPrototypes.cfg
ProjectilePrototypes.cfg
ObjPrototypes.cfg
NotificationEventPrototypes.cfg
ItemGeneratorPrototypes.cfg
ExplosionPrototypes.cfg
EffectPrototypes.cfg
DifficultyPrototypes.cfg
CoreVariables.cfg
ArtifactSpawnerPrototypes.cfg
CharacterWeaponSettingsPrototypes.cfg
NPCWeaponAttributesPrototypes.cfg
NPCWeaponSettingsPrototypes.cfg
PlayerWeaponSettingsPrototypes.cfg
QuestNodePrototypes
ObjPrototypes
GenericLairPrototypes.cfg
AmmoPrototypes.cfg
WeaponPrototypes.cfg
ConsumablePrototypes.cfg
Gamepass_ItemGenerators.cfg
DynamicItemGenerator.cfg
BenchmarkItemGeneratorPrototypes.cfg
QuestRewardsPrototypes
DialogPrototypes
ALifeDirectorScenarioPrototypes.cfg
ALifePopulationManagerFactionPrototypes.cfg
HearingSensorPrototypes.cfg
ThreatPrototypes.cfg
VisionScannerPrototypes.cfg
BlindDogAbilities.cfg
BloodsuckerAbilities.cfg
BoarAbilities.cfg
SnorkAbilities.cfg
