Heart of Misery
Heart of Misery is attempting to bring the game more in line with the popular overhaul mod “Misery” for Call of Pripyat.
As an avid fan of the Misery mod and its gameplay formula, and of stalker in general, i simply was craving more Misery style gameplay.
The goal is to increase the difficulty of the game intelligently outside of damage values, and increase the need for real strategy.
That said, we are still VERY early in the modding era for Stalker2 and this mod as of now i’d like to call and consider this Heart of Misery Lite, until it develops more and we get more tools to build with.
As the actual Misery mod for CoP is PACKED with features and added gameplay mechanics, such as cooking, repairing guns, utilizing sleeping bags, practically everything you’d see in a well modded anomaly build but they did all that back in 2015 – 2018, and very well at that, i find Misery to be almost perfectly balanced.
Of course we are severely limited in what we can add to the game gameplay wise but we can adjust current values and utilize various mods like “Mutant Loot” by SomberX for example to add those much needed aspects back to the game, so we can rebalance them into an enjoyable gameplay loop.
FEEDBACK
I imagine i’m not the only one who’s craving a Misery style gameplay experience out of stalker 2, i am certainly open to any feedback, criticism and opinions of the mod, i dont expect i’ll churn this out on my own, so if your interested, your feedback is welcome.
Also i Livestream daily at Twitch MojoRising where you can most likely find me currently playing and testing this mod.
INSTALLATION
This file depends on Mutant Loot by somberX – https://www.stalker2mod.com/mutant-loot/
Only install the Textures and Localization – If using “Real Weapon Names” Only Install Textures.
Then
Download and install “Mojos_Heart_of_Misery_Lite_01.pak”
Install into the ~mods folder, if the folder doesn’t exist, create it with the ~ at the beginning.
Stalker2/Content/Paks/~mods
Play & Enjoy Suffering.
HEART OF MISERY LITE CHANGES
SLEEPING: The need for sleep has been increased by alot, its kind of hard to test as one has to essentially leave there game running, or time since last sleep during regular gameplay, im currently making adjustments to this constantly.
But the Vanilla value is 0.01 Changed it to 0.14. This value is subject to change to perfectly balance the need for sleep, ideally i’d like the debuff be aquired at around 10 – 14 hours of being awake, lugging around 35+kg drains you.
LOOT SCARCITY Energy Drinks, Medkits, Booze, and other miscellaneous items have been severely reduced in there spawn chance with the exception of items placed in the world, the abundance of world placements was taken into account when adjusting these values.
Everything is more scarce, mostly so energy drinks as imo they should be a utilized resource rather then something your constantly consuming.
STAMINA: One of the biggest factors in Misery is weight management, having too many things will slow you down, along with sprinting for no reason from A to B, leaves you vulnerable to an ambush be it bandits or bloodsuckers, weight management is a relevant factor and ultimately effects what kind of operator you are.
Stamina now regenerates much more slowly, You will need to ensure you are well hydrated and sated when travelling the zone, the difference in stamina between starving and sated is very noticeable now.
No longer will you be able to sprint around with 40Kg, you’ll be able to do so, but you will burn up all your energy and it will take time for you to recover, making stamina consumption requires far more strategy, for if you panic and burn yourself out, you’re worm food.
Jogging is now the default movement speed, sprinting is only done when needed, and walking is far more relevant.
When your overburdened your stamina consumption is VERY slowly drained when jogging unless your well sated with the right amount of gear and/or you drink and energy drink or some water, when i made these values i somewhat fluked what imo feels as an almost perfect stamina system.
The lower your stamina is, the faster it regenerates, so when your overburdened and just continue you walk around, your stamina will fallout to about 30% and stay there, rather then fully depleting allow you to always have some emergency energy to move when needed, i feel it plays out really well, i will get a video to showcase the stamina directly in time and edit this description.
HEALING: Medkits effectiveness has been reduced, Orange Medkits 30-50%, Army Medkits 60-80%, Eco Medkits 100-100.
Wolverine augmentations are deactivated.
Bleeding no longer heals itself on its own and you will need to stop bleeding yourself via bandages, the bleed reduction of the 3 different medkits is far more relevant now as well as you can waste time to bandage animations in the heat of the moment, it does technically still regenerate but VERY slowly, to retain Vinca’s use case.
Bloodsuckers can sometimes cut you open REAL good needing 2 – 3 bandages.
FOOD: Food healing has been adjusted to heal much slower and much less, Energy Drinks last for much longer to reflect there new level of rarity.
RADIATION: I have attempted to improve the way radiation feels, by removing natural dissipation almost entirely, Anti Rads and Booze effectiveness has been reduced by 60%, and its far more relevant to carry more then 5 around.
As well as radiation effects being removed at low levels, to alleviate there annoyance with being irradiated alot more and for potentially much longer.
ECONOMY: Prices have stayed the same, repair prices are vanilla 1.01 values, which is easier then 1.0 but still tough, prices of mutant loot have been adjusted and balanced to work with the current economy, everything is priced quite low as well as the rarity of mutant parts acquired from dead mutants, the quantity of mutant parts is taken into account, so far its working out really well.
The economy in the base game imo is sufficiently difficult for the gameplay loop thats available, that said, theres room for improvement, the goal is to make overall zone progression slower by slowing down your economic growth, with the increased scarcity the need to buy medkits, energy drinks, ect is far more relevant.
BASIC NEEDS: Currently only the Sleepiness reduction has been lowered from Energy Drinks, currently it seems okay for now but this will get improved in time as i build this and understand how to change these variables adequately.
COMBAT: The frequency that enemies use grenades has been lowered to a more reasonable value, as well as the headshot sound has been removed.
AI is currently under the microscope by many right now, mainly GSC, and ALOT of changes are to come to adjust AI, so changes to combat will be minimal until A-LIFE gets further developed.
AI EQUIPMENT: Has been adjusted to include more variety among stalkers and faction members, there is a small chance heavily armored characters can been found in the early game, and low tier jacket wearing characters late in the game, to ensure a traditional and classic stalker feel when interacting with the locals.
A-LIFE: I have made zero changes to the A-Life, making changes to it requires ALOT of testing, and there is already a handful of modders that have already made great headway on improving it and have tested things alot more then i would be able to, from what i have learned tho, it has a long way to go, and all improvements accompany issues of some kind or another, i’m always keeping an eye on said mods to see what there up to and how they improved things, but currently im going to refrain from even suggesting any ALIFE mods, as they are very PC Build depended, CPU bottleneck is already an issue for most, and that only exacerbates the CPU bottleneck.
BLOOD: Blood decal amount limit and lifetime has been adjusted, to allow for more simultaneous blood decals/splatters and increasing the length they stay around, from minute and half to about 4 and half minutes.
Note, walking away from a scene and returning will sometimes remove the decals, but remaining within the area and everything should work as the values are set.
I am able to stop and have a smoke for a few minutes and admire the way a dead NPC is layed out with the wall painted behind him without any of the decals disappearing in front of my eyes. “I like the way you die boehh”
TWEAKS: Interaction dots were removed, and increased camera movement on ladders.
WARNING!
If you can’t already tell, this is a hardcore modification that focuses on making the game much more difficult, given the popularity of the mods that make the game easier, i imagine this is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.
This style of gameplay its not enjoyable by some but loved by others, this mod is essentially a love letter to CoP Misery.
If you have never played Misery before then “GET OUT OF HERE SALLGER !”
Then this might seem quite difficult, i myself have adapted to the difficulty well, im only going to be making it harder, as i get better at the game and learn its in’s and outs.
Stalker Call of Pripyat Misery, is a gruelling experience, that kills off most of its players, but breaking it in and adapting to it to the point i dont even find it hard anymore is one of the more memorable gaming experiences i’v had.
Issues that i have with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
SLEEPING: In Vanilla you only have to sleep every 3 days, and less if you’ve replaced your water intake with energy drinks.
Currently energy drinks reduce your “sleep points” and effectively replace the need to sleep, you can travel zone for 78 hours get tired, drink 4 energy drinks and then be ready for another 78 hours no sleep, just pure machine fuelled by energy drink “Salger sleep is literally for the weak”
SCARCITY: Vanilla game literally showers you with loot, medkits, vodka, energy drinks, which part of the reason nobody sleeps because there zooming on 18 redbulls.
STAMINA: Skif is a MACHINE of a stalker, he cant stop wont stop, unless you install a mod to make him human and deactivate his Wolverine abilities,
currently your able to sprint everywhere with 40kg of gear, there is no need for rest as your a super hero practically, your stamina regenerates VERY fast and its only exacerbated by the redbull wings granted by your constant sips from your Energy Drink Beer hat.
HEALING: The current healing methods are very basic, on top of the abundance of medkits, in some cases your able to just tank damage while healing, you can survive for 70% of a whole emission if you pop em fast enough.
RADIATION: Currently the radiation system is very lack luster imo, 1 anti rad empties your radiation, vodka is almost just as good, and its more of a boundary limiter then anything it seems and that can only get slightly better until some real mod tools are provided.
A-LIFE: Currently its broken according to GSC the removal of ALIFE from the steam page was apparently because of a single employee in marketing that took it upon themselves to change it due to the majority of new players not having a clue what A-LIFE is and apparently the scope of what was originally described is still in the sights.
The current system is very limited, and is going to be subject to ALOT of updates and changes.
ECONOMY: Misery and other inspired mods like Dead AIr are known for there harsh economy, the current economy in stalker2 imo is pretty good, its difficult, repairs are expensive and are the main culprit for it and imo only slight rebalancing is needed, to make it harder and slow down gameplay progression.
ANOMALIES: Currently imo they are a bit easy to master, iv seen some people just blast through extreme anomaly fields, albeit they know it well, i find that shines a light on the current issue with them, lethality.
BASIC NEEDS: Skif is a well oiled machine and machines need fuel, lots and lots of fuel, even if its only redbull.
COMBAT: Feels good in the game, but needs a bit of work of course, currently everyone clearly scored high in target practice carries around 10+ grenades on them, even you skif you most of all.
Its entirely related to the under developed ALIFE and im sure will be improved as updates for that release, that said, it can still be improved slightly there are a handful of ALIFE mods that make big changes to how combat plays out, but are plagued with blemishes and issues that
AI EQUIPMENT: Currently in the game there is a hidden Rank that is increased based on completion of pivotal story quests, at low rank levels only “rookie” stalkers and characters are spawned, be it bandits or faction members the only the lowest tier spawn, and vice versa for high rank late game, eventually everyone has an Exo suit, every loner has SEVA suit ect.
LOOT SCARCITY
The games loot system is well, what it is, 500 medkits, 500 energy drinks, 20,000 bandages, 10,000 Anti rads ect, mainly i’d like to adjust world spawns as well as corpse loot and stash loot.
It needs alot of work, imo the stashes are far too abundant and need to be nerfed, all the full suits of armor and 900 bottles of vodka, that said i haven’t yet figured out how to edit the stashes themselves, or more like i haven’t got around to looking too hard for it yet, too busy playing and testing things out.
I’d like to severely reduce the amount of “free loot” the game gives you and increase the relevancy of buying equipment, IE Medkits, Energy Drinks, Armor,
I want you to buy armor, that poor freedom armor lady probably hasn’t even sold a single suit to the entirety of the playing playerbase yet as its utterly roleplay to do so and pay 50K for a suit you can find for free if you check a dozen rooftops till you do.
One day, you’ll spend all your rubles to buy a Sunrise suit and finally leave your rookie jacket behind, one day.
Economy: I’d like to make progression much slower, have you doing Eco runs to hunt mutants, guns, artifacts ect, and have you set up home base somewhat in the various towns as you progress.
RADIATION: I want this to be a far more relevant factor in the game, more radiation, less severity, make it far more abundant and increase the relevancy for gasmasks and radiation protection suit upgrades.
ALIFE: Of course, but it needs to cook and develop more before i can get scope of whats potentially possible.
Various other aspects, ima keep working on this as time goes on.
COMPATIBILITY
The following cfg files were edited to build this.
CoreVariables.cfg
EffectPrototypes.cfg
ObjPrototypes.cfg
CombatSynchronization.cfg
ItemGeneratorPrototypes.cfg
ItemPrototypes Folder —-> QuestItemPrototypes.cfg
ObjPrototypes Folder —– > Blinddog.cfg, bloodsucker.cfg, Boar.cfg, Burer.cfg, Cat.cfg, Chimera.cfg, Controller.cfg, Deer.cfg,
Flesh.cfg, Poltergeist.cfg, PseudoDog.cfg, Pseudogiant.cfg, Snork.cfg, Tushkan.cfg
ItemGeneratorPrototypes Folder —> DynamicItemGenerator.cfg
