Jake’s Modified Zone
Merging of multiple mods that have compatibility issues and further tweaks to those mods. This includes mutants rebalance, gunplay rebalance, economy rebalance, A-life modifications, and player movement.
This modpack is a consolidation of the mods I like to use, with a focus on balancing a better gameplay experience for stalker/veteran difficulty.
The mods below were used as a base, merged and modified for a better experience.
Maklane’s Better Zone – Total Overhaul : https://www.stalker2mod.com/maklanes-better-zone-overhaul/
Grok’s Economy and Difficulty Fix Attempt (economy section only) https://www.stalker2mod.com/groks-economy-and-difficulty-fix-attempt/
Shay’s Living Zone (An alife Mod): https://www.stalker2mod.com/better-vaulting-and-better-stamina-usage/
Better Vaulting and Better Stamina Usage: https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/512
Exi’s All Exoskeletons Allow Sprint : https://www.stalker2mod.com/exis-all-exoskeletons-allow-sprint-ultimate-edition-available/
Artifact enhancement: https://www.stalker2mod.com/artifact-enhancement-a-little-bit/
What’s been changed?
Real Time to Game Time: Comes in 5 flavors:
4x (default)
3x
2x
1.5x
1x
(IE 4x means day time to about 2 hours, night to be about 2 hours)
A-life:
You should see more activity in the zone. Expect to see increased attacks on NPC lairs (lairs are locations where dudes are just chilling), as well as increased scenarios (these are the random events you encounter). Feedback welcome
Spawn distance is 95m to 300m for a-life.
Total agent count has been increased to 300. (Pending feedback, this can be raised/lowered).
See shay’s mod page for more information: https://www.stalker2mod.com/shays-living-zone-an-a-life-mod/
Gameplay changes:
FOV set to 90 by default, as well as viewing angle downward set to 90.
Weight has been adjusted for ammo, artifacts, quest items (those are set to zero until the bugs are resolved), weapons.
Durability has been significantly increased for armor and weapons. Armor should last quite a while, but can be expensive to repair, same for weapons.
Economy: The economy has been reworked to be between Grok’s misery mod and his non-misery variant. This should provide significantly less loot overall. However, trade with vendors has been altered, so that they accept non-broken items (0%) and pay a bit more overall.
Quest pay comes in 4 variations:
No quest pay adjustment (default)
30% increase for quests
55% increase for quests
100% increase for quests
Sell value from traders increased by 17% across the board.
Ammo cost reduced slightly
Repair cost increased to offset durability increase.
Artifact value has been increased and artifacts have been reworked.
Gunplay & Ballistics:
This mod pack includes Maklane’s Total overhaul. See his mod for a full description: https://www.stalker2mod.com/maklanes-better-zone-overhaul/
No one is a bullet sponge. If you don’t have armor, you will eat shit and die. Highly recommend getting armor that has protection of 30% or higher. Investing in your armor WILL save your life. Even if you have good armor, you CANNOT tank AP rounds, they will shred you. Take cover or die.
Grenades are very deadly, they will kill you without decent protection. Even then, it’s almost death.
Shotguns are also deadly within appropriate range (30m or 40m depending on the gun). Beware of enemies with shotguns, they will murder you point blank. NPCs with shotguns no longer kill you from a distance. Beware that multiple npcs with shotguns shooting at range can still give you bleeds, but there won’t be much damage, if any.
Last note on that: Stand in the open = death.
Jamming from Maklane’s has been altered, generally speaking, anthing over 85% durability will not jam. Anything under has an increasing chance to jam.
Side arms have been expanded to include smg’s and sawn off.
Healing:
Balance between vanilla instant heal and medkits taking forever.
Medkits take 10 seconds for a full heal. Bandages do not heal.
Mutants:
Included mutant loot, toned down the spawn rate of loot overall. Mutants should be more effected by expanding rounds now, as there armor has been stripped. There damage overall has been slightly increased to compensate for this. Some slight tweaks from Maklane’s Mutant changes as well. Mostly a small decrease in overall HP.
Upgrades:
Upgrades have been unlocked to allow full upgrade paths for both armor and weapons.
Stamina and Better Vaulting:
Slight tweaks on this, see https://www.stalker2mod.com/better-vaulting-and-better-stamina-usage/ for more details. (Tweaked from 225 to 250)
Stamina comes in 4 variations:
Vanilla
25%
50% (default)
75%
Fall damage has been changed to 40%. Falling 20ft isn’t lethal anymore, but hurts.
Exo’s suits by default include the ability to sprint now, as well allow helmets. Why? Well, everything else is trying to kick you while you are down, this is a treat for those that can find and afford to the upgrades to the exo’s. (Pending popular request, a variation can be made without this)
Stealth has been modified to avoid terminators. (See installation guide for additional recommendations to avoid terminators)
Misc:
NPC emission distance is now 900m.
Light lumiance of flashlight set to .95 instead of .7
Default Flashlight also modified to be better.
Glass translucence reduced to .05 (from .3)
Deadbody pickup time reduced from 2s to 1s.
Anomolies have been tweaked to do slightly more damage
Additional changes are recommended, but those will be linked in installation guide below. Any mod listed there, is highly recommended and IS compatible with this modpack.
Installation
1. Download Mod
2. Unzip mod, place all files in 000Install folder in ~mod folder. (Go to steam, browse game files, Stalker2\Content\Paks) If you don’t have a ~mod folder, create one. (Yes, you need the ~)
2a. OPTIONAL: There are several folders included, each folder has variations from the default mod pack. The name of the folder tells you what .paks it contains. To install, just drag your chosen variations into the same ~mods folder. NOTE, by default naming schemes, these should overwrite the base modpack. Ensure that zzJakesModifiedZone_0.1 is loaded above these variations.
Note: Only chose ONE .pak from EACH folder. This is done for future proofing variants in the future. (IE You may chose 1 from Folder A and 1 Folder B, no issues will occur. 2 from Folder A is a no go).
3. BRICKS SAVES IF NOT DONE: For Mutant Loot, download here and install in ~mods folder https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/389 . Make sure you select you download the localization and choose the one that matches your language.
3a. Note: Do not erase zzzz_Mutant_Loot_Rework that came with this modpack. It rebalances mutant loot. Just install the mutant loot mod and everything should work fine!
4. Enjoy, you are technically done! However, I HIGHLY recommend you install the following mods as well:
1. More Quests : https://www.stalker2mod.com/no-timer-and-more-random-quests/
This mod removes the 72 hour restriction on quests, and gives you 5 to chose from. Once you complete a quest, give them about 10 to 30 seconds, and you should be able to see 5 more quests to accept. (Note: I’m currently looking into the quest restriction limit of 1, but I haven’t had success so far).
Just install this in the ~mods folder, order doesn’t matter here.
2. Novichok’s AI (AI only, no combat) : https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/288?tab=description
This mod completely reworks so they aren’t so stupid or a complete terminator. ORDER DOES MATTER, install above this JakesModifiedZone (just add as many z’s to JakesModifiedZone as you need to make this happen)
3. This is a two parter, but if you want a better flashlight, you should install this mod. I consider this critical for night play. Follow modpage instructions, adjust to your liking (Will post popular settings here soon):
Flashlight Customizer (not baked into the .pak, as it cannot be): https://www.stalker2mod.com/flashlight-customizer/
Simple Modloader and Console Enabler (required for flashlight customerizer): https://www.stalker2mod.com/simple-modloader-and-console-enabler/
4. If you have performance issues or just want better performance:
Yerts Engine: https://www.stalker2mod.com/yerts-engine/
Compatibility Section
Unless otherwise specific, this modpack is NOT compatible with anyother mods or mod packs. Any recommended mods ARE compatible. Additional compability will be listed as feedback/questions come in.
