STALKER 2 OMEGA – Enhanced Zone Experience
All-in-one essential solution for enhanced STALKER 2 experience. Improves almost all aspects of the game.
The Vision
OMEGA is a hand-crafted, manually compiled, complete solution for everyone who is looking for enhanced and balanced STALKER 2 gameplay experience. Based on discoveries done by true heavy lifters of the amazing STALKER community – check out the “Words of Gratitude” section!
Keep in mind that it is currently in alpha state and therefore expect frequent tweaks, removals and additions of features, or even bugs. Not to mention the game itself is currently undergoing a massive overhaul.
Main goal of OMEGA is not to make game easier or harder, but to fix and balance gameplay, so it feels right and enjoyable. Of course, this is subjective topic, and there’s always a Sidorovich who believes that every stalker should suffer from misery. Well, this is not the case, fortunately.
Experience
Every aspect of OMEGA is well documented and structurized, leaving no blind spots. You can take a look at this spreadsheet to see what exactly has been changed, how it differs from the vanilla version, and how it affects gameplay:
Now, let’s highlight most important changes.
Specific numbers are not indicated intentionally, since they are likely to change during the rebalancing process. You can find the current values in the spreadsheet.
Difficulty and Economy
Economy and loot distribution are the core pillars of the game… and they are completely broken. To address this problem, several changes were introduced:
Lower durability damage.
Lower upgrade and repair costs overall.
Upgrade cost at friendly factions is considerably cheaper.
Consumables, ammo and medicines are a little bit more rare to find on bodies and in stashes.
Consumables and medicines are a little bit more expensive (but still available). Ammo is a little cheaper.
Artifacts are much more expensive.
Payouts for story and side quests are much more tangible, so now you are properly rewarded for your work.
Everything scales according to the chosen difficulty. Also:
You can sell badly damaged items, but not completely destroyed ones.
All stalkers now have much more money, so you can trade valueable items with them.
Fast travel cost is greatly reduced.
Healing, stamina replenishment, elimination of radiation durations are now slower when using items, but give a little bit extra.
Combat and AI
Another core pillars of the game are combat and AI. You’ve guessed it, they are also broken! As this one is much harder to fix, we approach the problem by introducing several solutions:
Lowered maximum health and armor of mutants, so they are not bullet sponges anymore.
As for the humans, damage to body, limbs and head are increased: this one will be sharp shooters’ favourite.
Usage of grenades by enemies depends on their rank, but they are thrown much less than in vanilla.
Also, NPCs are no longer exceptional snipers, so distance plays greater role in bullet dispersion. This also includes zombies.
Freedom of Movement
Carry weight was greatly increased, as well as overencumberency thresholds.
All quest items now weigh 0, all ammo, medicine and grenades now weigh 10% of vanilla values.
Stamina regens faster, different actions require much less stamina.
You can now vault over many new objects, but not all: vaulting was approached reasonably and with caution.
Tweaked stealth: you are now a little less detectable based on weather condition, pose and cover type, but nothing crazy that breaks the game.
Player’s weapon dispersion is slightly reduced.
Much less fall damage.
Living World
Day-night cycle is x1.5 longer (1.5 hours).
Weather transitions increased.
Quality of Life Tweaks
Increased view angles while climbing ladders and in free look.
Vertical sensitivity is unified with horizontal value.
NPC interaction distance is increased.
Melee distance for the knife and a buttstock are unified and increased.
Detectors now have slightly wider range for detecting and showing an artifact.
Removed radiation screen effect below 20% of irradiation.
Compatibility (separate downloads)
See the list of mods below.
Note about compatibility: this is a big and complex mod and it is most likely not compatible with other mods. You can find names of all modified files in our spreadsheet above.
Future Plans
As for now, any attempts to tweak A-Life 2.0 break system too often. We will address this when things get more stable.
Weapon ballistics rebalance.
Instalation
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 mod’s archive, then copy “.pak” file from the mod to “~mods” folder.
Enjoy the game!
Mod should work with existing saves and can be removed at any time, but keep in mind that this is Stalker and things can always go wrong. Make save backups just in case.
Made in Ukraine
I have always been a huge fan of the STALKER series, and even all the horrors of war that one have to go through every day, as well as all the suffered losses, could not kill my love for this game. If you think OMEGA has helped you, please consider supporting. It means a lot in such difficult times. Seriously, thank you!’
Words of gratitude
OMEGA wouldn’t exist without the STALKER 2 community and the hard work they’ve put into researching and developing mods. Huge respect to everyone who makes the gaming experience better!
