Stalker Infinity – Vanilla 2.0 Overhaul
From the moment I started playing STALKER 2 I saw great potential, but something felt off. I wasn’t satisfied with the weapon progression, ballistics, difficulty, and economy. Just a few days after release I went on a journey to fix everything I didn’t like, and for four months I didn’t stop until I was fully satisfied with the result.
Idea
The main goal of this mod is to ‘fix’ parts of the game that feel unbalanced, rushed, or incomplete. While STALKER 2 had a solid foundation from day one, it’s clear to many players, including myself, that the game needed more time to deliver a complete and polished experience. Broken economy, unbalanced difficulty, inadequate ballistic and damage model, cut or semi-implemented mechanics, this mod has a long list of changes that try to address all of the issues in vanilla game. However, it adds little new content and doesn’t seek to drastically change the game. Think of this mod as ‘Vanilla 2.0’, the version of STALKER 2 you probably expected to see at launch.
NEW GAME START IS REQUIRED
Economy
Every aspect of the game that affects economy was touched to achieve engaging and rewarding game loop. Focus shifted from hauling and selling yellow durability guns to actually doing something to earn money: doing quests, hunting artifacts, exploring the map in search for stashes, killing mutants. Mutants drop loot, artifacts are very expensive, especially if you turn them in via quests. Most side quest rewards are at least doubled. Mutant Loot mod is included here with custom changes.
Stashes
Stashes are overhauled completely, it’s not just “less loot to make economy more difficult”. There is a new, complex system behind stashes now.
Of course quantity of loot was adjusted because it was ridiculous before, ammo and consumables are less abundant. At the same time new rare and exciting loot was added to the pool.
Stash rarity is not predefined anymore. You might find a big surprise in a random backpack at the side of the road. A rare stash that was overflowing with medkits and useless food during your previous play-through might be almost empty this time. Each stash has a certain chance to be full of rare loot, but no stash is guaranteed to shower you with items.
Amount of stash clues you find when looting bodies was reduced to encourage more natural exploration. Chance to get clues is higher in end-game parts of the map.
Amount of destructible stashes in the world was cut by 75%. It might sound drastic, but it was necessary to fix the economy. It also helps to keep the pace of the game steady (you won’t spend time running with knife and opening 5 destructible boxes in each room).
“Smart loot” systems are disabled. You might’ve never knew that, but there was a “smart” loot system that’d place additional items into stashes and NPC bodies depending on how much you have in your backpack. No food and no ammo for a gun in your hands? Don’t worry, the game will place items you lack into the next stash or body you loot. This is not the case anymore, you are on your own. Plan your trips, take what you need with you and hope for the best.
Pre-placed loot
There are two kinds of pre-placed loot you see laying around the map: static and dynamic.
Static loot is pre-placed by GSC in pre-defined quantities around the map. This loot might be necessary so you won’t end up with no ammo and medkits somewhere deep underground. This loot is still in the game, at least consumables and ammo.
Static weapons and armor were changed and redistributed to follow new balance and difficulty. In general: no more powerful end-game guns and armor in early zones. Everything “end-game” was pushed towards end-game where it belongs. You’ll probably have to buy most equipment from traders if you want to try something new or upgrade, but it’s still possible to find something exciting around the map, especially if you know where to look.
75% of dynamic loot was removed. Dynamic loot is generated randomly from a pool of particular items, food item lying on the table can be a sausage or bread, medical item can be a medkit or bandage and so on. This change follows the same logic as removal of destructibles: there was just too much.
NPC and mutant loot
Due to changes to NPC loadouts, they won’t drop expensive guns left and right anymore. Hauling guns will earn
you a coin, but now it’s not main source of income. Durability range for dropped guns changed from 20-50% to 10-60%.
NPC still drop consumables and ammo, but not in large quantities. Considering overall
changes in consumables and ammo availability do no skip on looting bodies. No matter how little they have you’ll probably need it. I also suggest extracting ammo from dropped guns.
Mutant Loot is included! Hunt and loot mutant parts, sell them to bartenders. It’s a considerable chunk of your income now.
Prices and costs
Price of pretty much every item was adjusted.
While there are many ways to earn money, living in the Zone is also expensive. Main expenses are equipment upgrades, repair and ammo.
Upgrades are overhauled, both in terms of what they do and how much they cost. Don’t over-invest into a piece of equipment you don’t plan to use for long or very often, but it’s always a good idea to at least invest in durability upgrades.
Durability of items is adjusted, but unfortunately you can’t see exact durability values on UI. Some equipment is more durable, some requires constant care, just watch what happens to your guns and armor to get a “feel” of durability.
Repair cost is quite high. You might not like it, but it’s necessary to balance economy and progression. You might find sniper rifle early on, but do you have money to repair it, or it’s better to put it aside and stick with your beloved Bucket/Kiparis little longer?
Restoring item from 1% to 100% durability costs 180% of item cost. It means it’s cheaper to buy a new item than to repair red durability (less than 40%) item. There is 10% repair cost discount if you are friendly with faction.
Durability of items sold by traders ranges from 80% to 100%. Getting an offer that is close to 100% is a good deal since you’ll spend less money on repair.
NPC dropped guns range from 10% to 60% durability. Again, repairing an item with durability below 40% will cost you more than new item.
Ammo costs quite a lot. If you do it right, you’ll get enough basic (FMJ) ammo by just playing the game, only occasionally you’ll need to buy it. AP and other advanced ammo types, on the other hand, are rare and expensive. Don’t waste good ammo early on, buy and hoard AP ammo from traders if you have spare coin.
Traders
Traders stock is overhauled; weapon, armor and ammo availability is based on your rank progression and how far into the Zone you ventured.
Trade artifacts and mutant parts with bartenders. Bartenders will give you the highest price possible (40%), but they don’t buy weapons and armor.
Medics also buy mutant loot at 40% of item cost.
Regular traders buy everything at 20% cost.
You can trade with technicians! They sell weapon attachments and can buy red quality (broken) items for 10% of the price.
Random NPCs buy at 30% of the cost and sell with 20% discount, so you might want to check out what they have in stock and/or dump some items to empty space in your backpack.
Discounts based on player rank were removed.
Stock refreshes every 24 hours instead of 8.
Quest rewards
Quests are more rewarding, especially repeatable side quests. Artifact quests give huge payout, also now you’ll see what artifact you need to bring before accepting the quest.
Item rewards for many quests were changed or adjusted to follow new item progression. Some pre-placed items you encounter during quests were adjusted too.
Guns, ballistics and armor
This mod includes changes from my FUBAR mod plus some more. But unlike FUBAR this mod also changes protection values of armor and mutants to be balanced around new damage values. Guns will feel very different both in terms of damage and recoil.
Ballistics overhaul and gun changes
Full emulation of projectile trajectory and damage fall-off. Unlike vanilla game, you’ll see close to real-life ballistics simulation: correct bullet velocity and bullet drop over distance.
Guns have some dispersion even when aiming down the sights now, in vanilla ADS had zero dispersion.
Gun damage and penetration are calculated based on many real-life factors like bullet mass, diameter, muzzle velocity.
Bullet sponginess is reduced. Gun fights are deadlier both to NPC and player.
Recoil overhaul that generally gives guns more kick and makes recoil upgrades more useful.
Time to ADS, movement speed while aiming, weapon switch speed were touched to change the feel of guns and make them more unique compared to each other.
Weapon upgrades are overhauled, nonsensical upgrades like those that increase Penetration were replaced with something else. All upgrade effects and costs were adjusted.
Corrected rate of fire, fire modes and magazine capacity according to real life values.
Progression slowed down, more time with weaker/cheaper guns at the start.
Weapon weight is changed according to real life values.
NPC guns have the same stats as yours.
Ammo
Weapon stats seen in tooltip UI are based on FMJ ammo. Now you’ll see how AP/HP ammo modifies gun stats in AP/HP ammo tooltip. You might think that 9×39 guns are not that powerful anymore, but gun stats are based on FMJ ammo. Check out 9×39 AP ammo stats, huge difference.
Greatly changed availability of ammo as well as ammo cost. Hoard ammo you find, switch between guns of different calibers when you run out of ammo, buy and hoard AP ammo when you can afford it.
Ammo weight is changed according to real life values.
Armor balance
Armor and helmet protection values including element and radiation resistance are rebalanced. All costs were adjusted, weight adjustments.
All upgrade effects and costs were adjusted.
Just like with guns, progression slowed down, no more mid/top tier armor in early zones.
Maximum physical/strike protection increased from 4.5 to 6.
Explosions
Almost doubled the radius of damage and concussion for grenades and most other explosives.
Grenade damage equalized between player and NPCs; damage to player increased, damage to NPCs reduced.
NPC and mutant changes
Many changes to shooting behavior and accuracy of NPCs. Originally based on Maklane’s Better Gunfights, this mod goes even farther. While vanilla issue with enemies sniping from distance is still fixed, enemies are still dangerous at all ranges.
NPC loadout overhaul generally gives them cheaper/weaker guns early on, but more varied and stronger armor.
Armor protection changes also affect NPC armor.
Mutant HP and protection adjustments. Mutant abilities are also slightly adjusted.
Mechanics
All mechanics were touched, some were completely overhauled. “Mechanics” are background processes and effects not always visible to the player, but they have great impact on the feel and pace of the game. In general, expect more tough, intense experience, especially during combat.
Some mechanics have UI icon, like hunger, fatigue/sleepiness, bleeding. That icon reflects different “stages” of mechanic effects: grey icon – weak effect, white icon – medium effect, blinking icon – strong effect. Most mechanics have a number that goes from 0 up to 100 behind the scenes, so every “stage” can be tied to a range of values. For example Hunger is:
0-40 – no hunger
40-60 – weak hunger, grey icon
60-80 – medium hunger, white icon
80-100 – strong hunger, blinking
In general you can pretty much ignore grey icons, weak effect is just a minor inconvenience. Blinking icon, on the other hand, is something you might want to prioritize to get rid off ASAP.
Consumables
Prices, item weight and effects of consumables are changed.
Carefully read consumable/medical item descriptions. Most items have not only positive but also negative effects. Food items give a little bit of radiation and sleepiness. Medical items might give a little bit of hunger. There are artifacts that interact with mechanics. Read tooltips, observe for hidden effects, experiment.
Consumable availability is reduced, no more tons of free loot everywhere you go. You’ll need to plan your long trips.
Healing and bleeding
Medkits don’t heal instantly, they heal over time. You’ll need to sit tight and wait behind cover to recover.
Healing effects don’t stack, except bandages.
Food gives a little bit of healing over time, but don’t think that you can gobble 10 sausages at once and recover full health.
In general bleeding is more dangerous and you need to stop it fast. Not only it drains health, is also applies Suppression (see below).
Medkits reduce bleeding a little bit, but you need to apply bandages.
Hunger
Hunger affects your Stamina capacity and regeneration. While being hungry won’t kill you, it’s better to eat well before trying to run long distances.
You might feel like you need to eat too often, but remember that in-game day is just 1 hour long in real life time. Expect to eat 3-4 times per hour.
You get slightly more hungry when you use some medical items.
Fatigue/sleep
Sleep mechanic was mostly broken due to energetics being widely available. You probably never had to sleep in vanilla game. This changed through energetic availability and also overhauled effects of energetic.
Consider this mechanic a combination of your sleep need and fatigue. Sometime you just need to lay down and recharge.
Being tired greatly affects you: slower reload speed, slower time to ADS, slower switch between weapons, more weapon sway while aiming. Strong sleepiness might kill you after some time. At first you start to hear voices, then…
Energetic effects are overhauled. Now energetic is not something you need to chug more often than once in 3 minutes. It’s also less available.
Eating and using some consumables causes sleepiness/fatigue. Running also accelerates fatigue.
Sleeping restores 40 HP instead of 100.
Stamina/endurance
Stamina restoration/drain values adjusted. In general running is less problematic, but you need to have water with you.
Water and energetic overhaul. Water restores stamina and gives you a short regeneration bump. In general: carry some water with you and drink once every 30-40 seconds of running to quickly restore stamina.
Energetic doesn’t restore stamina anymore, it gives a long and strong buff to stamina regeneration and drain. Drink before long running trip. It still reduces sleepiness, but not as much as vanilla.
Couple of artifacts can give you a great boost, carry some stamina boosting artis with you.
Movement speed slightly reduced, but can be boosted past vanilla values with artifacts.
Radiation
Radiation is stronger and faster. Be more careful. You might need to turn away from some areas and come back when you have better protection.
Having couple of bottles of beers can be life saving, especially early on. Antirad is still the best solution, but it’s more rare.
Suppression
Suppression is something that is in the game, but you probably never realized it’s there. It doesn’t have icon. All it does in vanilla is some screen blur effect that is supposed to happen when enemies shoot at you.
After overhaul, you get “suppressed” when enemies shoot at you and while you are bleeding. If bullets fly by, you bleed out and you think “shit, this is intense and stressful”, it’s the new suppression effect. Basically it’s a combination of blur post process effect, movement speed and weapon sway debuffs, and the fact that you starting to loose your mind under pressure.
The only way to stop suppression effect on you is to stop bleeding and run/hide from bullets.
Psy and drunkenness
Psy effect and drunkenness got minor changes. Being drunk still makes the world colorful, loosing your mind is still deadly.
There are some artifacts and consumables that interact with both mechanics.
Remember that having strong sleepiness can drive you crazy.
Carrying capacity
Default carrying capacity reduced from 80 to 70 kg, but strong encumbrance threshold is last 5 kg instead of 10. This is reflected in inventory UI.
Overweight movement speed penalty slightly reduced.
Some artifacts change encumbrance threshold rather then carrying capacity, watch weight gauge on UI when equipping artifacts.
Artifacts
Artifacts were one of the most underwhelming parts of vanilla experience. Around 70 artifacts that are just different combinations of the same dozen effects (sometimes same combination). Actual values hidden behind nondescript “weak/medium/strong” labels.
This mod introduces dozens of new anomalous effects on artifacts. You can see actual values on UI. Custom localization for effect descriptions. I don’t want to spoiler, but some artifacts are so great to have that you’ll not want to sell them anymore. So great, that you’ll want to carry a dozen in your backpack just to switch between them depending on situation (you can do that, artifact weight is reduced).
But to find great artifacts you’ll need good detectors. Only best detectors can detect best artifacts. Price and availability of detectors is changed. Get lucky or find a trader who’ll sell you good detector early on.
Other changes
There are dozens of changes not mentioned in the description. Explore, read item tooltips, experiment with artifacts.
Misc changes
Interaction dots are disabled. It somewhat affects economy because sometimes you’ll not find dropped guns in foliage. Immersive and realistic.
Rebalanced anomalies durability damage dealt to player equipment. Prefer to traverse anomalies in specialized equipment, it has more durability.
Climbing changes, but without making puzzles trivial.
Changed weight and cost of weapon attachments. Attachments have effects not shown in their description, but you can see weapon tooltip stats being changed after adding attachments. In general, adding heavy attachments will slightly reduce recoil at the cost of increased ADS time.
Bear detector doesn’t detect legendary artifacts, Gilka and Echo don’t detect legendary and rare artifacts. Upgrade should be a priority.
A lot of pre-placed equipment around the map was replaced to increase difficulty. That cool SOFMOD AR is somewhere else now, perhaps around Malachite.
Lynx comes without scope. Buy and install x4 scope separately.
Some early unique guns don’t have some of the upgrades that are usually available.
Redistributed available upgrades between technicians.
Right-click when hands are empty to zoom-in (faux binoculars)
UI
Fixed vanilla weapon info card! Have you ever noticed how all guns have very similar fire rate and distance stat just doesn’t make much sense? Now you can get useful info from the gun tooltip.
Gun damage is simply gun base damage, min value is 0, max 100.
Penetration is armor piercing of a gun (with default FMJ ammo), from 1 to 5. Please note FMJ has low penetration, AP ammo has much higher,
though currently there is no way to display it on UI. General rule: gun with 2 Penetration will deal 100% of it’s Damage to an enemy with 2 Protection.
Fire rate is greatly improved and now shows fire rate between 200 and 1200 RPM. In vanilla it was from 25 to 1500 RPM. Now the difference between MP5 and AK-47 is not just 10 pixels. But it means everything below 200 RPM will show 0 fire rate on UI.
Distance gauge is increased from 80m to 125m. Now it shows zero range, as I said there are 4 zero range categories all guns fall into: 25m, 75m, 100m and 200m. You can think of this distance as an expected distance of engagement with the target.
Accuracy stat is relevant inside of it’s “zero range category”. You should compare handguns to other handguns and SMGs and compare assault rifles to assault rifles. There is no point in comparing handgun accuracy to assault rifle accuracy since they measure accuracy at different distances.
For shotguns, info card reflects stats for slugs (AP ammo) instead of buckshot (FMJ).
Difficulty and tips
New game start is absolutely required.
I recommend to play on Veteran difficulty, everything is balanced around highest difficulty.
Stalker/medium difficulty has easier gameplay: enemies have less HP and deal less damage, radiation and mechanic effects are weaker, anomalies are weaker.
Rookie/easy difficulty has easier economy in addition to easier gameplay.
I recommend disabling all Deluxe/Ultimate/Pre-order DLCs since they make game easier by giving free loot. DLC content was not touched and was not balanced by this mod.
Might add FAQ with tips later.
Included mods
Mutant Loot by somberX, no need to install separately
Real Weapon Names Global v1.43 by madmanskiii, no need to install separately. Use localization included with this mod, it’s the same plus mod specific changes/strings. Don’t uninstall localization included with this mod.
Recommended mods
Shay’s – Living Zone (SLZ) – I play with V2. Simply makes A-Life better.
NPC Combat Overhaul – I play with it, makes enemy AI smarter. But make sure to use compatibility patch from optional downloads.
Factions Patch – compatibility included, I play with it installed. Gives minor economic boost. Currently this mod causes invisible weapons bug, I included a fix, so you can use it.
Project Itemization – custom compatibility included. Will make economy easier, also has a problem with missing inventory icons. I play without it.
Incompatible mods
All major “overhaul” mods are not compatible. This mod touches over 9000 files (I’m actually serious). It touches most files that are often changed by other modders: CoreVariables.cfg, ObjPrototypes.cfg, UpgradePrototypes.cfg, GeneralNPCObjPrototypes.cfg, DynamicItemGenerator.cfg and many, many more. This mod should take priority over other conflicting mods, unless conflicting mod was specifically made to be compatible with this one.
Using “longer day” mods is not recommended since hunger/fatigue mechanics are balanced around default day length. Also mods like this affect A-Life, as far as I know. If you absolutely have to, at least use correct up to date mod: Feliche’s Real Longer Days.
OXA – Oxide’s eXpanded Armory – not compatible.
Modular Hard Mode – not compatible.
Desolation – not compatible.
STALKER 2 OMEGA – not compatible.
Maklane’s Better Zone – Total Overhaul – not compatible.
Maklane’s Better Mutants – Fear and Fair – not compatible, different rebalance included.
Maklane’s Better gunfights 2.5 – NO Aimbot NPCs – not compatible, different rebalance included.
Extended Equipment – not compatible.
Technicians rework – not compatible.
Pillhead – Substances Of Stalker – not compatible.
Better NPC Progressive Loadouts – not compatible, different rebalance included.
Better Vaulting (Ledge Grabbing) – not compatible, as well as similar mods, different rebalance included.
FUBAR – don’t install separately, everything is already included.
Localization
Full localization for EN and UA. This includes updated ammo description, custom artifact effects description, artifact quests description.
Partial PL localization: doesn’t include updated ammo description, but includes artifact effects description.
EN strings used for all other languages.
Don’t use other localizations. Don’t uninstall included localization, it covers all compatible mods just like RWNG.
How to install
Unzip archive to get .pak files.
Move all .pak files to the ‘~mods’ folder which you can find at
“S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Content\Paks\~mods”.
If the “~mods” folder doesn’t exist there, create it.
Make sure you understand load order. File names and load order were made to be compatible with mods in “recommended” section.
Check for conflicts with tools like ZonePaq Toolkit.
If you want to use NPC Combat Overhaul by LetsWoolgather, install compatibility patch from optional files.
