sunzi coaches beginners in
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - CLEAR SKY

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Clear Sky presents the history leading up to the stalker game "Shadow of Chernobyl". If you have not played any of the stalker games, my advise is to begin with the Clear Sky, even if this was published last. You should not feel that any of my advises are like commandments or something though. I will coach you in the game Shadow of Chernobyl here.

This guide is made for beginners, but is mostly "coaching" and definitely not a detailed "walkthrough". The intention is not to spoil anyone's fun, but to give a helping hand so nobody gives up. It's more detailed in the beginning, and the last area is the "exam", your final test - you are left with what you have learned.

You must install the latest patch for the game. You can download it from here. Also study the technical requirements for the game. The game can be very demanding on your PC if you want all the "eye candy".

Place names
In playing the game, you will have a PDA that gives you a lot of vital information, like where to go, where enemies are, what places to defend or attack and so on. The maps in this PDA are without place names, which is a big nuisance! For your own convenience you should install a "mod" for this game, a modification. This is not at all difficult, just follow these simple steps:
- install a little program called "Smart Mod Manager", find it here This program can be used also for installing other mods both in Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl. You can install directly from downloaded .zip-files. It's pretty much self-explaining.
- download a file called "PDA Maps with Point Names - Map-Pack (v1.2)" from this location and install it into your game with "Smart Mod Manager".
- After opening Clear Sky game, go to "Options, Video, Advanced" and make sure "Texture details" are set at maximum.
And then you can play your game!
There are also a lot of other "mods" for this game, but my advise is to keep it simple and not "cheat". Stalkers who cheat on the Zone will surely die!

THE SWAMPS

This is a short guide on how to survive and succeed in the Clear Sky game, with the eccentric wish of myself and mercenary Scar not to have more than absolutely necessary to do with traders. The guide is as little "spoilerish" as possible, but is detailed on a few points. These are the rules made for playing by this guide (you can ignore them if you wish):

"I'm a mercenary, not some lousy gunrunner. And those mafia traders never did an honest day's work." Mercenary Scar, private communication.

- You are not allowed to sell to or buy from any trader. Let them pay you what their factions owe you. That's all.
- Stash info can be bought, also from traders, and guns and protection suits can be repaired and upgraded. You are also allowed to do all kind of jobs, including finding flash drives for technics, and deliver items that are needed by your comrades in arms.
- All artifacts from an area should be in your posession before you leave that area for good, and all marked stashes should be emptied (if you find yourself unable to climb trees, you are excused). You are not allowed to keep any quest objects except for reasons beyond your control.
- You are allowed to buy one and only one protection suit total in the Clear Sky game, but not from the warrior factions Clear Sky, Duty, Loners, Freedom or Bandits. You are also allowed to sell vodka and food to barmen and individual stalkers you meet, but this is only to prevent you from ending up as a hopeless alcoholic, and prevent others from being too starved to fight. And play veteran difficulty, if you have some self respect. It's my opinion that these rules will give a better understanding of the zone and probably a better game experience.

Why? After playing Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky for hundreds of hours through more than a year, it came down on me as something of a shock: - how many hours have I wasted dragging load after load of guns and shit to traders who would then sell the same guns for twenty times as much as I got from them? What I like about this game - among other things - is the necessity to struggle to get by, to be a stalker in some original sense. It's all too easy to be caught in the neverending spiral of more money and more sophisticated equipment. It takes time and concentration away from playing the game, from exploring and from meditating by the campfire in late nights, listening to the music from some lonesome stalker with a guitar, and admiring artifacts. The stalker game should not be about walking around armored like a tank and shooting defenseless people for fun.

So let's begin with the swamp area, the base of the Clear Sky faction. Their leader, Lebedev, will explain what you need to know about the general characteristics of the area, about yourself and your main mission in the game, and the wornout stalker guide outside his office will with time explain about your PDA, which you are strongly adviced to use very actively.

You should also ask any stalker you meet about the place, the news and about themselves. Many of these more or less sober observations can add to your knowledge of the zone. As you are on a budget and cannot waste any opportunity to supplement your inventory, you should find your way into a small room behind in the building where the trader is residing. There you can steal some medical supply and some bottles of vodka. It is also possible to steal a rifle and an optical scope from underneath the mechanic's office, but you will find little ammo in the area, only enough for a single delivery job, so this makes no sense. You will find a rifle and a scope out in the swamps later (rifles must be upgraded to allow a scope). Squad leaders will often have jobs for you, but wait with this. They are time limited, and the first day or two in the zone you will be very busy fighting for a free way out of the swamps, which means regular warfare against the "Renegades" faction. Time limits are usually one day, and you have to be back collecting your reward within this time. The Renegades are by the way loosely connected with the Bandit faction you will meet later. Basically they are bandits "on their own".

You will be sent to your first mission with a leather jacket, a shotgun, a soviet pistol and a detector. The detector will tell you that you are close to artifacts, those rare and beautiful things created by anomalies, which again are created by the emissions in the zone. You will pretty easy find your first artifact, and then you can forget about artifact hunting until you find a better detector. Doing serious artifact hunting with the "Echo" detector is suicidal, and a few of the anomalies in the Swamps are difficult by any standards. After finding your first artifact, you walk briskly into a place with a tower and a small building. As fast as possible you shoot two or three mutants with your shotgun, as this will be rewarded when you come back to base. Let them come up close and shoot them straight in their ugly faces with the shotgun. Allways quicksave in advance of (and after) such scenes! Medkits and bandages are in short supply at this stage, so play it again if it becomes too costly. A stalker will try to get you up in the tower, but there's nothing to do there except climbing down again. Then loot the bodies you find for everything - you can sort out what you need later (and this goes for the rest of the area) - and break up a crate with (possibly) something in it, and a breakable stash box outside the small building. Use your knife for this work. You will be interrupted by an emission, so just work until you pass out. Later in the game there will also be emissions, but they will kill you if you don't find cover soon enough.

So to the real war. After listening some more to Lebedev, visiting the mechanic to see what he needs and have to tell, and getting your reward from the trader for your first mission, you will be sent into the swamps again. This time you are on your own! A series of calls for help and orders to do this or that will be sent to you. Quickly check the map of your PDA and decide for the nearest, as you cannot possibly do it all, and you will go mad and break your keyboard if you try to do everything at once. The Fishing Hamlet is a good starting point. Quite soon you will find out that the soviet pistol is not so bad. After all, the Soviet economy was largely geared towards producing weapons first and consumer goods only sometimes later, and their smallarms works as well as any, and often better. Use the pistol for medium range fighting, and the shotgun only when you are close enough to rush in and shoot the bad guy in the head before he understands much of what is happening. For all weapons: keep your calm and aim well!

You have to - or should - work together with the Clear Sky squads! As soon as possible, try to hang on to one squad marked in pale green on your PDA-map. By hovering your cursor over the unit mark, you will find out where it is heading, and there is certainly money to be won if you take part in their victory. You are a mercenary, and you want money! And since you do not want to compromise your integrity by falling down to the level of a simple gunrunner, here's your chance. Help the other soldiers, but don't rush in and steal the show all by yourself. Protect your comrades - you will need their help later. (You remember to save, don't you?) As soon as all renegades are dead, you will hear some triumph calls and will be informed to come for your reward. Let the rewards build up at the trader's, they will never disappear. Loot all corpses (this gives you access both to their backpacks and any stash info from their PDAs), break up all breakable crates and smash every breakable stash box. Also search the large, green stash boxes, but only take what you need. And check your PDA for any of the special stash signs. Finally go into your inventory. Empty all weapons for ammo. Keep only the best quality weapon in each category and drop the rest, in a stash box if one is available, or in the backpack of some dead stalker. Keep all 9x18 (pistol) and 9x19 (submachine gun) ammo and of course any rifle ammo. Keep only a dozen or so of each kind of shotgun ammo. They weigh a lot and can be found everywhere if you need it.

About submachine guns: - The Viper will be your steadiest friend through the game! You will find several of them. Keep two of good quality and have one of them upgraded (or downgraded, as it is) to 9x18 ammo. The last one is the one to use in the swamps. The 9x19 with ammo you stash somewhere to take with you when you leave the swamps.

There's one place where you absolutely must take part in defeating the renegades, and that is their head quarter, the machine yards. Without this, you will have to go through several areas with nothing but a leatherjacket to protect your body, and that sucks big time! So find the squad heading for this place, keep away from open spaces and try to kill one enemy after another. Retreat, load and save after each kill. At this stage you should also use a named save, a backup, made in safe distance from any difficulties, and renew it often. Otherwise you will soon enough discover that it is possible to make your last and only quicksave, after many hours of playing, one tenth of a second before some enemy you have not noticed shoot you from behind!

After the machine yard waits the gate to freedom (you may believe), the southern farmstead. After defeating the losers there, you will be ordered to go to the next area, Cordon, with the guide. Of course you do not! You are not there to follow orders from some invisible eye in the sky. What more is to do in the swamps?

Now is the time to search out the squad leaders for any profitable business, and you will find that they have lost all kind of merchandise around in the area. Going for these objects, you should also seak out any marked stashes on your PDA and empty them. Stash info, if not bought, comes from you searching the backpacks of deceased stalkers, so always do this. Also search any dead stalkers you will find around in the wilderness. Any farmstead or installation you find should be carefully searched through, and, as nobody watches, don't feel silly if use some time to look for hidden things even in the most unprobable places.

The squad leader's jobs comes one by one. You have to do or fail in doing one job before you will be given another, and then from another squad leader. First try all the squad leaders in the CS base and at the machine yard, or any place with a guide. These places can be considered safe, and you will not have your job fail because your employer dies for some reason. These quest items can be in the posession of renegades, or lethally close to anomalies, so there is sometimes a lot of work involved.

Here's your new detector. Go find it!

There are two objects you will not be asked for. First it is the Vintar sniper rifle you lost when the first emission, shown in the introductory video to the game, hit you. It's still there, and should be in your posession. When you retire from the stalker life, you will certainly want it to hang there on the wall to remind you of good,old times. It will cost you a fortune to repair it, so don't, and there's no ammo to be found in the swamps anyway. The other item is more serious, and it is a better detector. You need a "Veles", and you need it soon, because now you shall empty the swamps of artifacts. Artifacts are created in anomalies, and most anomalies will kill you if you do not treat them with great respect. You can both see and hear the anomalies, sometimes from some distance, so if you wander around in the swamps, you will probably find them all. The Veles will show you exactly where an artifact is in the anomaly, and you will use your eyes to see where you can set your foot. And you will throw bolts, lots of them. You will most probably swear and sweat, so where will you find this Veles thing that can help you so much? Most players will never find it without help, so I can say this much:- there's an opening in the fence towards the northwest of the area. And there's a little picture for you here. Try out the Veles the moment after you have found it. That's all.

About protection suits: after the battle for the the bandit head quarter, you will be rewarded with a Clear Sky basic protection suit. As this is your protection for a long time to come, you must go and upgrade it. The mechanic will do that for you, if you pay him well. First of all you need night vision. The nights in the swamps may be beautiful, but mostly very dark. Then upgrade for bullet protection and durability and so forth as far as you can afford. You will also need some extra artifact pockets.

You see, artifacts are not for selling, they are for using! And they are used by putting them into the artifact pockets of your protection suits. A basic rule is that almost all artifacts that have some positive use, also emit radiation. This radiation will make you sick and finally kill you if it is not neutralized by anti-radiation artifacts, like the Jellyfish you found on your very first mission. You may by now also have found a Gravi artifact, that makes it possible for you to carry an extra 20 kilos. But the Jellyfish is not enough to counter the radiation of the Gravi, so you should have 3 artifact pockets and the hope of finding another Jellyfish soon if you want to use the Gravi. Also note that both your protection suit and weapons will degrade with use, so from time to time they will have to be repaired by the mechanic in camp.

A few more words about stashes: by studying your PDA map, you must have noticed a number of marked stashes all around. Some are "free" and they are marked after you have inspected dead soldiers' backpacks. But some are not. A few persons, like traders, barkeeps and a few others will sell you stash info. Most of these are not worth the money, but you should absolutely buy the ones with info about flash drives with upgrade data seeked by the mechanics. Just refuse the ones you don't want until you come upon these valuable ones. Sometimes you will have to buy some cheap stash to get this going. This goes for all later areas too. All sellers of stash info will have a lot of stashes they do not seem to know much about, but they allways share when it comes to the flash drives. There is only one exception to this, and that is one particularly expensive stash info for sale by a stalker in the Duty camp in the Agroprom area. I'll remind you when we come that far. If you buy all available stash infos, there are altogether 60 stashes in the Swamps.

When you have finished the Swamps area, your inventory should show up as something like this. To the left are things you can leave in the safebox at Southern Farmstead, to keep the weight of your load below 50 kilos. The russian assault rifle you should keep, and also upgrade it a little further than just a scope mount. Russian wapons are superior to their NATO counterparts when it comes to durability and dependability. All the vodka bottles I have planned to sell to some barkeep when I really need cash. They pay much better than individual stalkers.

Do you need any more help? Maybe to get out of the area? When you go for Cordon with the guide you should have an at least partially upgraded standard CS protective suit, an assault gun with a scope, a good magazine shotgun, a Viper and a lot of ammo, a heap of medkits and bandages. And eight artifacts. You should have four to eight thousand rubles in cash, to buy stash info and repair gear in Cordon. The 9x18 Viper and ammo and any shotgun ammo in excess of maybe a dozen cartridges should be left. Try to get the weight below 50 kilos. You can carry 10 kilos "overweight", but then you will be out of breath all the time and cannot run more than very short distances. For what awaits you in Cordon is what awaits any stalker trying to get into the zone: the military. And they have a machine gun manned by a fanatical maniac only waiting to make small pieces of you. As you are playing Veteran difficulty, you are very easy to hit and wound. One shot can kill you. So save and try: - find a good position, before you are discovered, save, and aim for a big boulder down by the end of a tree trunk. Run down there and hide behind the boulder. The moment the shooting stops and an officer is ordered to go down and investigate, you run around the tree and sharply to the left. Run for your life. Be prepared to use the quick key for medkits and spam medkits! This is no place to save your resources, as it is probably the most adrenaline driven scene in the entire game. As soon as he stops shooting at you, save! There are often soldiers at the road up to the right, and they may hit you after the machine gunner has lost sight of you. You may find the default quick-use key for medkits a little difficult to use in a hurry, so go to the Options menu and change this to "T". Then it's more within reach.

A slightly different route is to go for the middle of the fallen tree. Near the root end it's resting on some rocks that can also serve as your cover. Run for this place and have your knife ready. Under the tree are two crates that you can knife away and then go down and under the tree. Then run sharply to the left. And you can go to the left of the tree too... there's a hole in fence there, and this is by far the easiest way. Just thought it would do you good to sweat a little. I promised not to spoil you, remember?

Any way you go, you will be welcomed by the trader Sidorovich in his cave when you are close to the rookie camp. Make a named save, "finished swamp" or something, before you do anything or talk to anyone. Then you can start playing the Cordon area from the beginning if you screw up totally, and if it's your first play there's some chance you will.

I should not tell you this, but I will: - you may find it totally hopeless to outrun machine gun bullets, and sometimes when you arrive there's allready a patrol on the road to the right. And it may be dark night and you can hardly see where to go (so go by daylight to better your chances). Some players actually give up here, and will never become real stalkers, and that's a pity. So there is another way. The "go to cordon by guide"-mission is necessary to come into the Cordon area at all, but you have done what you have been ordered to when you stand in the cave. From then on you can go back and forth as you wish without any guide - and you may use the other, nothern, gate to Cordon. You will find other difficulties for you there, as the Loner stalkers there hate mercenaries and some shoot on sight. Trouble everywhere. If you are spotted by one of the Loner border squads on active guard, you will have made enemies, actually a lot of them, among the ones you are later to cooperate with! And we just can't have that.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's "Roadside Picnic" (1972, english translation 1977), here in tandem with another science fiction classic, "Tale of the Troika". Mouseover: The cover of the American DVD edition of Andrei Tarkovsky's movie "Stalker" (1979). "Stalking" in the 70's was mostly a hunting expression, not what we mean by stalking today. A third meaning of the word is used in the stalker games, where it is explained as an abbreviation for Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers. The word still seems to carry with it some of it's historic roots though, both the old and the more recent.

So this is how it is done: go back through the tunnel to the Swamps and find the northern gate. There are renegades there, but sneak along the fence and go north before they spot you. In Cordon you will find yourself in a little valley. Study the PDA map carefully. You must keep a good distance from Loners. Walk as far to the left as you can and make a grand tour around most of the area, but not into the small vally with the gate to the Garbage area. Cordon is also fenced towards the north. As soon as you hit the fence, go east until you hit a railroad. Big surprise! It is also fenced! But this fence can be jumped somewhere. And you keep on going along the perimeter of the area. You will pass some buildings with militarys in them, but keep quiet and they will not discover you (hopefully). Continue walking (do you like mutants? Don't shoot any of them for now!) as far as you can from any loner stalkers until you come down to the boot camp of stalkers, where you will be greeted by the greedy trader Sidorovich in his cave.

Some stalkers I met out in the woods once, told me that it is in fact possible to go directly from the northern gate and to the Loner Head Quarter. If you do them some favors, like finding some stuff for them and helping them with shooting unagreeable beasts, you should be able to travel down to the rookie camp without being shot by Loner guard squads. You will not come any further with the main objectives of your travel through the Zone until you talk to Sidorovich though. So there are several alternatives as to how to enter Cordon, but mainly there are the hard ways and the sneaky ways of entering the Cordon area. Actually the latter is the true stalker way, as a stalker will not risk his life if it can be avoided. A stalker is a very careful person, or one with a short future.

As nobody should play games all the time, do some reading. One of the main inspirations for the stalker games was the science fiction novel "Roadside Picnic" by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Amazon will most often direct you to someone who will sell you a used paperback copy (if you are rich, you can buy a first edition for only a thousand US$ or so...). Later came the movie "Stalker" directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, inspired by the novel, but very different from it. A DVD is available from Amazon. And then came the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games inspired by both science fiction book and movie, and in the modern setting of the area hit by the biggest industrial accident of all times, the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. When I talk about the "true stalker spirit", it's with the novel and movie mentioned in mind.

You may also show your host country the respect of learning a little about Ukrainian history and society. There are numerous books about this, and some think that the life in the zone to some degree reflects the political situation in post-Soviet Ukraine.

(Video: Footage from the movie Stalker, 1979)

THE CORDON
You did remember to make a named save after you were safe in Cordon? OK.

Are you sad and worn down? Did you kill a man and now you regret it? Think about it. It will hardly help you much, but it can make you a better human being.

The Cordon is where stalkers of all kinds find their way into the zone. The military unit guarding the entrance is thoroughly corrupted, and hundreds find their way into the forbidden areas by greasing military palms, or by simply climbing over fences at unguarded spots. Rookies will usually spend some time in a little place where the trader Sidorovich is king. The dominant faction in Cordon is the Loner stalkers, mainly civilian stalkers who have united for self defense. Their internal enemies are the militarys and numerous mutated beasts of different kinds. Their expansion plans are to beat the Bandit faction in the neighbouring Garbage area and in this way to come into the inner parts of the zone, strike luck and hopefully return to their sweetharts in the outside world with their pockets full of money. Silly dreams! Many of them, like soldiers in all factions, are outcasts from the regular society. Always use the opportunity to ask them about themselves.

Sidorovich will put you to work as soon as he can, and you will be sent to the Loners' head-quarter. You will have to fight real soldiers, who are nothing like the ragtag lot in the Swamps. Just follow the storyline and do what you are told. Like in the Swamps, you will find that squad leaders and some individuals have a lot of jobs for you, both to fight the innumerable mutants and to fetch all kind of items lost here and there. One special item is actually hidden in the military borderguard camp, and that will tax your fighting skills! I can't help you much except giving one advise: don't get caught in the open! There are 21 soldiers in the camp, and as soon as you kill the last one, new squads will be marched in and they are not that far away.You just have time to loot the camp and leave. The machine gunner will stay with his gun, so you can loot the camp, kill the machine gunner and then run. It is also possible to sneak in and take the item without killing more than a couple of soldiers, but you will not necessarily find this to be an easy way of doing it..

Maybe the graveyard of monolithic state capitalism, what people call "communism". Close by the Flea Market.

As you are working for the Loners, you may find it an attractive opportunity to join this faction of nice, peaceloving people. Don't do that! You see, they are at war with the Bandit faction, and bandits are not so very different from the other stalkers as one may think. Talk to them and you will find out. Generally they are the most fun to talk with. And there is very much to be won by staying at least neutral with the bandits. They are the only faction that are able to upgrade the most advanced protection suits to perfection, and their technician have very profitable jobs for you. They will also rob you at least one time, and take all your money. Life in the Zone is never easy! For the reasons mentioned above, you should maybe abstain from any jobs that involves killing bandits. There are two such jobs in Cordon, and one in the later Dark Valley area and even two in Agroprom area.

There are only a few artifacts in the Cordon area, and they are not very difficult to find. You may find one of the jobs, given by one of the two (sometimes three) soldiers you can actually talk to, very difficult. Just try to find and climb the highest structure anywhere in Cordon and maybe you understand the solution to this quest.

If you have done all available jobs, searched for artifacts and generally know the Cordon area well, it's time to move on, this time to the

GARBAGES

Strange things in the Garbage area. Isn't that a brain...and a spoon?

(Remember a named save, "Cordon finished" or whatever you like.)
The Garbages area is the home of the Bandit faction, but they are not alone. The Loners are pressing from the south, the Freedom faction is well situated in the east and the Duty faction together with a large contingent of Loners are very present in the neighbouring Agroprom area, often crossing the border. The Garbages is both of strategic importance, and it's a rich area. The garbage dumps are from the original Chernobyl accident, and a great variety of radiated stuff is buried in them. There are "diggers" who specialize in liberating such items, and the bandits actually use slave labour to "mine" the garbage.

If the Loners have not already crossed the border post from Cordon to Garbages, you will find bandits there, and they collect money for their own cause from everyone passing through. As you should hold on to your money, just run for it, sharply to the right, as soon as you can. They will swear and make some noise, but you will come through. If the Loners are already there, you shall do one very important job for their squad commander: find some inscribed pistol he have lost. All the factions in the Garbage follow you with stern eyes, and if you do not do this job, it at least sometimes happens that none of them will give you jobs either. It's not difficult at all, just have to be done to build up your cred! If the Bandits were at the border post, just revisit a little later, and the Loners will probably have fought their way through. After this, please visit the Bandit head-quarter and the Flea Market. At the Flea Market you will meet one very depressed hothead you should not listen much to. You will revisit the Garbage area many times, so you do not have to spend very much time here. Instead check your PDA for your next main mission. You will eventually end up in a little valley with a guy trying to fight off a pack of dogs. Help him survive, and he will tell you where to go. (If he dies - and he is something of a jerk and sometimes acts suicidally - you will lift info about your direction from his PDA) Remember to ask if he has any stash infos to sell you. Buy all infos on upgrade flash drives if you have not done this already in the Bandit camp (sellers of stash infos often share the same infos with others. You will never be able to buy the same stash info twice, though).

DARK VALLEY

Every day or two you should take time to do some mutant hunting together with the Loner guys in Cordon. It can be fun, and since you are on a budget, you need the money too.

Dark Vally is the home of the Freedom faction. Regular boy scouts, they seem to be, but plagued by internal strife and mysteriously invading hostile mercenaries. They need a lot of help! Just do what you can, and when finished with helping everyone, you can go on and mind your own business. Remember to ask every "important person" about how you can help and if they have stash info for sale. The barkeep, Ganja, will pay you what the faction owes you, but let him keep your money for now. If you have accumulated a lot of vodka bottles and food, just stash it in the safebox in the bar area for later use. Any of the quite valuable upgrade flash drives Uncle Yar the mechanic wants, should also be stashed here.

In the battles in the Dark Valley, you will come upon a lot of NATO weapons. As you are not in the weapon business, just empty them of ammo. Collect all the ammo you can! If you find one rifle of good standard, use it, but don't waste your money upgrading NATO rifles. They are no good and will jam and generally be a nuisance after just a couple of hundred shots, or even earlier.

You will by now probably have found out that the factions have quite different views about the Zone. Some want to fight it, some wants to utilize it, and the Freedoms pretty much wants to regulate it and allow everyone a fine tour. This seems also to go for their views on drug policies, where the Freedoms seem to have adopted the Dutch coffeeshop policy. But Ganja the barkeep is not really up to this, and his weed is never available this week. A sad thing, that is! Weed is smoked everywhere in the Zone, even if some of the faction officials may not like it. The Bandits are probably the main dealers, and the weed is grown somewhere in the Zone itself, but you will not find the place. The strongest prohibitionists in the Zone are the Duty faction, but even there you will find the telltale hookahs. But the Duty faction is enemy with the Bandits, and I think they only pretend to be against weed because nobody will sell it to them.

Some of the artifacts in Dark Valley should be possible to pick, but a couple of them are devilishly difficult, and I will advice you to wait with those until you have better protection gear. You can not at this stage dive into fire anomalies and run around down there trying to catch artifacts moving around! (To be honest, this is not always necessary either, but be prepared for the worst.)

After the Freedom head honcho is satisfied, he will send you down to Garbage again. If you have any cash left, use it to upgrade your weapons, buy stash info or anything. This will explain itself pretty soon.

GARBAGE again...

Was this one of the men that mugged you, Sir? Well, he's sorry now, and you can have all your stuff back. The money he has spent on gambling and women.

Your PDA will tell you to pick up something in a room by the Flea Market. Be welcome to do so. Pick up everything you can find on the floor afterwards, and you will understand why you should not be an enemy of the Bandits. If you are a friend of the Bandits (they show up green in your PDA map), it should actually be possible to get your stuff back from the ones that mugged you (yes, that's right) without shooting them. Anyway, now it's time to collect all your riches and turn them into cash. You still have some length to go before you can buy a really good protection suit, but such a thing will cost you first twenty grand, and then a lot more than that for upgrading. Better prepare. Up you go to Dark Valley again, cash in all that Ganja owes you, sell him all Vodka and food you have, and go to Uncle Yar with the upgrade flash drives you have got or found. He will first pretend not to be interested, but press the "bye" line and he will suddenly come to senses and ask if you have his flash drives.

Then you go down to the bandits and sell the mechanic there the flash drives of his you have managed to find, and you are suddenly some rich stalker!

Here is a little about your standing with factions: - They start out as neutral and are marked as yellow in your PDA map (for details, see "statistics"). If you do them a lot of favors, work like a horse and do not shoot any of them by mistake, they will eventually become your friends, and be marked green in your PDA. Being friends with a faction makes life easier for you. The traders will have better offers (should not concern you, but such are the facts), and most important: - if you later on engage in faction wars, you can hurt a faction a lot before they turn from green to yellow and finally to red. When red they are enemy and most likely will stay so for good.

AGROPROM
To get into Agroprom you probably have to pass one Bandit guard unit again. Run over the tunnel roof, keep to the right, and ignore their yelling. If you are at green with the bandits, this unit will turn yellow. It's my experience that there will allways be some rogue bandit squad who is less friendly than the main faction, but usually they will be sent to some outlaying camp for hopeless hotheads where they are not too much in your way.

When in Agroprom, you must talk to the entrance Duty guard squad leader, but after that you are on your own. You don't have to follow him to the Duty camp. Actually you should not do so, as there are many funny animals to shoot around the Loner camp and there is nothing less than a secret, underground, trader that you absolutely must meet. Not to trade, but to do a job for him. On your way to do this job, you will also meet a group of stalkers in need of help. You know what to do. Whatever you do, don't engage in the Loner campaign to eradicate the two local bandit gangs in their part of the area. Go talk with them instead. You may think it most humane to help the Loners kill Bandits, but they are very likeminded in most respects, so let them fight - and collect all the ammo this fighting results in. The Loner base have their own mechanic with need for upgrade info, and a trader with some stash info for sale (this particular trader will often be shot in the back by bandits outside). When you find no more jobs or infos or ammo in or around the Loner camp, it's time to visit the Duty.

Deep underground you meet this guy and his pals. Listen to what they have to say.

The Dutys are very resolute soldiers, and want to fight the Zone by every means available. Of course they want your help! And they pay well, and so does their mechanic (even if he is even less polite then Sidorovich in Cordon). Duty squad leaders also want help to gather what they have lost here and there, but when you come to one who want you to find something called a "Duty member's case", it's time to go to the Duty general and find out what's on his mind. And it's quite a lot. He will send you down underground, and I can't help you there, dark and scary as it is. There are also people down there, and to be honest, I'm a little afraid of them even if they may not really shoot me. Just remember that what you are really after, is information about Strelok, and at the same time you of course want to empty any stashes down there, find the Duty member's case, and there's also a valuable (unmarked) stash of sniper ammo that you probably will want to come down and look for later as I cannot imagine you will find it so easily. When you come out the underground, or if you come out the underground, notice the place. It's the only place where you can enter the underground later.

It may be you still have some questions, like how and when you will be able to buy a more satisfactory protection suit. The one you have is ragged and bad and another one that came into your possession is without night vision. Be patient! Notice what the Duty trader demands for his SEVA-suits (if he has any). It's just too much, and you don't trade with those people anyway. So first clean up in Agroprom. Do any remnant jobs, find the "important person" who have a very expensive stash info he will not tell you much about, and when you feel finished with the area, let's cash in what everyone owes and go for Yantar.

YANTAR

You will meet many men that need help, and most of them have better manners than this guy, Drifter by name. According to Russian gamers, he should also give you some info about one of the weapon upgrade memory sticks neeeded by the Stalker faction gunsmith, but if so, he keeps it to himself until he dies for no apparent reason.

Doing long trips in the Zone - if you do not pay the guides to take you to your destination - is often safest done by running along fences or the perimeter of the area . Going to Yantar you can do this, and at the same time empty any stashes along the way (you will find two gates to Yantar on your PDA map, go for the eastern one). When entering Yantar you will very quickly be asked to help in defending against attacks from zombies. These are stalkers with brains destroyed. They have one brain cell left, and it is dedicated to shoot your head off. They are very good at it and fear nothing. They react a little slowly, though, so if you keep your calm and aim right between their eyes, they will go down after a shot or two. As long as there is "zombie alarm", the door to the lab where you are supposed to meet professor Sakharov will not open.

The first visit in Yantar has only one motive: to finally buy a decent protection suit. Professor Sakharov in the mobile lab in this area also does business, and he is the only trader you are supposed to deal with, by the rules set out in the beginning of this guide. Don't talk to him, go straight for the trade button. Now you will see that he has SEVA suits much cheaper than Duty. Buy one (you need to have accumulated at least something like 21.000 rubles), and go back the same way you came. Go to the bandit technic. He will be as drunk as always, but he will upgrade your SEVA for you. Upgrading a suit can be tricky, so save before you begin. You want it to protect you against everything, but can't have it all. Let your cursor hover over the maximum environment/psi protection, and start upgrading the lighted parts from the left - as far as you can afford. Do not care about bullet protection. The SEVA will never be very good at that anyway, and actually the CS suit you are already wearing is better. So keep it. Also upgrade with as many artifact pockets as you can afford. If you have followed my advises, you should have money enough to upgrade all the way for psi-protection and with all the artifact pockets. The backside is that you are still stuck with first generation night vision, the greenish one I'm sure you hate. But as I said, you can't have it all. Take pride in your new suit. You have earned it without selling out to the weapon black market profiteers and their mafia hirelings! And you can now go back to Yantar as a much better prepared stalker. If you meet any difficulty in upgrading the SEVA, being told there is "no information for upgrade", the reason is that you have not found and delivered all three of the upgrade flash drives the mechanic wanted.

Don't forget to be a human. On New Year's Eve, Scar went down to visit a lonely soldier in Cordon and made him some firework with his artifacts.

Some notes about guns: - I've allready told you that the Viper submachine gun can be your best friend. It's quite effective against both man and beast. But you need something more potent now. Look for a good pump operated shotgun and upgrade it, but not for threaded barrel, as this will prevent you from using ordinary shot cartridges, and those are actually most effective against mutants. This gun, used with cold blood and on point blanc range, will kill any mutant (well, except one) and most men. You also need a reliable assault rifle. As for now you need one of the scoped and partially upgraded 96 model russian rifles most Dutys are carrying around. Wherever Duty have been in combat, against Freedom or sometimes against bandits, they may have dropped one. So hang around to see if one can find it's way into your inventory. Repair the rifle and remember the first commandment about handheld automatic guns: short bursts! If you want something really good, find a not upgraded rifle of the same kind and have it upgraded all the way for precision. It will then be one of the two best assault rifles to be found in the Zone. It doesn't come cheap, though. (The other master rifle, is the SGI, but they are harder to find)

You can do as much preparatory work as you wish before going back to Yantar to actually talk with professor Sakharov, but eventually you will go there. Sakharov will give you some bits of information about Strelok, and he will send you on two expeditions. Close by a PDA you are first sent to fetch, and also along the edge of the dam in the swamp around his lab, you should use your detector, and you will probably find a couple of very valuable artifacts. When you are sent into the industrial complex to accompany a group of stalkers (do exactly as they tell you!), you will meet a lot of uncharitable zombies. This last mission is to clear the way for you to the next area, where Strelok has been seen, the Red Forest. As usual, you don't have to do this at once. You can go for the exit gate from the industrial complex and chat with the stalker units around there. They are also in need of help, imagine that! You will also find two more artifacts in the factory, and usually one ot them will make it possible for you to run almost without interruption.

When finally going for the Red Forest, you should be well prepared. You have probably found out that artifacts can help you in so many ways, but most of them emits radiation. To use these, you have to put anti-radiation artifacts in your suit pockets together with them to balance the radiation. If not, they will slowly first make you very sick, and after a while you will die. A Gravi artifact will enable you to carry 20 kilos more weight than usual, and that's something you need when you shall carry a rifle, a shotgun for mutant hunting, a Viper for allround defense, several hundred rounds of ammo, all the medkits you have, an assortment of useful artifacts, grenades and everything else you imagine can be needed in the most insane area in the game. So get this sorted out by yourself. You see, I don't know what artifacts you have found. First of all, you may not have found every one in each area, and besides, anomalies produce different artifacts from one game to another . It's often random which one you find, even if they belong to the same "class". So do the best with what you have. I'm also quite certain that you have collected more stuff than you can carry, so make a "war chest" for example in the Agroprom stalker camp, in one of the green safeboxes. There you can stash surplus ammo, guns you cannot bear to part with and such. If you have two thousand rounds of ammo of the same type, you cannot carry it all, and neither will you need it. As far as possible, try to live off the land, or more precisely off the bodies you will find and stashes that can be emptied.

If your PDA map shows no immediate danger, allways walk around with your detector in hand. Have a bolt or a pistol in the other hand. Even if I wanted to, it is very difficult to explain where the artifacts in Red Forest (or some other areas) are, but most of them can be found if you carry your detector when you progress through the area. Remember that artifacts can be on the ground, underground and even up in the air. And they move around too!

OK, then RED FOREST it is, and MILITARY WAREHOUSES too.

(Make a named save!)
You are very close to Strelok, he is running down the road! Run after him and be prepared for trouble (as he will tell you). As when in the Swamps you will receive more tasks than you can handle, but hopefully you remember that your main cause is to prevent Strelok from reaching the NPP (Nuclear Power Plant, that is Chernobyl), as that will start emissions that will certainly kill both you and possibly also all others. So stick with him (no, you will not catch him this time, but make a good show of it, will you?). You will be ambushed, you can talk to the last survivor of the ambushing party and ask if he needs help (ask him to stay, as he is a moron, and you don't want that as company), you will go into the forest itself and so on. Red Forest is full of artifacts. It is also full of very dangerous mutants and numerous anomalies. It's a bad place. Even finding your way is very difficult the first several times! It's also a place of opportunities for stalkers, so be prepared to use some time here. Help other stalkers in need and you will be paid well, try to catch two artifacts in the most fearinspiring anomaly you have seen. Go on until you find the recluse Forester. Study your PDA as often as the mutants will let you, study the map and be prepared for danger every step you take. It's impossible to be very much detailed in this coaching for the Red Forest without making a "walkthrough", and that would only spoil the fun for you. I'm sure that when you have finished, you will want to play this area and most possibly the whole game over again on your own, so don't be too pedantic about anything.

Scar having fun with Forester. Forester has a somewhat weak memory, so if Scar interrupts him by asking him to upgrade something every time the old man begins to thank him for finding his artifact, he is so confused that he loses his thread, and Scar must start from the beginning. Each time Forester will give Scar a Vintar sniper rifle as reward for finding his beloved Compass artifact. One time Scar scored 65 Vintars that way, but they were so heavy that Scar couldn't carry them, so he left them in Forester's cabin. He didn't need them anyway. What I wonder about is this: - if Scar got 65 Vintars, does that mean that Forester got 65 ....nooo....that can't be?

Here's the main story: - Forester will send you to the area called Military Warehouses. Here you will first talk to the squad leader at the reception gate, and then to the leader of a Mercenary squad further down the road. You are there to receive some radio signals that Forester wants. Make sure you do this, and back to Forester you go, as he has a very important job for you, to find a unique artifact. Find it. There is also an artifact in a cave under the place where you find the Compass artifact, and normally there are some Duty guys that can give you a job or two. There is a pasifist monster down there that you will provoke into action by for example shooting some crates through a metal shielded opening in the tunnel wall. It does not like guns, and will throw anything not bolted to the floor at your head. Your job. I don't want to be drawn into that fight!

Forester is still not satisfied. Now he wants you to go back to the Military Warehouses again, this time to transmit some signals to a group of stalkers trapped in a spatial anomaly. The transmitter is guarded by a fierce gang of military soldiers, but the Merc leader will get you some help from the Freedom faction. From the same Merc leader you will buy stash info for something special: info about where to find a SGI rifle! Then go for the transmitter, fight down the militaries, and send the damned signal so the stalkers can get out of the anomaly they are trapped in. And suddenly you are ordered to meet up with Lebedev. He is waiting by the bridge where you were ambushed in Red Forest. You are probably in need for some rest now, so take a leisury walk around the perimeter of the Military Warehouses. You can relax hunting mutants, picking artifacts from the nature, do odd jobs for the leaders of the squads that squat here and there, try out how the fighting skills of the Monolith faction are, and admire the view if you so wish.

As Lebedev by the bridge will wait forever if he has to, you can also go back for example to Uncle Yar in Dark Valley and have your newfound SGI rifle upgraded all the way for accuracy. Then you will, at least that's my humble opinion, have the most perfected assault rifle in the Zone . It can be used as a sniper rifle or a midrange assault rifle, it's a masterpiece of controlled fire. Forester also gave you a Vintar sniper rifle after you liberated his beloved Compass artifact. When you go for the battle of the bridge, where Lebedev is waiting for you, remember to carry the Vintar with you, and a lot of armor piercing ammo too. This particular Vintar is upgraded, but not all the way. Like all quest rewards, it cannot be upgraded any further. If you can afford it, find one of the Vintars so often dropped by the back gate of the Loner's Agroprom camp, and upgrade this all the way for accuracy. I'm perfectionist when it comes to guns, so ignore this if you want. Any way you choose, you are pretty well equipped.

You are close to finishing the game. There are two major battles left for you: first you must meet up with Forester and take part in the battle of the bridge. Then you will take part in the offensive through the town of Limansk. We do it this way: I will help you with the battle of the bridge, and you will do the Limansk part and finally neutralize Strelok on your own.

Scar revisits the Clear Sky HQ in the swamps to claim the reward for helping Clear Sky all the way to the gate of Limansk.

When coming to the bridge, Lebedev will order you up the stairs of the watchtower. Take up your position with your Vintar sniper rifle and follow orders. Be prepared to use some 2-300 rounds of ammo! Shoot renegades and their snipers as fast as you can, and the bridge will gradually be lowered. When sniping, allways use the single shot mode of the weapon (Change with zero character of your keyboard).

When the bridge is down, cross the bridge, kill any remnant renegades, and take part in the victory seremony. Be sure to ask the leader of the Merc squad that you helped free from the spatial anomaly about what he has experienced, and he will give you a nice gift. Lebedev and the Clear Sky will also reward you richly, but this will not allways show up in your PDA map. This is a bug. If you on a later occasion go back to the Swamps, the trader there will give you a piece of very advanced automatic weaponry and a very nice sum of money. If you carry with you a load of what the Swamp dwellers use to ask for, like grenades, russian rifle ammo, 9x18 ammo, medkits and such, and also do some jobs for the different units, this trip will add a lot to your inventory and you can actually have money to upgrade all the weapons you may need for a long life in the Zone.

For the truth is this: when you follow Lebedev and the Clear Sky into Limansk, there is no way back! You are left with your final exam: go through Limansk, reach the NPP, kill Strelok if possible and end the game. You should by now have all the skills and all the equipment you need. I cannot help you anymore, and as I am a dedicated stalker, I will not go somewhere with no path out anyway. What an idea!

But you may also feel that there are things unfinished in the Zone. Have you not heard about taking part in faction wars, are there not unfound artifacts and should there not be some undone jobs here and there? So make a named save after the battle of the bridge. If you go for the NPP straight away, you can afterwards use this gamesave to go back into the Zone areas and have fun. If you want to let Lebedev wait at the gate to Limansk, just let him. He will not be happy about it, but he will wait. Now you have several alternatives. Immediate exam, or more stalking in the Zone first. Or first your final test and then back to the Zone via your save. It's all up to you.

Some notes about
FACTION WARS

Remnants of your victims after some time in a faction war. If you find time, collect some guns and stuff them into the backpack of a dead guy. Then they will go away together with the body. If not they can actually slow down your PCs memory when loading a game. For I hope you have not fallen to the filthy habit of selling guns?

If you have been a good stalker and helped every man you have met, all factions will now accept you as a member, that is Duty, Loners, Freedom and Bandits. Military, Renegades, Monoliths and invisible bloodsuckers don't accept newcomers. Mercs neither, even if you are actually a member of the "Merc faction" from the moment you first left the Swamps. Mercs can be quite friendly to you, but this depends on who are hiring them for the moment.

You will of course make a named save before you engage in any faction, and also when your faction has won over it's enemy. This way you can try out as many alternatives and combinations as you may in any way want. The moment you enlist in a faction, you are enemy of this faction's enemy. You can go from Freedom to Loners, or from Loners to Duty or Freedom, but not directly from Freedom to Duty or from Loners to Bandits (or the other way 'round). But you can of course go back to a save before you enlisted in Freedom, and enlist in Duty instead, just to try out more alternatives. Or, if you change your mind in the middle of a campaign in for example Duty service, you can enlist first in the neutral Loners and then join Freedom afterwards. A change in faction membership between two hostile factions must always be done via a faction neutral both to the last one you joined and to the one you plan to join. (Freedom is the only one neutral to Bandits, if you ever need it).

When you have tried out faction wars in this way some times, you may feel up to trying advanced faction war, that is to beat one faction and after this be able to join your beaten enemy via a neutral faction. It is in fact possible to take part in all faction wars in an unbroken line. You can beat the Loners for the Bandits, then the Bandits for the Loners, and then you can beat Duty for the Freedom and Freedom for the Duty. A separate article about this will be published as soon as I feel inspired enough for it. The secret of such "faction jumping", is to use as little force as possible against the enemy.

All factions want to capture the head quarter of their enemy. This sounds easy, you may think, and sometimes it is. Other times it is painstakingly difficult. You believed that if you run in front and shoot down every enemy, your faction will follow you like a pack of dogs. They will not. The Loners will have trouble crossing some border because it is blocked by a faction they are friendly to and cannot shoot. You must help. The Freedoms may be more interested in local warfare in the Military Warehouses, where they are planning for their new headquarter, and show no interest in going for the Dutys in Agroprom. You must be patient. Remember that you are not the general, you are just a mercenary, a hired gun. The power in the zone does not belong to any ordinary stalker, it is in the hands of political shadow figures, faction leaders and most possibly the mafia that connects them all. So don't expect faction wars to be simple. If you, as thousands upon thousands of soldiers in real wars through history, are ordered to wait somewhere and nobody else shows up, be a real stalker: go do something else. Let the authorities do their own dirty work for a while. Go visit the swamp dwellers and admire the sunrise, go for a particularly difficult artifact you had to give up earlier on, take an inspection trip around to hear if any squad leader is in need of help. As all faction wars pass through the Garbage area, be informed that quite often they will feel that the Flea Market needs to be occupied, even when they don't tell you about this. Try that, even if you don't feel much for killing traders and mainly peaceful Loners (The Loners will of course not want to remove their own, but that much you certainly understood...) I have never experienced any faction war to be completely stuck. But they can give you a couple of grey hairs.

In all faction wars you should read the information in your PDA and make a note as to which positions your faction want to capture or defend. This is often the solution if a war seems to be stuck and your faction does not come to your help!

You can of course play around without taking part in any faction war as a faction member yourself, but I leave these choices to yourself and your imagination. I will help you no longer. There are other rookies lining up, and my time is limited.

One final remark: as you do not sell weapons, they will have a tendency to lay around in hundreds, and can actually slow down the memory of your PC when you load a game. After having emptied them for ammo, put them in some body's backpack and they will disappear together with the body after some time.

Good luck, stalker, and good hunting.

When you have finished Clear Sky, you may feel inclined to continue to The Shadow of Chernobyl. Do so at your own risk!

Sun Zi says: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril"

If you have questions, feel free to join the stalker gamer community at GSC. If you have comments on text above, any suggestions are welcome. Mail me at hoftv(at)online.no

This article has been through a few minor changes, and this is the final version, since the game is now patched up to a very decent standard. Beginners should use the 1.5.10 patch only. Ealier patches are not necessary.

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