Patch 1.5 “Guns & Looting”: A powerful boost for the zone in Stalker 2

Patch 1.5 for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, called “Guns & Looting”, is now available and it brings major improvements. This patch should be a game-changer for the player experience, making the world more vibrant, cohesive and dangerous than ever before.

“Guns & Looting” is a massive patch that underlines GSC Game World's ambition to make Stalker 2 a landmark in the genre by taking community feedback into account and constantly enriching and expanding the world.

The elephant in the room, the development team's biggest construction site, is hard to ignore: The A-Life system has been and will be further developed. From now on, life in the zone will continue outside of the player's field of vision. The stalkers and mutants pursue their goals, interact with each other and no longer suddenly appear in front of the character. You will encounter characters you have met before and the Zone's population will regenerate more naturally, making every expedition unpredictable.

A new anomaly, the “Aquatic Electric Tornado”, is being introduced to Stalker 2 with the patch, as well as a handgun, the Kora Pistol. The inventory benefits from some practical improvements, such as a “Repair All” button for equipment and smoother item management.

One feature in particular stands out in the community feedback: the “reload renewal on all weapons”, which now allows you to continue a weapon reload animation where it left off after it was interrupted. So if you start reloading and then interrupt the action (e.g. by running or switching weapons), you no longer have to start the entire reload cycle from the beginning, but the animation will continue from where it was interrupted, making the gameplay smoother.

The patch also overhauls the artificial intelligence of mutants and NPCs, fixes numerous bugs related to quests and progression and rebalances the arsenal of weapons and the effects of artifacts. The battles are fairer, the weapons more varied and the ammunition management has been refined.

Another major new feature is the Zone Kit for Stalker 2, which allows the community to easily create and share mods via Steam Workshop and Mod.io. This allows the game experience to be constantly redesigned and gives free rein to the creativity of Stalkers.

The full contents of the patch notes can be found on the official site.