S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 received a huge patch 1.2 — many complications in the life of Scythian, quests, locations and game performance

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.2: Heart of Chornobyl received a huge update with about 1700 changes. That’s right, because many of them can hardly be called improvements to the life of a Scythian.

The changes affect almost everything: AI characters and mutants, A-Life shooting, stealth, balance, bugs, features, story, locations, items, etc. It would be impractical to list everything here in full, but get ready, because now there will be pain, and then, perhaps, relief (if we find it). And the first points are worth quoting:

It seems that this means more quality weapons for NPCs and less money from loot for the player, but the latter change, on the contrary, worsens the quality of weapons. Also, a bug has been fixed where NPCs would loot armor that could then be collected from them. In some locations, this allowed for very easy money farming. Now there are no unplanned exoskeletons in the late game.

And let’s move on to the monsters that will now definitely bite the Scythian. Here are some of their new super killing abilities.

• Fixed Controller abilities that did not work through doors
• Fixed the inability for mutants to attack in certain positions
• Fixed Chimera not using jump attack
• Fixed a bug where mutants with the ability to jump ran around the player on surfaces that were out of reach
• The controller has a new ability — growl (the whole Zone is sincerely grateful!)
• The frequency of the jump attack for the Blind Dog has been increased.
• Improved open-world combat with the Pseudogiant near the Abandoned Science City in Pripyat.
• Fixed a bug where a grenade would damage a bunker when its shield was active.

After some of these changes, the idea arises that developers sometimes «fight the wrong way». Hey, the Controller is not the protagonist, the Scythian is the protagonist! Grenades… bunkers died so well after a few… If the monsters can’t cope with the player’s destruction, radiation will help.

• The anti-radiation effect of the Strange Water artifact has been reduced
• Increased radiation damage depending on the accumulated radiation.

And now the promised relief. NPCs will no longer be terrifying super snipers who can see you everywhere, including in tall grass, and hit you without missing a shot, even with not very accurate weapons — NPC shooting accuracy has been improved. Also:

• The accuracy of bullet dispersion at all distances for all types of weapons has been reconfigured.
• Added randomization of shot accuracy in bullet scattering.
• Reduced wall penetration by some bullets from NPC weapons.
• The time for identifying the player’s NPC character has been adjusted.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs in the Malachite location could see players at a great distance and through objects.

Mutants also got not only «buns». The terrifying clouds of rats that were running fast through the lairs will be slightly reduced. The number of bloodsuckers sleeping until the end of the mission «Behind the Seven Locks» has also been reduced (if you want fewer bloodsuckers, don’t rush the story, there’s plenty to do in the Zone).

The frequency of NPCs in exoskeletons has been reduced, making some of them easier to kill. Although the use of powerful weapons to the head was already «vanshot». Reconfigured the armor worn by NPCs. Increased the chance of low- and mid-level armor spawning, while the chance of higher-level armor spawning has been reduced.

Also in the game many technical optimizations: reduced FPS drops, greater productivity in PDAs, there are fewer memory leaks. More than 100 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION crashes and other bugs have been fixed. Many plot points have been fixed in the game, which we won’t write about here because it’s a very big «forgive» and spoilers. Improved interaction with locations and objects. If you dive into full list of changes on Steam, you’ll definitely find something interesting that hasn’t been covered here.