The new mega Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl mod Объединенный пак 2.1 is really worth playing for any fan of Stalker. The storyline of Shadow of Chernobyl is preserved in this mega mod. This makes it a lot of fun. It is a bit of a challenge to get started in this mod, you can die from one bullet wound. But so can the enemies. Boars can take quite a few shots of 9×18 Makarov to die, but Bandits are easy to kill. Once the player talks to the soldier under the railway bridge, kills the bandits defending the transition to the Garbage, rescues the stalker loner, defends the vehicle graveyard, defends the railway hangar from the Bandits, they will be better equipped to deal with enemies. I even found a MP40 submachine gun, but it had no ammo. This is a good departure from the other Narodnaya Solyanka mega pack, that had cave levels that were almost impossible to navigate. Now, the player can just do the same familiar missions to get started in Stalker, and there are a massive amount of maps, and it would take a year to finish this mega mod, it has a very long storyline. it will take a long time to get to the Chernobyl NPP.
The gunplay in this mod is stellar, it is easy to kill enemies and enemies can kill you just as easily. There are a few familiar areas in this mod, like Zaton and Yanov, but they are on the opposite side of where they should be. But I am sure there will be cool missions on these maps. This amazing mega mod is more stable than Dead Air, that mod crashes very frequently and has strange brown tinted graphics that are very ugly. although, there is a new version coming out soon with a new Cordon map based upon the Stalker alpha version of the Cordon, that has a factory and farmland. That is OK I guess, but fixing the crashes should be a priority as well. The current state of OP 2.1 is better, it is not fully translated, but this is OK, if you speak English, you can manage in this mod very well. Especially if you have played Stalker SoC before, the initial quests should be familiar. It is fine once the player gets ahold of a couple of weapons and some more ammo, then talking on bigger enemies would be possible. Bandits in the Cordon and Garbage are in familiar locations, the only thing is that Sodorovitch`s bunker was locked when I went down there, but the player is required to take the medicine after speaking with Swamp Doctor in the Cordon village, then they can talk to Sidorovitch.
Start the collector stashes quest as soon as possible after capturing the ATP and rescuing the Stalker from the bandits. This allows you to get the sledge hammer and by the time you get to Dark Valley, you can get a infinite sprint artifact with 1500% stamina. As well as a fuel canister for the flamethrower.
This is the location of the note that starts off the collector quest.
Stash all of your stuff in the caves in a stash backpack, you can get it all back later when you get quests to go to the caves to look for treasure. When you are almost done in the dream caves at the start of the game, find a stash bag and put all that you can into it, especially the 2000% stamina Moss artifact, these can be recovered later when you go back to the caves after talking to the bald buy in 100 Rads Bar.
This would be a very nice stash to find.
Where to find Vodka in OP 2.1 Cordon.
More information here: https://pastebin.com/xKDsXagM.
As shown at the timestamp of this video, in the lower room in the CNPP, there is a crate with an exoskeleton in the room, this could be very useful.
https://youtu.be/JH0A7HOq5b0?t=556.
This will dwarf other Stalker mods such as Return to the North, that is also plagued by frequent crashes. But it does not have a superb amount if characters and assets like NS OP 2.1 One version of it even had Agent Smith in it. Download OP 2.1 with this torrent file.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s0gydeiPcTC4GN9qRP-BMQPBfZA8CoTR.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R SHOC: Объединенный пак 2.1 (официальная раздача)
http://torrent-stalker.org/viewtopic.php?t=1634.
Some gameplay footage here. In Russian.
Patches for NS OP 2.1, and information on how to extract the files. Also a Narodnaya Solyanka torrent and some other misc files.
Some very useful tips for new players.
https://pastebin.com/BcRg4rbr