Tried out Narodnaya Solyanka 2016. It is arguably better than OP 2.1.

I have tried out Narodnaya Solyanka 2016. This is a mod for Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl. I got frustrated playing NS OP 2.1, once you get to Yantar, it is just a mess and I could not cope playing it anymore. I was always radiated for some reason, and nothing would fix it. At least 2016 is a better Solyanka build, it has more straightforward missions. The caves are different. You meet a Stalker in the caves who leads you to Miner, then you must retrieve a container for him that he puts an artifact into. Then you get medicine to take and come back to the Cordon. Then there are the usual missions, Find Nimble and get the artifact for Nimble. Then the player can go to the Garbage and help out there, just like in SoC. This is more straightforward and fun. The overall look of the game is more like Autumn Aurora. It runs with a very high framerate too. This is very important. And it is easier to get ahold of the more interesting and useful artifacts, Strelok`s stash in Agroprom Underground has 3 artifacts and a very useful Kalashnikov with a red dot sight.

You still need to bribe the military guard at the bridge in Cordon with Vodka to allow passage, this is not too hard though. But there is more Vodka around once the player gets to Agroprom and Bar, I have 6 bottles already. The initial part of the game is rather like NS OP 2.1. You spawn on the road next to the death truck and you need to get to the Stalker village to talk to Doctor. You cannot deal with Sidorovitch until you take the medicine and get better. The Stalkers in the camp do not trust you at all. You could be Monolith for all they know. But once you finish the caves you are fine. But the soldier guarding the entrance to the Duty base in Rostok has a quest that takes you back to the caves and you must go to a room full of anomalies to get an Emerald artifact and then he will let you in. This would allow a player to do the RG-6 mission early and get some more money. Very useful I guess. And other quests given by Freedom leaders.

It is very strange to see Sidorovitch outside his bunker talking out in the open. He is not a fighter and prefers to hide in the bunker. He does have a lot of contacts though. That is how he gets ahold of various things to sell in the zone. Even a crossbow for hunting. I wonder if you could re-use the arrows like in Far Cry 5. At least the caves are not like the New Arsenal 6 caves, they are a never-ending labyrinth and then the Nazi maps start, there you must fight off countless Nazi Monolith soldiers and the caves themselves have a massive amount of Monsters like Librarians and Pseudogiants that just overwhelm you. At least in Narodnaya Solyanka 2.1 you get artifact grenades. These do massive damage and clear a room very effectively. I guess like Stalkersoup, I will have a big fight soon, there is one that has 50 Pseudogiants in one fight. That would be a lot of fun. But you would be better equipped by that stage. So it is not as bad as it sounds. I mean some maps for classic Doom have 24000 monsters. I made one once that had 400,000 monsters, but it ran at 2 frames per second.

Stalker is better optimized though, and runs fine.

Downloads: https://www.moddb.com/mods/solyanka/downloads.

Install the base mod, then the cumulative patch, then the micro patch. Then run Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl as normal. And enjoy. Make sure you do not shoot the military under the bridge, they give you quests.