MISERY 2.1 Freeplay Black Road Extreme Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

For people searching for extra challenge I present the Black Road Extreme optional game start.

What it does:

Two new alternative starting locations
No money
Limited starting gear
All dynamic stashes removed
No storyline
No quests
Freeplay from the start, all levels open

It's a total freeplay open world survival experience.

_______________________________________________________

Links updated Mar 26 with starts that fix few issues.

Download (start location 1): Dropbox.com

Download (start location 2): Dropbox.com

_______________________________________________________

Copy the files to your savedgames directory, load, and enjoy!

ps. this is my own little project, not an official MDT addon, so any gripes are to be directed towards me.

Edited by: K.E.V.L.A.R.

--

Sounds interesting!
I'm coming up on Pripyat soon on my game, so this might be worth a shot after I finish.
Are there no staches at all, or maybe some random staches?
Limited gear - you mean you start with limited gear (compared to normal Black Road with no gear at all), or that the items you can eventually find is limited?

Only the vanilla stash locations are present. They are usually filled with crap, so I didn't bother clearing them out.

Limited starting gear is what I meant (edited the OP, thanks). You have pack of cigarettes, bottle of beer, handheld torch and a knife. Trader inventories are untouched, and as this is a freeplay stage, the inventories contain all the goodies from the start. Of course you have to grind a bit to buy anything.

Edited by: K.E.V.L.A.R.

--

I've noticed that those vanilla stashes are also almost never mentioned by wounded hostile stalkers when questioned. There can seriously clutter the system cause they are often in the middle of nowhere hidden in need to known locations... Occasionally poltergeist fling these stashes at you :/

So you need to play as a sniper? Also is it an extra option that you can pick at a new game or affects everything?

It's just a simple savegame from my freeplay stage after I completed all the quests. Then I got rid of my gear and money and teleported myself at the location where the journey starts. I also disabled all the dynamic stashes from my gameplay, so they are completely absent. There aren't even those empty rucksacks anywhere. Of course you can try the trick where you set the actor_class = sniper in actor.ltx, even if it's an assaulter or recon and load the save if you want to play with other classes. Don't recommend it though.

--

Oh it is a savegame figures I found the file being tiny.

For (possible) future Misery incarnations, game start like this would be a must have option. As I lack the scripting power that removes the hurrdurr-where-are-myh-choppas vanilla story and boring side quests by default, this is the next best thing to that.

I think the complex Misery sandbox deserves a freeplay survival mode. So I'm advocating this cause with my 'game start' experiment.

Edited by: K.E.V.L.A.R.

--

I agree, man encountering a monolith squad at the nearby campsite of the sawmill get my bleed boiling. Or worse freedom, duty and monolith battling it out while you swing you worn makarov ripped from a zombie in fear and crap your bridges.

PS: If correct a save that is run as a sniper can't be loaded as recon or assaulter, I tried accidently a few times

I check it can only be loaded as a sniper, I did see what looked like being in the iron forest bunker o.o

Edited by: Nyayr

As I said if you play other classes actor_class = sniper in actor.ltx. So if you play recon go to actor.ltx and change recon to sniper. You can then load the save.

Also I said I don't recommend it. But I have tested it and it works with all the classes.

--

This is perfect! Just what I was looking for, thanks so much man! I'm sick and tired of going through the storyline to unlock new areas and equipment, this is just what I needed, thank you so much

It keeps crashing for me.
It started right. I wondered where I was when that "guard" came close. Then I realized where I was and how to get out.
Once out, I sneeked and peeked, generally taking things slow. Then I had to dash back to the vicinity of the initial point, for an emission was taking place. I just made it.
Holy hell, this was great.
Sneeked out again, went to the Oakpine, saw some zombies fight something else (couldn't see what or who). In the distance I saw some dead body.
Sneeking my way forward, hoping to get some loot, I was scared sh*tless by a bloodsucker appearing right in front of me. Dead.
I saved when I got out, after the emission, but it seems it is corrupted. So I can either start all over again or give up.
For now I give up, there's always tomorrow.

I love this game setup. Just the sandbox and the extremities of the zone while under powered, outgunned and outclassed by even the weakest of the enemy forces. You and the knife.

Great stuff.

Change switch distance in alife.ltx to 20 or even lower and load your crashing save. Then play along, get far from the Iron Forrest, make a new save, change s_d back to what it was and load the save. It's probably the civilian zombies in Iron Forrest causing the crash.

Glad you guys enjoy this.

Edited by: K.E.V.L.A.R.

--

I enjoyed this too! Getting out from the complex was a mild challenge and I had to re-start 2-3 times. Got out and saw zombies for the first time. Was kind of creepy to find out that they're reviving all around me. Luckily the corpses by the chopper were still not looted. Started moving towards Skadovsk when two cats attacked me, killed them. Right after that I was attacked by 3 snorks. Was damn hard with a gun not suitable for my class prone to jamming after every shot, but I managed it. While I was looting the corpses another snork appeared from somewhere and one hit killed me. It's quite a miracle that I survived that long . But still, awesome work man! I guess I'll postpone playing it for a while since I actually enjoy missions. There's only one worse spawn point I can think of now - snorks cave.

I was just wondering, did You side with duty or freedom? Or none? And did You help Beard in the first missions? Or are we supposed to find these things out the hard way?

Neutral with both Freedom and Duty, and helped Stalkers.

I was actually contemplating on making the start location the inside of Jupiter factory. It's infested with monolith at this game stage so getting out of there in pitch black without gear could be interesting.

Edited by: K.E.V.L.A.R.

--

thx for the mini-mod, looks fun

Edited by: lopezien

I'd love a Recon version of this if anyone can make one (no hurry). I pretty much freeplay as it is and I wish it was an option from the start.

To achieve that:

1. Copy over everything from class_diversity\recon folder to main \gamedata and overwrite everything it asks for

2. Go to configs\cratures\actor.ltx and change: actor_class = sniper

Thats all. This way you are 'faking' the game that you're still a sniper so that the saves work while in fact you have everything set up for recon.

@Kevlar

Maybe it'll be cool to disable the save blockade in axr_misery.script. Maybe I'll up it and post in the OP?

Edited by: trojanuch

Cool thanks I'll give it a try.

trojanuch wrote:

Maybe it'll be cool to disable the save blockade in axr_misery.script. Maybe I'll up it and post in the OP?

Great idea man, please do so!

Also I updated the OP and added a second alternative starting location.

Should be even more fun harhar.

--

I played it a little, it is okay but diffcult. I discovered zombies are bets handled with a knife 1 stab in the head and they are dead. Two soldiers had their gear so could get AK1-5 from those. Nasty were 4 bandits that sometimes visit the place and ofcourse the horrid bandits that target you from the workshops when they see 1 glimpse of you at outside the iron forest.

Did found it odd 3-4 full fixed saigas were laying idle in the village. Who would drop them there?

It is okay to play around with I can't wait for a genuine freeplay to appear. Might be best that then also the vanilla stashes are not present.

What does the save blockade do?

Edited by: Nyayr

OP updated, no more idle saigas or lootable bodies, obvious oversights from my side. Also no civvie zombies in Iron Forest, so no risk of crashing.

--

could you make a version with a lot money in order to test something(armors)

For testing purposes there is a powerful Alun's debug/spawn menu build in Misery, check here for more info:

Moddb.com

--

Hi KEVLAR,

Been playing the game that spawns in Pripyat. It's great. Had some troubles (ahum) to get out of the IP, but gradually getting stuff scraped together now.
This is exactly the kind of start I was hoping for.
Thanks for making it possible.

B

Sweet.

--