Misery passed without dying, video included Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

After many tries, even before misery on my own mod which was the same idea, I have finally passed this game without getting killed once. I recorded the entire playthrough and I am uploading it now for any that are interested in watching. Links for the other parts are in the description of each video:

Oh if you do watch it, let me know where you live and if there are any ads or whatever. It says that there are songs in the video which are owned by other people and they may affect things depending on your country.

For my next challenge I am going to try to complete the game without purchasing any ammo. This is actually how my mod before I started playing misery worked, you had to find ammo in the zone and could not buy it unless a passing stalker was selling some. Obviously people dropped more ammo than they do in misery though Should be tough.

Edited by: odizzido

Awesome play. Always scanning the horizon, looking for safer routes, staying on hi ground, checking your six, etc besides having great mouse reflexes. You're a true Stalker man.

And I'd like to congratulate the Misery team. I don't think such a realistic (and tense) gameplay would be possible without this mod.

Just two observations:

1) the bloodsuckers are visible to you. So it makes it easier. BUT I'm still not convinced it should be otherwise, or we fall back to what Gordyne said in the other thread: Relying more on chance than skill. In other words: Your tweak should be the default for the mod, IMO.

2) You utilized totally cheese-tactics for the bloodsucker nest, the kind of which you are only able to use if you memorize each enemy exact location. This is the kind of thing I would like to see nerfed in the mod. Less cheesynes and more realism. In other words: I would like to see you use a more realistic approach over there (like you were using the whole game)... perhaps using actual CQC tactics like rapid room-cleaning or using small explosives, etc. instead of simply "cheating" the computer like that.

Otherwise, bravo. I'll finish this episode later (stopped 2/3 of the way) and I hope you upload the others.

Edited by: lessavini

For number 1, I am just using the latest misery patch. I've not changed it from that. I am not sure what spot you're talking about but they are visible to you even if they're close to another mutant or stalker, not just yourself.

haha as to number 2, it's actually pretty easy if you just plant some bombs on the ground then alert them. It just costs a little less to do it the way I did. I don't feel bad about it since the zone has killed me many times with cheap stuff

And yeah the rest are coming. They take a while to encode and upload. Part 2 and 3 are up now

Also expect another version of this with a new mini-mod I will release where traders don't sell ammo. I've been playing with it for a while and the game is totally doable without buying ammo. I have to change how I play quite a bit but I am having a lot of fun with this new challenge and game style. There are only two cheap parts I do(aka know), clearing the chopper with the map where I am behind the wall and that bloodsucker part. On my new playthrough I will clear the chopper without doing that, and the bloodsuckers I won't even kill since it's not worth spending the ammo/bombs.

Interesting idea with no buying ammo, I could see how you would do it especially with all the grenades you find. Foregoing grenades would make it stupid difficult. Bloodsuckers have always been easy to spot interacting with others and from a couple hundred meters away. I find the concept of honorably giving vampires extra chances to kill you instead of pragmatically using the most cost effective means at your disposal numbingly obtuse. I freaked the first time I spotted the hoard of blood suckers my very first vanilla play through and opened fire, the bloodsuckers got Grouse, I got them in the narrow quarters. I thought I broke the story line so I replayed from an earlier save. I found out minutes later the medic was going to do Grouse anyway ... the zone gets everyone eventually. It's fun figuring out new means of handling the same old problems, and I do play for fun. What's the fun of being a secret agent if you have to do everything by the book? It would be cool if you could retask the poison gas for some other mission. Set it off in close quarters with a grenade or something

Funny. I have the latest version of Misery too (2.1.1 all in one) but suckers are fully invisible to me. Thanks for the heads up.

About the "cheesy/cheating" parts, do you think the game could be finished (without dying) without relying on this kind of thing ? If so, how? If not, what are the "cheating points" of the game in your opinion and which tweaks would you recommend for alleviating them ?

Thanks. ;-)

Edited by: lessavini

The rocks are pretty cheap as well, but they've just been part of stalker for so long now that I think misery's difficulty is based around everyone using them. I do think it would be possible to pass the game without using them though. Bloodsuckers, pseudogiants, and snorks are outrunable and chimeras are dodgeable. The mutants that can get you even if you run are the dogs, but if you have good enough gear you can take out a lot of dogs on flat ground(I took out a lot from 11:30-14:30 in part4 which is uploading now). I think the start of the game would be extremely difficult without the rocks but it would be easier once you got some armour.

On a side note, I've gained a lot of respect for the MP5. I've been using it on my no ammo game to kill mutants and it's extremely effective. I took down five dogs charging at me without getting hit once, and the snorks guarding the ledge helicopter went down very easy. I imagine the PPSH would be similar. I don't like the ironsights on it but the capacity seems really nice. I will need to give it a good go once I find a good one I want to repair/buy.

Odi, dont know if I agree on the rocks being cheap. I see it very justifiable by various animal behavior patterns we see in nature (some are afraid of water, others of climbing to high places, others only attack in packs, etc, etc, etc). But preemptively knowing the exact location of a given hostile ? That has no natural justification whatsoever. (except if you had Superman x-ray vision ).

About the MP5, one word: "Frazier". Get this baby now. With all rate-of-fire upgrades Its damage output is obscene. It was my fave gun in Misery 1.

The boars and flesh and pseudogiants I am fine with them not getting on the rocks. There are plenty of animals which don't do well with climbing. However the bloodsuckers and blind dogs not being able to get up on them is kinda silly to me. I guess the dogs can jump(I've seen upwards of 15 meter leaps) so really it's just the bloodsuckers.

I've finished uploading my playthrough. All the parts are listed in the descriptions on youtube.

Wow. I have already found ~30+ stashes in my 40 hours (estimate) of MISERY, and in the first 5 minutes of your playthrough alone you showed 4 stashes I didn't know about! Daren't think just how many I've missed!

I just played the original game again for 10 minutes while waiting for mod download on another PC. I checked what I had become accustomed to checking for stashes in Misery and found like 3 pristine weapons in 2 minutes. I had missed many lucrative vanilla stashes because the economy was too easy in basic game and I never looked as hard. I'm still finding the odd "new" stash in Misery when I explore a little more.