Mutant Hit area recognition exist? Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Hello fellow expert stalkers. Have anyone of you felt the differences between hit a mutant in the face and hit it on the back? I am wondering if the game has hit area recognition for mutants.
We all know it does exist for human NPC since a Head shot is very likely to be fatal with most of the weapons. I am always not sure where to hit mutants as their weakest point. (They often move too fast for me to hit them at all)

Yesterday I had the liberty to test Saiga shotgun on two of the giants in Pripyat. One of them chasing me while the other one stuck on a metal container due to a glitch. The one were facing me took about 28 shotgun shell in the face. 8 sheel per mag and I had to reload 2 times. The other one which got stuck on the side of a container took over 40 shells before went down, and hits were landed on the side and back of the giant.

Is anyone else experinced with weak points of the mutants yet and if they exist, where are they?

Yes, mutants as well as humans have hit boxes, but they vary from mutant to mutant. For example, the bloodsuckers will go down easily with one or two headshots, but when shooting at flesh and boars you should aim for the hip or flank - their heads are "armoured" in comparison.

radasil wrote: Yes, mutants as well as humans have hit boxes, but they vary from mutant to mutant. For example, the bloodsuckers will go down easily with one or two headshots, but when shooting at flesh and boars you should aim for the hip or flank - their heads are "armoured" in comparison.

Ok I think I got the picture. I am not a big on shooting mutants myself. They are always killing each other. If they don't charge at me I will always hold fire, that's why I am not expert on mutant killing. I just felt lucky if I am able to spray a bloodsucker down, hard to aim for head when it's moving and half visible.
I am more interesting in dogs and cats, they are very common and roam in numbers. I always think hs would be the but often that's the only part I can hit since they always face me.

Both cats and all dogs (including pseudo- and psy-) have weak heads in comparison to their bodies. Blind Dogs will take one or two to the face before going down, but can take up to 6 to the flank. Cats are similar.

Not entirely sure if it's a bug or not that's why I didn't bring it up in the bug section.
I followed the tip provided by others to team up with NPC stalkers, as they are great help in the field. That's why I always hang out with a team of them and if I see mutants I hide behind the team. (to save bullets and medkit) But several times when I click on the "Can I team up" option in the dialog. I got teleported to an random location on the map with the team few yards from me. Few times we got teleported into hostile zone where everybody got wacked within secs and left me fending for myself.

Not a bug. It happens to all of us. Last time I hooked up, I arrived at the cooling pond outside of Jupiter Plant and even before the black screen cleared I was hit 5 times by the two feral cats that were focusing on me. The rest of the team were occupied with a pack of blind dogs and 2 chimera.

Reload previous save!

The risk of travelling with stalkers. The limits of the game show up as the game starts going from real time towards full quick travel. Meanwhile you do not encounter any enemies and just bypass them and literally appear next to them. Going to the cooling plant in freeplay is tricky cause you can often bump into 1 or 2 monolith squads, a few chimera can rush from the elec basement area and a shitload of mutties might show up, not too mention the occasional freedom/duty crap.

Team up in Zaton and Jupiter isn't too bad. Zaton is usually full of little bandits and mercs, easier to counter when teamed up with fully armed stalker group. Jupiter are mostly empty except when I was really unlucky, ran into the path of mutant hoards. Pripyat being the most dangerous place to team up with other stalkers. The areas in Pripyat is highly unpredictable, monoliths are annoying and they got snipers can spot ppl from blocks away.

I find Monolith nowhere near as exasperatingly overpowered as mercenaries.

Noworky wrote: I find Monolith nowhere near as exasperatingly overpowered as mercenaries.

Really? Most of the Mercs aren't overpowered as far as I can see. They are just like rest of the high tier NPCs. Monoliths on the other hand are far more annoying because they like to blow themselves up when wounded.

Speaking of overpowered I have just met a group of Duty guys, 5 of them in identical exo suit. I didn't ask them to team up, just followed them when they trolling through Zaton. Gotta tell ya these guys steam rolled almost everything in their path. They cleared half of the map without losing a single guy. I had to stop following because my bags are so full after picking loots after them.

I got blown up exactly once by a wounded Monolith stalker. Not getting blown up by them is as easy as shooting any downed Monolith you're uncertain of. Aside from that, compared to mercenaries, they turn up far later in the game when you're much better equipped, and they tend to be less bullet spongy than mercenaries are. Mercenaries appear in Zaton, have very high bullet absorption, absurdly quick trigger reflexes, telescopic vision and always use armour piercing rounds. Much more irritating.

I know you are speaking of these at water process plant and substation. And these merc patrols after the quest for water process plant is done. Yes these guys can be annoying since they already in exo suit and we only have access to some basic firearms and no so great armor.

I have been using them as weapon test subjects. I did found a surprisingly effective weapon against them in CQB. You should try PB1s. That little pistol came with silencer on. Not only it is stealthy and deadly with headshots, it has almost no recoil. I can easily put 2 rounds under half a sec into the same spot at close to mid range. That pistol is very interesting against mercs because their movement is predictable inside buildings, just wait for them where their heads will be and they go down easily, since my pistol has no recoil I always hit the same spot. Out in the open at night Mercs are major pain in the ass, they always force me to retreat behind cover and takes a lot of time to spot each one before taking them out with rifles.

Since we are talking about mutants. I have once watched a video where a blind dog was feeding off a body. Is there built in script controls mutant behavior? All I see is mutant either sitting or running around killing each other, they don't eat what they kill.
I am wondering if we can activate the script where mutants will behave like wild animals when they are hungry they go hunt, and feed on whatever they can find. (I am still hoping to bait some of these fucking dogs with explosive buried under a body)

A monolith guy that blows itself up always lays in a feutal position on their side and they breath so they move a little, when in doubt you fire a single round in them if they lay funny on their side. I rarely get blown up as I'm used to these tricks, I also tend to put extra rounds in them as they stagger, cause they never surrender anyway.

Mercs are high end cause they tend to fire more at your head area even at longer ranges, also they respond quicker, have less 'wait time' in which they aim and suffer less stagger from getting hit by bullets, mainly cause they have in average better armour then monolith. Also they have superiour nightvision and tend to have a higher count of firing grenades at you.

Though an exo duty squad I seen rolling through enemies as well, only to be stopped by a group of 2x2 chimeras and a monolith ambush.

In SoC you saw dogs pulling carcasses away, I'm not sure if vanilla SoC had it or the mod I played.

Does anyone have problems with the Poltergeist that floats around the helicopter in the iron forest anomaly? Since 2.1 devs have seemed to have removed the pseudo giant, the controller and the invisible zombies but simply left a bunch of zombies and two poltergeists. I killed the first one easily but the second one is really giving me a hard time. I keep shooting at it from long range because getting any closer than like 50 feet causes him to spaz out and do that loud thing where he continually damages you regardless of if he can see you or you can see him (which I think is another load of shit but thats another story) I've put maybe 60 rounds of AP down range at it, I'm not sure if I'm even hitting it or the night and night vision goggles is messing with my aim. I'm leaving the iron forest for now so I'll head back when its light out again.

The spawn there is random. There'll always be at least one poltergeist, but the rest varies. Poltergeists have annoyingly small hit boxes. Aim for around head height, or better still use a VOG-25.

Noworky wrote: The spawn there is random. There'll always be at least one poltergeist, but the rest varies. Poltergeists have annoyingly small hit boxes. Aim for around head height, or better still use a VOG-25.

I think I have just one VOG-25 I somehow killed the first one, I keep firing towards the center of the poltergeist where its blue hue centers upon its really weird how I killed that one so easily and this one is a pain, I don't really regret shooting 60 AP rounds into it of my AK-74 I found a stash so I didn't exactly pay for it, no worries

This time I grabbed my TOZ-34 with some slugs and shells an an AKM with a scope hopefully this helps, of this game Iron forest and jupiter have been the hardest because of the poltergeists ability to damage you with psy damage from such a range around any corner regardless of my psy protection with cannibis or my mask

Mike1Juliet wrote: Does anyone have problems with the Poltergeist that floats around the helicopter in the iron forest anomaly? Since 2.1 devs have seemed to have removed the pseudo giant, the controller and the invisible zombies but simply left a bunch of zombies and two poltergeists. I killed the first one easily but the second one is really giving me a hard time. I keep shooting at it from long range because getting any closer than like 50 feet causes him to spaz out and do that loud thing where he continually damages you regardless of if he can see you or you can see him (which I think is another load of shit but thats another story) I've put maybe 60 rounds of AP down range at it, I'm not sure if I'm even hitting it or the night and night vision goggles is messing with my aim. I'm leaving the iron forest for now so I'll head back when its light out again.

Welcome to the Iron Forest of Misery. It's a hellhole and considered to be boss fight before player can travel to jupiter by themselves. Explosives usually works well against these floating turds. You are just lucky a full nest of blood suckers aren't present for the party. Trust me these things are far worse than floating targets you can't hit.

DesertEagleV wrote:

Mike1Juliet wrote: Does anyone have problems with the Poltergeist that floats around the helicopter in the iron forest anomaly? Since 2.1 devs have seemed to have removed the pseudo giant, the controller and the invisible zombies but simply left a bunch of zombies and two poltergeists. I killed the first one easily but the second one is really giving me a hard time. I keep shooting at it from long range because getting any closer than like 50 feet causes him to spaz out and do that loud thing where he continually damages you regardless of if he can see you or you can see him (which I think is another load of shit but thats another story) I've put maybe 60 rounds of AP down range at it, I'm not sure if I'm even hitting it or the night and night vision goggles is messing with my aim. I'm leaving the iron forest for now so I'll head back when its light out again.

Welcome to the Iron Forest of Misery. It's a hellhole and considered to be boss fight before player can travel to jupiter by themselves. Explosives usually works well against these floating turds. You are just lucky a full nest of blood suckers aren't present for the party. Trust me these things are far worse than floating targets you can't hit.

I found simply eating radiation pills and running straight into the electric anomaly field and let them kill themselves

I came back later to find multiple controllers and a pseudo giant spawn, the pseudo giant followed me through the anomaly field and died upon running over 5 of the little shockers, the controllers were easy to kite around, just peaking in and out of cover is easy.

However on the exit after looting everything yielded 3 bloodsuckers, I found that laying IED's kiting them away was actually really effective

You are still lucky. Just 3 and late for the party. I had 8 on top of me as soon as I started throwing grenade on the outside wall. And I was not well stocked on ammo so I ended up reload to the far away save and tripled my ammo stock before going in again.

Bloodsuckers rush into electric anomalies and die very quickly, usually around 2 zaps.

Nyayr wrote: Bloodsuckers rush into electric anomalies and die very quickly, usually around 2 zaps.

I don't know man at early stage of the game I don't have the sci-detector so I don't get too close to the electric field, since I don't know how much room for me to maneuver. I don't like sitting still while bloodsuckers running around. I always move backward and few side steps so I can spray them when they appear in front of me.

I agree, I watched a youtube clip of a guy luring shit into the leccy fields but he was armed and armoured to the teeth, with more drugs than columbia. At that stage in the game there was no way I was going to attempt getting out in the open with all that shit running about, never mind a rookie player trying it! Get to the teleporter or hire some heavies to do the work for you.

I just did the iron forest again (1st time as an assaulter) and was greeted by a pack of izloms, zombies, 2 controllers, and the mandatory poltergeist. Only the izloms rushed into the electrical anomalies. The controllers just stood back and tried to do their mind trick from afar and the zombies just shuffled around. Sniped the controllers and poltergeist before going in to finish the zombies off. At least I didn't have to deal with the izloms.

radasil wrote: I just did the iron forest again (1st time as an assaulter) and was greeted by a pack of izloms, zombies, 2 controllers, and the mandatory poltergeist. Only the izloms rushed into the electrical anomalies. The controllers just stood back and tried to do their mind trick from afar and the zombies just shuffled around. Sniped the controllers and poltergeist before going in to finish the zombies off. At least I didn't have to deal with the izloms.

That sounds like a fun party. You should revisit it few days later after zoning back from Jupiter. I am sure next time will be different. Looks like Controllers and their puppets are perm-residents, rest are random guests.

That's weird, upon all my returns to the Iron Forest, it's empty. I believe Bandits and Mercs are spawning there as they can be seen walking out but no mutants. Also, I've noticed that controllers can be stubborn bastards and hang just out of view. As soon as you pop out to shoot them they start mind slapping you. However I also noticed that if you are, say, hiding behind a building and decide to turn tail and run, they begin to follow you and move closer. If you stop, they stop. Particularly annoying if you're only repositioning yourself and they start walking toward you and fry you with psy.