Ruined stalker relations - beard won't trade (Misery 2.2) Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

So I killed some stalkers and looks like I can't talk to anyone except the mechanic at Skadovsk, not even Pilot. Anyone know how to improve relations? Can it be done by killing some other faction? Or by waiting? How long and can I wait at Skadovsk?

You need to live, not sleep, a period of days(if you just barely ruined relations) and/or do good deeds like complete unfinished tasks benefiting that faction. If you have gone too far you are screwed. If you are sloppy in your play and not guarding against such faux pas, it is a good idea to save a couple of the stalker friendly tasks until near the end so you can redeem yourself. In 6580 hours of play, I've never managed to mess up that bad; it's really not that hard to avoid.

jasper34 wrote:

You need to live, not sleep, a period of days(if you just barely ruined relations) and/or do good deeds like complete unfinished tasks benefiting that faction. If you have gone too far you are screwed. If you are sloppy in your play and not guarding against such faux pas, it is a good idea to save a couple of the stalker friendly tasks until near the end so you can redeem yourself. In 6580 hours of play, I've never managed to mess up that bad; it's really not that hard to avoid.

Well, I know exactly what must have done it: I killed 3 stalkers on the way back to Skadovsk. I just didn't realize the game modeled faction relations in this manner. I suspected Duty/Freedom factions could be aggravated, but I always thought of "stalkers/loners" as freelancers and not really belonging to a real "faction" like the Monolith guys for example. Is it possible to check with debugging just how much I screwed up my relations and how long I have to wait? I assume it's gotta be a number somewhere in the game, just not displayed.

Completing quests is probably out of the question since I won't be able to talk to anyone to complete the quests, even if I had some in progress. Can I kill someone to improve them? Do "stalkers" have any "enemies" in Zaton whose deaths benefit my relations?

Edited by: misterkat

Saving Petruha, completing the ambush quest on the 2nd stalker ship, killing the bloodsuckers, finding the truth about Tremor, Ranger Station ambush all help Stalker relations. There is no file you can examine AFAIK. Load an earlier save.

jasper34 wrote:

Saving Petruha, completing the ambush quest on the 2nd stalker ship, killing the bloodsuckers, finding the truth about Tremor, Ranger Station ambush all help Stalker relations. There is no file you can examine AFAIK. Load an earlier save.

I don't even have any open quests left that I can see on the Zaton map, and without Pilot, I don't think I can even go to the next map. Too bad there's seemingly no way to see what the stats are like in CoC. I don't want to work on this save when maybe there's no hope.

Edited by: misterkat

You might be able to edit the game_relations.ltx file to change the threshold, but I don't know what exact numbers you would have to change in what direction. Backup the file, and you can play with it.

I rotate a number of saves, so going back an hour or two of play is no big deal, neither is starting over IMO.

jasper34 wrote:

You might be able to edit the game_relations.ltx file to change the threshold, but I don't know what exact numbers you would have to change in what direction. Backup the file, and you can play with it.

I rotate a number of saves, so going back an hour or two of play is no big deal, neither is starting over IMO.

I already tried screwing around with those files. They're in data\gamedata\configs\creatures inside the misery dir? I played around with actor to try and increase health regen to something high just to see if it works, and it doesn't. I can even move all the files to another directory and the game still works. I guess the files being used are somewhere else?

Never mind I was editing a different folder.

Actor definitely works with save games. I recovered health immediately after loading (set health recovery to some crazy number just to see if it works).

What I was thinking of doing is messing around with the relations number at which it turns to a level at which they won't talk to me to back into my current relations number. Then I can wait an hour of gametime and mess with it a bit more to see how much it changes per hour.

Can someone clue me into what number in the LTX file this is? Do I need to do anything to "reload" the guys in Skadovsk, or is it in effect immediately when I restart the game program and quickload a save where I'm there near Beard?

Interesting. Looks like renaming game_relations.ltx doesn't even crash the game. I guess it's not used, unlike actor.

Anyway, I gave up on trying to remedy this. I thought of letting the game run overnight, but it's too unstable and crashes.

Interestingly, I reloaded the save to the point where I saw the stalkers. Talked to the leader and he was headed back to Skadovsk. I didn't kill him this time, but Beard still wasn't talking to me. I must have killed someone else.

Good thing I do a hard save (and keep them indefinitely) every 10-15 minutes.

I had to reload even further back than that since I apparently went on a stalker killing spree that trip. I guess I can only kill Duty/Freedom/Bandits and the like.

Edited by: misterkat

Game_relations is used. Every time you check corpses after shooting someone (when you loot them), if you have shot any friendlies, you should reload or accept the likely consequences. Missing files that existed before MISERY will be copied in vanilla form from the original game .db's which is why no crash (assuming you deleted from the right folder this time

jasper34 wrote:

Game_relations is used. Every time you check corpses after shooting someone (when you loot them), if you have shot any friendlies, you should reload or accept the likely consequences. Missing files that existed before MISERY will be copied in vanilla form from the original game .db's which is why no crash (assuming you deleted from the right folder this time

It was certainly the right folder since some files being deleted resulted in errors (and health regeneration could also be achieved this way). I set all the values to big negatives so I should have certainly been above them and in the "green." Oh well, easier to reload.