It feels dead. Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R so much, and i was hoping the Misery mod will improve it, but there isnt that same atmosphere, there are no stalker patrols going about, for example i was traveling to the waste processing station from sawmill and i didnt even meet a single stalker patrol. After exiting Skadovsk after a fallout i dont see any stalker groups going out and having their usual adventures in the zone, without this i feel that the atmosphere of the game is gone.

The game has changed, you are playing Dark Mod. The sun is now an enemy and most veteran Stalkers travel by night.

damjancd wrote: The game has changed, you are playing Dark Mod. The sun is now an enemy and most veteran Stalkers travel by night.

Yea, but even if they are traveling by night they should be in the skadovsk relaxing talking about their experiences, shouldnt they?

damjancd wrote: The game has changed, you are playing Dark Mod. The sun is now an enemy and most veteran Stalkers travel by night.

Oh, i read it more carefully, no im not playing dark road, im playing the usual mod, and there are no stalker groups. Is it a bug?

Must be something on your end.
I've got plenty of stalker squads running around Zaton in my game.

PerXX wrote: Must be something on your end.
I've got plenty of stalker squads running around Zaton in my game.

Oh ok, but is there any way of fixing it?

Not sure what you meant by dead. I spent quite bit time observing Zaton and Jupiter area looking for sniping/ambush spot. I've found out there are always 1 - 3 patrols from each faction, constantly moving on the map, each patrol is made of 4 dudes. So you can always find patrols just need to expand the search. Same apply to mutants, once they are spawned on the map they will patrol the whole area as well. I saw a group of 9 cats chasing a flesh, walked toward opposite direction then half hour later the same 9 of them were right behind me.

GeneralNippleToast wrote:

PerXX wrote: Must be something on your end.
I've got plenty of stalker squads running around Zaton in my game.

Oh ok, but is there any way of fixing it?

They could just have been killed. There's a longer respawn time in 2.1 I believe, to prevent players from repeatedly farming stalkers for cash.
I'd give it a few in.-game days and see if the world doesn't start to repopulate.

The typical way of changing the amount of units you see in zone is either modifying the squad sizes (which is time consuming), or adjusting the unit idle times, which by default can be done by modifying the smart_terrain.script and sim_squad_actions.script files in the gamedata/scripts folder. In these files you should be able to find the lines

local DEATH_IDLE_TIME
local RESPAWN_IDLE
local STAY_POINT_IDLE_MIN
local STAY_POINT_IDLE_MAX

next to which there will be numbers. Lowering these should make the zone feel more alive.
Of course, things could have changed in Misery 2.1 and these might no longer be present, made irrelevant or located elsewhere.

You are welcome to try anyways, and report back your results, as i still have not had the opportunity to download the official release. >_>

Edited by: Stiivais

These settings are still in the smart_terrain.script - althou differently formatted. Point is that now they only control spawning of mutants (and are set to respawn in 1 hour intervals).

Human spawns are controled separetly for individual smart_terrains inside configs\scripts\[level_name]\smart folders - those which have settings defined on top are those which spawn human squads.

Edited by: trojanuch

Ok, thanks for the advice guys, ill try it later.

Oh, btw how do i open the lead container?

GeneralNippleToast wrote: Ok, thanks for the advice guys, ill try it later.

Oh, btw how do i open the lead container?

With the tool that look like brown tweezers (You find them in the pack in next to you if you start the black road) maybe the regular game you start with them.

Nyayr wrote:

GeneralNippleToast wrote: Ok, thanks for the advice guys, ill try it later.

Oh, btw how do i open the lead container?

With the tool that look like brown tweezers (You find them in the pack in next to you if you start the black road) maybe the regular game you start with them.

Thanks.

I agree with the OP, and I know it is because my current play style is overly cautious, but until I improve I would like to moderately bump the stalker teams respawn rate. (Even Spartacus is dead!)

Should 'death_idle_time' = 'respawn_idle'? Is a new game required? Would you consider 14400 down from 21600 a moderate increase to spawn rate?

I've only edited zat_stalker_base_smart.ltx, but should I instead edit all in Zaton that have the option. I am hoping that after Zaton I'll be on better footing and could leave those areas at the Misery default. Thanks very much.

Edited by: Khugan

Agreed, anyone know?

GeneralNippleToast wrote:

damjancd wrote: The game has changed, you are playing Dark Mode. The sun is now an enemy and most veteran Stalkers travel by night.

Oh, i read it more carefully, no im not playing dark road, im playing the usual mod, and there are no stalker groups. Is it a bug?

Black Road and Dark Mode are different things.

*Black Road* is where you start in the middle of the night in the Sawmill, with no gear.
*Dark Mode* is where there is constant radiation outside during the day, causing death and whatnot. As such, there are no NPC patrols during the day, and essential quest NPC's are in environmental gear. You choose this option during install.

It is kind of confusing, and they should probably tweak the names. Is it possible you are playing in Dark Mode?
(Edited Dark Road > Black Road, thanks Nyayr.)

Edited by: MadeYouLook

It is the black road not the dark road.

Nyayr wrote: It is the black road not the dark road.

You're right, my bad. But my point still stands, OP may have gotten the two confused, seeing as he referred to "Dark Road" in response to a post about "Dark Mode".

Edited by: MadeYouLook

Any news about this?

My Zaton only got sparse on stalkers right before I headed to Pripyat. Upon returning, there were groups everywhere. Multiple staker and mutant groups visible at once all happily killing each other. Besdies the regular groups, after Pripyat you have groups of 10 Monolith in former Merc and Bandit locales. Use the highest switch_distance your system will handle without FPS dropping off and you will see much more activity.

Is there someone who knows how to increase the number of Stalker of each faction in the Zone? (Not just the spawn times)

Misery is a very good Mod! Actually its better then the vanilla version its has just one drawback for me
I dont like to be in a Zone where is almost nothing to do anymore. (When the questline is done, you can just go for artifact hunting or killing enemys)

I would like to see more stalker, mercs, bandits, monoliths and freedom guys running around an fight brutal until the end.
The zone should never be quiet.

Each Faction has some primary tasks in the Zone, but if the sit on their asses in Zaton, Jupier and Pripjat it seems like factions are totaly useless.
(I already started to kill every group ill see to have a little bit of fun)

You should like what you see on next release I used to always piss Freedom off for extra enemies too... back to Beta testing ...

Nice can´t even await it

Big thanks for the work ;D

jasper34 wrote: You should like what you see on next release I used to always piss Freedom off for extra enemies too... back to Beta testing ...

What do you mean by this? They are adding new scrpit to add more NPCs to the zone?

The one time i tried to play Misery i unistall it since there were no NPCs anywhere, the zone was dead.

You will be very pleased. Check out the facebook page for the teaser.

When do we get to try some of that new stuff?