Honestly I think the Red Forest is overrated in terms of difficulty and radar is criminally underrated especially when navigating through the forest. I think this is mostly due to the Red Forest being a frequent passage through the barrier. In radar I instantly got attacked by a pack of dogs coupled with a psydog, then got attacked by a two psydogs and a Chimera. Then I got attacked by TWO psudeogiants simultaneously. Then I went a bit deeper into the forest and got attacked by two psydogs, a pack of dogs and a controller at the same time. This all took place in just over 5 minutes. I have never seen anything half as oppressive as that in the red forest.
@@StrengthScholar0 Speaking as a newer player my first time going to red forest was quite a experience. It was the first area that gave me big trouble since I got jumped by Chimera in the forest I could barely see so I was walking around like a scared cat. (I had not encountered chimera at that point and was wondering why the "lurkers" just would not die.) Once I reached the forester hut I got inro a shootout with some monolith/sin and they just kept coming I barely killed them with my remaining ammo but it must have been 15 - 20 people luckily not all at once (must have been some kind of patrol or multiple ...). I had to knife the last one in the small shed since an emission was coming and he just ran in ... so overall quite a memorable chain of events. So once I progress further I keep your words in mind :)
@@chidori0117 Lol sounds "typical" for the red forest. Don't me wrong the red forest is a hellscape. I just think the forest in radar is a moderately more horrific hellscape that doesn't get enough attention in the community.
Yo. You think that's a lot? 4 Lurkers, 2 Chimeras, 3 psy-dogs and an bloodsucker all at once as I spawned in with my companions at the barrier entrance, and right around the corner were 4 pseudogiants waiting for me as I enter the forest area. That was intense. I just left after seeing the pseudogiants to get a better hunting rifle, and when I came back they already despawned, but holy crap that was my worst day at the radar (i did regular sweeps of it grinding the high tier mutants and monolith)
Red Forest really tickles the monkey part of my brain... scanning the area for the silhouettes or signs of predators. In most other zones enemies are easy to spot, but in Red Forest enemy camouflage actually works annoyingly well.
I like Dark Valley as an early game place to do missions on a Bandit character or a faction that's neutral with Bandits. I've had 2-3 missions stacked onto the farm location and having the free companions makes them a breeze, it's a great path early game for stashes, loot, and money. Often there's a mission to kill military outside the Labs location with them often dropping pretty decent stuff. So I think it could rank higher given the possible loot and early game progress to be made. :P
@@DankRobot true, I’ve had 2 or 3 of the pop up so far at random. Luckily my RPK wielding companion and the Chimera Hunter Toz has been quite effective at taking care of them :P
I have not seen any dangerous mutants there other than 1 psy-dog. However, I did see a pack of 8 Chimeras, a blood sucker, 2 psy-dogs, a few snorks and a controller on Truck Cemetery once. Does Warfare change mutant spawns? I am disapointed by how peaceful Red Forest is.
If you're one of the "good guys" (Mercs and Banditos), Dark Valley is a great comfy place to farm for money. Both Sultan and the Bandit merchant give lots of quests, and they're usually local. The best quest chain is when Sultan gives you a quest to kick out some Stalkers at the farmhouse, and sometimes he gives another quest to off some stalker in the same location. He also gives you 4 guys to tag along every time. And if you go talk to the merchant he would give you a mutant hunt quest and/or contract on some military in the factory, basically on your way to the farm house. And Dark Valley is one of the smaller maps with least anomalies, so it's a 2-3 minutes run to the farm house (5-10 minutes if complete the mutant quest and the factory quest). All the targets basically sit at the campfire waiting to be mowed down. Sometimes if Mercs were already at the farm house they'll just kill your objectives for you. And you get to keep the extra 4 gunmen Sultan give to you indefinitely until you turn in the quest. That's 4 quests (basically 35,000 rubles in the bag) with minimal effort that you can knocked out in a straight line, along with free extra help for whatever. Granted, you either have to be Merc or Bandit but Dark Valley is definitely S-tier resort retirement community for me.
Also there is a bunch of electric anomalies right inside the base close to east exit where you can get free artifact after every emission. So apart from all the things you mentioned before there is one more reason to like this place especially when you start as a bandit.
Always nice to see a fellow toaster enjoying their time in The Zone! My personal favorites are of course Army Warehouses and, for a sneaky early game trick, Wild Territory, in which I start in Rostok, hope that a random duty guy gets killed by a pseudodog by the Wild Territory entrance, yoink a gun off their corpse and go to get possibly easy early sneaky headshots on the two mercs sniping from the building as early game there's a good chance the snipers at the entrance wont be there yet, usually gets decent stuff at the start. Nothing to G36 in two to three minutes possibly. Anyways, love your content! Keep em coming!
yoink a gun off their corpse and go to get possibly easy early sneaky headshots on the two mercs sniping from the building as early game there's a good chance the snipers at the entrance wont be there yet ? ..... Oh the outpost.
There's one trader near the mine in Red Forest where you can create stash there, sleep safely and basically farming ALL the monolithians while throw ALL those items in said stash.
Just started playing and I'm moving my portable workshop stash to garbage. For starting out I think it's a perfect place to set up since it's kinda in the middle and you can go to all the beginning spots with no problem from there.
I fought my first Pseudogiant in Red Forest (was doing Clear Sky story in Anomaly, don't have to touch X18) and I had to reload that save like three or four times until I just gave up on shooting it and used my underslung 40mm on it twice before finishing it off.
I love Red Forest, I love Great Swamps during a storm, I love Truck Cementary. Because I love the goose bumps and the chills running down my spine :) Low level gear and you really play like your life depends on it.
In my opinion, the CNPP always goes to S tier. It's a shame how in the original games you couldn't explore the entirety of the CNPP, so Anomaly's version of it is the closest thing we get. Even though it's just walking simulator with the occasional Monolith squad and high tier mutant, it really is a picturesque place to walk around. I really do hope STALKER 2 does expand upon the CNPP more especially with the many other buildings around it.
Dark valley is a very good early game location for mercs. It lets you do relatively easy tasks, gives bandit companions and is close to butcher, which makes it A or B tier for ironman merc runs imho
Im rooting for anomaly and i LOVE warfare mode,and i think my favorite late game and early game base location is rostok as any faction member,its just perfect at defence,enemies get little cover,lots of outposts for reinforcements,and can hold an entire army inside. Lots of npc's for jobs,100rads bar And sure army warehouse isn't bad but there's a small line between being canned up and ready to shoot up and like rostok being canned but greatly fortified,i mean in rostok you get lots of cover and narrow parts wich works in your favor and in army warehouse its hard to keep up everything,enemies get lots of cover and you barely nothing,not too mamy outposts and jesus christ don't get me started of the freedom base because once enemies are near it and you're inside you become a shooting range target,its thight and open at the same time or its just because magically freedom AI is just so dumb it can't defend itself like bruh get this,im playing freedom,and i took all the outposts from mercs and bandits for myself and my god i couldn't even sleep without half of the forces being wiped out by duty and monolith,but when im playing as my fav faction wich is merc then i don't even need freedom's outposts because somehow mercs shit on both duty and monolith without a problem so yeah Merc and rostok 4 life
I have a playthrough as duty right now and north is really painful right now. But in your list not all of the locations: there is a bunker in generators and another bunker on CNPP. And, to be honest, I feel a little bit confused: there is an achievement where you need to visit all 33 locations, you got 30 in your tier list and CNPP’s second bunker and generators military bunker makes it 32. So what is the location number 33 and where is it?
The Truck Cemetery is one of my favorite stomping grounds. Great place to hunt mutants, including "big game," which is handy if you like to make a living as a monster hunter. Plus, it has a certain aesthetic appeal as one of the literal graveyards of Soviet socialism. Deth to the state! SVOBODA!
"i avoid this place at all cost" Red Forest F I really enjoy Red Forest XD the only thing i hate its all the vegetation but hunting stalker, mutants and artifacts are FOR ME quiet easy
İ can not get any outfit loot on dead bodys anybody have any idea on how to fix that, i only get outfit parts, i am playing as monolith and have some progress in the palythrough
I think chance of getting outfits can be changed in progression difficulty in settings. Also by default Heavy armor won't appear on bodies until you have high enough rank or something like that. This can also be changed.
Sarcophagus in C tier? The whole map is just a shitty maze of narrow tunnels with Monolith crawling everywhere, annoying staircases and basically no reason to come here outside of the Strelok mission. It's pure F tier.
Great swamps, Radar, Dark Valley, Truck Cemetery are all very atmospheric location representing the true danger of the zone. Definitely at least the C tier for all of them.
Oh man I'm not sure about Limansk... To me this is also an S tier location. There's so many monoliths there usually that it's very nice to just go there and farm them. They will drop a lot of suppressors and scopes + other good loot (including meds), it's a very lucrative way of making money without even doing quests. Given it's narrow design (mainly the outpost chokepoint), this makes for very good cover and it's nearly impossible to get flanked if you know how to tactically approach this map. I'd say to an experienced anomaly player, Limansk is easily at least A-tier for loot, for me probably S. Tip: Just make sure to bring some companions with you, you will want their carrying capabilities as well. You really do get that much loot on average.
I would say so too, but after playing for so long, having to progress through it with all the invisible walls just makes it a chore to go through and it's just very 1-dimensional because of that. Gets boring real quick since there's no variability in the approaches you can take
CNPP is one of the coolest maps in the game in my opinion, not every area has to be something densely packed with factions, jobs, etc. It's cool for being the goal of the first game to reach, and the real life and lore significance of it to the disaster that started the zone
Red forest is at least A tier. It may not have the greatest number of artefact spawns, but the sheer scale of enemies to kill means you can fill up on loot very fast. Perfect for farming monolith and mercenaries.
One of the biggest perks of setting up your base at yanov station in Jupiter is that for some reason it has two mechanics, so you'll get double crafting materials especially if you give them both tools. Also my man did the red forest dirty. Yes it is dangerous as heck but boi is it fun
I really feel like there's few areas that capture the butthole-puckering tension of Stalker better than The Red Forest. It's where I go when I want to show my friends on discord what Stalker is all about. Intense patches of radiation, anomalies everywhere, Monolith waiting everywhere in ambush, the howls of mutants surrounding you as you inch your way through the dense thicket of trees... I'm on edge the entire time I'm there, but that unique sense of tension and impending danger is precisely why I choose to enter the zone every time. The Red Forest will forever be 'S' tier in my book.
Radar... got to say it was the tough one. You can go with the road and encounter lots of Monolith or walk in the forest and got chased by 2 chimera at a time. But you can find a lot of artifact after few night. If you take time to prepare before going to radar, the time you get there will be raining artifact.
This is true. Especially with DAO. Considering that the forest area is occupied only by mutants it is the best area to get mid to high tier artifacts as no AI stalkers dares to go there
@@greymidnight1221 actually, the AI did go there but mostly they got killed by Chimera... or if they comes from north entrance, they'd be shot by the Monolith. Also if there's Liquid gold anomalies around, be sure to check it after 3 hours in game, because they respawn artifact way faster
I'd also tier locations based on building accessibility. If an emission erupts, places like Truck Cemetery, DarkScape, or even Jupiter or Zaton can be hell if you haven't planned accordingly. I always check the PDA messages tab to see when a Stalker has alerted you to an emission or psy-storm. The PDA also give you an in game clock to keep track of the hours until an emission.
Cordon is a cozy spot as an experienced stalker but when I was still new and downright SUCKED at stalker, Cordon and Garbage was so ugly and uninteresting that I didn't play the game for like 3 weeks after my first 2 hours.
Whenever I play duty I always head to the wild territory since it's easy to farm NATO weapons there. However what I don't like about wild territory is the mutants
Generators is actually the final location of two quest chains: Mortal Sin and the Explorers quests. The Explorers quest sends you to the center of the Meat Grinder anomaly, the one that’s in the middle of the massive generators.
@@nuruddinshah684 the series of fetch quests you get from the ecologists for anomolous samples. the last sample they want from you is in that anomaly. you get a 50k rouble reward and a letter of commendation from the ecologists.
Rostok is definitely S Tier for me for just how important it is as a hub area plus how it's basically home. Army Warehouses though is F for Freedom and half the map is devoid of intelligent life until I'm done passing through it.
The only reason I like Dark Valley is the Military base has quite an easy way to farm them. Just have to skirt around behind it, climb the wall and you should see a pipe with a window above it. Climb the pipe, head in through the window, out the door and take a right out onto the balcony with a rail separating it from the warehouse. Hop the rail onto the warehouse roof and crouch on the other side of the peak and take headshots at any Military. They’ll make their way upstairs and you can just use the fatal funnel of the doorway to stun then take them down. I usually farm it for gear every few days. Sometimes when you head in from Meadow, Mercs will be down with the Ecologist and Renegades at the farm and you can just let them battle it out and clean up the stragglers. Other than those two very specific things, I agree. It’s pretty bad
Worth mentioning that Agroprom has an additional semi-independant underground area. There is very little reason to explore it although it's arguably as visually interesting as the Jupiter-Pripyat Tunnel.
Darkscape... didn't read the description, so I went there earlier. I had only one fully functional weapon, an mp5. There was a controller in the forest that massacred everything around it, and got killed. So I continued on. There was ANOTHER controller right near the end. I had almost figured out armor repair modules... and had encountered two controllers. So basically, I love Darkscape for being the place that completely screws you up if you fail to actually learn the lore and read the guide. It's a dumb-noob-mistake punishment zone. I think that's its niche.
Imo Limansk is easily s tier. In gamma this is the best way to grind gear. In efp army warehouses have a LOT of stashes, so in this mod that is best place to make money early. For me swamps are A tier for looting mutants, darkscape is c tho, because of travel time. Red forest is my least go to zones, because of shitty visibilisty and sinners. Monolithians are ok to deal, they drop like normal. Sinners on the other hand have shitty loot and abnormal hp pools.
Army Warehouses is the worst location and needs a rework. It has psy-field everywhere that blocks vision on towers, oversized corpses and cars, a ton of anomalies in what should have been a safe place and a lot of enemies no matter what faction you play as. It should have been a Shadow of Chernobyl version of this location at least.
@@nullmoxy in Gamma if you collect all lab documents, you can figure out the password for the door and go down there. I think it might be bugged, but there 100% is a quest down there which can end multiple ways. I suggest a hard save before entering though :)
Fun fact about Jupiter, theres a decent chance that you find ISG near the Jupiter Underground entrance, in my playthrough ive seen a group of 4-8 almost every time ive been there, even got an nosorog drop, but i got unlucky and it was lost due to my low scav skill..
I just ran through Jupiter to get to Limansk. Had to fight my way through Bandits and ISG to get through the container yard. Also set up close to the Merc base for some spying. Had two ISG walking around outside the door. Jupiter does seem very great about having ISG hanging about. I also like the vast sightlines you get. I’ve sniped more ISG there with little concern just due to being able to see where they hang out from huge distances away
I think the locations rank may also depend on the faction you play. If I'm a merc or ISG probably Dead City is the choice (have main base there, easy to run to Yantar/left regions, Army Warehouse/Red Forest/Radar, Limask/the upper regions) If Bandit or Renegade then Dark Valley (near Garbage/Agroprom, Meadow...right regions) If Freedom and Clear Sky then Army Warehouse (they are ok to each other, right?) If Sin or Monolith then...hard choice but I'd prefer Red Forest to Outskirt. The rest is Rostok (it's like the capital of the Zone) My biggest bonus point to location mainly are accessibility to trader/repairman and how center the place is between other That being said, my current base is at the spacious area left of the train hangar :D not perfect but for now it's there. I actually I would love to know a place that has campfire indoor, a bed, able to save freely so I can do both the crafting and healing, sleeping, sheltering all at the same time. Edit: I think the almost perfect place is the shack in the swamp at Agroprom. Just place the campfire indoor and it's all very good.
One thing about the Sarcophagus, after killing Monolith there, with enough time passed mutants do actually spawn, and worst of all - plenty of Poltergeists which often take a huge chunk of time to reach whilst they're all chugging everything that is on the ground. If anyone is doing an Invictus run or wanting to return for gear, highly recommend avoiding it or at least carrying a lot healing items with you and preferably entering from the northern side
Wild Territory is my favorite map. I love how it looks. The compact and detailed level design make it stand out in that regard. Also it is great for farming mercenaries when you are playing as a loner. Regarding red forest, I have found that if you approach it from the north, it is much easier to fight the monolith and Sin guys as there is much more cover. But the forest itself remains extremely dangerous.
I'd put Wild Territory and Truck Cemetery in A tier (at least for early game if you're set up in Rostok). TC offers a good opportunity to farm mutant parts for fetch quests, spawn decent amount of mutant killing quests, there's almost no stalkers, so no unwanted firefights and you practically always can have high ground against mutants. Invest a bit in rad protection and it'll be your home away from home until you'll be ready to move out to the north. WT is also great place to farm some NATO equipment from mercs, considering there's not a lot of them there and a decent chunk of document quests spawn there, so quick in and out, though you need to be careful about mutants since it's more tightly packed location, but nothing really dangerous, except for bloodsuckers, spawn there so it should be OK.
Most I can agree, but putting Red Forest on same tier as Darkscape? I actually like Red Forest and go there pretty often for both artefacts and Mono/Sin hunt (way better place then shitty Radar that I hate). I like Zaton more then Jupiter, but thats probably cuz I spend a lot of time there in Call of Pripyat (nostalgia). Sarcophagus is full of mutants when you go there again out of boredom after clearing it for main story. Dunno if it was my "luck" but I think I killed like 20 bloodsuckers with 5 of them being on top of the ladder where Mono normally camps and 3 controllers at wish granter room with some zombies and burers.
I tried doing a SIN playthrough on hard and set red forest as my starter location. The second i left the tunnel i was greeted by a chimera that ripped my face off. So, i can definitely agree that red forest is arguably one of the worst starter locations ever, especially as a SIN member. Apart from end-game mutants that constantly roam the area, you have little to no quest givers and the place is a crossroads for almost all factions. I've seen many stalkers coming from all factions wandering around in groups of 3. They also tend to have really good armor, so your shitty starter weapons will barely put a dent on them. After a certain point it becomes a reload the savefile simulator and makes you hate the area.
I was disappointed that CNPP has no other purpose than the main storyline, there is quite some potential. Outskirts could have more quest opportunities, some could lead you to CNPP too. There could be something collectable as a dangerous side quest that will pay you well. And of course finding rare artefacts in some crazy anomalies, there are no opportunities. Finally having a good reason to buy the expensive scientist suits. Also in Agroprom, stalker facility in the north, it looks like there was supposed to be a loner trader, but then there is no trader? that also was a bit disappointing
Great Swamps and Truck Cemetary both at least B Tier. But i'd even dare to say they're A Tier. They're the most climatic locations in the entire game. Wild Territory belongs in D at most, it's the same level of annoyance as Darkscape but unavoidable and with buildings and dangers (a.k.a. an annoying road between two actual locations), as soon as you get the info with a passage from Wild Territory to Garbage i pick that route, it's faster even with the fact that i exchange 2 loading screens for 3 loading screens. Because then i only spend like 20 meters in Wild Territory. Yantar could get to B tier it has scientists and also is very climatic. And inside Yantar there's a better and smaller version of Wild Territory, and this one is actually fun. None of the labs should go out of D Tier period, they're just quest locations with poltergeists, burers and snorks. I wish there was a way to drop Red Forest to even lower tier but unfortunately the list ends on F.
Garbage for some reason for me has this trouble where the only big vendor there dies at some point and all the stuff he sells disappears with him too. And the only other vendor in Cordon too. I’ve had that happen to me twice in my Anomaly runs and it bugs me how useless Cordon and Garbage becomes location wise just for basic restock.
I can't stand Radar. Whenever I go there I ALWAYS have to deal with 2 or 3 high tier mutants at a time and ALWAYS a emission when you make it about half way across so your forced to run to the little hidey room only for the monolith cheese there way inside through the floor. Love it.
Red Forest is amazing. There are dangerous mutants for quests/cooking/selling parts, reliable Sin and Monolith, and an absolute fuck ton of artifacts in my experience.
I haven't been everywhere yet, but I have to disagree on Darkscape and Great Swamps. Both may not be the best places which is true, but both are home to high amounts of mutants, which isn't really a negative, Great swamps is also even better since it has a high chance to spawn 1 blood sucker at the Agroprom exit. Usually its almost always there, more so if you do clear sky's quest. Darkscape can be a LONG journey but it can be a good way to get mutant parts if your friends with loners, furthermore at night Darkscape can spawn a lot of higher tier mutants so its a good early place to farm them.
Every S tier location is cozy for Loner Stalkers and Ecologists. I'm trying to get a small base built in each one. But EFP is making progress slow hahaha
@@moyu1616 It's imposible to kill Doctor. Or it was changed to be this way in Warfare Overhaul which makes sense. I'll try killing him with a debug command.
@@karpai5427 In CoC there was another storyline called mistery of the zone in which you will have to talk to doctor and he will give you a key and a note, try to get the key in debug mode, it should start the questline.
Well, i tried but still couldn't open the freakin door. You can try open it by throw your gun into the door, it will slowly open but be careful, the door might crush you
I think you rating some of them so poorly based on difficulty is kinda ehh, places like Red Forest are easily S-tier BECAUSE of the difficulty and atmosphere as well as unpredictability, but everyone's got a different approach I guess. In general this list will obviously change depending on which faction you start as
