Why the average STALKER has better gear than you would expect! 

The only thing I'll add before watching is that practically ALL the people I saw in costumes from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were clean, practically as if they were taken out of the package. Weapons- I understand perfectly well that they must be clean and well-groomed. But the uniform should bear traces of abrasion and at least traces of dirt.

Best solution? Take your equipmemt into the 5 day hike into the forest etc, dont clean it and boom, you got authentic look of used equipment, + keep it in eastern 2018'ish theme and the cosplay will be almost perfect

Subject of hygiene in the Zone is something that was always interesting to me because theres 0 lore about it. Hygiene in the Zone would be absolutely horrific tbh. Most stalkers probably don't even bathe. Diseases such as trench foot, jock itch and fungel likely are common. Although I can see scenario of stalkers using a lot of wet wipes and stick deodorants to clean themselves up a bit. Sid and other traders should absolutely be able to provide stalkers with things such as toilet paper etc. Rookies also might bring a soap or two, and then slice it into tiny cubes and sell it to stalkers for huge sum. Weird thing is that all NPCs have a very clear uniforms. It makes sense for scientists to have clear clothes and have functioning showers, perhaps military as well but literally all NPCs having such clear uniforms does seem like something thats just done for gamepay reasons.

Yeah, I mean the suits shouldn't be that clean, but at the same time, most fuckers would like to keep their suits cleans of dirt due to the radiation

The kind of unfortunate/important truth I think about Stalker style kit is that most civilians can get perfectly serviceable and new weapons easier than you can find old and rusted stuff. Like, classic WW2 firearms and old rusted AK-47s/AKMs are probably harder/more rare than fresh hunting firearms (Civilian AKs like VPO, TOZs, etc..). What I mean, is that rookie is far more likely to be running a brand new PM/Shotgun, civilian AK, or an AK-74/AKM someone pawned off from storage than a lot of the Mad Max guns you see people running. Either way, good video and good point!

Maybe stalkers understand that clean guns are necessary in a dirty battleground

Can´t remember a single working washing machine in the Zone! ;D

Regarding the supplies brought into the Zone in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. story, there's another explanation: that stalking is actually a semi-tolerated illegal activity. The outside world needs the unique workforce of stalkers to transport materials, artifacts, and intelligence out of the Zone. Therefore, a certain level of supplies flowing in is also tacitly allowed, while personnel, materials, artifacts, and intelligence are tightly controlled. This could also explain Strelok’s motivation to eventually voluntarily contact the military.

I hate the gamer trope of rusty guns, it is sign of ignorance

Games like fallout and metro do have a messy, maybe kit-bashed look to them but the STALKER series is modern day, where everything is normal other than where you are.

The ISG are mentioned in clear sky and call of pripyat (if you choose to interpret the "UN researchers" and "UN observers" stated in these unique dialogues as ISG and not something else)

Yes as it's mentioned in the books, there are showers in Rostok, in a scientist city and of course at the power plant monolith base :D

The thing I always never understood is why rookie stalkers didn’t bring in lots of their own kit. Even if I was a loner and I went into the zone I’d have snuck in with night vision, extra batteries, a solid rifle I smuggled through Ukraine and a crap ton of ammo for it. I’d probably be a merc though…

Great video! As a STALKER costume maker myself, I really appreciate the effort you've put into comparing the factions abilities to obtain and maintain gear, as well as the hypothetical conditions in which that gear will be used in the Zone. I use that thought process as well when designing STALKER costumes.

12:51 In ShoC, most soldiers are poorly equipped for fighting mutants. In some versions of Oblivion Lost, there'd sometimes be Spesnaz troopers equipped with Saiga 12s. They could be contenders against monsters. 14:51 In Oblivion Lost, if you became an ecologist, it would also make you friends with both Freedom and Duty. 14:59 Probably working for the scientists first, then doing monster hunting missions for anyone who needs that sort of thing done (but mostly to satisfy my own thrill-seeking safari-hunting desires of demented do0m). 15:11 I want to play as a FLESHPIG! 🤣

I guess if you wear your regular clothes and a ski mask you can join the bandit group

I really like your arguments and find the convincing... When making my model pack i thought many logical scenarios like; Renegades being unkept and dirty bc of they mostly roam the swamp and don't have good relations with other factions Duty and the military having mostly standardized gear Loners and bandits having mixed gear. I made tons of different models to emphasize their individuality while being recognizable by colors and specific gear

I'd argue the military shouldn't have high grade gear out in the starter areas, round the cordon and around the edges of the zone due to extended deployment. Tussles are not common unless you got a chosen-one bastard like strelok deciding randomly he wants those god damn documents from the checkpoint guard. Good quality gear would be wasted on guard duty. I think I heard this quote in media so I ain't 100% how true it is for militaries around the world but "I can always trust my life and rest assured that the equipment I am using has been made by the lowest bidder", particularly this is eastern Europe, so its not a stretch to say a lot of this gear would be very *old* and maybe even in service since the soviet union years. That is to say, it depends, later on you face spetznaz with much higher quality gear, but never exosuits. Duty is very by-the-books in their behaviour, so you are 100% correct, they are on par with freedom in terms of hear availability, but their condition would be much better simply because of the discipline that likely translates into much better maintained, oiled, cleaned, glued, taped and sewn equipment alike, then their freedom counterpart. They'd also likely smell less like pot smoke. Hygene is a big issue, toiletries are cheap but bulky, so they'd be one of the last traded items into the zone simply because its not profitable. Traders pay big money for anything to be smuggled under the military's noses, or pay extra in bribes to get it across with no issues. Thing is, people don't WANT to smell, if your cleaning's good, you feel good, if you feel good, you perform good. If you perform good, you might not die. In a place like the zone, I expect there to be rudimentary ways of keeping clean. It rains every other day in the zone, so collecting "clean" water to wash yourself or your underwear shouldn't be too difficult as long as you got a container sitting under a gutter for long enough. Things like deodorant, rubbing alcohol, or anything to make you feel minty fresh will be fuckin scarce, and restricted to the stalkers with the money to spend. The rest of us? zone is filled with mutants, got boars, got mutated pigs. Render some fat, gather ash. God knows theres a lotta campfires around the zone. Now you can make lye solution and homemade soap. Stalkers are a hardy bunch, many of em may be from the rural areas and know how to do this shite. It only takes 1 guy to know how to do it before everyone copies him. It wont make you smell good, but you'll be clean, and that's what matters. In a place like the zone, where you'll routinely get into gunfights, scraps with mutants, scratches, bites are almost a daily problem. What irony is it to survive a gunfight only to die weeks later from an infected dog bite? Their snouts aren't clean, they eat stalker corpses and fuckin.. squirrels or whatever the hell they eat- you don't want that bacteria already, and there's so much peroxide and alcohol to disinfect yourself with before you run outta cash. You don't want dirty clothes, dirty fingers and dirty skin to be a problem on top of your already present worry of dying of sepsis. I liken the zone to prisons a lot, in prisons you can get by real nicely just by being smart. There's guy's who do tattoos in there, guys who flip drugs or ciggies or trade porn, or draw porn, or melt candy and ramen noodles to make rudimentary cakes and candy sweets. If there's a way to make money in the zone without putting your life on the line, and I imagine something as simple as making soap, or washing clothes, or cutting stalker's hair, or cleaning bases and the camps, or cooking all the mutant meat everyone brings in. They are time consuming tasks with a low risk, just need to put your pride aside get down to do it, cuz it needs to be done. Who's to say a stalker who's recovering from wounds wouldn't do this stuff? not like they'll sit in bed all day playing snake on their pdas, or messaging their wives, or jacking it, or cleaning guns or staring at cracked drywall, they still need to eat everyday, and if doing those less heroic tasks all but ensures you wont be bleeding money while you bleed blood in the hospital bed, they'll fuckin do it, cuz they need to. lotta questions can be answered just by applying logic, and a little fanfiction and creativity on part of the player. That's my personal headcannon on what the zone is to me.

People often forget that the world outside of the zone is fine and probably more advanced than ours thanks to the artifacts. Merchants like sidorovich, and factions like duty and freedom are known to have smugglers constantly bringing in new stuff for their stalkers, and the mercenaries/military have official avenues of getting new kit in. Even monolith is running gucci'd out custom F2000's with grenade launchers.

Next time I'm raiding Pripyat I want to see a Monolith soldier just sitting there and doing laundry. Also I want my gear to look like I just walked out of a snork nest. Hate those guys

Those stalkers who have their equipment in a poor state, don’t live to long

4:08 Gamma would like to disagree. According to them every stalker's gun is held together by duct tape, superglue and hopes and dreams. At least when I loot it that is.

Ah the classic case of Normies flooding a niche fandom and ruining it

not exactly from OG trilogy but after finishing call of chernobyl in complitely modified freedom exoskeleton with torn off patch i can say with utmost confidence that veteran stalker will either have a suit that shows all the fixed wear and tear or be changing suits frequently as per gear i'm sure nobody who gets out of cordon village will stay with leather jacket and makarov anybody shows up in madmax outfit they better have a awesome story how they survived in limansk for a month constantly fighting monolith, mercs and mutants because nobody and i mean NOBODY walks around like a stitched up hobo

Everybody has good gear when there's lots of bodies to pick up stuff off of, right?

duuuuuuuuuuude, i always see you around doing cosplay in the GSC posts, didn't knew you had a youtube chanel, awesome work¡

Roadside picnic is a super interesting book

I REMEMBER YOU, TOOK PICTURES WITH YOU BACK IN GAMESCOM 2023, I WAS THE ONE US MARINE COSPLAYER

I feel like absolutely tattered armor and gear makes the most sense when you're either going for a post-ShOC Monolith fighter or someone who just came back from a long raid into the heart of the Zone, and in the latter case it would help to have a few artifacts hanging from your belt with LEDs in them or something. It could also make sense if you're cosplaying as a snork or a zombie, but I don't know if anyone cosplays as snorks or zombies. EDIT: As far as cut content groups go, I feel like while all the people who get into the series through Anomaly (or similar standalone mods) will have their own opinion on the matter, I don't think it's really worth trying to present a costume inspired by them as being from a particular faction, because most STALKER fans won't recognize whatever it is. ISG and Sin are cut content for the simple reason that they were too similar to groups that already existed and were no longer needed for the lore or the gameplay. As an example of what I mean, Renegades only even still exist because of a gameplay caveat in Clear Sky where a relatively non-threatening always-hostile human enemy had to be present for combat and Faction War tutorials without locking the player out of interacting with a more nuanced (but still dickish) Bandit faction. Sin was just Monolith with a decidedly more Orthodox edge before Anomaly turned them into the lovable superpowered radioactive Lost Boys we know and love. The ISG were just another flavor of Ecologists, but then they were scrapped because...well, we have Ecologists already, and they're implied to come from all over the world because the whole world benefits from discoveries made in the Zone or for the simple fact that they used to work there prior to the 2006 disaster. As far as the new game goes, I cannot wait to see what cosplayers come out with inspired by the new factions and characters.

I don't know, but I think the reason why most of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R weapons and equipment are not metal fossils is because the world outside the zone is fine. There was no war or catastrophe that led humanity to the extension, the zone is just a miniature apocalypse within a certain area in Eastern Europe, the weapons come from the black market, soviet armories, and even local manufacturing (gauss rifle). I don't know if I'm right or wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just my opinion.

Long Answer: This video Short Answer: Free dry cleaning in the bloodsucker village(100% real no clickbait)

6:00 not to mention thrown together shit don't do that great of a job at protecting against radiation.

I wholeheartedly agree, never liked both pristine, and on the other side of the spectrum, the weird madmax post-apo stylizations. I'm in the process of building a Clear Sky costume myself and dirt and grime is on the top of my list to achieve, but simultaneously, not doing some spiky, rusted and delapidated weirdness. Though it has to be said, that different factions would typically be able to maintain a different standard of upkeep (like you say, Mercs for example wouldn't look out of place in modern military gear with minimal wear, but Bandits would not). But in general I'd echo what you say here without any amendments.

Nothing to be aware of especially with this type of gear and some of the things you're going for UP against in the zone, having a neutral or natural smell might actually be a bit of a benefit in masking your presence.

I would say that the Renegades would have even worse weapons and gear than the Bandits, because the Renegades are rejects from all other factions, including the Bandits that barely tolerate them and they don't have any access to facilities to maintain their weapons and gear, and they don't have an easy time trading with the outside world. In mods like Anomaly and its derivatives, Renegades have access to the Bandit base in Dark Valley, but they are rarely spotted hanging out there. I would rate them as scraping the bottom of the barrel. From those that have access to the best gear and weapons, I would rank the UNISG as top of the line, since their gear is internationally sourced and they would have unrestricted access to it. They are funded by the UN, so that's multiple governments probably the US, UK and other major rich countries. The Monolith would come in second, since they are the only faction that wasn't cut to have the best gear and weapons. They do so, because usually those stalkers that head north into the Zone usually are the ones that have gathered the best weapons and equipment, but they fall victims to the Brain Scorcher and they get brainwashed into Monolithians or Zombies. The C-Consciousness probably confiscates and redistributes weapons and equipment from captured stalkers. Speaking of the C-Consciousness, they probably have contact to corrupt government officials, since those that compose the C-Consciousness worked for the government themselves before the creation of the Zone, so they might get supplied this way, or alternatively, they may have some private benefactors that we don't know about yet, or even better, they access the bank accounts of all the stalkers they've captured and use their money and names to buy weapons and gear that is then smuggled into the Zone. The Mercenaries would come third, only because they are a private organisation, probably owned by some oligarch and they would also get the best weapons and equipment from the international markets that their benefactor can afford. The difference between these three factions is a matter of which one you believe would have the best funding. After that come the Ecologists and the Military, which are both funded by the Ukrainian government. The Military would have worse protective gear than the Ecologists, since their tasks are more combat oriented, so they get more battered, and their high ranking officials control the Zone's outer perimeter and are known to be very corrupt, so they steal the good equipment and sell it for profit to traders from other factions. However, they would have better weapons than the Ecologists, since they are the Military. Duty and Freedom are kind of difficult to rate. Some members are shown to have better gear than the Military, others have worse, so it depends on their rank within the organisation. In terms of funding, they are only funded by their members, so that's not great when compared to the other factions. On average, accounting for factors such as lack of discipline and lack of funding and corruption, Duty and Freedom would be worse off than the Military. After that comes Clear Sky, which is weak at the start of Stalker: Clear Sky, but becomes stronger by the end of the game, so much so that they launch an offensive towards the center of the Zone, which fails and the faction is almost completely destroyed, save for the technician Novikov who appears in Call of Pripyat. They don't appear to be funded by anyone other than their members and they really struggled with the renegades at the beginning of Stalker: Clear Sky. Also, they inhabit the Swamp, which is a very hostile environment for firearms, so their guns would be on par with those of the renegades, maybe slightly better since Clear Sky has a technician. Clear Sky is probably the weakest of the organised factions. Loners can be all over the spectrum in terms of the quality of their weapons and gear, ranging from the best gear that they have looted off of some UNISG/Monolith corpse to scraping the bottom of the barrel, but they would still be better than Bandits and Renegades, since they would have access to facilities to maintain their weapons and armor. You didn't mention Sin, a faction that appears in the most popular mods nowadays. I think they are probably on par with the Monolith, but maybe slightly worse, since they recruitment is based on a person believing their religion, rather than on a brainwashing machine.

Broke stalkers and bandits using temu/wish/airsoft gear makes sense. Cheap leaf suits and knockoff multicam polar fleece are effective and cheap combined with hunting bandoliers and civilian firearm would be an easy starter set for a fresh mutant hunter.

Another great video my friend! I will take it in consideration for my "cosplay" if go to BGS to play the demo there.

Exoskeleton Bandits when

There's weathering and there's neglect. Any weapon will get scratches and marks from constant field use. Uniforms and armor are supposed to be well maintained and replaced if damaged. Especially in a radioactive environment. For anyone that's ever served in a military, the thought of wearing a dirty uniform is as bad as losing your issued firearm.

Well my cosplay for stalker is doing it like it hapend irl. Like for loner i use what you could found in eastern Europa military surplus like some old uniforms like kzs klmk or like afganka, gorka or obr 93 and using body armor like 6b2 6b3 and stuff like that

Duty do need showers. Where else would they drop the soap?

I seriously suspect that those who always emphasize 'this is the ragged clothes and rusty guns people of xx time and xx place should be using, shooting bullets from their eyes,' never learned how to maintain their own bicycles when they were young... And this is also a bias and misunderstanding of the post-apocalyptic genre, which is becoming increasingly extreme due to competition among different groups caused by the lack of works based on this theme. The concept of 'post-apocalypse' has been continually diluted by social media's pursuit of attention, while some highly stylized designs are being portrayed as 'how people should look when they face a little problem - this is absolutely realistic.' This kind of bias and misunderstanding of the post-apocalyptic genre often becomes frustrating when explaining to newcomers that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is not post-apocalyptic, not Escape from Tarkov, not Metro Exodus, and that Metro Exodus and the Metro 2033 Redux version differ in style and settings from Metro: Last Light, the original Metro 2033, and even the Metro trilogy novels.

with my ufpro mercenary cosplay im out, its to clean xD

To be honest, I do prefer Roadside Picnic or the movie's vision of The Excluded Zone and overall relation with The Big World instead of "tacticool" games' Zone - especially Clear Sky shows absurdity of it. You know, stalker who ventures the Zone with his own load of troubles, treverses alien yet familiar places which expulse everything that breathes and is more willing to talk than exchange lead in such place is far more intresting than some dudes armed to the teeth strolling through barbed-wire labirynth in some kind of sick entertainment center. Well, I don't say that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. isn't fit for that or isn't doing it - lemme say that more often than not I am seeing "amazing" assaults and skirmishes instead of ambience, slight horror, melancholy and nostalgia covering a good story of human's efforts, troubles and endeavors. I might be wrong, but it also might be that I've only met people who are seeing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s universe as only "shoot-shoot, bang-bang" type of deal. Kinda similar to how cyberpunk became an action movie setting instead of reflective reading. After Cyberpunk 2077 I hope that I am wrong, yet I cannot say otherwise - cyberpunk is "cool visual overlay" of merchandise nowdays. And thus I hope that stalker 2 will avoid such fate.

Interesting! I like the shots of the different various factions. Some had odd femine walking animations though, were they on the fashion walk?😂 I would say The Renegades would rank lower as they're less organized than the Bandits, plus the environment of the Swamp would degrade their gear even further. The ecologists suits should be of much higher standard but in terms of anomalous protection instead of combative protection. Maybe another two axis in the graph could show that. Still, cool video! I think it would help cosplayers a lot!

It´s 2000s ukraine. Every last piece of soviet and even ukrainian kit is available to stalkers even before they ever enter the zone. It´s just a question of money. Proper suits will probably be send to the in zone traders offcourse but even those are mostly just a lower layer of chemical/radiation protection and a top layer of combat gear like a plate carrier with pouches. Your basic bitch rookie or bandit probably runs into the zone with a backpack, his jacket and grandpas WW2 pistol/rifle/shotgun or whatever else he managed to sneak in. But anyone with a bit of thought and preparation into this new life could enter the cordon kitted as if he was going on combat patrol in afghanistan with not mutch more effort than it took to get into the zone. Little reason to DIY

there is S.T.A.L.K.E.R anomaly

Great video!

Thanks for the video, quick question: where can we get a stalker costume like the one you are wearing? Please reply

you look like you need protein and gym than basic stalker gear

I imagine the freedom lot absolutely stink

I didn't know that there were books what are they?

Yea it’s all soviet tho