I’ve been seeing your content a lot more lately now that I’m getting into the end-game of Stalker 2. Never played a Stalker title before and as I played blind, now I like to be informed and analytic with my loadout and hear now that things are opening up and that I’ll be moving to a Veteran playthrough soon. Love your details and practical application to the game and the data you provide
Thanks m8, I have basic armor guide coming out tomorrow, it is the basic guide but I go over armor classes/use cases and some ways to save money on repair costs (all your money)
For for artifacts it goes like this: weak = 1 medium = 2 strong = 3 maximum = 6 All Resistances (except for radiation) add to the protection value of your armor with their corresponding number equating to a bars worth of protection. Resistance has a cap however at 5 bars worth (you can test this with grenades). If you are using an armor set that gives you 4 bars worth of physical protection then a weak artifact will give you the same physical protection that the compass's maximum protection would. Now because armor will get damaged and loose it's protection rating getting one that puts you over insures you are always max protected. instead of the compass I would recommend the artifact that gives both medium endurance and physical protection. unlike resistances the endurance has no cap. also carry weight does have a cap to at 140 kg.
Does endurance artifacts stack? I have a thunderberry which is probably my favourite one by far since running around the map is a core aspect of the gameplay.
Endurance does have a cap at approximately 12-14. Try stacking 3 Thunderberries & you'll notice there's basically no noticeable diff from 2 of those stacked.
@Krenisphia I believe the absolute best is 2 Thunderberries + something with Weak/Medium endurance, but I don't think it's even necessary when you also need to take care of weights, physical protection & rads from both. So I'd say 2 Thunderberries is the most optimal set for endurance 👌🏻
Running two maximum or four strong artifacts is the hard cap for each type. Weird water can sustain four maximum radiation artifacts without any led containers and make you immune to radiation, not counting instant death irradiated areas. Also can easily reach the carry weight cap. It is super broken atm, needs some balancing or buffs for other artifacts.
Your vids are good, found your armor guide the same day I realized I need to just start subbing out armor at low durability since was too expensive to fix and was just going broke
Resistances are capped at 90% except radiation with 85%. Max carryweight is capped at 140 kg. Stamina regen at 30. Your armor is part of the calculation and the bars in the ui are the cap. Each level of a artifact equals one full bar in your armor stat. weak 1, medium 2, strong 3, maximum 4 I guess your Falcon is upgraded to maximum physical resistance? Yeah, a compass is wasted here.
1 Compass and 1 Weird Water has you pretty much set to use whatever armor you want to wear. Honestly with how irrelevant Rad Protection and Physical Protection is with those two the only stat that matters in armor is Psi Protection, add a Hypercube if you want to ignore bleeding and the mandatory Thunderberry to assist on the core gameplay (running) and carry a few weight increase artifacts with you. Anomalous protection becomes very situational when you eventually get a Veles detector allowing you to avoid most anomaly damage, and there's only a couple few POI's with fixed elemental damage. I would only worry about it if you go artifact hunting, and you might as well ignore it since chem damage and burn damage is low while Electro anomalies will always take you to critical health no matter how much protection you have. It's weird how Weird Water and Compass are so overwhelmingly strong they pretty much invalidate the entire armor system, while the rest of the artifacts are different amounts of OK excluding Night Stars and your first two Thunderberries. I think a good part of it is how exceedingly superior an artifact with a "Maximum" stat is over the rest of its kind, lead containers and Weird Water then invalidating the downside of the heavy Radiation it would otherwise inflict. No room to use the artifacts with double "Medium" stats or just "Strong".
My question is... do the same artifact stack? Imagine you found 3 Compass (I did), it has maximum physical protection but also maximum rad so equiping them without any radiation protecting artifact or lead container will result in death.
I would say yes, on one char I also got 3, I mainly use 1 Hypercube, 3x Compass, and 1 Molten Rock in the diamond exo and this char feels better protected than my 2nd and 3rd char with only 1 Conpass atm.
You can’t go over the physical protection cap on armor, so even if your armor was fully broken 1 compass is all you need, but they do stack overall so if you had 2 weak protections they would both count as far as I know
pointless, you would get 4 + 6 + 6 + 6 bar worth of physical protection which would be useless considering it caps at 5 bars for 90% dmg reduction, better stack thunderberries because endurance has no cap, and an hypercube or liquid rock, considering an upgraded diamond exo gives you weigth cap of 140, you only need to cover all resistances, bleed burn chemical electricity, so the best setup is actually 1 hypercube, 1 liquid rock 1 glare, and 2 thunderberries, because the downside of the weird bolt is too strong, and relying on emission to recharge it is too random. And if you want to stay efficient even with damaged gear, replace 1 thunderberry by a compass, the compass alone gives you dmg res cap. Also some testing suggest that weird ball dmg reduction from bullets while standing still actually are additive, not multiplicative which would be insane if it allowed to go beyond the cap, but it doesn't. It still locks out at 90%
Maybe, I haven't gotten into extensive testing yet, I am almost done collecting a ton of these things to start doing damage tests vs mutants/enemies with predictable damage attacks.
No, because 1 compass is enough to pretty much push any armor into the hard cap for physical protection. You can test this by throwing grenades at your feet and standing on top of it. The lost health shows it pretty accuratly.
btw sad they ruined the compass. it was better in call of prypjat with all around anomaly protection. the desciption makes a lot more sense like this as well.
literally just weird water into every build and keep stacking them thunderberries buddy boyos!!! maybe at point of no return add 2x compass and a hypercube into the mix
no need for weird water, the moment you get a diamond exo, the exo will give you 140 weight ( the cap ) without the drunk downside, plus the max radiation protection isn't worth it with 4 lead slot.
@@ts6603 it seems that you are right, it looks like that i'm the victim of a bug, my carry weight is stuck at 140, i've been running weird water for almost the entire game, and now even when removing my exo suit that still gives a 25.6 kg bonus that is not negligible , i'm still stuck at the carry cap. From what i could gather, it seems that the "carry capacity" upgrade is not tied to a piece of armor, but will impact your character even when stashed away, so you can actually upgrade other pieces of armor of lower tiers, and you will reach the cap even with nothing actually equipped, i hope they patch it. So don't upgrades multiple armors is my recommandation, else you will trivialise the carry capacity system.
As much as I love the game, the artifacts are a bit meh, especially with Weird Water being a thing. Towards the end game everyone runs the same stuff. Hopefully we'll get some balance done to artifacts and stat system in general. Obviously this is not a priority but maybe in a year or so. Or maybe someone comes up with a mod to do exactly this.
the weird ball actually does have a negative effect it gets progressively heavier the more bullet damage you take it only goes upto around 5KG, and it slowly gets lighter again in time, so it’s not that big of a deal but still it’s a thing
I’ve been seeing your content a lot more lately now that I’m getting into the end-game of Stalker 2. Never played a Stalker title before and as I played blind, now I like to be informed and analytic with my loadout and hear now that things are opening up and that I’ll be moving to a Veteran playthrough soon. Love your details and practical application to the game and the data you provide
Thanks m8, I have basic armor guide coming out tomorrow, it is the basic guide but I go over armor classes/use cases and some ways to save money on repair costs (all your money)
For for artifacts it goes like this:
weak = 1
medium = 2
strong = 3
maximum = 6
All Resistances (except for radiation) add to the protection value of your armor with their corresponding number equating to a bars worth of protection.
Resistance has a cap however at 5 bars worth (you can test this with grenades).
If you are using an armor set that gives you 4 bars worth of physical protection then a weak artifact will give you the same physical protection that the compass's maximum protection would. Now because armor will get damaged and loose it's protection rating getting one that puts you over insures you are always max protected.
instead of the compass I would recommend the artifact that gives both medium endurance and physical protection. unlike resistances the endurance has no cap.
also carry weight does have a cap to at 140 kg.
Does endurance artifacts stack? I have a thunderberry which is probably my favourite one by far since running around the map is a core aspect of the gameplay.
@@Krenisphia Yes! They do stack!
Endurance does have a cap at approximately 12-14. Try stacking 3 Thunderberries & you'll notice there's basically no noticeable diff from 2 of those stacked.
@@F1stzz So is 2 Thunderberries the absolute best you can possibly do for stamina?
@Krenisphia I believe the absolute best is 2 Thunderberries + something with Weak/Medium endurance, but I don't think it's even necessary when you also need to take care of weights, physical protection & rads from both. So I'd say 2 Thunderberries is the most optimal set for endurance 👌🏻
Running two maximum or four strong artifacts is the hard cap for each type. Weird water can sustain four maximum radiation artifacts without any led containers and make you immune to radiation, not counting instant death irradiated areas. Also can easily reach the carry weight cap. It is super broken atm, needs some balancing or buffs for other artifacts.
Your vids are good, found your armor guide the same day I realized I need to just start subbing out armor at low durability since was too expensive to fix and was just going broke
Resistances are capped at 90% except radiation with 85%.
Max carryweight is capped at 140 kg.
Stamina regen at 30.
Your armor is part of the calculation and the bars in the ui are the cap.
Each level of a artifact equals one full bar in your armor stat.
weak 1, medium 2, strong 3, maximum 4
I guess your Falcon is upgraded to maximum physical resistance? Yeah, a compass is wasted here.
Maximum is 6. Since it can negate 2 strongs.
You forgetting he is wearing falcon armor, which has decent radiation protection (around 2,5 bars fully upgraded). 2,5+4=???
@@SHOKKERZ91IHDI hes talking about weak 1, medium 2, strong 3. maximum 6
@@SHOKKERZ91IHDI yes the maximum stats are 5 but the maximum relics give 6 bars
I would love to know whos right??
1 Compass and 1 Weird Water has you pretty much set to use whatever armor you want to wear. Honestly with how irrelevant Rad Protection and Physical Protection is with those two the only stat that matters in armor is Psi Protection, add a Hypercube if you want to ignore bleeding and the mandatory Thunderberry to assist on the core gameplay (running) and carry a few weight increase artifacts with you.
Anomalous protection becomes very situational when you eventually get a Veles detector allowing you to avoid most anomaly damage, and there's only a couple few POI's with fixed elemental damage. I would only worry about it if you go artifact hunting, and you might as well ignore it since chem damage and burn damage is low while Electro anomalies will always take you to critical health no matter how much protection you have.
It's weird how Weird Water and Compass are so overwhelmingly strong they pretty much invalidate the entire armor system, while the rest of the artifacts are different amounts of OK excluding Night Stars and your first two Thunderberries. I think a good part of it is how exceedingly superior an artifact with a "Maximum" stat is over the rest of its kind, lead containers and Weird Water then invalidating the downside of the heavy Radiation it would otherwise inflict. No room to use the artifacts with double "Medium" stats or just "Strong".
I had one artefact with max bleed resistance, it healed bleeding witin 5-10 second.
sounds slow. i think hypercube coagulates blood faster. not sure if weird nut is better or worse though
I didn’t know you could get multiple weird ball
I got a second one and sold it assuming they respawned and thought it was a bug when it didnt respawn so idk if its a bug or not
Free money for your lesser zone artifact runs jajajajaja
@@IcedCoffeeGaming ive visited multiple times but it never respawns, is there a trick to it?
My question is... do the same artifact stack?
Imagine you found 3 Compass (I did), it has maximum physical protection but also maximum rad so equiping them without any radiation protecting artifact or lead container will result in death.
I would say yes, on one char I also got 3, I mainly use 1 Hypercube, 3x Compass, and 1 Molten Rock in the diamond exo and this char feels better protected than my 2nd and 3rd char with only 1 Conpass atm.
You can’t go over the physical protection cap on armor, so even if your armor was fully broken 1 compass is all you need, but they do stack overall so if you had 2 weak protections they would both count as far as I know
Monolith exoskeleton, three compasses, a weird ball and a weird nut. Be happy 😊
pointless, you would get 4 + 6 + 6 + 6 bar worth of physical protection which would be useless considering it caps at 5 bars for 90% dmg reduction, better stack thunderberries because endurance has no cap, and an hypercube or liquid rock, considering an upgraded diamond exo gives you weigth cap of 140, you only need to cover all resistances, bleed burn chemical electricity, so the best setup is actually 1 hypercube, 1 liquid rock 1 glare, and 2 thunderberries, because the downside of the weird bolt is too strong, and relying on emission to recharge it is too random. And if you want to stay efficient even with damaged gear, replace 1 thunderberry by a compass, the compass alone gives you dmg res cap.
Also some testing suggest that weird ball dmg reduction from bullets while standing still actually are additive, not multiplicative which would be insane if it allowed to go beyond the cap, but it doesn't. It still locks out at 90%
do multiple compass stack their physical resistance effect?
Maybe, I haven't gotten into extensive testing yet, I am almost done collecting a ton of these things to start doing damage tests vs mutants/enemies with predictable damage attacks.
yes but not proportional i guess. thunderberry does stack for sure
No, because 1 compass is enough to pretty much push any armor into the hard cap for physical protection. You can test this by throwing grenades at your feet and standing on top of it. The lost health shows it pretty accuratly.
btw sad they ruined the compass. it was better in call of prypjat with all around anomaly protection. the desciption makes a lot more sense like this as well.
literally just weird water into every build and keep stacking them thunderberries buddy boyos!!!
maybe at point of no return add 2x compass and a hypercube into the mix
no need for weird water, the moment you get a diamond exo, the exo will give you 140 weight ( the cap ) without the drunk downside, plus the max radiation protection isn't worth it with 4 lead slot.
@@MrDrekki its not giving 140 weight cap without any weight artifacts wtf are you talking about?
@@ts6603 it seems that you are right, it looks like that i'm the victim of a bug, my carry weight is stuck at 140, i've been running weird water for almost the entire game, and now even when removing my exo suit that still gives a 25.6 kg bonus that is not negligible , i'm still stuck at the carry cap. From what i could gather, it seems that the "carry capacity" upgrade is not tied to a piece of armor, but will impact your character even when stashed away, so you can actually upgrade other pieces of armor of lower tiers, and you will reach the cap even with nothing actually equipped, i hope they patch it. So don't upgrades multiple armors is my recommandation, else you will trivialise the carry capacity system.
As much as I love the game, the artifacts are a bit meh, especially with Weird Water being a thing. Towards the end game everyone runs the same stuff. Hopefully we'll get some balance done to artifacts and stat system in general. Obviously this is not a priority but maybe in a year or so. Or maybe someone comes up with a mod to do exactly this.
that's how end game artifacts work, you sell everything but the best
the weird ball actually does have a negative effect
it gets progressively heavier the more bullet damage you take
it only goes upto around 5KG, and it slowly gets lighter again in time, so it’s not that big of a deal
but still it’s a thing
1:14
He mentioned that