We start the game in the Antechamber location, in the basement of one of the houses. First, talk to the Guide. Follow him to the passage to the Cordon. Near the checkpoint, the Guide mentions the absence of a sniper on the tower and goes to scout. There are two possible scenarios:
1) wait for his message and go to the checkpoint.
2) follow him until the message appears, but then a helicopter will appear and kill you.
Cordon:
Talk to the Guide, then to the checkpoint commander, Makhalov. If you choose the wrong answer, there will be no further storyline (even if you miraculously survive the shootout). There are still some caches from the original game left at Cordon, so don't forget about them. They'll be very useful at this point in the game. Wooden crates in the bushes to the left of the checkpoint will reward you with PM ammo. The attic of the checkpoint barracks contains canned meat and a pair of indestructible body armor. The attics in the DN contain the Zarya suit and the Stone Flower artwork.
Reach the newbies' village and take Sidor's job to find a supply crate. This shouldn't be a problem (you can approach the crate from the checkpoint, avoiding the boars).
Then Sidor asks you to check the SOS signal. There are two possible outcomes:
1) agree and find the PDA.
2) refuse and walk around the location toward the destroyed bridge. The SOS signal comes in. Continue with step 1, but give the PDA to Wolf (in both cases, there's a pack of dogs at the signal location).
Sidor's next task is to eliminate a merchant (it's best to approach the ATP from the railway embankment):
1) Kill the merchant without harming anyone else and report to Sidor.
2) Kill him, but wound or kill the other mercenaries first, then head back, but the village is attacked by avengers. Kill them, talk to Wolf, then Sidor.
Sidor's final task is to deliver a crate to the Bar. Agree and head to the crossing to the Dump.
Run under the bridge as quickly as possible, because there's radiation.
Upon exiting the Cordon, you can take the quest to eliminate a group of bandits on a farm. This quest is optional, so it's up to you. You won't get anything particularly valuable from them, unless it's for moral satisfaction.
Dump:
There's nothing to do in this location right now. There are no missions, and it's unsafe to wander around without proper gear—anomalies, mutants, radiation—so we quickly run through the Dump to the passage to the Bar.
Bar:
We give the crate to the Bartender, who sends us to Voronin. We speak with the sergeant at the entrance, read the text messages, don't forget to talk to the sergeant again (he's a sociable guy), and then we go face-to-face with Voronin. He gives us the task of finding any information about the murdered debt collector in the Army Warehouses.
Army Warehouses:
We find a corpse by the fence and take his flash drive (it'll be useful later in the game). Max immediately sends a text message. We go to the Freedom base to talk to him. Then we talk to the sniper in the tower. After the conversation, we go look for the PDA cache near the hatch, slightly to the left of the direction the Duty soldiers attacked from in the original game. We receive another text message from Max (oh, those text messages, they're so free to receive). We talk to him again and get the PDA. You can freely wander around the location, collecting loot—except for the bloodsucker, there are no dangerous spots here. The mercenaries at the checkpoint are neutral, they're needed later in the story. The Monolith can't break through the barrier (perhaps a few will still shoot during the next run to the AS).
We return to the Bar: give the PDA to Voronin. You can give him the flash drive if you want, but write down the code from it; it's needed for the story. Next, Voronin sends us to the Dark Valley to help Tkachenko, so we go there.
Dark Valley:
Be sure to speak with the guard at the base entrance, then go to Tkachenko. He doesn't believe in us, so he wants to test us out—he gives us a task to shoot some fleshlings. We go behind the base, to where the ChN was hunting a pseudo-dog, carry out a local genocide on the mutated pigs, and return for a report.
The next task from Tkachenko is diplomatic: Duty wants to take a strategic point—the entrance to the X-18 lab. To do this, we need a deal with Soma's gang. There are two options:
1) You can tell Soma that they've been ordered, and the shooting begins—report to Shulga at the base, attack Borov's gang, then talk to Shulga at the farm.
2) Som asks to negotiate with Borov at the farm. We run to him, and after a short conversation, we follow Borov, but then a mugging occurs. The main thing at this point is to remain calm; the bandits have taken all your belongings, money, etc., so you need to hide in a corner and wait for rescuers. We wait for a short time in captivity, then we see the Dolgovites and Som's gang appear. We talk to Shulga, then to Som, and go to Matushkin. (You'll pick up your things from the second building on the farm.)
Matushkin is waiting near the base. After talking to him (he'll give you a good gun and ammo), we go clear the entrance to X18. It's occupied by snorks, zombies, and bloodsuckers. We need to kill them all, then talk to Matushkin, and go down to X18 to get the documents.
X18:
It's full of zombies, there are burers, overall it's fun. We find the documents, three pieces in total. The first is on the upper level, in the room next to the code door, in the "Kissel" anomaly (or nearby), the rest are downstairs, in the hall with the pseudo-giant and in one of the blue boxes. We return to the Dark Valley, but a surprise awaits at the exit—we hit a mine and teleport to X20.
X20:
There are two options here—either run fast or shoot a lot. For the latter, grab the RMB, ammo, and first aid kits near the barrier, kill everyone and everything (optional). Don't forget to search the rooms—there are lots of artifacts here, which will definitely come in handy after the robbery at the farm.
We find the exit and proceed to the TD, where Voronin meets us, who will clarify the situation with the mine and make an offer we can't refuse.
After talking with Voronin, we go to the investigator at the Duty base in the TD, and after talking to the investigator, we head to the Army Warehouses.
Army Warehouses:
We talk to Max, then to Lukash, he gives us a task about a contract with mercenaries. Here again, there are options:
1) take out all the mercenaries and report to Lukash.
2) talk to the mercenary leader, Rusak, find out what he wants and sign up for the dirty work: we receive the first task, to kill the Master, who is right there, at the AS, on the farm where the Duty soldiers were originally located:
1) kill,
2) talk; report to Rusak.
Now the quest to kill Sparrow: everything is clear here, but the first conversation with Flint in the Wild Territory requires vodka. After you've given Flint everything, simply go to the passage to the Bar and the quest will update. You'll pick up the poison and then go to the Bar to talk to Sparrow.
Killing Chip (Chip will help you later in the story, so it's up to you whether to kill him or not): 1) Go to the Dump, to the hangar, wait for Chip to reach a certain point, then kill him; 2) Talk to him. Report to Rusak.
Report to Lukash, and you'll get your own little house, where you originally killed the informer on Lukash's quest. There's a mattress in the house, so you can now sleep.
We receive a task from Lukash to deliver a crate to Agroprom and deliver it to the observer in the Bar (this is self-explanatory—there will be a short scene that you'll see for yourself. This task is optional and can be declined, but I don't recommend it—the scene is quite rewarding).
Agroprom:
At the Dump, near the crossing to Agroprom, some gangsters may be waiting. Shoot them all and loot the items.
Immediately after the crossing, talk to the guard, then talk to the Shaman at the base. He sends us to the base commander, Tsar, on the third floor of the complex. From the conversation, we learn that Svoboda wants to take control of the Agroprom territory. To do this, we need to eliminate the mutants in certain areas of the ground and strengthen our position there.
We sign up for this hopeless task and head to begin the cleanup. We go to Svoboda member D'Artagnan, who will give us equipment and set the task. While clearing the eastern complex, we search the corpses of the Dolgov soldiers—we need to find two PDAs, otherwise you won't complete the mission. After you've cleared them all out, the passage to the Agroprom dungeons will activate, and we also need to clear them of mutants. As soon as you kill the last mutant, the passage will activate again, meaning it's time to report to the Tsar, hand over the PDAs we found, and complete the mission.
Now, off to the bar to see Voronin; he's been waiting for news. After talking to Voronin, you'll receive a text message from the Tsar—he has the information we need, so we dash out of the bar and run to Agroprom. After talking to the Tsar there, we head to the Scientific Complex.
Scientific Complex:
Upon arrival at the location, speak with the guard, then the Svoboda soldier they've sent to replace him, and then Nekrasov. Nekrasov first sends you to escort Professor Anikin. Anikin is to investigate the changes that have occurred in the mutants over the past week. The objective is to prevent the mutants from escaping at any cost in the event of an emergency.
Finding Anikin isn't easy—the scientist is located underground, the entrance is in the building next to the house where you spoke with Nekrasov. After that, it's a matter of luck—you could wander for a long time... a very long time. When, despite everything, you finally find Anikin and escort him through the complex, Nekrasov will give you a new task: go to X16, where a device that exerts mental influence on mutants was being tested, but the test ended in failure. You need to find and bring back this device.
X16:
It's simple here, not much different from the original—kill the undead, head up to where you disabled the installation, find a bioradar, then head back down, descend to the very bottom, and see a teleporter. Jump in, take the installation, and use the teleporters to return to the Scientific Complex.
Scientific Complex:
Give the device to Nekrasov and receive a new task: the scientists' devices have detected some kind of energy surge near their base. The stalkers near this location say they see nothing, but when they approach, they get headaches. You need to reach this location with your group and guard them while they take measurements. We meet up with a group of scientists, escort them, watch one of the soldiers commit suicide, and then end up in the Dead City.
Dead City:
Upon arrival in the MG, we receive a text message from a group of stalkers, talk to the surviving (briefly) scientist, and set off to find the camp.
In the camp, we talk to the soldier, then to Fang. Fang says we need to disable some kind of psi-installation, otherwise we won't escape the MG. Well, hopeless missions are nothing new, so we gallop toward the city center, the main thing is not to turn into zombies.
In the city center, a timer starts counting down, showing the time until zombification, and the place is also full of zombies (apparently Fang has been here for a long time and has sent many people to disable this psi-machine).
We find the installation in the COOP Torg building. On the second floor, in a room on the right, there will be a switch on the wall; we use it. We get out of the city center as far as possible before the timer runs out and we become completely part of the Zone. We report to Fang, but instead of leading us out of the city, he gives us a new task: find supply caches in the MG. There are detailed descriptions of each cache, so there shouldn't be any problems.
After delivering everything they found to Fang, all the survivors gather to discuss their next steps and decide to leave the MG together. Who do you think played the key role in executing this simple plan? Right, so we head to the center of the MG and, thanks to our natural dexterity, jump through the teleporters and head to the Generators.
Generators:
Upon arrival, we speak with Strelok, who will explain the situation and offer another hopeless task. We agree, receive a silent sniper rifle, and go to war with the Monolith's followers. As we approach the base, we kill the snipers in the towers, secure the area, and prepare for a lot of killing. The Monolith attacks in waves, in large numbers, and shoots very hard, so take a good position and don't let yourself be outflanked; there are many enemies and you might not have enough ammo for everyone. After destroying the second wave, we teleport to the village, where the fight with the Monolith begins again. The enemies are still persistent and eager to kill everyone. We destroy the last wave of followers and go to Glukhar's building, read the text messages, and follow the remaining stalkers to the crossing.
Army Warehouses:
After going to the AS, we speak with Strelok, and after the conversation, we receive a text message from Lukash. We speak with the leader of Svoboda and receive information that Svoboda intelligence has detected significant Monolith activity throughout almost the entire Zone. A small group of fanatics is currently approaching from the Scientific Complex with one prisoner. Lukash suggests finding this group and, if possible, rescuing the prisoner. Svoboda scout Privozdnik will give us more details; he's waiting at the base near the tunnel with the anomalies. After talking with him, we proceed to the Wild Territory.
Wild Territory:
If Chip was killed on the Mercenaries' mission, you will act alone. If he was spared, speak with him and begin the operation. The Monolith squad is positioned behind the construction site, near a trailer. They've left a sniper at the construction site itself. Chip will inform you of this at the right moment. It's best to take out the sniper as quietly as possible. If the Monoliths start shooting, they might kill the hostage, which will force you to replay the game, as the story will freeze.
Once you free the hostage, talk to him. This guy's name is Dale, and he'll tell you a lot of interesting things, but in return, he'll ask for a favor: find his PDA, which he lost while escaping from the adepts, and bring it to the Cordon. This device can be problematic—sometimes it simply disappears through textures. Look for it near the crashed helicopter, on the rails. After getting the PDA, go to the AS to report on the raid to the Ghost, and after the report, you'll receive a text message from Voronin inviting you to a private conversation.
Bar:
We speak with Voronin, he mentions an important PDA in the Wild Territory—yes, that very one. After the conversation, a timer starts, after which everyone in the Bar becomes enemies. We need to leave the Bar in time for the Cordon; Dale is already waiting for his PDA in the newcomers' village. We talk to him, get a lot of information, and determine the main target—Nekrasov, which means the path leads to the Scientific Complex.
Scientific Complex:
As soon as we enter the location, the airwaves explode with reports of a mutant attack. From there, only one thing is clear: we need to find Professor Sakharov and find out where Nekrasov is.
You can have some fun here—the situation is similar to X20: lots of mutants, lots of them. You can practice shooting at freely running and jumping targets, or you can ignore everything going on around you and run straight to the center of the map. Sakharov is waiting there in a two-story building. After talking to him, he will open a teleporter to the Wild Territory, through which all the survivors will escape. After the transition, talk to Sakharov, then the leader of the lone troopers, and teleport to the exit to the Bar.
The events of the last few days have seriously undermined the main character's mental health, and so the goal now is to get drunk and forget. It seems simple enough, but it's hard to drink alone, so we seek company at the bar, in the form of a debtor (the quest for the assault on Abakan in the original). We down a couple of liters of vodka over philosophical conversation and forget about it.
After waking up in the bar, we go to Voronin's to get over our hangover. However, instead of getting over it, the bastard suggests we take part in some kind of exercise between stalkers and the military. First, we need to talk to Major Makhalov at the Cordon checkpoint so he can issue us a pass to pass through the checkpoints in the Banquet Hall.
After receiving the pass, we go to the Banquet Hall, present it, and head to General Zakharov. He sets the task and indicates the meeting point for the entire group. We go to the airbase, watch a scene, and teleport to Dark Hollow.
Dark Hollow. (Hint: remove the bioradar from your belt.)
The task is simple: destroy all mutant groups in your path.
The most important thing here is to follow the squad leader, Caesar, as the stalkers, for some reason, are running back and forth and are not always sane. We advance along the road, fighting, and after destroying a certain number of mutants, we'll reach the gas station.
At the gas station, we speak with Caesar, who informs us that one group has gone missing toward the farm. We can't abandon our troops and need to go searching.
We head to the farm, speak with Caesar, see the approaching horde, and quickly get the hell out of there to the crossing to the Cordon.
Since the situation is clearly not going according to plan, we need to report the incident to General Zakharov immediately, which we do by heading to the Banquet Hall. Zakharov decides to send additional forces; a meeting with them is scheduled in Dark Hollow, to the left of the crossing to the Cordon.
We find the group Zakharov sent, talk to the group commander, Sam, attack the farm, then head to the other end of the location, where Caesar and I arrived. Along the way, there are many mutants, bloodsuckers, boars, and pseudo-giants—there definitely won't be enough ammo for them all, so it's best to just run past them. The mission will update when you reach the end of the location, and now you need to report to Zakharov.
Report to Zakharov, and afterward, head to the Bar to talk to Voronin. This guy is proposing a lifelong mission: to team up with the Duty and Freedom units to break through the Monolith defenses in Pripyat and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and then infiltrate the Monolith Control Center.After talking with Voronin, we go to Radar.
At the Radar, we meet an old friend, Shulga, and his squad. After walking a bit, we witness the grim scene of Freedom fighters being shot at. We fight our way to the crossing to Pripyat, shooting as much as we can, but another surprise awaits us: after shooting another wave of adepts, we find ourselves captured.
After waking up in captivity and talking with Shulga, we do the usual thing of captivity: wait. A rescue team will arrive shortly, quickly shoot the Monolith soldiers, and grant us freedom. After talking with Shulga again, you can leave this hospitable place, remembering to pick up your gear in one of the rooms (look for a place with three staircases, a descent under one of them, and a backpack with your things).
Don't forget that you still need to go to X10 to get Katzman's PDA. The code for the door was on the flash drive that they didn't give you (or did they? Then it's 358465). The door is on the lower level, to the right of the stairs leading there. The lab is empty; a couple of bloodsuckers after all we've been through clearly won't be a problem. We pick up the PDA and go storm Pripyat.
Pripyat is literally Stalingrad, with heavy weapons and aircraft available. Immediately after the transition, talk to Shulga (he's so annoying, I want to shoot him). He gives us a route and promises air support, but the route is tricky—over rooftops and over teleports. Once we've reached the roof, we find the adept with Gauss, take him out, and grab the rifle. The mission updates—hordes of Monolithists appear. We pick them off with Gauss, but don't get carried away. As soon as we hear the noise of helicopters, we duck into the farthest corner, as the glade's flyers can't even tell which are our own crawling around, which are the enemy—they don't seem to care, they're shooting at anything that moves, and us first. We remember our acrobatic stunts in MG and get off the roof, out of harm's way. The airwaves are filled with reports of battles, gunfire all around, all in all—it's been a successful outing.
From there, everything's very simple—we move to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and, with the support of the soldiers, begin the assault. You'll have to shoot a lot, as this is where the Monolith's main forces are, and the "tanks" will get on your nerves. It seems possible to sit back and wait—they know their stuff, but where's the fun in that? We break into the Monolith Control Center, where, like in the original, there's a crowd of guards. We clear them all out and head through the coveted door.
There's Nekrasov, the one we're so eager to kill. We talk. And that's it. The end.