Difficulty levels

== Differences between difficulty levels ==
This wiki is written for the Nightmare (hardest) difficulty level to provide the baseline. The game itself is also balanced around Nightmare. Easier ones have two most noticeable differences:
* Artifact resistance cap is more than 60% (artifacts will be removed from your belt if you exceed the resistance cap).
* In several quests like Mercenaries' suitcase, Missing expedition, Theft of the SCAT-15 etc, there are much fewer enemies (up to 3 times fewer on Novice). Additional waves of enemies for higher difficulties are hardcoded in their scripts.
There are also some minor differences on easier difficulties:
* Repair kits are a bit more effective.
* Enemies drop armor and weapons in better condition (up to 10% better condition), and some additional rounds of ammo. (kind of irrelevant as OP-2 showers you with loot regardless)
* Dynamic anomalies are a bit more sparse.
* You take less damage during the blowout. (it's unknown whether you can survive it on lower difficulties without blowout protection; needs to be tested)
* Minimap displays a warning when the enemy is throwing a grenade (noted with the grenade icon on the minimap) or using an underbarrel grenade (noted with a red X on the player on the minimap).
* Sledgehammer requires less stamina per hit. (irrelevant, just as the sledgehammer itself)
* Accelerator you obtain in "Stone of Luck" (at the end of the Sniper storyline, in the late game) works with the enemies nearby.
* You can save during The "bad" contacts of Sidorovich.
* You can't die during the Cave dream.
* During Liberation of the Slavik the Bullfinch's squad, you have up to 10 seconds of being seen before failing the quest, instead of 5 seconds on the hardest difficulty.
* Woolgatherer achievement (lose your weapon 10 times from mutants like any variant of dogs, including pseudodogs) requires losing it fewer times.
== Achievements ==
Lowering your difficulty doesn't affect the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. achievement, but you won't get the Vivid Nightmare achievement if you played on any of the lower difficulties even once.
Official "cheats" built into the options don't affect the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well, but you will get the No-Cheater achievement in the end if you never used any builtin cheats at all. However, savescumming is also possible since the tracking isn't applied retroactively to the saves you made before enabling the cheat.
Category:Core mechanics