recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Gaslighting

It's time to find the anti-immortality artifact Black Mark in Dark Valley and put an end to Shadow of the Monolith once and for all.

**Warning: After a certain point in this quest, the Monolith truce gained after Beard's backpack will end and all Monolithians will once again become your enemies.**

## Walkthrough

### Cave

Before leaving the Cave, Miner hands us a Positioner that will let us track the GPS coordinates of the stash containing the artifact.

### Dark Valley

The stash is located in Dark Valley, directly underneath the bridge over the irradiated swamp. Coincidentally, it's right underneath the radioactive symbol on the minimap.

Pick up the artifact and quickly stash it in a single artifact container if you aren't wearing the Prophet's Star. Head to Labyrinth - you can get there quickly from Undiscovered Land.

### Labyrinth

You can freely clear out all of the natural Monolith spawns on the map without softlocking the quest. Shadow and his squad are scripted not to attack yet even if their reputation shows them as enemies. Enter the bunker and climb up the ladder to see Shadow flanked by his four machinegunner goons.

Strelok offers Shadow a "rare artifact," fooling him into picking up the Black Mark and unknowingly nullifying his own immortality. When pressed about Living Water, Shadow will refuse to offer any information and the Monolith truce will be broken for good. Shadow and all four machinegunners will begin firing on you during a white screen flash.

**The conversation between you and Shadow is not translated, at least not at patch 15.03.23**

#### Surviving the meatgrinder

If any one of his squad dies before you speak to him, the rest will become aggressive, disqualifying Gas canisters as a good setup option here. The safest way to survive this encounter is pre-placing Plastic explosives all around them and running down the ladder during the white screen flash, safely detonating from the floor below. Popping one Morphine will also give you enough time to Rambo everyone in the room with a good weapon.

Pick up the Shadow of the Monolith note and the Black Mark from Shadow's body. The secret to his immortality is the Living Water artifact, which is "hidden in itself and covered with a radiation background."

### Cave

Return to Miner to let him know the news. Apparently, this was not Shadow himself that was killed, but his identical brother. Miner advises you to hold onto the Black Mark so that one day Shadow can be destroyed.

Right after you end the conversation with Miner you are messaged by Sakharov to meet with him.

This completes the Black Mark section of Chess Player, and leads directly into the Living Water quests which can be continued after playing Chessplayer's Dictaphone No10.

**The conversation between you and Miner is not translated, at least not at patch 15.03.23**
Finding Rabinovich

After hearing Chuk and Gek's story, Cat has some ideas. He advises to find Rabinovich, a businessman who is known to deal with everyone, even with Monolith, as long as money is there. Checking Skinflint out might be a good idea, as he probably knows where to find him.

Some stages of this quest are not tracked.

## Walkthrough

Skinflint sends you to Rabinovich's accomplice Humble in the bloodsucker village, near Morose.

In the village, you don't find Humble, but there's his friend, Gambit, drunkenly stumbling around. He's asking for three Vodka bottles. Bring them to him and drink with him. He'll tell you that they were drinking with Humble, and he suddenly jumped up and went looking for someone into the village; if he's still alive, you could find him there.

In the NW corner of the village, you'll find wounded Humble. Heal him and ask him about Rabinovich whereabouts. He tells you that Rabinovich refused to travel with him, and went beyond the barrier alone. He must have been waited by someone there, and headed towards Central Pripyat, so you should look for him there. After the dialogue, 3 Avengers will spawn nearby and try to eliminate the witnesses.

Rabinovich can be found in an apartment building in the NE corner of Central Pripyat, on the second floor.

Talk to him, and ask why Monolith is trying to build relay towers. He will confess that he smuggled some satellite communication equipment to Monolith, by the request of Black Doctor, without even knowing who he is. Black Doctor's base seems to be located in Limansk's Hospital, which is your next target.

After leaking the information, Rabinovich will be shot by a scripted "sniper", and an Avenger will spawn in the building to get rid of a witness (you).

Report to Cat. He advises to ask Zakhar about the path to Limansk.

## Bugs

* Humble can and will die if you leave him wounded in the village instead of talking to him. This will softlock the quest.
Get a USB flash from a crazy sniper

One of the Freedom guys rushed out of the bloodsucker village and dug in at the swamp, shooting everyone at sight; seems like he got a few screws loose. Max wants you to investigate what he saw by getting his flash drive, as it might be dangerous for everyone.

## Walkthrough

You can just go an kill Crazy stalker, taking his flash drive. Beware of the minefield at front of his hut; throw bolts to detect mines. However, you can also try talking to him; refer to Army Warehouses#Crazy stalker for more information.

## Notes

* Coincidentally, Crazy stalker's flash drive is also wanted by Voronin in Crazy Stalker's flash drive. OP-2 devs found a solution of OP-2 elegancy: they just gave Psycho two flash drives.
Inspection of the village

Kolmogor asks us to do one final sweep of Old Village with Pilgrim in preparation for the military assault.

## Walkthrough

As you leave the headquarters you'll be accosted by one elite soldier and Kolmogor will taunt the death squad over the radio.

As you approach each house in the village, something will spawn from the inside of them.

On the upper level: in one house, two Izlom will spawn. In two others, there will be one elite soldier hanging out in each.

On the lower level: one house will spawn two zombified stalkers on the inside. Another will spawn six fleshes. The ditch around the edge of the village will spawn 3 blind dogs and 3 pseudodogs.

You don't actually have to trigger all spawns to finish this portion of the quest - reaching a certain corner of the village will mark the task as complete. Return to Kolmogor, who wants you to continue trying to find Panther.

## Notes

* While it isn't necessary to clear out all spawns, it is nice to get them out of the way so you won't be taken by surprise in the near future. Pilgrim will also deal with them mostly on his own if you want him to as long as you get him to follow you.
Music lover

Barkeep spoils that Ghost actually wanted him to find a double, but refuses to talk more until you find him some vinyl records in the Dump, for an ancient mechanical record player somebody dragged into the bar.

## Walkthrough

The possible locations for the records are shown in your PDA and are fairly trivial compared to what you typically see in OP, since these are all vanilla stashes; but just in case, here's a video with all 7 variants.

Bring the records to Barkeep, and will tell you the details on how he looked for a double for Ghost, after which they both went to Yantar; and also that the scientists wanted to see Marked One.
Gunsmith's address

Informant tells you that he knows where Gunsmith lived in Pripyat before the disaster. However, his information has a price, as always. Informant wants you to visit Deacon and get the map of the military minefield in Cordon from him.

## Walkthrough

Deacon tells you that the military who had the map died to a librarian, but it wasn't the only librarian in the Swamps; Deacon wants to kill them all. Complete Minefield for him, and he will give you the map.

Bring the map to Informant. He says that Gunsmith used to work on experimental electromagnetic weapons before the disaster. A few years ago he returned into the Zone, but not to get his blueprints; he was interested in the information about the laboratory X-7 from Informant. He was supposed to get back in a couple months, but never turned up.

According to Informant, Gunsmith used to live in Central Pripyat, in the apartment building close to the ferris wheel.

When you get to the address Informant gave you, you meet Dragunov, starting the City clearing operation, the next quest in this storyline, and also Artifacts for Dragunov, the quest from another storyline.
Kuznetsov's stash

## Walkthrough

The stash is hidden under the broken bridge to Limansk in Red Forest, in a really hard to reach spot. You have to crawl one pixel at a time on the very edge of the bridge. There are two potential spawn spots, on the opposite sides. Both are shown on the videos below.

## Notes

* You'll need the note from this stash to advance Kuznetsov's deck.
Fenrir's lair at Pripyat

The next Fenrir's sniper nest is in Central Pripyat, on the ferris wheel.

## Walkthrough

**Important:** this quest will be much easier if you complete the Annihilation from the Secret Weapon of the Monolith storyline first, and grab a sniper rifle with computerized targeting.

Head over to Central Pripyat and climb the ferris wheel. After approaching the axle, 4 military snipers with VSSK "Vykhlop" will appear on the roofs around you.

Climb to the top, and Fenrir will contact you and say that you need to look at the ground. Find the stash under the cabin cap at the bottom. Use binoculars to increase your reach, if you find yourself unable to reach it.

The full route is shown on the video below:
Kostya's stash, X-10

## Walkthrough

This stash is protected by three controllers, several bloodsuckers, and a teleport puzzle which you have to solve. Head into the lab to get teleported back and to start the puzzle. The solution is on the video below.

At the end of the puzzle, you will reach the stash with the PDA, a note on which says that the code is **2...9...7**; after taking the stash, you'll be teleported to another part of the lab, and a couple bloodsuckers will spawn around.

The numbers are constant parts of the code, and the dots are unknown parts. You have to rearrange numbers Kostya got in the previous stash (9, 7, 2, 54, 61) in such a way that they fit into this. There are only two possible ways to do this, either **2 54 9 61 7** or **2 61 9 54 7**. The code unlocks the door nearby (2:17 in the video). You can try both combinations on the door to find the right one.

The backpack behind the door contains two kinds of teleporting devices, and an instruction for one of them, which will be stored as a note in your PDA.

### Teleporter

The Teleporter is a device that can teleport you to certain locations at will. It doesn't do anything on its own; it's just a convenient interface for "manual teleports" you obtain throughout the game; see for example Bonus stash: Yantar on how to obtain the manual teleport to Yantar. Each use requires a Teleport artifact in your inventory, and consumes it. Teleport artifacts can be purchased from merchants, Doctor in particular.

### Hand teleport

The Hand Teleport Prototype is a single-use device that transports you into a random location, consuming a Moonlight artifact from your inventory in the process.

### Backup stash at Dump

The instruction manual for the Hand teleport prototype mentions some cryptic "backup stash" at Dump, and says that you can only get to this stash from the swamp at Dump. Refer to the video above to the location of the stash, the timecode is **2:57**. The stash contains another two prototypes.

### Kostya

Report to Kostya and show both devices to him. He will advise to check Sakharov out; maybe he knows how to use the "random" teleport prototype. (this leads to Vasiliev's PDA)

## Notes

* Wiping the lab **before** accepting this quest will make your life much easier.
The Recluse's Mystery

A mysterious figure called "Recluse" seems to be behind the shadowy movements of the Brotherhood. We should collect all the information we can on this figure and make sure it goes to the right person.

## Walkthrough

This is a long-term quest that will not update until finding the laptop in Skillful provocateur. This laptop is delivered to Sviblov in Heavenly Office, marking this quest as complete as well.
Glow

Two Dan's hunters have been wounded by a bloodsucker. He wants you to go to Darkscape at night and catch 15 fireflies for Kalmyk to make a remedy for them. You'll need to carry a Glowstick to attract them. Bring him a Rucksack as well.

## Walkthrough

After 12:00 AM, come to the Darkscape with a glowstick. Fireflies are found at the spot marked on the picture below.

Equip your glowstick, and the fireflies will get attracted to its light. Press F on each to catch it. There are 20 fireflies total, and you need to catch 15.

After catching enough, return to Dan. Bring him fireflies and a Rucksack.

## Notes

* Glowstick is a rare drop from most NPCs, and a reward for some cyclic tasks (Kalinin's and Syak's). You need to obtain one on your own.
* Fireflies aren't shown in your inventory; you'll get a message when you caught enough.
Out of the frying pan into the fire

You find Pathfinder, only to discover that he's trapped with a motion sensor bomb and a bunch of Blackwater mercenaries are about to arrive to replace their fallen squadmates.

## Walkthrough

Mercenaries will arrive shortly, in waves of 8. Protect Pathfinder while he's tinkering with the bomb. He will disarm it, stopping the timer, and run to the stalker camp.

Escort Pathfinder; he will run to the train car shack near the stalker camp, where 6 more mercs wait for him. Wipe them out, and talk to Pathfinder. He says that he has the flash drive with a piece of the information about the Gauss prototype. Turns out, he dragged the bomb with him, as it was tied to his leg. The timer suddenly starts ticking again, and the bomb will go off in a few seconds, killing Pathfinder; you should get away immediately.

After that, 6 more mercs arrive to the scene. Kill them and grab the flash drive off Pathfinder's body. This finishes In the footsteps of the Pathfinder as well.

## Notes

* This encounter is notably difficult due to the need to protect Pathfinder in the house while mercenaries close in from several directions. You will have to take an offensive approach on the hill to avoid being collapsed on from multiple angles and to prevent mercenaries from getting close to the house Pathfinder is stuck in.
	+ Tanky mutant embryos like Librarians will go a long way to making this easier on you. They will draw fire and kill quite a few mercenaries before finally going down. Just make sure to place them far away from Pathfinder as they will kill him as well.
* This task fails if Pathfinder dies before completion, but you can still loot the flash drive from his body and continue the questline. If you're aiming for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. achievement, you will need to protect him through the full encounter as any story task failures will block the Task Performer achievement.
* The damage from the bomb explosion appears to be scripted. It does not matter how far away you run from him when it explodes.
Kuznetsov

A corrupt senior military officer guarding the entrance to the Zone with his squad, and one of the major characters throughout the entire game.

## Location

Can be found at the military checkpoint under the Cordon railway bridge.

## Notes

* Kuznetsov will let stalkers pass through the checkpoint in exchange for a bottle of Vodka.
	+ Unlike in vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl, he will always accept bribes, unless you attack one of his men.

* When you come close to him (or his other lackeys) when his squad of lackeys attacks nearby stalkers, he freaks out.

* Also, when you provoke him to pull out his gun, even if you holster your weapon, he still points a gun at you.
Labyrinth

Huge underground cave system, home to Monolith. Probably the most confusing level in the game, even more so than the Cave.

## Layout

### Main chamber

The Labyrinth's main chamber has 5 levels, with the top being 1 and the bottom being 5, accessible through the descending tunnels around the chamber, with the actual labyrinth accessible from the lower level.

### Labyrinth

The Labyrinth itself is located at the bottom. It's inhabited by a myriad of critters, including the underground controller who lives in his own chamber with a typewriter, in which you can obtain the recipe for Burer's Great Grandma's Beads, the hypermodificate for bullet resistance.

### Teleports

There's a system of teleports that can be used to quickly travel from the bottom to the top without having to run for 20 minutes straight. The teleport inside the labyrinth moves you to the wall cave. Teleport in the wall cave moves you to the top. Teleport at the top (turn 180 after entering from the Cave) moves you past the electric anomalies at the top.

### Ladders

Some walls in the main chamber are actually invisible ladders and can be climbed up and down, to ascend and descend quickly.
Huckster's loot

As a reward for the bomb cases you got him in the island on Cordon, Barkeep gives you a tip on thoroughly hidden stash of some huckster he knew. The stash should be on one of Agroprom's roofs.

## Walkthrough

This is actually a series of 4 stashes in Agroprom, Zaton, and Bar, two of them are hard to reach. The route is shown on the video below.

How to climb unmarked ladders:

1. jump vertically, without pressing W
2. at the top of the arc, press W to hold onto the ladder
3. walk into the ladder to make sure you're not sliding off of it
4. repeat step 1
Meet Fang

After talking to Cyclop in Flasks for the Gynecologist, Fang contacted you and told you he's alive, calling for a meeting.

This quest is unmarked and doesn't have any canonical name.

## Walkthrough

Move to the Fiery Cave, entering from the swamp. Talk to Fang.

Turns out that the "mysterious stalker" who was in Captivity together with Fima the Charcoal was Fang all along, and also the owner of the safe in the Labyrinth. He knew a lot of valuable transitions and made notes on the old WWII map.

After working for Gavr *(and finding out about his plans as Blend told you in The Blend's flash drive)*, he managed to evade his assassins.

Then Stargazer contacted him, somehow finding out about his map and telling that he helped Marked One survive after the Death Truck crash. All this looked extremely suspicious, and Fang went into hiding in the Fiery Cave in Undiscovered Land.

Right now he's looking for a missing girl, the daughter of some big shot from C-Consciousness. She flew into the Zone to visit her father, and disappeared, or has been kidnapped. She was last seen at Radar, near the antennas. A large Monolith group has been dispatched to search for her, and even Avengers were looking for her *(as Chimera told you in The assassination of Sidorovich)*, but never found her.

## Notes

* If you don't want to deal with the frogs and other nonsense from the lake entrance, there is a gap in the ceiling of the cave passageways accessible from the regular entrance which leads to the meeting point with Fang. Jump artifacts or backpack jumps can get you up the gap.
German medal

Pipe ambush:
Wehrmacht soldier x12

Shevchenko ambush:
Wehrmacht soldier x25

Nazar has heard of more Wehrmacht appearing in Zaton recently, and is interested in the extravagant medal held by their commanding officer. He promises us some leftover ammunition from the waves if we can obtain it for him.

## Walkthrough

The officer and his squad are in the antenna complex to the west. 12 Wehrmacht soldiers will be inhabiting the complex, and the officer is in the final room just before the drop down into the pipe. He'll have the medal on him as well as a full condition Award Walther p.38.

After dropping down into the pipe to leave, 12 more soldiers will spawn outside and try to hem you in. Deal with them and head back to Nazar.

On reaching the Shevchenko, four staggered waves of soldiers will spawn on and around the ship. Take them out and give the medal to Nazar for the promised ammunition.
Objectives of an unknown stalker

**For Volazar to talk:**
Deja Vu

A strange stalker in a weird outfit has showed up in Warlab, apparently looking for Marked One. Klyonov advises to look for him and find out what he wants.

## Walkthrough

After accepting the quest, you get the message from the stalker. He wants you to prove that you're Strelok, and won't talk until you made a photo of the Sarcophagus in Deja Vu.

You can find him in the large room with six tanks on the bottom level, just outside of the elevator shafts. Speak to him and follow him to his workshop.

Turns out his name is Vladimir, but he's most known as Volazar. He worked in the Warlab as a researcher, before the Zone was formed, creating the advanced military nanosuit and the modules for it. Some time ago, the former head of the lab contacted Volazar and instructed him to give the suit to Strelok - apparently he knew Strelok somehow.
Meet Hiko in Chernobyl-1

After confronting Surgeon in X-17, you obtained the map and transition to Chernobyl-1; you feel this wasn't random, and you're going to investigate that location. Hiko will be waiting for you there.

*This quest is unmarked and doesn't have any canonical name.*

**This quest has a timer; you have several hours to find Hiko.**

## Walkthrough

Travel to Darkscape and enter the Chernobyl-1 through the newly obtained transition. You're immediately met by Courier. Speak to him; he was sent by Hiko and will guide you to the military base where Hiko is. He warns you that as you approach the base, you should follow him step by step, because of the minefield protecting the base. If you fail to do that, you might blow yourself up. Despite his warnings, you should actually run ahead of Courier and take out all mutant spawns along the way. He can easily die to a possible Splinter spawned on the roadside.

You will see Hiko in the center of the base. Talk to him to discuss your next steps, starting Assault armaments.

After that, talk to Courier again to find out about the situation in Chernobyl-1.

Three weeks ago, a large mercenary group moved into the base at the center of the location, and installed some kind of force field over it, so anybody attempting to cross it is killed within several seconds.

Mercs also wiped out the Duty, who were occupying the location before. The remaining squad is located in the grocery store basement. You can talk to their leader Captain Savitsky and start the quest Hopeless situation.

The local old man named Native also survived the merc assault; he can be found in one of the houses to the south. Another survivor is Bill, the merchant who runs the bar at the basement of the convenience store. He still runs it, but the bar serves mercenaries now. You can try shaking them up, see Bar Heist.

## Notes

* Hiko's camp has three exoskeleton-wearing masters who you can buy stashes from.
Finishing off a sniper

The leader of the Freedom squad in Limansk, Bormann, wants you to eliminate the Monolith sniper at the construction site.

## Walkthrough

Make your way to the construction site, fighting through Limansk's natural spawns. Here's the schematic of the enemies (besides the natural ones).

After passing the ruined house, four black-suited Monolith troopers will wait in ambush behind the corners. On the approach to the site, 15 zombified stalkers will spawn up the stairs. Take care of them and move into the unfinished building.

Three more black-suited Monolithians will be guarding the building, and the sniper will be on the top floor. Be wary of his HK 417 "Sniper" as it uses highly lethal 7.62x51mm NATO ammunition in bursts.

Immediately after taking him out, you'll receive an invitation from Sviblov for the quest Serious Talk.

Return to Bormann for some ammunition and another task.

## Notes

* Bormann's dialogue mentions the "Construction Site" in capitalized letters, but he's referring to the unfinished building in Limansk and not the separate zone itself.
* There is a large amount of 5.56x45mm ammunition in Limansk, as well as many enemies using it, so clearing out the area with a weapon of that caliber will let you go positive on ammo.
* Bormann says that they managed to reach Limansk in a squad of 5, but there's at least 13 Freedomers in Limansk, including himself.
Little diversion

Kalinin wants to mess with the bandits at the ATP. He's heard a story about tainted vodka in the vicinity of the Dump which is highly poisonous, and asks us to obtain it and smuggle it into the bandits' normal vodka stash.

## Walkthrough

Artyom the Cook knows where the tainted vodka is, but wants us to hunt rodents in Hunting for rodents before giving it to us.

After we've obtained the 30 poisoned bottles, we can either sneak into the chicken coop or blast our way in. It is the southwest-most building of the bandit camp, and the stash is located in in the northeast corner.

## Notes

* Do not access the stash from above; while you can low crouch your way in, it may not be possible to get out without jumping artifacts or a teleport.
Just reward

You collected all parts of the documents for Voronin. The only thing left is to receive your reward.

## Walkthrough

The reward has **massive** overall weight. You probably need a Grav-suit to lift all that.

The 30 ammo boxes you get are randomly selected from the following pool:

* Gauss cartridges ×10
* FMJ Box (150x3) ×150
* 23x76 "Shrapnel 25" ×6
* Box with 7.62x54R ×100
* Box with 7.92x57mm ×150
* LM Partition .338 ×10
* .338 LM FMJ ×10
* 12.7x55mm STs-130 IA ×10
* 12.7x55mm STs-130 IP ×10
* 12.7x108mm AP ×10
Golden chunk

Ghost wants you to find 10 Golden chunk artifacts that can only be found at CNPP-2, promising to tell about a route between CNPP-2 and Sarcophagus.

## Walkthrough

There are 16 Golden chunks spread throughout the entire level. Having an Artefact Detector will help with the search a lot. As you approach the artifacts, small Monolith ambushes spawn around. There are additional controllers on the location as well.

The location of all 16 Golden chunks is shown on the picture. Alternatively, use the video below.

## Notes

* Golden chunk is a rare artifact, finding all 16 is advised. In particular, you'll need 7 of those artifacts in the late game, in the quest named Components search: Part 2.
* Golden Chunk pairs well with the Combination Lock task where you infiltrate the Monolith in CNPP 2. The Monolith will not attack you as you run around to gather all the artifacts, leaving mutants as your only problem to contend with.
Klyonov's artifacts

Marked One decides to check on Klyonov in Warlab; he must have transmuted the artificial Poltergeist's Heart you gave him earlier in Artifacts for Klyonov.

## Walkthrough

Klyonov informs you that the experiment was a failure, and the Poltergeist's Heart has been changed. However, he's preserved its core in a similar, less radioactive artifact. Another interesting artifact, named Spiral was created in the process. Take both of them for now.

## Notes

* Depending on your artifact loadout and difficulty setting, the Spiral may be useful due to its 7% bulletproofing that can be used in conjunction with a Burer's Great Grandma's Beads (13%) to get to an even multiple of 10.
Missing photographer

Wolf is asking Marked One to look for a journalist named Senya who had gone missing recently.

This quest is unmarked, and doesn't have a canonical name.

## Walkthrough

To start the quest, select the line "Everything's fine? I see you're worried about something" in Wolf's dialogue, after you saved Nimble and gave the flash drive to Sidorovich.

The photographer's body can be found in Agroprom Underground, inside the controller tunnel that leads to the Agroprom military base.

As you pick his Camera up, you will receive two missions to finish the journalist's job in the Zone.

## Notes

The Camera you obtain is a key item required for many quests throughout the game.
Friend of human

Kalinin wants you to locate the camp's lost pet, a brown female blind dog who was last seen in the southeastern forest. He gives you a sausage to feed her.

## Walkthrough

The dog will be towards the south end of the forest, staying stationary but barking at you as you get close. Be sure not to confuse her with other, darker dogs.

Interact with the dog to feed her the sausage and she will immediately rocket off along the south border of the map. She will stop and bark at a bush - take the stash behind it and she'll immediately set off again, this time north towards the camp. Once she gets close enough you can speak to Kalinin again and complete the quest.

## Notes

* There are a lot of nasty mutants along the path, including burers, scorpionflies, molerats, pseudodogs, and more. It's up to you whether you want to take them out before accepting the quest, as it might make your life easier. However, the dog is not targeted by mutants and runs extremely fast, so you could theoretically just run for your life, grab the stash as soon as possible, and run back to the camp.

## Bugs

* Although the dog isn't typically targeted by mutants, the electro-burer that typically spawns in the forest could attack her.
Hospital defence

The wounded stalkers in the makeshift hospital inside the old barge need to be protected from encroaching zombies. Noah gives us the task of ascending to the sniper post and ensuing the exploding zombies don't reach the stalkers inside.

## Walkthrough

All of the zombies in this quest are exploders, and they'll approach slowly from the west, north, and east in three separate waves. Seven will come in the first wave, seven in the next, and 16 will come after that with a hunter-controller accompanying them coming from the east.

Return to Noah after taking care of all three waves and he'll tell you to return in 10 hours for the next wave.

## Notes

* Exploding zombies are a big ammo sink. Since there's no other reason to bring a high-powered rifle to Zaton for the wave of mutants, you can use stocked up anomalous grenades or anomalous underbarrel grenades if you have leftovers - vortex grenades can pop three zombies at once with good placement. Just be careful not to throw too close to the barge since stalkers can die from chip damage through the wall.
* Close range options like a flamethrower aren't possible as the quest will fail if you descend from the sniper nest.
Meet Grey

During the search for Strelok, Fox directed you towards the stalker named Grey at the Dump.

## Walkthrough

As you approach the hangar on Dump, you hear a call for help on radio. Help stalkers fend off bandits attacking the hangar. Talk to Grey, receive your reward. Ask him about Strelok.

## Notes

During this quest, a wounded stalker can be found near Grey. If you rush to him immediately after hearing the radio call, you could save him, which counts towards helping people in The rescue.
The code for the door in Pripyat Underground

After searching the body of the Monolith traitor in Pripyat Dungeons, you found the PDA. The records on it say that there has to be a code for the door at the northern part of the main chamber. Probably one of the soldiers has it...

## Walkthrough

The code is located on the body of Sergeant Sidorenko, leader of the sniper squad. His nest can be reached by entering the catwalks at the NW part of the main chamber, then going through the tunnel to the catwalks above the giant excavator's counterweights.

The code is **65687**, it will be stored in your PDA.
Liberate the "Duty" member

After entering the Dark Valley the first time, you see Bullet interrogating a wounded bandit, Mongol. Help Bullet out to save his friend Max Lyuber from being killed by the bandits.

## Walkthrough

This quest is largely the same as vanilla. Wait for the Bullet and Mongol dialogue to finish. Heal Mongol (wait a couple seconds so he doesn't punch Bullet into face). Follow Bullet to the bus stop. Hide and ambush the guards, killing them and saving Max. Talk to both Bullet and Max, receiving your reward. Ensure that Bullet and Max are left the location to the Dump. Meet them at the Duty checkpoint in the Dump.

## Notes

* Bullet mentions that the rest of his squad is being held hostage at the bandit base. You might want to save them as well; refer to Free the Duty squad for details.
* After healing Mongol, all bandits in Dark Valley will become neutral to you for the rest of the game. This neutrality is also easy to lose if you kill too much of them. Mongol is not needed for anything anymore, so there's no point in protecting him.
* Even if you healed Mongol and the bandits are neutral, you can safely shoot Max Lyuber's guards.
* Technically, you could just shoot Mongol at the spot, as Hog and Skimpy will talk even if hostile. The only difference would be the necessity to wipe the base out every time you want to talk with them. However, bandits being hostile will interfere with at least one quest down the line, so just heal him.

## Bugs

* This mission is notoriously buggy, which is vanilla SoC legacy (where it's even more buggy and unstable).
* Mongol is hostile to the squad even if you healed him and paid the ransom. Watch out for him picking anybody's gun. You can blow him up with a canister if needed.
Treaty with the military

To set up the helicopter flight for Photographer, Kuznetsov needs to gather evidence of the Monolithians developing chemical weapons; you should bring him a canister from the Monolith Control Bunker. Additionally, he wants a Walther P.38 for a commanding officer.

## Walkthrough

### Monolith and chemical weapons

Make it to the Monolith Control Bunker through Sarcophagus.

During this quest, two Gauss turrets are placed in the Sarcophagus. One is on the lower level, after the hole in the wall leading to the Monolith gathering room. Another is in the upper circular corridor surrounding the reactor.

The Monolith Control Bunker, where the canister is located, is mostly empty other than a few mutant spawns, but another two Gauss turrets will spawn in a side room and in the end of one of the tunnels.

The canister is in the room directly before the C-Consciousness representative. The room will be riddled with mines, forming a jumping puzzle.

Detonating the mines is not an option since they will destroy the canister you've been asked to retrieve, so the mission is to get in and out without detonating a single one.

The jumping puzzle to the canister is straightforward enough, but exiting the area without blowing yourself up is harder and requires precise jumping. Here's the video with the entire route:

The route back can be made easier by:

* using the jumping artifacts
* using rucksacks as a stepstool
* teleporting away

### Rare pistol

Despite the dialogue, Kuznetsov needs the ordinary Walther P.38, not the "award" one. This is a translation error. It can be acquired from either:

* Nazi officers in Zaton during The archive documents.
* One of Barkeep's tier 2 artifact hunt cyclics, requiring a Spring.

### Finishing the quest

Bring both pistol and the canister back to Kuznetsov. He will promise to organize the flight for Photographer, as well as reward you with the Sayga "20", a fully automatic 12 gauge shotgun with a huge magazine (20 rounds!).

## Notes

* The canister is around 8kg, not significant on its own, but can be a drag to carry through CNPP-2 if you're on other missions.

## Bugs

* Some people reported Kuznetsov not talking if you detonated the mines in the control bunker. If that happens to you, try not detonating them before turning the quest in. If you detonate the mines while inside the explosion radius, the cylinder will disappear from your inventory.
* The Walter P38 that is required in the quest is a regular Walter P38, not the Award Walter P38 variant, so you can keep your Award Walter P38 from the Nazis as a war trophy.
Unique suits

Skinflint knows that the military got new experimental anti-gravity suits that let you carry a lot more weight than an ordinary exosuit. He wants you to steal them from the Agroprom military base, from one of the barracks.

## Walkthrough

Weirdly enough, the suits don't spawn for this quest specifically; they only spawn after giving Kuznetsov 10 Vodka bottles in Jubilee gift. The stash with the suits can be located in the attic of one of the barracks (the southern one).

It contains two Grav-suits, 26kg total. Bring both to Skinflint; he will take one, and you can keep another to yourself.

## Notes

* The grav-suit needs batteries for sprinting and jumping, just like any exoskeleton. It doesn't let you shoot while you're wearing it, but being able to haul 310kg in a game about hoarding is absolutely indispensable. Don't forget it also needs plenty of stamina regen, though.
Unmarked quests

### Untracked quests

Some quests, mostly legacy ones from the original Narodnaya Solyanka and older NLC versions, are not marked in your PDA, making their stages hard to track and making the plot confusing. The prime example of this is Krysyuk's PDA.

### Bonus stashes

At some key points in the plot, you will encounter super vague hints on stashes that might or might not be real; the hints are so subtle and obscure that they as well might not exist at all. These are bonus stashes, and you're practically guaranteed to miss most of them entirely if you don't follow guides. They are **extremely** hard to find, typically extremely hard to reach, and extremely hard to even know about. An example of that is Bonus stash: Yantar (it's the easiest one!).
Searching for decoder

Bubulyuka tells you the location of the decoder for the recipe; it's in the grocery store at Limansk.

## Walkthrough

Upon climbing to the top floor of the grocery store, you discover the body of Yuri Semetsky. Apparently he's real and not just a glitch in the system making it broadcast the messages of his death to the network.

On his body, you find a PDA with a hint to search on another floor. U-jump onto the floor below, and trigger a teleport in the room that will transport you onto the bottom floor. Find the stash there, with the cipher book in it. After picking it up, a bunch of burers and chasing controllers will spawn inside.

The only way out is to use the Teleport artifact inside the stash.

The full route is shown on the video below:

Report to Proper70.
Stolen maps

A group of Monolith traitors killed many Shadow of the Monolith's people, stole Monolith maps and escaped into Pripyat Dungeons. Brother of the Shadow of the Monolith wants you to find and punish them, and bring the maps back.

## Walkthrough

Head out to the Pripyat Dungeons through the Central Pripyat; **you have 2 hours to get there, or the quest will fail**.

A squad of 6 faithful Monolithians will be here to aid you. Talk to the leader. The traitors are holed up in the next room, backed up by a large military squad.

After convincing the friendly Monolithians to charge forward and attack, most if not all will inevitably die. Clean up the main chamber, but beware of the snipers with suppressed SVDs stationed on the upper catwalks. A turret in the cabin of the giant excavator will also be in your way, protecting a safe with a Cloaking exoskeleton inside.

One of the Monolith traitors will have a PDA containing details of the situation. An undercover military squad successfully infiltrated the Monolith but blew their cover and decided to flee with the stolen maps mentioned by Brother Shadow.

After picking this PDA up, another four soldiers will spawn on the upper levels. You'll receive another task, The code for the door in Pripyat Underground, to open the locked door and progress the quest.

Obtain the code and open the door, which is located in the northwest railway branch. Three more soldiers will be waiting to ambush you behind it.

After this, you have to navigate an extremely radioactive and somewhat complex system of underground tunnels. In case you feel lost, here's a video with the route:

Make sure you're ready to take on Plagued and Mosquito zombies in a tight space or at least have the resources to run past them without being bled to death.

Near the exit you'll stumble upon Captain Kazantsev and his squad. The soldiers will attempt to hold you back while Kazantsev flees with the maps. If he crosses a certain point in the hallway ahead, the game considers him to have escaped and the quest will fail. Kill him and his entourage as quickly as you can and grab the bag with the stolen Monolith maps from his body. Keep going along the pathway and exit back to Central Pripyat.

Return to Brother of the Shadow of the Monolith at CNPP-2, bringing him the bag and both PDAs you obtained.

## Notes

* Pripyat Dungeons is full of bonus stashes and other interesting loot. While you should lay down a rucksack in an isolated portion of the map to store the loot from the soldiers, it's up to you whether you want to fully explore the area or leave it for a return trip when you are better equipped and have cyclics or sidequests to complete here.
Ugly Elsa

Hospital assault:
Murzo
Brotherhood clown ×14
Zombie variants ×?

Murzo revealed to us that the Colchamine we gave to Elsa is poisoning her even further. Sakharov must be made aware of this before it's too late.

## Walkthrough

### Yantar

We are most definitely too late - not only has Elsa been taking the supposed medication regularly, she's disappeared with Sakharov's hand teleport. An unknown contact messaged her to go to Eastern Pripyat and we can only assume that's where she has gone.

To make matters worse, Doctor messages us and says that he has been ambushed by Murzo and his men in the Eastern Pripyat hospital, opening Irreconciliable duelists.

Five white coats will assault the bunker after you receive this message - be careful of one with an RPG-7.

### Eastern Pripyat

Murzo and fourteen Brotherhood clowns, six of which are using RPG-7s, are assaulting the hospital. Unexpectedly, Seryoga the Paratrooper will be covering Doctor during the assault and will help you take out the Brotherhood goons.

Clear everything out but beware a large spawn of zombies, including two plague zombies, three witches, and several exploding zombies on top of the regular mutant spawns. Murzo himself can be taken out with a high damage weapon this time and will die for good, completing Bloody endgame. Living Water can be taken from his corpse.

Speak to Seryoga about why he's there - he followed Doctor after being concerned about the old man hurrying to the hospital alone. Strelok observes that he's paid off his debt from the injection fiasco.

Doctor is thankful for Strelok and Seryoga's quick assistance - he's exhausted from what he calls an empty victory and will teleport out of the area to sleep it off. Irreconciliable duelists will complete.

In the eastern wing of the hospital, Elsa can be found. She is either dead or zombified, then you have to kill her. You can find a note on her. She chose to resist until death and committed suicide rather than submit to full zombification and control.

### Report to Sakharov

Strelok delivers the bad news and Elsa's Last letter to Sakharov, completing the quest. We also hand over Recluse's laptop and the formula for White Fill.

Sakharov mentions that someone wants to say goodbye to us, opening Farewell and absolution.

## Notes

* Seryoga will help with the Brotherhood clowns, but is neutral towards the local mutants and the zombie swarm. Drag them away from him if you want to use explosives on them.
* Seryoga is carrying another Kalter's VMK that can be bought off of him. Strangely enough, Murzo is no longer carrying this weapon and uses a silenced Tavor CTAR-21 instead (in the latest patch dated 15.3.23 he carries a Kalter's VMK, but not in mint condition as the one you can buy from him earlier).
Kill the Strelok

Marked One is saved by Skygazer after the crash of the Death Truck. The only thing he remembers is that he has to kill Strelok.

## Walkthrough

As you start the game, you see Skygazer right before yourself. Talk to him and receive a PM without ammo, and a First aid kit to heal yourself.
Some 9x18mm ammo can be picked up along the way, for example in the hidden room inside the brick house not far away (climb the ladder onto the roof, and drop down into the hole on the other side the roof). A breakable box with a vodka bottle can be found on the farm. You can use it to bribe the military guard under the bridge to pass.

### Crossing the railway

The easiest way to cross is to simply jump over the fence under the big loud anomaly in the sky. Watch out for the military, don't get caught (reload if they see you, don't run). For more ways and general information, refer to the Cordon article.

### Doctor

Once you arrive at the Rookie village, get down to the basement near campfire and talk to Doctor; Sidorovich won't open the bunker until you are healed by him.

## Notes

* This quest is largely non-actionable and will end in Strelok's hideout in Agroprom Underground, after talking with Doctor in The long-awaited meeting during the vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl storyline.
* Until you speak with Doctor and drink his medicine, you can't access ATP and will be teleported away from it on approach. It was a lazy bugfix in 2.2 from the devs. Don't try to circumvent it, as it will break your game.

## Bugs

* Sometimes Skygazer will start fighting a pack of dogs nearby, instead of waiting for you to come close. As you have low HP, you can't run.
Fenrir's stash

Fenrir left you a stash in Limansk, in a two-story building near the fountain, on the second floor.

## Walkthrough

### Limansk

The full route is on the video below.

The OOB exit through the bush shown on the video seems to be unstable. You can use any of the exits at the construction site from the previous missions in the questline.

Once you find the room, you encounter Proper70, the same stalker that you need for Recipe decryption. He's unwilling to cooperate, though. After telling him you killed Fenrir, and showing him the proof that it was Fenrir's last wish, you both drink to Fenrir's death, and Marked One loses consciousness. After waking up, you see that Proper70 disappeared. Pick up Fenrir's stash in the same room.

After picking the stash up, Resident Evil contacts you, calling you for a talk.

### Zaton

Visit Resident Evil and tell him that you killed Fenrir. He tells you that you should find Proper70. After the talk, Proper70 call you to meet him at the scientist bunker at Jupiter. This will lead to the Information about the "Prophet's Star".

Additionally, Resident Evil gives you the lead to the stash Fenrir told you about in the audio recording. This leads to Beauty in the Cage.

## Notes

* Proper70 carries the "Poltergeist" flamethrower. You can buy it out for ~150,000RU by making him switch to another gun, but unless you finished the Mystery of the Islands questline and unlocked it as a reward it will be broken down to 0% condition, making it useless.
Swamps

Once a farmland, this territory is now a marsh after a Soviet dam project raised the water level. The water is highly radioactive, and the routes around it are dangerous.

## Transitions

* from and to Cordon: given for Protect the novices camp from the mercenaries by Devotee.
* to Agroprom: given for
* to Old Village: given during Kolmogor's sister

## Out-of-bounds exits

* The entire Clear Sky base lacks outside fence, so the OOB space can be freely accessed from there.
* Hole in the fence (NW part of the location) is another OOB exit.

## Notes

* There is a free, fully repaired HK MP5A4 in the Pump Station, where Kalmyk usually resides.
* Swamps has an artifact decay restrictor. Refer to Artifact decay for details.