Night of the Full Moon

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My second task at Agroprom was to locate Ghost's diary for Kruglov. The idiot placed it on a highly irradiated hill guarded by pseudodogs. After sniping said dogs it took me a few goes using anti-rad to locate the thing only to then suddenly take fire from a nearby hill. Since it was night time and a storm had begun pouring rain from above I had no hope in fighting back from that open location so instead I opted to make a wide run back to the facility where the friendly stalkers were camped, losing my pursuers in the process. There was no point in going back out there with poor visibility so I decided to nap only to be woken up by another blowout at midnight. Once it passed, so had the storm and the full moon lit up the surroundings enough for me to travel. Returned to Garbage after killing a pair of would-be robbers and traded in some dog parts for equipment and cash from the fat trader. From there I decided to cross over to the Dark Valley to try wrap up more quests and was pleased to find a Duty Squad guarding the Western woods of the area. I proceeded North where Fox had joined Bes and Mole's camp, and handed in Strelok's armor to Bes as I promised earlier.

Decided to try retrieve a laptop from the lab here too so I circled around the bandit buildings, killing their lone sentry as well as a wandering burer then remembered to detour into an abandoned house where the injured guy I left here from last time was still bleeding out. Must have a lot of blood? Anyway gave him a medkit and he accompanied me to the lab entrance where I eliminated a random mutant camp (rats, snorks and bloodsucker) before continuing downstairs to face the pair of poltergeists that survived my previous venture here. Finally cleared the place but they managed to smash my armor. With the laptop in hand I made my way back to the surface only to find a new military APC had parked itself right outside the gate! I used up what little grenades I had left but the damn thing was still alive. There was no way I could outrun it's autocannon and no cover to run to from there so I made my way upstairs to the roof and did some parkour to the next building. It was a long drop from the roof, but was the only way I could see to get out of the perimiter without passing the APC. Needless to say, it hurt. - but I lived!

Did a huge circle around the area again, passing Bes' camp and the Duty team to avoid the APC and reach the bunkers in the bottom part of the region. There I was meant to hunt down a stalker called "Vampire" which turned out to be pretty easy as he was just chillaxing by the fire. Punched his lights out to complete the quest then took the South path to return to Cordon.

I like to think this is what he looked like.

Descent into the Dark Valley

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

I noticed on the map a new way to reach my destination - something called the Forgotten Forest. I only got to its outer zone when I was beset by packs of dogs, a pair of snorks, blood suckers and zombies that get up after you "kill" them. Did a good job pushing me outta there and rethinking my route. With exo armor at less than 50% I hoofed it back to the Duty outpost and used the Northern path instead which, while being more radiated, was a whole lot easier to traverse.

Upon entering the Dark Valley I met up with "Bullet" who had just taken down a small group of bandits (I had to put one out of his misery though), and he asked me to help him free his fellow guild members from the bandit controlled buildings in the northern section. Turns out their leader holds a key I need to get into my main target = laboratory x18. After helping Bullet save one guy being transported it was up to me to infiltrate the base and rescue "Shaggy" and his team.

Of course I was attacked by a bunch of bloodsuckers en route but the first part of their compound was surprisingly lightly guarded by only 1 dude. I imagine the bloodsuckers did take a few of them out though since I found their bodies. The next few sets of bandits were asleep so I took the liberty of point blank shotgunning them to the face, Just as they deserved. This of course alerted the numerous remaining scum but they were no match for me. Alas I found Shaggy in the dungeon - dead. He was either executed or it was suicide, regardless I got the key from the bandit boss and made sure all hostiles were dead before leaving the compound.

I was surprised to find Mole and Bes camped outside, and completed a few tasks for them while I was there which earned me a nice Tommy-gun from Mole which would come in very handy in the next place I was going to visit. The laboratory had a few more bandits lurking outside (one with an RPG - yikes), but the true horrors were within the heavy sealed door.

 

Burers are a lot more dangerous now, but still just as ugly.

The entry was crawling with izolms along with a few snorks. Also killed me a few burers and a number of very annoying poltergeists further in while trying to find codes to open two locked doors, behind one of which was another pseudogiant. I eventually find the files I was after, but that nice tommy gun was totally dry of ammo and my exo-skeleton armor was pretty much falling to pieces.

Tripping out at the Cordon

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Woke up on the road with a guy named Stargazer who apparently pulled me from the wreckage of a "death" truck. He seemed surprised I survived then gave me a raincoat, binoculars, a knife, a med kit (used immediately since I was near death) and a small pistol with 8 bullets and sent me on my way to the "newbie village". This is hilarious, given the amount of hostile wild life I am seeing nearby, not to mention I have to get past a military checkpoint at a broken rail bridge to reach it. Gotta say the anomalies have never looked so good, and dangerous. Fortunately I still have my infinite scrap metal pieces to toss ahead of me just to make sure I'm not walking into anything nasty.

Getting across the tracks turned out to be easy since I spotted a lightly patrolled section atop the hill and I slipped through undetected which is great given that a) the military guys don't like stalkers and b) they are better equipped than I am. Spent all but one bullet on a pack of dogs that caught onto my scent on the other side, and I had to make a run for the village with the left overs in tow, resulting in the death of one of the guards. Was also interesting to note that there was a gangly zombie (which I had never seen before) lurking in the forests nearby and keeping everyone on edge. The guards eventually killed the "Izolm".

He's a handsome fella ain't he?

The other stalkers at the village had a great deal of distrust in me, and sent me to see Doc to take some sort of test. Apparently this involves taking wierd medicine and passing out (again) only to wake up deep in a mine full of horrible beasties including snorks, bloodsuckers, zombies, skeletons, pseudogiants and poltergeists. Thanks guys. At least they provided me with some power armor, a chain gun and decent artifacts to negate the horrible radiation. After massacring all the other hostiles the last section contained a series of lightning anomalies - a good trick given that someone in power armor cannot run. Easy enough to time jumping through the eletrical arcs with the armor off though.

Having passed the "test" I awoke back in the village and see the local trader (bought more ammo - yay) as well as some other dudes to do some random tasks involving retrieving artifacts, saving captured people, retrieving armor from dens of psy-dogs, and hunting boar - all in a lousy raincoat and -still- using Stargazer's pistol. The modders balanced the money in-take/out-take very well. It was around this point last time that I went south to the military camp to wipe them out but given that they have a HELICOPTER lurking around their base (and I still only have a pistol) I thought to instead follow the main quest North to find this "Strelok" person.