│📚manual

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Repairing guns

Guns must be repaired to progress since you can't buy them from traders with GAMMA Economy. Indeed, the EU and UN decided to put a stop at the bloodshed in the Zone as well as guns smuggling from the Zone to the nearby countries by trying to limit guns traffic, and no faction want to have problems with more Private Military Companies paid by these organisms, PMCs are already crawling enough within the Zone.

"Limiting guns traffic?! Tell that to politics when you have monolithans in front of you!!!! Why do think Monolith is back after all these years?! Fuck the EU and UN!"
- Illich Popov, Veteran Loner.

You can loot guns from stashes or dead stalkers though, and that's how you will make it to the North in one piece. Most of them will be destroyed and you'll need to fix them or they will jam very often.

Keep in mind that gun's condition is separated from parts conditions. Gun condition represents how clean a gun is and will change parts degradation and promote jamming. Jams are coming from the actual gun parts. Repairing the gun condition will not repair the gun's parts. Each part must be repaired individually. Each part affects the gun jamming frequency but the barrel. The barrel changes the damage the gun deals, to some extent.

To repair guns you have two ways:

• Collect parts for the weapon that are above 60% condition and repair them with the appropriate tool to 100% condition (ramrod, Multitool... Check the part's details). Drag and drop the repaired parts on the gun, it will limit the chance of the gun jamming. Moving parts in and out of the gun will will make it less clean. Barrels can't be replaced that way, you need the appropriate toolkit and replace it in the crafting / repair menu (launched in a vice or after right clicking and "use" a toolkit).

• If a gun has a barrel with a condition above 60% condition, you can buy a cleaning kit from mechanics and right click the gun > clean barrel. Same for other parts. It's an easy way to get good guns early since you can buy cleaning kit without any toolkits unlocked.

• Alternatively, you can get the appropriate repair kit, right click the gun and "maintain parts" it will allow you to replace the guns parts for 100% condition parts automatically, but will consume a repair kit use. It can even replace barrels. These kits can be crafted or bought to mechanics once you have the appropriate toolkit (basic, advanced or expert).

You must also clean the gun using cleaning equipment or paying a mechanic to do it. Cleaning a gun will not repair its parts but will prevent parts to be degraded when using the gun.

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Repairing armors

Armors repair follow a similar pattern. Find them in stashes or on dead stalkers.

Collect parts above 50% and repair them to 100% condition. Replace the armor parts using a workbench or right clicking any toolkit and "use" it. To replace armor parts you'll need the appropriate repair kit in your inventory. Replacing parts will not consume repair kits uses. From 50% and above, armors can be repaired directly using repair kits. Below that you'll need to repair parts. Be sure to maintain you armor condition.

In GAMMA you cannot repair armors at mechanics.

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How to progress

Perform tasks, kill mutants, collect their parts, keep these parts to accomplish stalkers tasks, collect stashes coordinates, visit those stashes, get fat loot, get toolboxes, repair the fat loot by buying or crafting repair kits using the toolboxes

Do tasks, get goodwill, sleep, visit traders, buy new shiny ammo for your fat loot.

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Healing

Use basic healing items like medkits or bandages to heal your main health. It will also heal your limbs temporarily (yellow HP). To convert these temporary HP to permanent HP for your limbs (yellow to white HP) use post heal items (like Ibuprofen, with white dots in their description).

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Crafting

Right click toolkits that you'll find in stashes and click open workbench to start crafting.

All recipes are available from the start, including cooking recipes. You'll just need to farm monolith exos to get special exo batteries crafting recipes.

Use this to your advantage to get access to good equipment!

Be sure to disassemble everything you find to save some space in your backpack as well as being able to craft new equipment in your base.

Keep the textiles to craft new backpacks.

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Inventory management

Inventory management is rather easy, just clean your inventory from the unnecessary mess, and store them in a stash in your faction base.

"We just witnessed a loner, his backpack was so heavy he was struggling climbing that cliff coming from bloodsucker village... Then we heard a scream in the night... Poor bastard... We'll get his loot in the morning and will prepare a proper burial."

• Sergei Ivanov, Master Freedomer.

Now here are some nifty tips:

Holding Shift while moving your cursor in your inventory will transfer the whole stack of items you are pointing. That way you can easily store all your disassembled parts in your stash and vice versa by holding shift while moving your cursor on items stacks.

Shift+T will "Take All".

Mutant parts and meat don't weight much and are on high demand by stalkers : keep all of them in your inventory all the time, this will give you goodwill and stashes easily

Crafting tools don't weight much now and you can right click "use" them to open the crafting and repair menu just like a vice. That's a good way to craft what you need on the go.

Ammunition can be quite heavy, but disassembled ammo parts are very lightweight: keep these parts and craft ammo on the go with your gunsmith toolkit. Be sure to disassemble all unnecessary ammo.

You can right click and mark some items as "Favorite" and others as "Junk". This will give you an easy access to the important items that will always be on the top of every inventory containers. It's the opposite for junk: it will always be at the bottom of inventories

You don't need every medical items to heal your body. Mark the most important ones as favorite for an easy access.

Water bottle are much better weight-wise than cantines to quench your thirst. Keep the cantines in your main stash to cook mutant food.

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Traders progression

"Hello Stalker, you are new around here, right? No shiny ammunition for you, we don't trust you just yet... I see that you have that old PPSh from your grandfather don't you? Here are some 7.62x25 ammo, that's all you gonna get today. Now, go hunt these mutants and make the Zone a safer place."

• Petrenko

Traders will mostly sell supplies and some accessories. You can increase their supply level by doing tasks for the trader's faction. The goodwill thresholds are: 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 goodwill. This is the main way to secure a constant income of good ammunitions.

You won't be able to buy or sell armors and guns at traders.

Traders are either of the WP (Warsaw Pact) or NATO type. This will influence the kind of supplies that they sell (ammo and attachments mostly).

NATO factions: Mercenaries, Clear Sky, Freedom, UNISG.

WP factions: Military, Loner, Duty, Bandits, Renegades, Monolith.

This also influences NPCs loadouts of these factions, but for instance Monolith NPCs have about 50% change to have a NATO or WP gun.

Some traders sell very specific items, like Prof. Sakharov and Hermann sell the Artefacts Melter, a GAMMA specific toolkit that let's you empower and craft artefacts (and you can break artefacts with it to replenish the melter's power). They also sell exoskeletons' PSU recipes at Supplies Lv 5.

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Money management

In GAMMA money is of the essence, especially in the beginning.

There are fast ways to make cash, namely doing tasks without picking up fights, selling mutant parts or selling artefacts to the ecologists.

You'll find yourself often spending money in healing items and that's intended. The more you play, the better the toolkits you'll have and the easier it will be to repair good gear and craft items, which will save money and make fights easier, thus helping you saving even more money.

In mid game, you'll inevitably get loads of money. This can be used to upgrade your equipment, or invest in expensive AP ammo.

You can also buy detectors and NVGs at traders... Or craft them and save some money.

Maintaining an exoskeleton armor will also be a money sink since you need to often buy expensive exo batteries in numbers.

Better healing items are also a must to have easier fights, using stimpacks will greatly help you in tense fights.

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Energy management, a tale of food, drinks and beds

You character will be tired at the end of the day. You have to sleep replenish your energy. You can only sleep if you are tired enough. Using sleeping pills will allow you to forcefully sleep, this will not replenish your energy.

Depending on how the day was, you'll get tired faster or not. Eating copious meals and using sleep inducing medicines will allow you to feel tired and get rest at the end of the day. However if you are eating small meals, and use energy drinks or caffeine tablets often, you'll have a hard time to be tired enough to sleep at the end of the day.

You'll have a chance to wake up early. Be sure to try to sleep more than what you intend to sleep the correct amount of time. Sometimes you'll oversleep.

Having a sleeping bag + sleeping mat will reduce the chance of waking up early

Vodka or Beers can help you sleep as well.

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Ballistic System

GAMMA uses Grok's Balanced Overhaul Of Ballistic System. It changes notably the bullets and armor penetration from PLAYER to NPCs (not the other way around) using EFT ammunition system as an inspiration. The goal is to have a more realistic ballistic system where you must take into account the armor of your enemy and the ammo type you are using.

Ammo Armor Penetration (AP) power is compared to the limb armor of the opponent. If the AP power > limb armor, damages are applied. If AP power < limb armor, no damages are applied and limb armor is reduced based on AP power. Ammo with low AP power thus need to break an opponents limb armor before starting doing damage. AP ammo are thus required to kill heavily armored targets. FMJ and HP ammo will still work, but the enemy armor must be destroyed by many of these bullets to start doing damage.

Legs and face armors are reduced.

AP ammo (Armor Penetration): are expensive but will defeat any endgame heavily armored target. They are end game ammo, don't use them against lightly armored targets or you will waste money.

FMJ ammo (Full Metal Jacket): are cheap and must be used to kill lightly armored targets... or if you don't have the money to buy good ammo against armored targets

HP ammo (Hollow-Point): are a bit more expensive than FMJ and must be used to kill mutants.

Sniper ammo are actually very powerful, but also very expensive. Lapua will most likely one shot most ennemies to the chest... if you can afford them.

Buckshots will work as inexpensive, early game ammo against stalkers. Forget about them mid and late game. They aren't useful against exos. They are very good to kill mutants.

Slugs are good to kill mutants and stalkers alike. AP Slugs are good only against stalkers.

Some ammo are much more useful against mutants: HP ammo, .357 magnum, .45 Hydrashock, buckshots, slugs, 7.62x25 LRNPC.

Bullets have an armor penetration value in their description. It's based on the Russian BR classification for ammo penetration:

• BR1 - BR2 = penetrate light armors
• BR3 - BR4 = penetrate middle-class armors
• BR5 = penetrate heavy armors
• BR6 = penetrate exo armors.

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Storylines

Lost to the Zone:
Available at your faction leader in your starting base with these factions:
Loner
Clear Sky
Duty
Freedom
Mercs
Ecologists

Mission Afterglow:
Available at the start of the UNISG playthrough (type isg in character creation menu to unlock this faction).

Artefacts Hunters:
To start the plot, you need to go to any NPC from among the "Artifact Hunters" (for example, Kovalev in the church in the swamps) or find their representative, a stalker-ecologist named Sarik the Twilight in the village of newcomers. Available to Ecologists allies:
Loner
Clear Sky
Duty
Freedom
Military
Mercs
Ecologists

Last Dawn:
Talk to Spore in the Swamp Clear Sky base. Available to Clear Sky allies:
Clear Sky
Loner
Freedom
Duty
Mercs
Ecologists

Operation Monolith Retribution:
Talk to Colonel Kuznetsov and help the military take control of the very Center of the Zone! Available to Military allies:
Military
Ecologists

Dr.X questline:
Available to all factions, not really story oriented.

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Hidden Radio Emitting Packages

You'll get random messages that are telling you to find some packages in certain maps.

To find them, equip your RF Receiver and press the detector key. Put your weapon away and start changing the frequency of the RF Receiver to match the one from the message (check #│💻keybinds-in-gamma for more details). Follow the strong beeps, the faster they are the closer you are to the package. You can hold the Use button (F) to display the package text and more easily find / grab it. It's actually an item laying on the ground or hidden in barrels etc. It is NOT a stash you have to interact with. You can then right click the package in your inventory and open it to get its content. It ranges from random stuff to artefacts or toolkits.

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Upgrading weapons using kits

Boomsticks and Sharpsticks introduces a new way to upgrade guns: using upgrade kits. This will allow you to make guns more tacticool (adding lasers, or recoil reducing attachments). Once you have a gun and a compatible upgrade kit (kit highlighted when hovering the gun), just move the upgrade kit on the gun to upgrade it.

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Stashes

Stashes must be marked to contain anything. Unmarked stashes will always be empty. Stashes content is tied to the map they spawn in: the northern a stash is in the Zone, the better the loot.

Storing stuff in stashes is safe : it won't be looted by NPCs and even if the stash is marked at some point, content will spawn in the stash on top of what you previously stored.

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Radiations

GAMMA features dynamic radiations and revamped radiation damages system.

New random radiation patches are spawned when starting a new game.

Radiations will slowly reduce your health (much slower than Vanilla) and will reduce your max stamina. The more irradiated you are, the more probably critical organs will be damaged by rads. This results in the player character coughing and loosing significant health amount.

If you hit a radiation patch and the icon is beeping at the bottom left, don't panick. If you start coughing, it's time to check your dosimeter. If you have rads above 500mS, it will slowly kill you, think about using an anti rad or several cigarettes. If the icon is yellow, use a strong anti rad as soon as possible.

The more to the north you go, the more dangerous the radiations will be. Be sure to have a good gas mask before going into northern areas. Army Warehouses without a gas mask can kill you if you just hit one bad radiation patch without proper anti radiation medication.

In future changes, getting good gas masks will be harder and there will be a real progression on helmets just like armors.

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Screenshots

The folder listed in-game is not where they were. Turns out screenshots should be in STALKER G.A.M.M.A. RC1>overwrite>bin

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Disguise system

You can wear other factions armor and be considered as a member of that faction if the patch of the faction's armor is on.

If you tear off the patch, you'll be considered as a member of your characters faction.

When attaching the patch, you need to be out of the field of view of other stalkers so your disguise doesn't blow up.

This feature is especially powerful with ecologists armors, but they are very hard to get your hands on in GAMMA

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Lore

After the fall of the Monolith thanks to Strelok, the Zone became a place of science and discoveries. The zone wasn't a secret place anymore and the UN then started to ban armament selling in the Zone to make it more peaceful, with paid PMCs to ensure the security and limit fights between existing factions. During that time the Monolith grew stronger again, and in 2018, the Monolith is back, reactivated the miracle machine and the brain scorcher, and it's 2012 all over again, and Strelok is back at it after staying hidden in the zone for so long. Your character arrives in the zone in the middle of that mess.

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GAMMA Artefacts Reinvention

• New Grizzly Detector to find all artefacts even with NVGs on. Craftable with an advanced kit.

• New artefacts spawning system: artefacts spawn randomly in the current map the player is in in anomalous fields. Be sure to check them whenever you move around them!

• New artefacts quality system: artefacts spawn with a random low condition (or "quality") to mimic that every artefact is different in their strength.

• New toolkit, the Artefacts Melter. Buy it a Sakharov or Herman for about 30k RU. You can craft artefacts (right click > Fuse Artefacts) and empower them with it (right click > Empower artefacts). Every action you take with the artefacts melter will consume some uses. You can refill the melter by holding Left Alt key and dragging it on top of any artefact. That will melt the artefact and give 1 more use to the melter. You can alternatively buy another melter... Keep in mind that bringing an empty melter with you is a good way to make replenish it on your way through the zone with artefacts you don't care about.

• Artefacts empowering: combine two exactly similar artefacts to sum their condition / quality. You can combine any junk artefact with any other junk artefact at a reduced rate.

• Artefacts crafting: access the craft menu as usual. There will be a new crafting subsection: artefacts. This will allow you to convert multiple artefacts of a given tier to the tier above: Junk > Tier 1 (7mS). Tier 1 > Tier 2 (12mS). Tier 2 > Tier 3 (23mS). Tier 3 > Special.

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Cooking

Cooking is now easier because you don't need coal using field cooking or military kit when you are near a campfire.

It makes the basic and advanced cooking recipes (requiring water)much easier to cook.

The number of uses of these cooking kits also got improved.

Mutant meat kcal has been improved (a lot) and the radiations they give are very minimalistic now.

The cooking camera animation has been shorten by a lot so you can cook things much faster.

Also, all cooking recipes are available from the start

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Armors defensive values

Super nice spreadsheet made by @strong root

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mzFmk1zVWa3-scEWwfPZLHxhkmCKXta5DTjUhASVmbw/edit?usp=sharing

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Guns

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MtcGryS-7sWRKWrDXpg28n1QXs6th-dofZYAqAP7mYQ/edit?usp=sharing