S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyltakes dozens of hours to complete, and that’s if you’re only following the main story. If you take the time to explore the map thoroughly, you may easily spend 150 to 200 hours in Stalker 2 before you can claim to have experienced everything The Zone has to offer. That includes, among other things, unlocking every achievement/trophy.
All Journalist Stash Locations in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Where to find all 12 Journalist Stashes and what you get from them.
Stalker 2 features a grand total of 58 achievements, some of which are pretty much impossible to unlock unless you specifically go out of your way to fulfill their requirements. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of some of the hardest achievements in Stalker 2 along with handy tips that will help you unlock them. Check it out down below.
Spoilers Ahead
7Loner Shooter
Sniping Without a Scope
To unlock Loner Shooter you’ll need to score a headshot from at least 75 meters away. Sounds difficult but not impossible for a seasoned sniper, right? Well, the caveat is that you’ll need to do it without the help of ADS (aim down sights). In other words, you’ll need to fire from the hip and won’t be able to rely on scopes. The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to kill the enemy you’re firing at. As long as one of your bullets touches their head, it’ll count as a headshot and the achievement will be unlocked.
There are two ways of going about this – a fully upgraded sniper rifle and do your best to aim for an enemy’s head or grab an automatic rifle and spray a bunch of enemies while you pray for the best. Either way, you’ll need to find a location with plenty of open space and ideally get some high ground. Slow-moving enemies like Zombies are great targets, but bigger mutants can be even better ones as they’re easier to hit. There’s no easy way to estimate distances on the fly, especially when enemies are moving, but you’re able to place a marker on your map and use the compass to get a rough estimate.
Weapons in Stalker 2 have bullet drop-off, so always aim above enemies. Upgrades for Flatness and reduced drop-off can help compensate for that, but only to a certain extent.
Blowing Things Up Never Gets Old
BOOM! is a surprisingly-difficult achievement to unlock considering it only requires you to kill 20 enemies by “blowing up the surroundings.” The wording here is vague, so you might be tempted to try getting the kills using your own explosives. Unfortunately, that won’t work. Instead, you’ll need to use environmental explosions by blowing up barrels and other things that go boom. Thermal Anomalies don’t seem to count since none of them explode per se.
The reason why this achievement is difficult to unlock is because an exploding barrel doesn’t kill instantly most types of enemies. Enemies in Stalker 2 are notoriously tanky, so you’ll either need to soften them up before triggering an explosion or use explosions to kill weak enemies like Rodents. On the bright side, you don’t need to kill the required twenty enemies all at once. Try to kill a couple of enemies with exploding barrels here and there whenever you get a chance and you’ll eventually get to twenty sooner or later.
Once you find a good spot where you can score some easy explosion kills, feel free to save and reload the game to farm the same enemies multiple times. Repeat kills count toward the achievement.
5Between the Lines
Who Has Time to Read?
Between the Lines is one of the hardest achievements to get in Stalker 2 if you’re trying to unlock it the traditional way. The achievement requires you to collect eight notes and then use the clues inside to unlock a door in Prypiat. The notes are scattered all over the map and there’s no indication that they are needed for anything, but they are. The clues come in the form of a series of numbers you can punch onto a keypad to unlock a mysterious red door on the 8th floor of an apartment building in Prypiat (image above). These are the notes you’ll need:
The clues from the notes combine to form the code‘13263622’. Punch it onto the keypad to unlock the door and get yourself a nice reward. The achievement unlocks once the door is opened, so you don’t necessarily need the notes to get it. While the achievement is meant to be an extra reward for solving the puzzle, you may save yourself some time and simply use the code above if you don’t feel like running around the entire map looking for notes.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl – How to Open the Locked Door in Hlynka
This unassuming village hides a dangerous foe.
4Stalker’s Smarts
Smarter Than Your Average Bear
This next achievement is a bit of a doozy and easy to miss if you haven’t looked it up beforehand. Stalker’s Smarts can only be unlocked during the Side Hustle optional mission and requires you to retrieve an item from a warehouse without actually entering the building. You can grab the mission in question by talking to Sergeant Yeremeyev inside the Icarus base, Zaton region. The warehouse can be found in theRailway Maintenance Facilitynorthwest of Icarus. Simply follow the quest marker and it’ll lead you right to it. Once you find the building, you can spot a box in one of the windows on the upper level of the building. That’s the quest item.
You can simply push a button to open the door and get the box for the quest, but if you want the achievement, you’ll need to find a way to grab the item from the outside. There are a couple of ways of going about this. The easiest method is to find a crate and push it all the way to the building. You can then get on top of it and jump to reach the box. You can also reach it by climbing on top of the nearby train and making a big jump from there toward the window. You won’t be able to get through the window, but you can grab the box in midair if you’re fast enough. Finally, you can lob some grenades or use an RPG to cause an explosion inside the room that will make the box drop out of the window.
3Scanning Complete
Gotta Catch ‘em All
To unlock Scanning Complete, you’ll need to collect Artifacts from every Scanner in the game. This achievement is confusing because it sounds like you would need to collect one of every type of hand-held Scanner, such as an Echo Scanner, a Bear Scanner, etc. That’s not the case. Instead, you’ll need to interact with those large Scanners scattered throughout The Zone and retrieve Artifacts from them. There are ten such Scanners and you can find them in the following locations:
In a field southwest of the Slag Heap
In the sewers of the Hydrodynamics Lab
On an island in the western part of the region
On top of the crane in the northern part of the region
Cooling Towers
On top of the Electrical Transformer. Can only be collected at night
Chemical Plant
Inside a building east of the Scientist Helicopter
Dead Sponge
In the center of the Burning Rift
Burnt Forest
Along the border between Yaniv and the Red Forest, near the western edge of the map
Devil’s Mushroom
Red Forest
Inside the Prypiat Substation
On the roof of one of the buildings of the River Port
Meat Lighter
There are more than ten of these Scanners in the game, but the other ones don’t count toward the achievement as they don’t contain Artifacts.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl – How to Get the Liquid Rock Legendary Artifact
Equip this Artifact and you’ll never have to worry about Radiation again.
2Wardens Drool
Even Bandits Deserve a Second Chance
Wardens Drool is an achievement that requires you to save a Bandit and piss off the Ward in the process. Generally speaking, Bandits will attack you on sight whenever you run into them while exploring The Zone. Those are certainly not the type of people you want to save. Every now and again, you’ll run into some non-hostile Bandits during a side quest who will try to rob or scam you, but you can’t rely on those to help you unlock this achievement either. The only way to get this achievement is by making a series of somewhat counter-intuitive choices in the early and mid-game.
The first choice you’ll need to make is to show Captain Zotov theUnusual PDAduring theA Needle in a Haystack quest. Later on, you’ll need to pick the dialogue option “I want to talk to Chornozem” during the follow-up quest: Answers Come at a Price. Instead of talking to the Bandit, kill the Ward members guarding him to save Chornozem’s life. The Bandit will thank you and you’ll be one achievement closer to completionism.
1The Four Winds
At first glance, The Four Winds seems like an easy achievement to unlock, but as it turns out, it’s actually one of the hardest. This achievement requires players to unlock every region of The Zone, including two locations that are currently inaccessible. Namely, the Iron Forest and the CNPP. But although these regions can’t be explored just yet as the developers are saving them for future DLC, they still register in your PDA as new locations when you get close enough to them and will count toward the achievement.
To unlock the Iron Forest, you’ll need to visit the Iron Forest Gate north of Garbage. Meanwhile, the CNPP can be unlocked by visiting the Bridge of Death east of the Generators. The Generators can only be visited toward the end of the story. You must unlock every other available location by that point because there’s no going back afterward.
The Four Winds seems to be bugged at the moment. Unlocking every region, including the currently inaccessible ones does not trigger the achievement. It’s unclear whether this is intentional or something that will be fixed in a future patch.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a sequel to the award-winning game franchise developed by GSC Game World. Experience one-of-a-kind gameplay, featuring the elements of a first-person shooter, immersive sim, and horror. The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is a unique, dangerous and ever-changing environment. It promises a lot — the artifacts of unbelievable value can be yours if you dare to claim them. The price you may pay, on the other hand, is no less than your own life. One of the biggest open-worlds to date, filled with radiation, mutants and anomalies, is yours to explore. All the choices across the way not only define your own epic story, but influence the future itself. Be mindful about what you see, do and plan, as you will have to find your way through the Zone or be forever lost to it.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - 10 Tips And Tricks We Wish We Knew Sooner
Some of these tricks will greatly increase your chances of surviving in The Zone.
