Written by Jeff Buckland, 9/30/2008
S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky is a brutally difficult first person shooter from GSC Game World where you play in a rather open environment and can do a lot of things in the order you choose. This non-linearity combined with the toughness of some of the firefights can leave you in a really bad way (more than once I was stuck with a quicksave where I had only few rounds of ammo, no medkits or bandages, and my character was bleeding out), so use these tips to get an edge that will last you through to the game's conclusion.
Making money
What I didn't realize when I first started playing that the way to success in Clear Sky isn't necessarily finishing objectives or following the story, but making money and putting it towards better loot. Finishing main story objectives rarely gets you the good stuff, but the side missions are great sources of cash. During the early game, money should be your primary goal; if so, you'll be able to do much better once you do start working on the main story.
Cart the loot
Later in the game, moving loot around is kind of a pain in the butt, but early on it's easier. The first level, the swamp, has several "guide" characters (marked in areas on the map once you clear out spots in the swamps) to instantly take you back to the Clear Sky base - just load up on anything that's worth money, get a guide to take you back for free, and dump it all off at the trader. Then just have the guide take you back to where you were. It only gets tougher to cart loot back and forth between the front lines and traders after the swamp level, so take advantage of it while it's good.
Get upgrades
The way to make many of the game's weapons and armor good rather than mediocre is by upgrading them at the engineers that are in several of the game's levels. Use these guys to repair your stuff (it's expensive but worth it once you make an investment in upgrades for your gear) and also install vital upgrades that allow you to put a scope on a gun or add that little bit of extra weight capacity to your armor. And tossing a scope on that rifle of yours will allow you to take on camps of enemies with much less risk. One easy start is in the cabin of the engineer in the Clear Sky base - see that scope on the vice in the back of the room? Now go under the cabin and and jump repeatedly while mashing your use (by default it's F) key and you'll actually be able to grab it through the floor. You can grab one of the SMGs in the room, too. Once you grab some of the guns from the military in the Cordon (more on that later), you can equip the scope on one of them for some precise shots in single-shot mode.
Faction wars
Clear Sky is a different game from what a player of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R might remember. Here, you'll never really wipe out a faction even if you take over their base (Freedom vs. Duty is the biggest example of this), and you'll find an ebb and flow of factions taking over spots and you can help them out when nearby. Learning how to take best advantage of this is important - even if you weren't actually close by when your buddies took over a spot from the Bandits or another faction, drop by and you'll find the enemy corpses lying there ready for you to loot. If you wait too long, then often you'll only see their guns lying around, which can still be a good source of income. Overall, you'll have the choice between siding with the Diggers or with the Bandits, and I recommend the latter since they have more to offer once you get friendly with them than the Diggers. You'll also get to choose between Freedom or Duty, which is a close one and each has its merits so that's up to you.
Snagging artifacts
In Clear Sky you'll have to have your detector out to even be able to see artifacts, much less pick them up. Traders won't be selling them or giving you quests to get them, so the ones you do get should be a big deal. The first thing is this: when you see a bunch of anomalies or a visibly dangerous area full of radiation or psi activity, your reaction should not be to avoid it entirely. It should be to quicksave, pull out your detector, and dive in to find an artifact. You'll know pretty quickly if one is there, and once you get to the point where you can get the detector that's worth 1500RU, spend the money to make it easier to get what you want and get out. Either way, an artifact is always worth using up a few medkits, because even if you can't use it, it's worth quite a bit to a trader.
There are at least six artifacts placed throughout the Swamps, although it will take you quite a bit of searching to find them all. If you need help, head ot the Clear Sky base and check out the Swamps map in the room next to Lebedev's. It'll have anomaly areas circled with a thin line. There's also one more which is particularly tough to find, but this video should help.
Weapon accuracy
Clear Sky has that same ridiculously bad weapon accuracy that plagued the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I've no idea why they continued this crappy trend, but what it means to you is that even a nice rifle with a scope that you've got leveled at your enemy correctly is going to fire out in a very large, random cone so that you'll miss far more often than not. Of course, bullets are also not instant-hit weapons and the bullets do actually drop based on the speed they travel (and you can upgrade some guns to increase that speed), so you'll not only need to lead your shots but also account for gravity. Unfortunately, you also need to account for the game's arbitrary difficult that's been added, unless you install a mod to fix it - which I do recommend just to save yourself the aggravation of emptying a full clip, with a gun like the AC96/2 set to single shot and its scope perfectly leveled on the guy 500 feet away, and having not a single round actually hit.
Use buddies
Many of the installations you'll attack will include the help of a few NPCs. Sure, they kind of suck and are horrible at staying behind cover (and will often push you right out from behind your own cover), but they're often worth it just so that the enemy will shoot at them instead of you. In the meantime, you find the best place to drop some precise shots and rack up some kills. You might even let the firefight go on a bit longer so that as your buddies get killed, you can run over to their bodies after the fighting dies down and loot them too. Just try not to let the "Task failed" message pop up if you're on a side mission, since even if you kill the enemy afterwards, you don't get the reward - and the rewards for doing these is often much better than the profits from the sale of the gear that's dropping.
