Jason Moth

This flower is not like the others.

Most of the Artifacts you’ll come across in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl are formed inside Anomaly Fields and can only be extracted using a Scanner. Altered Items are a bit different in that they only show up near Arch Anomalies and don’t react to Scanners. There are only a handful of these items available in the game and each one is unique in its own way.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl features a wide variety of different Artifacts, some more powerful than others. Players will routinely find common and uncommon Artifacts like Lyre or Moonlight while roaming The Zone, but Stalkers who go out of their way to explore every Anomaly may sometimes stumble across a fabled Legendary Artifact like the Liquid Rock.

Hlynka is one of the first locations you encounter after leaving the relative safety of the Lesser Zone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. At first glance, Hlynka is just another random village infested by Bandits and plagued by Anomalies. Most of the houses and buildings found there are barely worth looting, however, you don’t want to miss out on exploring Hlynka because the village contains a valuable stash.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl takes 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 can 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.

Path of Exile 2 is quickly becoming notorious for offering one of the craziest skill trees ever seen in gaming. Featuring no fewer than 1,500 different skill nodes, the skill tree is both impressive and intimidating at the same time. That said, the tree only contains passive skills. If you want to acquire new active abilities, you’ll need to delve into an entirely different system.

Almost every item you find in Path of Exile 2 can be upgraded in some way or another. The only notable exceptions are unique items, which cannot be altered in any way. Pretty much everything else is fair game provided you have the right upgrade materials on hand. If you do, you can improve an item’s stats or rarity and add various Runes to it to make it stronger, among other things.

Like any good ARPG, Path of Exile 2 features a ton of weapons, armor, accessories, and various other pieces of loot to collect. Most of this loot will serve you well for a few levels but, sooner or later, will end up being sold, salvaged, or disenchanted. Every once in a while, though, you’ll come across a particularly good piece of loot that you'll want to hang onto for longer. When that happens, it’s time to start thinking about upgrades.

Path of Exile 2 allows players to mix and match weapons, active abilities, and passive skills with almost no restrictions regardless of their class. While your starting class nudges you in a certain direction, you can deviate from it at any time and play any sort of build you want. This level of freedom, which is also present in the original PoE, is almost unprecedented in other ARPGs, but it does come with some drawbacks.

Much like its predecessors, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has a vibrant modding community that’s constantly working to improve and expand upon the fantastic FPS created by GSC Game World. Although Stalker 2 has only been around for a few weeks, the community has already created hundreds of mods aimed at fixing bugs, improving performance, overhauling existing systems, introducing new features and more.