Stalker 2’s first patch is coming next week – here’s what it will include

Developer GSC Game World said Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s first patch will respond directly to feedback from players.

In an update posted to Steam over the weekend, the studio said it has identified a number of issues, and listed its priorities.

Memory allocation failures – “which previously caused the game to exit unexpectedly, particularly around rendering, skeletal meshes, and quest-related cutscenes” – are first on the list, followed by main quest progression issues, including NPCs getting stuck in objects, incorrect quest markers, and issues with quest cutscenes. Main quests like Visions of Truth or A Minor Incident will be revised “to ensure smooth transitions, avoiding rare cases of players not being able to proceed further”.

Here’s everything else scheduled for a fix in the first upcoming patch:

Gameplay and balance adjustments, including:

• Fixing the price of the weapons with upgrades installed compared to their value without attachments.
• NPCs behavior, including the way they act when lacking a shelter during the Emissions.

Cutscenes and visual fixes, including:

• Rarely missing facial animations, misplaced NPCs, and visual inconsistencies like detached heads and clothes clipping.
• Quality and stability improvements of the visual effects.

Softlock fixes, including:

• Issue where players were unable to close the trade screen after putting ammo in a wrong slot while playing on a gamepad.

User interface improvements, including:

• Quest notifications now showed correctly during dialogues.
• Corrected texts and missing interaction prompts.

Noted to be addressed in future updates:

• Analogue sticks dead zones bugfixes.
• A-Life system bugfixes.

Right now there’s no word on when the patch will go live, but GSC Game World hinted it’s coming “during the week to come” to both PC and Xbox Series X/S.

“The game has been out for several days now (it’s still surreal to say that), and we’ve been following your feedback in all possible forms carefully,” the team said. “To the more than one million stalkers in the Zone, thanks for playing – that means the world to us.”

“Full of anomalies in more ways than one, Stalker 2 is a mess of bugs and jank that nonetheless stays faithful to the open world survival shooter of yesteryear,” reads Eurogamer’s Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review.