Stalker 2 has just received a new patch that fixes the main mission and side quests as well as input lag.

It was quick. Patch 1.0.3 for Stalker 2, which was released just a few days ago, fixes a whole bunch of mission bugs. Stalker 2 has a lot of bugs, so it's going to take some time. It's going to take a lot bandwidth: the patch for today is around 20GB.

It's hoped that it will result in a more enjoyable experience for artifact hunters. The patch fixes "multiple" crashes and memory leaks. It disables mouse acceleration and smoothing to reduce input lag on PCs.

The majority of these fixes are spoilers, so they will be redacted below. You can read the full patch notes for 1.0.3 here if you're interested in more details. Some of the fixes are as follows: a dead enemy despawned too quickly, and players were unable recover items from its corpse. Other enemies chased players further than necessary, and some essential characters died when they shouldn’t. All of these issues are progress-stopping, so it's great to see them being addressed so quickly, especially after the last patch.

There are a few fixes for AI--no it's not the complete fix of A-Life 2.0--such as a bug with NPCs blocking doorways and monsters acting strangely when shot. The vendor was also not selling certain types of ammo, so that has been fixed.

I haven't played Stalker 2 myself yet. I played for about 8 hours a week ago, but decided to wait until a few more patches were released because, surprise, bugs kept stealing my progress. Glad to see progress in that area, so I may be heading back into the Zone soon.

Here are the patch notes.

Memory leaks and crashes:

• Multiple ACCESS_VIOLATION_ERROR fixes.
• Multiple LowLevelFatalError crashes fixes.

Controls Adjustments:

We have adjusted the following parameters/values based on your feedback to reduce input lag when using keyboard+mouse:

• Mouse Smoothing is disabled as a default.
• Mouse Acceleration is disabled as a default.

The default values for mouse sensitivity have been updated to provide a predictable experience for our users with the new values of the two parameters listed below:

• Camera sensitivity: 25%.
• Aim sensitivity: 15%.

Main and Side Missions:

• Fixed issue where [spoiler] could chase the player outside of [spoiler] when playing In Search of Past Glory.
• Fixed a bug where the NPCs (spoiler) and [spoiler] died after trying to enter the building during the mission on the Edge.
• Fixed issue where [spoiler] could despawn before the player loots an collar from it in In The Name of Science missions.
• Fixes issue where the player could lock themselves out of the game during Dangerous Relations mission.
• Fixed issue where [spoiler] became hostile when a player [spoiler] was spotted during King of the Hill missions.
• Fixed a bug where [spoiler] would despawn in front of a player after the dialog within the bunker in A heavy Burden.
• Fix issue with NPCs despawning after completing Legends of the Zone missions.

AI:

• Fix for the issue where mutant bodies would stretch after a shot with an automatic weapon.
• The issue where NPCs would block the doors in the Back To the Slag Heap Mission has been resolved.

Balance:

• Fix for the issue of not being able to sell certain types of ammunition.

Saves:

• Fixes issues with missing saves for players after a hard restart of the PC/Xbox.