Rogue Keeper on 19/4/2007 at 12:04

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Be careful with your reputation. As I have just read in IGN Stalker Guide, your ranking heavily affects the availability of endings.

Endings and their requirements :

[spoiler]

There are a total of seven endings in STALKER. Five of them are Wishgranter endings, usually resulting in a full body explosion (you die). If you want to see the different endings in the game, you actually need to micro-manage how you play the game right from the start, since that determines values for the fake endings.

''I want to be rich'' -- Requirement: Have a total of 5O,OOO or more rubles when meeting the Wishgranter. Most players will probably get this ending if they start selling artifacts and unused weapons to the traders. Without trying, you can probably amass several hundred thousand just incidentally selling items. If you need to, buy several expensive suits and armors to reduce your money, and destroy the items by stashing them on corpses, then leaving that map.

''I want the Zone to disappear'' -- Requirement: Achieve a rank of top stalker (requires 1OOO rank points) when meeting the Wishgranter. This is an easy feat if you start exploring the game thoroughly. Rank points are earned by completing side jobs, main jobs, and eliminating enemies. Check your ranking on the PDA to see where you stand. The PDA will give you a point system to follow as well. Completing many missions and requests, as well as killing many experienced stalkers will up your score immensely.

''I want to rule the world'' -- Requirement: Lukash and Voronin are both dead before reaching the Wishgranter. The leaders of the Freedom and Duty factions must be killed for this to occur (not sure if this is superseded by having too much money). Killing Lukash is fairly easy; several grenades in that small room should do the trick (you should silently kill the two guys downstairs first). Killing Voronin is a bit more difficult, since there're more people in Rostok and the medium range streets give the A.I. the advantage; however, if you start whacking people in the city, you should be able to pretty much work your road of death to the Duty base and level it.

''I want mankind to be controlled'' -- Requirement: Get a rotten stalker rating by getting a high negative rank score when meeting the Wishgranter. This is a harder ending than it sounds, since killing NPCs will increase your score. What you need to do is to start failing missions (apart from the half dozen you need to do to get to Chernobyl). You don't want to get the decoder (increases score), so you might want to make a new save or play a new game just to see this ending. If you take on side jobs and then proceed to refuse to do it, you can lower your score greatly at each trader or mission giving NPC. Not sure, but some people maintain you need negative 1OOO rank points to get this one!

''I want to be immortal'' -- Requirement: Do not have any of the above requirements fulfilled by the time you meet the Wishgranter. This is meant to be the default ending, which you can find annoyingly hard to get if you start to drop a lot of the Monolith butt wads in the base. Have a score in the low hundreds (about 500) so wiping out the 40 Monolith soldiers inside the NPP should not increase your ranking appreciably. The high ranking of the soldiers at the NPP is what contributes greatly to your stalker score.

''One of the C-mind'' -- Requirement: Take the door decoder in Pripyat and meet the C-mind in the secret lab. Joining the C-mind will put Strelok in a Matrix coffin (made in Russia) and end the game. Do this if you like the Borg, being assimilated, or generally hate being your own man in an ideal republic.

''Make your own future'' -- Requirement: Take the door decoder in Pripyat and meet the C-mind in the secret lab. Refuse the C-mind and you have to fight through the Monolith soldiers guarding their masters' cryo-coffins. This is the best ending of the game, depsite what you (or pther people) may think otherwise.

[/spoiler]

(http://guides.ign.com/guides/480467/page_16.html)

Fallen+Keeper on 19/4/2007 at 14:08

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Nice endings, but the conditions are completely unbalanced. The line that divides them is to thin.

Maybe something like this would do....
[SPOILER]
''I want to be rich'' - collect 1.000.000 rubles
''I want the Zone to disappear'' - be as poor as possible + excellent reputation. Some kind of Jesus Christ.
''I want to rule the world'' - take out the two faction leaders.
''I want mankind to be controlled'' - maximun negative reputation.
''I want to be immortal'' - achieve 1500 rating

and make the fight through the Monolith clan less linear for godsake. It's the worst part of the game. At some point I thought I was playing FEAR.

[/SPOILER]

Talgor on 19/4/2007 at 17:05

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Hmmm. A few more missions, and now the reputation is back to Excellent. Strange. Oh, well.