Best Stalker 2 mods to install

Stalker 2 has you exploring the perilous Zone, packed with dangerous anomalies, threatening creatures, and hostile humans who aren’t prepared to share their loot. To make this gargantuan game the experience you want it to be, whether that’s with quality of life improvements, cheaper repairs (they’re pricey, right?), or something to make things a little less terrifying, there’s fortunately plenty of mods for that.

Stalker 2 mods can elevate your exploration massively. Looking for an increasingly brutal experience or to sit back and relax amongst the perils of the Zone? Mods have you covered, regardless of what you’re after. So, to save you from scavenging for yourself, here are the best Stalker 2 mods and how to install them.

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• Best Stalker 2 mods to install
• How to install Stalker 2 mods

Best Stalker 2 mods to install

Below, we’ve listed some of the best Stalker 2 mods to consider installing, whether it’s quality of life improvements, mods for a more immersive experience, or giving yourself an easier time overall.

Stalker 2: 7 Best Mods to Install

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Ledge Grabbing

The Ledge Grabbing mod from Kennymylenny is one that’ll definitely help with your immersion in Stalker 2’s anomalous environment, and the modder puts it best themselves: “Ever wonder why Skif, an ex-soldier, can't even climb over a 3 feet tall fence or ledge?”

This mod does away with that, allowing Skif to hurl himself up ledges, over fences, onto trucks and more, so you have even more traversal opportunities across the Zone.

No Weapon (and optionally outfits) Durability Loss

The No Weapon (and optionally outfits) Durability Loss mod from Tacgnolsignol allows you to bid farewell to the rather harsh weapon-degradation system in Stalker 2.

Sure, having to repair or replace your weapon every five minutes is no doubt part of the fun for some folk, but if you’d rather not take your weapons and armor back to a Technician regularly — thus, handing over your hard-earned Coupons — this mod has you covered.

This mod allows you to remove durability loss from your weapons entirely, or reduce it by 50%. The same can be applied to your armor, too.

No Shader Warmup

Say so long to the lengthy shader compilation screen that Stalker 2 greets you with on start-up. The No Shader Warmup mod from KZekai is exactly what it says on the tin, and removes the shader pre-compilation from the game entirely so that you can quickly get going.

This mod reportedly does not affect your performance or how your game looks either.

Reduced Repair Cost

Repairing your weapons and armor in Stalker 2 quickly becomes very costly, especially as you loot better weapons and armor which hold more value. This, paired with the fact that the durability of our gear isn’t the best, means most of your Coupons can easily be spent on repairs if you aren’t careful.

The Reduced Repair Cost mod from hawkidoki does away with all of this by allowing players to reduce their repair costs by a percentage of their choosing. If you fancy it, you can even make all repairs free. Isn’t that nice?

Longer Sprinting

Stalker 2 boasts a huge map, and for the most part, you’ll be navigating all of it on foot. The only time you get some respite from this is by hiring a Guide at a major settlement to transport you to another area.

If running from A to B is taking too long, you’re out of Energy Drinks and tired of waiting for your stamina to regenerate, give the LongerSprinting mod from NickMillion a whirl. The mod allows you to reduce your stamina costs by 25%, 50%, or 75%, so you can still keep things realistic if you fancy.

No (or reduced) Weight for Ammo, Nades, Meds, and Food

It doesn’t take long at all for you to surpass Skif’s carry capacity in Stalker 2, and once you do, you’ll find his stamina draining awfully fast while your movement is generally much slower. It could be worse, but it’s still not necessarily worth wasting all your Energy Drinks on.

This is where the No (or reduced) Weight for Ammo, Nades, Meds, and Food mod from truditu comes in, allowing you to choose whether your food, drinks, ammo, grenades, and meds weigh 0%, 10%, or 50% of what they would typically weigh in the vanilla version of the game. This is great because less carry weight means us keen looters can carry even more stuff!

Grok’s Modular Mutants Health

Stalker 2 has many threats to be wary of, and mutants are one of many. Depending on your difficulty and what you have yourself kitted out with, you may be finding mutants particularly challenging, or perhaps the complete opposite.

With that in mind, Grok’s Modular Mutants Health mod allows you to adjust the health pools of mutants however you please. Finding them too squishy? Ramp up their HP. Playing on a higher difficulty and experiencing nightmarish mutants that are hindering your progress? Reduce their HP a tad. Finding some mutants more difficult than others? The mod offers a ‘Balanced for All’ mod aimed at reducing the tankiness of mutants while still providing a challenge for players.

Mutant Loot

We aren’t quite done with modding the mutants in Stalker 2 just yet, with the Mutant Loot mod from somberX allowing you to loot a range of unique items from the corpses of slayed mutants in the Zone, just like in prior games.

While the content that this mod adds is original, the icons it uses are from ‘cut content’, which is interesting! This also gives loot fiends yet another opportunity to loot items and resources while exploring the Zone.

How to install Stalker 2 mods

Perhaps the easiest and most trusted way of installing mods for most games is via Nexus. That said, if you are choosing to install mods for Stalker 2, do so with caution. Remember to check that the mods you install are coming from a reputable modder; check the mod’s endorsements and be sure to have your antivirus up and running, just in case.

With that out of the way, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to install mods for Stalker 2 via both Steam and Xbox Game Pass:

1. Download the mod you wish to install from Nexus - it should go in your Downloads folder.
2. Open up the Stalker 2 game files.
3. On Steam, this is done by right-clicking Stalker 2, selecting ‘Manage’, and then selecting ‘Browse Local Files’. On Xbox Game Pass, this is done by right-clicking Stalker 2, selecting ‘Manage’, ‘Files’, and then ‘Browse’.
4. Once in the game files, select the ‘Stalker 2’ folder.
5. Next, select the ‘Content’ folder, and then the ‘Paks’ folder. On Xbox Game Pass, you may need to click through ‘Stalker 2’ and ‘Content’ folders a second time before reaching the ‘Paks’ folder.
6. Inside the ‘Paks’ folder, create a new folder named ‘Mods’. This is where your mod files will live.
7. Extract your installed mod from earlier into the new ‘Mods’ folder you have made.

It’s also worth installing your mods one at a time and testing them before installing another. This way, you don’t run the risk of opening your game — with multiple freshly installed mods — and something going awry, leaving you to figure out which of the many mods might be the issue.

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For more on Stalker 2, take a look at all anomalies, all artifacts, and all Trader locations across the Zone.