S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl review: a captivating survival shooter, even with bits falling off

GSC’s return to the Zone is ambitious, atmospheric, and astoundingly buggy

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

• Developer: GSC Game World
• Publisher: GSC Game World
• Release: November 20th, 2024
• On: Windows
• From: Steam , Game Pass
• Price: £50/$60/€60
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i9-10900K, Nvidia RTX 3090, 32GB RAM, Windows 10

We’re probably all past “And in the game” jokes by now, but it is fitting that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl is about venturing into a shattered world and enduring the worst of its logic-defying hardships to find the treasures within. This is a bold, uncompromising survival FPS that can easily capture you for days on end – but I can’t invite you back into the Zone without hammering in a few hundred warning signs reading “DANGER: BUGS”. In Ukrainian, obviously.

A quick recap: Heart Of Chornobyl is in fact the fourth S.T.A.L.K.E.R., built by a revived GSC Game World led by veterans of the original trilogy. It once again dumps you in an even weirder rendition of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, where a combination of nuclear fallout and (by now a series of) psychic experiment fuckups has left it teeming with mutants and mercenaries. Not to mention all the anomalies: patches of usually-deadly phenomena that poke their fifteen mutated tongues out at the laws of physics.

Many years have passed, both in-game and out, since our last visit, and while this hasn’t done the Zone much good – almost all of it remains a scarred, rusted hellhole – it has forced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to get with the times as a shooter. That doesn’t mean it’s now more Call of Duty than Call of Pripyat , mind. Gunfights are still tense, brutal affairs, with limited ammo, jamming-prone guns and aggressive enemies encouraging a methodical approach over running and gunning. It’s more that combat feels smoother and, dare I say it, more satisfying, with its slick animations and thunderous weapon bangs making for good times despite your own fragility. Some of the mutants are, by contrast, certified bullet sponges, but clearing a room of gasmasked thugs can still be and often is thrilling.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

Again, that’s not to say that this is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with the edges sanded down. For all its upgraded production values, Heart Of Chornobyl still makes clear that life in the Zone is horrible and likely short. Just tooled up for a big mission? Here’s three monster attacks and a bandit ambush so you’re limping and bulletless by the time you get there. Found some nice loot? Get ready to haul it off at baby crawling speed, because the weight carry limits mean you can only travel unencumbered by taking the absolute essentials. Favourite gun jammed twice before it can finish a single magazine? Sorry, moron, you should have spent three-quarters of your life savings to get it repaired by a technician, such as the ones that the main mission flow repeatedly drags you away from for hours at a time.

The friction isn’t just there to be cruel, though. It encourages planning and thoughtfulness, whether that means plotting a route across the map that allows for more frequent trading stops or a change to your artifact-laden loadout (valuable stat-boosting items pilfered from anomalies) to cover your stamina or carry weight deficiencies. My favourite of these magic, if usually self-irradiating orbs granted me a huge buff to stamina recovery, which made hoofin’ it across the Zone noticeably quicker. The decadent Western concept of fast-travel is available via freelance guides, but they’ll only take you between major settlements, for fees that are mighty steep in the early game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s love of walking, however, is mainly just a means to nudge you towards most of its best bits. Chancing upon another visually striking, artifact-hiding anomaly, for instance. Or the genuine horror of a night-time Bloodsucker attack, the cloaking, tentacle-faced abomination taking bloody swipes at you from the darkness. Or getting caught in an Emission, a lethal map-wide psi-storm that turn the skies a hellish orange and sends you dashing for the nearest shelter. Or the brilliant moment when two (or more) of the Zone’s threats clatter into each other, rather than just you. When a pack of giant boars surrounded me on a fallen boulder, safe from their maws but lacking the ammo to fight back, an unlikely saviour appeared in a Bloodsucker, who slaughtered the pigs before circling me – only for some roving bandits to show up, aggroing the beast long enough for me to jump off and dash to safety.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

Roaming around Heart Of Chornobyl provides ample opportunity for these memorable moments of overlapping murder sources. Psychic attacks – from specific enemies, or seemingly from the Zone itself – can inject some chaos into otherwise routine firefights, with deceptive voices floating into your ears and imaginary baddies mixed in with the real ones. It’s best to carry some psi protection tablets so these encounters don’t get too overwhelming, though the more fantastical aspects of the Zone can work in your favour too – I was grinning with mischievous joy when an Emission hit just as I approached an enemy base, sending all its guards running inside and leaving me to dash unimpeded (if also at imminent risk of becoming radioactive dust) into a side entrance.

This kind of thing might be music to the ears of starving S.T.A.L.K.E.R. enthusiasts, as will Heart Of Chernobyl’s success in maintaining another series highlight: the atmosphere. The modern Zone is as tense, lonely, and sometimes eerily beautiful as ever. It’s a collage of thick forests, decrepit Soviet architecture, and otherworldly warping that seems at once frozen in time and liable to lash out at any moment. It’s especially spooky at night: your head-mounted torch has the illuminating power of a vape pen LED, so navigating anywhere after sundown must be done without visual confirmation of anything that might be rapidly approaching from more than nine feet away from your face. Excellent storms here, too, with heavy winds, pounding lightning strikes, and thrashing trees that make it sound just like a mutant is barrelling through them.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

There’s a great sense of place to Heart Of Chornobyl, and not just thanks to this atmosphere-building. Every single NPC is uniquely named – another returning series quirk – and while buildings and locales are technically static, there is something alive and storied about them, from the simple creaking of long-abandoned metalwork to the hidden tunnels and scribbled notes that flesh out Chornobyl’s lost hamlets. It’s a compelling argument for handcrafted open worlds over the lifelessness that procedural generation so often brings.

I’ll put together a full performance test later this week, but be warned that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is as much of a PC-punisher as thosesystem requirementssuggested. On my Core i9/RTX 3090 rig, I could only average around 60fps at 1440p by using the High preset with DLSS Quality upscaling. And that was with drops down to 30fps in the most demanding bits.Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

Another authentic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. touch, albeit one that’s more enjoyable ironically , is the jank. Yes, Heart Of Chornobyl might have tightened up the combat and smoothed out the controls, but look elsewhere and you’ll see the stitching. As well as some unfinished gluing, and more than a little haphazard welding. In-game cutscenes, for example, often start with a lurch, as its NPC actors visibly spawn in before folding into their intended poses. Then there’s the faction system, which lets you choose which of several different merc and stalker bands to cosy up with or betray – but if you’re mates with one faction before abandoning them later, some of their soldiers won’t get the memo, standing by while you waltz past their defences or even start stabbing their colleagues in plain view.

Much of the outright bugginess is benign, in an almost charming kind of way: think ragdoll corpses flailing out of control, or props held by an NPC falling out of sync with their character model so you end up having a conversation with their Walkman headphones. That’s funny! I can live with that. But scout’s honour, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 on the whole is easily the most borked FPS I’ve played in years, often in ways that aren’t quite so amusing.

Off the top of my head, here’s a very partial list: radio voices losing the radio filter effect mid-sentence. Your character gaining a radio filter effect when he shouldn’t. The artifact indicator light on your starting detector not working. The HUD compass disappearing. Audio stutter. Game stutter, despite compiling shaders on every goddamn launch. Character mouth flaps not working in cutscenes. Flashing textures. The enemy awareness indicator showing every time you unpause. Subtitles showing when you’ve switched them off. Weapon crosshairs expanding to the edges of the screen during a conversation.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

I didn’t witness anything completely, impassably game-breaking, but did come close with one mandatory objective that refused to complete; my entirely accidental workaround to this was storming off in a huff until, about 700 metres down the road, I got a radio call thanking me for a successful mission. After which, I could slope back and progress the story. But that was only after an hour or so of bumbling around, reloading and restarting, until I’d essentially given up. Guides ed Ollie has also informed of an incompletable side mission early on, though I missed that one myself.

GSC say they’re launching with a “Day 0” patch that could address some of these bugs, but there’s just so many, so diverse in nature, that it’s hard to see S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 releasing in anything approaching rock-solid shape. In fairness, part of this is Fallout: New Vegas syndrome, where some level of impropriety is inevitable given the game’s ambition and scope; blasting through the main questline took me just shy of 40 hours, and completing all the side missions and unmarked encounters apparently takes that up to 100. And you still won’t see everything in a single playthrough, given the branching storyline that twists and turns depending on your faction choices.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

I also don’t think it’s overly sentimental to point out that unlike whichever Bethesda-published bugfest you could name, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has been forced to take shape amid real-life horrors. This is a dev team that’s been forced out of their Kyiv home (and in one especially tragic case, slain ) by an invading force that commits war crimes on an apparently daily basis. Even if you never make it far enough to see the credits’ unsettlingly long In Memoriam section, simply knowing these circumstances is enough to make “Urrrrrgh, game don’t work” complaints – as if calling the helpline for a malfunctioning toaster – seem churlish at best.

Somewhat surprisingly, Heart Of Chronobyl is not overtly anti-war itself, choosing instead to stay true to the themes of human ambition vs. our cosmic insignificance that have been central to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. since its origins as the sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic. It is, however, more keen than previous games on highlighting Ukrainian culture. Radios play a mix of classic and contemporary tunes by real Ukrainian artists, and you get the option to use Ukrainian voice acting (with subtitles in your local language) as a single-click toggle on the initial setup. Traipsing through the Zone, you might even notice a number of bus shelters with eye-catching mosaic art , an enduring expression of Ukrainian artistry amid Soviet-era oppression.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World

I’ve been battered and sometimes frustrated by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but ultimately there is something admirable about its commitment to challenging you – especially when it simultaneously provides just enough tools to avoid becoming unfair. Between that, its punchy shooting, and some properly superb atmosphere-building, it’s done enough to earn the mantle of Good Game.

Is it a good enough game, though, that you should headbutt your way through such a dense wall of bugs? I personally think yes, having not played or really thought about any other games for all the previous five days that I’ve been lost in the Zone. At the very least, that question should probably be more a matter of whether it’s worth playing now, or in six months’ time, when updates and the promised mod support might have more thoroughly patched it up. And even in the latter case, that’s probably not an alien concept to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans.

This review is based on a retail version provided by the publisher.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

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

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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