Radiation damage is something you will be forced to face Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyland although they tell you how to fix it, suddenly you may find yourself constantly accumulating radiation poisoning no matter where you are and how much you heal, even in safe zones. This can be confusing and seem like a bug, but there is actually a way to fix it.
With the launch of Stalker 2 being a bit problematic, you might think this constant radiation is one of those bugs and something the next patch or update will fix. However, this is not the case and the the game will not outwardly explain why this is happening. Figuring out how to fix this will keep you from using up all your radiation protection and keep your game from feeling too difficult.
What causes constant radiation damage in Stalker 2 and how to survive
Artifact Radiation Poisoning and How to Fix It Quickly
It turns out that the artifacts in Stalker 2 are the main cause of your radiation damage problem. Although you are told that the artifacts are quite useful and the menu screen is vague about whether you will get more or less radiation damage using a specific artifactsome of them can be quite dangerous to use. This is because some of them have positive and negative results, and you should pay attention to which they are.
The source of the problem is in the menu description. In it, a relic might say Radiation and then a level like Medium. When this is the case, you will take an average amount of radiation damage rather than avoiding it. This may seem obvious, but I myself was struggling to understand why I was taking so much damage, simply because I equipped the artifact without thinking much about it and it. it felt like it was protecting me instead of harming me.
This is something the game doesn’t explicitly say. Although the Tutorials menu states that artifacts can cause damage to you, it is unknown how they actually do this for each individual artifact. You will want pay close attention to everything you can to avoid errors in Stalker 2 thus including what the various NPCs are saying and doing.
You should hide the artifact or sell it until a suitable countermeasure is found. Certain things like armor upgrades in Stalker 2 can negate an amount of radiation damage, while other artifacts can have the opposite effect. Those protectors will say Radio Protection as opposed to just radiation. Once unequipped, you may still have to cure any remaining status effects with medicine or by sleeping, if you are not already taking damage. In an already difficult game, don’t make things worse for yourself.
The first artifact you encounter during the tutorial, the Slughas the Radiological Protection attribute. Unfortunately, you don’t get to keep this one. However, since this artifact was explained as offering this protection, I did not think of another harming me in the same way.
If it is not an artifact, there may still be other items in the game that do the same thing and that have not yet been discovered, as there were others in the first game. Check your inventory to anything that looks like the harmful artifact, if you are still taking damage. Unequip it and get rid of it if you can to resolve any radiation issues you have in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl.