Almost fifteen years in the making, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has finally released its open-world for players to explore and scavenge for loot. Like all games of its ilk, STALKER 2 has a punishing economic model in place, where money is always in short supply, and godly items are priced astronomically.
This STALKER 2 guide has every strategy you can use to earn coupons quickly and efficiently, as well as an ongoing exploit/glitch.
Side Quests
Try to discover and complete every possible side quest at any given point in the main story, since they can become unavailable as you make further progress. These short quests provide a quick and relatively easy infusion of cash.
Some side quests are repeatable, and can be grinded with a short interval between runs.
Loot Stashes
Be on the lookout for stash locations as they appear on your map, and scavenge them for their loot. These recovered items tend to be of exceptional value to traders. Gather up all of the PDAs off of the corpses because they can often lead to yet more stashes.
Anomalies And Artifacts
Artifacts are valuable prizes and are often found among clusters of anomalies, so be sure to use your Echo Detector in the vicinity to spot them; the echo will flash blue when an artifact is detected. The beep rate will accelerate as well. Spare your armor the damage, and yourself the repair bill, by taking it off before navigating the area. Sell off duplicate artifacts, or those that do more harm than good.
Offsetting Encumbrance
With inventory management comes weight considerations, and this is where the previously mentioned artifacts can come in handy. Equip any artifacts that help reduce that encumbrance, thus allowing you to drag even more valuable loot back home.
Weapon Sorting
Prioritize yellow damaged weapons over red broken ones, in order to squeeze out maximum value for your time and effort when lugging loot back to a trader. Red weapons are unsellable (except to Ragman at Rostok base) before being repaired, and become unprofitable after repair. Yellow weapons are sellable even in their damaged state, and may sell for more after repair, but profitability in the latter case is minimal.
Choose Your Trading Partners
Except under the most dire circumstances, avoid selling to anyone but a proper trader with an establishment of their own. This is because they can give you the greatest possible value for your goods, with other NPCs offering significantly lower percentages.
Do Not Hoard Consumables
You will come across large quantities of food and medical supplies in your time in the Zone, more than you will ever really need yourself. Feel free to dispose of excess stores in exchange for coupons.
Farm Respawn Locations
Non-story areas with enemies will eventually respawn after being cleared out. If the previous loot run was particularly good, consider returning to farm it, after a short interval.
Economize Repair Costs
Repair costs are the primary money sink in STALKER 2. Every trip into the Zone basically boils down to the profit remaining between the value of the loot scavenged and the cost to repair all of the damage incurred by your gear. One way to offset those costs is to rely on the starter Makarov PM/Skif’s Pistol; it has a very low rate of durability loss or decay, making it inexpensive to repair over time. With most human enemies, a headshot is an instant kill, as are lesser mutants.
Maintain a cheaper-to-repair set of armor for coupon farming runs.
Unload Magazines
If you cannot or do not want to pick up a weapon, at least unload the ammunition. Every single bullet has sale value, and it all adds up. Weapons on the ground will have to be picked up first, but those on corpses and inside of containers can be unloaded directly via the menu.
Infinite Money Exploit
Having a lot of ammunition on hand from the previous tip lends itself to a trading glitch that is currently still active. Visit a trader, such as Hamster in Zalissya, and initiate a trade. From your inventory find a stack of something with the highest sale value. Ideally this would be a large quantity of ammunition, but also works with drinks, consumables, and grenades, if that is all you have on hand. The trader must not have the exact same item in their own inventory, but you can solve this by simply buying up the entire stock of that item for your own stack, if you can afford it; this will only add to the profitability of the exploit.
- Drag the stack from your ‘Inventory’ section into the ‘Sell’ section
- In the foreground there will be a new pop-up titled ‘Sell’: hit ‘Sell all’ or ‘F’
- Note the value of the sale in the ‘You Get’ section at the bottom, but do NOT press ‘Confirm’ nor ‘F’
- Now drag the stack back from the ‘Sell’ section into your ‘Inventory’ section
- The item will snap back to the ‘Sell’ window in the background
- In the foreground there will be a new pop-up titled ‘Return’: ignore it
- Note the value of the sale in the ‘You Get’ section at the bottom has jacked up sharply
- Click ‘Confirm’ (do NOT use the ‘F’ keybind at this point) in the ‘You Get’ section, and the K coupons will be added to your ‘Inventory’
- The foreground pop-up ‘Return’ dialog will still be active: hit ‘Return all’ or ‘F’ to recover your stack as well
- Rinse and repeat to your heart’s content
Those are all the ways to quickly make (and save) money in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
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