[1.5.2] Old World Addon  

An old-fashioned overhaul aiming to capture the atmosphere and gameplay style of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy. Featuring an item and balance overhaul, new weathers, weapon pack, interface changes, and more!

Version history:

Moddb upload has been updated with the most current version of the mod. Those who have installed a previous version, download the patch from Google Drive.

20/10/2022 - PATCH 2. Minor fixes and difficulty tweaks.
11/10/2022 - PATCH 1. Ultrawide monitor support. Minor weapon and interface fixes.
7/10/2022 - Release.

Old World Addon is an atmospheric and gameplay overhaul of the base Anomaly experience, serving as a demake that takes S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to its simpler roots. It is aimed at fans of the original trilogy and retro gaming in general. This addon attempts to combine the most interesting gameplay and visual aspects of the three games in the vanilla stalker series, creating a much faster-paced yet highly immersive adventure.

The most significant alterations of Old World Addon are the item changes. The addon downscales the number of items in the game to the amount present in the original trilogy to bring Anomaly closer to vanilla stalker. These changes also simplify or outright remove many of the side mechanics present in base Anomaly to put greater focus on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s core gameplay loop.

-Replaces Anomaly's item set with a simpler one, resembling vanilla stalker.
-Removed all "trash" items.
-Removed weapons not present in the ported FWR weapon pack.
-Removed artifact storage containers.
-Removed all food and healing items except for the ones present in the original trilogy.
-Removed most outfits as part of the faction identity change.
-Replaced specialized weapon parts with generic ones.
-New item spreadsheet featuring more colorful item sprites for better visual clarity.

Atmosphere

Introducing a completely new visual style and atmosphere reminiscent of Shadow of Chernobyl and various stalker builds. The atmospheric changes attempt to capture the mystery and hopelessness of the Zone. Soundscape changes are also present by including ambient sounds ported directly from SoC, as well as restoring Vladimir "MoozE" Frey's iconic dark ambient soundtrack.

-Added four unique custom-made weather types. Sunny (Build-style), Cloudy (Build-style), Partly (SoC-style), and Dark (SoC-style). Partly, Dark and Cloudy weathers have rainy variants, adding up to seven weathers in total.
-Edited weather radio chatter to better fit the nature of the new weather types.
-All of the new weathers use skyboxes from the vanilla trilogy and builds
-Increased visibility and daylight time, even during stormy and rainy weather.
-Morning starts an hour earlier and the sun sets an hour later. Lighting levels in weather settings have been increased to provide better visibility at all times of the day. The goal is to make night vision and flashlights less useful during the daytime.
-Restored distance fog from the vanilla trilogy. Fog begins to consume the Zone at 350 meters (400 for clear weather) from the player instead of 650.
-Soundscape changes based on SoC ambience.
-Reinstated player pain sounds from Call of Pripyat. The player talks and breaths less too.
-"DUNNN" location discovery sound has been replaced with the "beedeebeep" PDA sound.
-Restored location-based soundtrack from Call of Chernobyl (and by extension, the vanilla trilogy). Each location will have 1-3 unique music tracks instead of being pulled from a shared list.
-Anomaly's ambient sounds collection has been replaced with Shadow of Chernobyl ambient sounds.

Weapons

A custom implementation of the vanilla-style arsenal from the FWR weapon pack, combining the retro visuals of original trilogy guns with improved animations and weapon feel. Player and NPC protections have also been changed, trying to strike a balance between high lethality and making heavy armor have a noticeable effect both for the player and AI stalkers.

-A tweaked and adjusted integration of the FWR Weapon Pack featuring remastered weapons from the vanilla trilogy and builds. (original by rnm_016)
-Adjusted many of the FWR weapon pack's weapon models. Optimized polygon count, replaced high-definition attachments with vanilla ones, and adjusted sharp edges. Several weapons which previously did not support attachments now do.
-Drilled some holes in the AKM-74/2 and TRs 301.
-Restored the fake weapon names from the vanilla trilogy.
-Weapon attachments have been downscaled to the PSO scope, NATO scope, and a universal silencer.
-Both the PSO and NATO scopes now have three unique variants.
-The unremarkable standard variant which provides a small zoom.
-"Long" variant which allows adjustable zoom and has a much higher magnification.
-"Computerized" variant which highlights enemies similar to the binoculars. The scope is similarly adjustable but doesn't zoom as far as the "Long" variant.
-Weapon upgrades
-Gauss rifle now has a unique upgrade tree that allows the player to select between damage and fire rate trees.
-This will also prevent one-shot kills on the player due to the decrease in the un-upgraded gauss rifle's power.
-Weapons with integrated scopes have modified upgrade trees which allow them to obtain the benefits of all unique attachable scopes.
-This applies to GP37(wpn_g36), FT-200m(wpn_f2000), Vintar BC(wpn_vintorez), Gauss Rifle(wpn_gauss), IL-86(wpn_l85), SVDm-2(wpn_svd), SVUmk2(wpn_svu) and their unique variants.
-AKM-74/2(wpn_ak74) and its variants can be modified to use 7.62 caliber ammunition at the expense of ammo capacity and recoil.
-Old 5.56 caliber change has been replaced with a blue NATO AKM-74/2(wpn_ak74_nato) which can be found in the Zone.
-FT90(wpn_p90) can be upgraded to the .45 ACP caliber in a similar manner.
-TRs 301 (wpn_lr300) can now be modified with an extended magazine with 45 bullets.
-Several high-tier pistols can be upgraded to support fully automatic fire to be more competitive with other weapon types.
-Restored many unique weapon variants from across the trilogy for those who prefer using unique versions of guns.
-Most can be bought from Nimble.
-Unique weapons are marked by a blue "up" arrow, similar to the upgrade symbol.
-Reduced the weight of explosive munitions, such as underbarrel grenades or the ammo for the RPG.
-Restored vanilla condition-dependent accuracy. Low-condition weapons won't hit the broad side of the barn.
-The faction select screen now has two combat difficulties instead of three. Normal difficulty takes 60% damage and Hard difficulty takes full damage.
-The four standard damage difficulties can still be accessed in the options.
-Weapon damage, accuracy, and NPC resistances have been rebalanced towards the vanilla stalker combat system.
-Weapon accuracy without upgrades has been lowered across the board to encourage close and medium-range combat (sniper rifles still have high accuracy).
-Weapon accuracy upgrades have been modified to be much more noticeable.
-Weapons are considerably more specialized
-Decreased long-distance combat potential of shotguns and assault rifles. The further you shoot, the more ammo inefficient it will be due to inaccuracy.
-Increased importance of sniper rifles for long-range combat due to their increased accuracy relative to the rest of the arsenal.
-Increased efficiency of pistols as cheap and powerful sidearms.
-Enemies with body armor can absorb a lot more damage compared to poorly protected targets.
-Sniper rifles and other high-caliber weapons will still one-hit armored targets to the head.
-Low and medium-caliber weapons require concentrated automatic fire to the head to take the target down quickly. Body shots will deal a fraction of the damage.
-Enemy protection values edited to be between CoP and Anomaly values.
-"Facer" script disabled, NPCs will no longer try to melee the player, mutants, and other NPCs.
-NPC weapons no longer jam, reducing sporadic reloads in combat.

Economy

The game's economy has been significantly altered to resemble that of the original trilogy, particularly Call of Pripyat and Clear Sky. The value of currency has been increased and the player's income will strongly depend on their location within the Zone. The northern locations provide better task rewards, better artifacts, and more experienced stalkers with better loot, but it comes at the cost of greater adversity from powerful roaming mutants and more powerful anomalies.

-Rebalanced anomaly distribution throughout the Zone. Southern locations will have weaker anomalies, and anomalies will increase in power as you progress further north (this includes dynamic anomalies spawned through scripts).
-Added "weak" and "strong" mutant squads for many mutant types. Weak mutants will appear in the south and strong mutants will populate the north.
-Strong mutants are set to be diurnal. They will come out at all times of the day when you're exploring northern locations.
-Mutant tiers directly influence how numerous they get. Weak mutants have squad sizes similar to base Anomaly, while regular and strong mutants increase significantly in numbers.
-Mutants overall are more numerous. Strong versions of mutants will be present in packs up to three times as big as weak mutants.
-Rookie stalkers will now primarily reside in the south while experts are in the north.
-Different stalker ranks have noticeably different tiers of weapons.
-This also affects weapon distribution. Southernmost locations will feature stalkers with simpler, less punchy weapons.
-This location-based equipment distribution typically doesn't last long, as NPCs travel *a lot*.
-Stalker weapon drop condition follows the CoP calculation formula for all stalkers regardless of rank, meaning better condition weapons across the board.
-Edited starting loadouts. Factions that start closer to the center of the Zone have immediate access to higher tiers of armor and weapons.
-On the lower economic difficulty, advanced factions can spend their loadout points to access a powerful weapon.
-Rebalanced trader inventories. Trader inventory now also depends on their location relative to the center of the Zone.
-Traders closer to the center of the Zone will sell powerful endgame items. Obtaining more goodwill will unlock high-tech gadgets, and increase the quantity of ammo.
-Traders in the south of the Zone such as Sidorovich will primarily sell early-game-oriented items at all levels of goodwill. You won't be able to purchase high-caliber ammo and powerful weapons/outfits from them. Increased goodwill populates their inventory with quality-of-life items and significantly increased ammo quantity.
-Groups with a limited number of faction traders and relatively southern starting points (Bandits, Military, Clear Sky) can still obtain their faction's high-tier items through increased goodwill similar to regular Anomaly.
-Adjusted faction goodwill accumulation (and loss on failure) for many tasks. Escort, measurement, camp clear, hostage rescue, and many other time-consuming tasks will award 100 goodwill instead of 50.
-Increased rank gain for killing stalkers to keep up with faster item progression.
-The faction select screen now has two economic difficulties instead of three. Stalker difficulty for regular progression speed and Scavenger difficulty for a more difficult one.
-Scavenger difficulty decreases the viability of trading by decreasing sale prices, increasing item costs, and doubling upgrade costs. It does, however, increase the chances of obtaining stashes from PDAs as well as the amount of loot that can be scavenged in the world.
-Rebalanced economy to resemble its vanilla trilogy balance.
-Currency has been deflated. The player will earn less money, but items cost a lot less.
-Reduced all base item costs down to their Call of Pripyat values
-Reduced income from all tasks to balance reduced item costs. Rewards from tasks in the south of the Zone have been reduced the most, while tasks in the north have been reduced the least.
-Traders pay different amounts of money for weapons. Factions that use NATO weapons will be less interested in paying you for Warsaw Pact weaponry, and vice versa.
-Barkeep (Rostok) and Hawaiian (Jupiter) now have proper trader inventories as they did in SoC/CoP.

A Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky inspired rebalance of outfit stats and characteristics. The number of player outfits and NPC visual variations has been reduced to improve faction identity, now not every faction will have access to advanced outfits. Light and medium outfits have received significant improvements to make them more competitive with late-game outfits.

-Outfits, even with their stock values, will now provide a very noticeable amount of protection from physical and anomalous damages compared to base Anomaly.
-Outfits wear down slower similar to SoC.
-Stock outfit protections are lower than their SoC stats, but can be upgraded to be higher.
-Outfit protections now come in increments of 5% for increased visual clarity and easier comparisons of characteristics.
-Outfit upgrades also follow this logic.
-A noticeable class separation between outfits. Outfits are divided into light, medium and heavy classes.
-Outfits support a different amount of artifact slots depending on their class.
-Light outfits support a high amount of artifact slots and can be upgraded to support all five.
-Due to increased strengths and drawbacks of artifacts, this can be highly powerful and make light armor more competitive with heavy, high-tier outfits.
-Medium outfits support a regular amount of artifact slots. Even when upgraded they cannot fit them all, typically being able to support up to three.
-This makes medium a viable endgame choice if you prefer having both high protections and utilizing the power of artifacts.
-Heavy and advanced outfits typically have almost no artifact slots and can be upgraded to one or two slots depending on the strength of the outfit.
-Heavy outfits are ideal for those that prefer to rely purely on the strength of their outfit rather than artifacts.
-Upgrade overhaul. Upgrade types and effectiveness are noticeably different depending on the outfit class.
-Light outfits offer significant but specialized upgrades of up to 20% increased protection per upgrade.
-Medium outfits can offer up to 10-15% protection increases depending on the upgrade.
-Heavy outfits suffer from diminishing returns and typically have less significant and more expensive upgrades.
-Removed psychic protection upgrades from armors that support a helmet slot. Psi-protection is fully dependant on the helmet.
-Significantly reduced the number of stalker models in the game to make factions more recognizable. Factions will be limited only to their iconic outfit types present in the vanilla trilogy.
-This also affects the player's ability to access equipment, as not every faction will be able to access all armor types. Traders will only sell outfits commonly used by their group (with some exceptions).
-Faction weapon selection is also highly specialized, Duty will only have warsaw pact weapons and shotguns, Freedom and Mercs only use NATO weapons, and so on.
-Only veteran-ranking faction members (and higher) will spawn with weapon attachments.
-Renegades now have a distinct pinkish-brown color scheme to make them more unique in comparison to the Bandits.
-Adjusted the Sin faction to be more mysterious and edgy - they will almost always wear trench coats. Western-type outfits have been removed altogether.
-Traders will only sell equipment and ammunition used by their factions, making it less convenient for the player to maintain a weapon unconventional for their respective group.
-Default squad size for all organized factions has been set to 3 (the maximum). Stalker, bandit, and renegade squad sizes are still random between 1-3 because they're like that.
-Zombified stalkers no longer appear in locations below Yantar. They will primarily be present in the north, where psychic influence is more present.

The artifact system has been overhauled to make the player balance tradeoffs instead of managing containers and application modules, changing the way players handle the Zone's ultimate treasures. Artifacts can provide powerful bonuses but failing to counteract their negative properties may prove deadly.

-Removed artifact containers. Artifacts no longer irradiate the player from within the inventory.
-Removed "junk" artifacts without properties.
-Removed "Empty" and "Full Empty" as there are already several references to this Roadside Picnic artifact present in the game.
-All artifact statistics have been rebalanced to resemble their original vision and lore.
-Bonuses gained from artifacts are more "focused" and powerful but feature drawbacks that must be balanced against.
-Compared to Call of Pripyat/Call of Chernobyl only some artifacts are radioactive, others will take away from your defenses, stamina, health regeneration, and so on.
-Almost all artifacts are part of a three-tier series, with tier 1 having the weakest bonuses and drawbacks and tier 3 having the strongest of both.
-Artifact spawns now depend on the location relative to the center of the Zone. Use this information wisely when hunting for a specific tier of artifact.
-Southern locations will only spawn weak artifacts.
-Middle locations (starting at Garbage) will spawn weak and medium artifacts.
-Northern locations (and all underground laboratories) will spawn medium and strong artifacts.
-The center of the Zone will only spawn the highest artifact tier.
-Almost all artifacts weigh 0.5kg. Big heavy artifacts like the Death Lamp weigh 2.5kg.

Several UI changes are included to accommodate the addon's atmospheric and gameplay decisions.

-New main menu, featuring a cover of Wasteland I by Aphile.
-Weapon, artifact, and armor statistics have been revamped in an attempt to make game mechanics easier to compare and understand the value of.
-Most effects will be displayed in percentages per minute rather than be converted to their real-world values.
-Armors and weapons also display their parameters in percentages instead of vague bars.
-Added "Helmet protection" parameter to helmets and combined suits of armor.
-This prevents improper protection comparisons between combined outfits and armors without helmets.
-All NPC icons have been replaced with cheesy build-inspired avatar photoshoots.
-Stalker portraits are also square now. Almost everywhere except the news section of the HUD, as it has to be edited in the engine.
-Squad leaders will display on the minimap in colors relative to their relationship to the player instead of faction. They will also display at all times.
-Added a Shadow of Chernobyl-style HUD, including SoC's semi-transparent bleeding, radiation, and psi indicators. Boosters and other newer elements have also been adapted.
-Added Clear Sky Inventory mod by Vladislav98.
-Modified the inventory to support square icons and be more informative.
-Inventory color scheme has been changed to rusty brown.
-Inventory will now display your rank and reputation.
-Added a direct display of protection values in the player's inventory.
-Adjusted tooltips for various stats in player inventory - mouse over an inventory stat to get a tutorial on its respective features.
-Added a name randomizer to the faction select screen.

The list of other tweaks included with the addon.

-Many minor changes that I don't remember anymore.
-Removed Hip.
-Game starting date changed to 5:30AM on June 21st, summertime.
-Reduced a-life character switch distance from 750 to 500 (weather visibility now maxes out at 350-400 instead of 650).
-Barrels and gas cans explode easier (health reverted to standard values).
-Increased game time scale to 10 times faster than real-time. (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s default value)
-Helicopters and helicopter sounds are now enabled by default.
-Integrated LTTZ: Director's cut addon to improve the mod's storylines.
-The final part of the Dark Presence quest has been slightly modified and rewritten in an attempt to mitigate crashes and softlocks.