S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 Players?

So I spent about 14 Months in BG3, which was great.

After that I was looking for a change and wanted to go back to something like Fallout/Metro.

A picked up Stalker OG and played it to completion, then into Clear Skies. Hit STALKER 2 on a good sail and picked it up.

I'm on my first playthough. I'm guessing I'm about 1/2 through (?) I'm in the Swamps to the lower right.
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Question:

If you play (or played) did you go survivalist or pack mule?

Survivalists play through the game and take what they can carry. After Fallout and Fallout Frost, I'm what I call a pack mule. I loot EVERYTHING. I'll go to a convenient place (guard shack, stash, or road intersection - then drop excess red guns, yellow guns, consumables, etc. Then head back in to fight and loot some more. Once a compound (or dungeon) is cleared, I'll make multiple trips back to the nearest camp stash to deposit.

Current sitting on about 320,000K with so much stuff in the Camp Stash I could easily sell 1/2 of everything and still have plenty. IIRC from last night I've got about 425 Med-Kits in the Camp Stash as an indicator. I think I broke the economy. LOL

I'm still using the Scoped AK you get from the water tower near the start and an SPSA-14 shotgun along with SCIF's Pistol.

WW

Not played Stalker since about 2009 so can't be much use. Generally a pack mule.

Big fan of the original- despite many flaws and bugs. Mods and expansions made it better.

But I looked at the new one and apart from the updated graphics (and the original was great for its time as well) I saw no reason to go back.

Its a great game world, but instead of making a vibrant, deep, open world RPG with a ton of different stuff to do, they seem stuck on the narrow story and focus on shooter gameplay mechanics to get from A to B.

My solution in the original was as much as possible wander off and do my own thing, using more imagination than I would for say a Betheada game to make up for the lack of content.

I don't really need to buy the same game again just to do that.

To answer the play style question I'd collect and stash. After mods there'd be more artifacts and buyers would have more money for them, so I'd hunt the Zone looking for stuff and aimed to make a million roubles.

Did the same in Morrowind dealing skooma in a Legion uniform. Classic dirty cop.

So being a "loot goblin" is not the easiest role, as it means you spend time avoiding fights to haul your loot. Cause you know you can't fight effectively without sprinting and you can's sprint when you are over encumbered because ya' know you are carrying all the loot from the last compound you just sacked.

BAD NEWS:

Problem I was running into in STALKER 2 was Stash Inventory, I'd put so much stuff into it that I was getting a really long scroll from top to bottom and it was in random order and there were rows and rows of empty space because after I would sell loot for cash - the inventory would not collapse in overall size and not resort. Out order items with lots of empty space. Meaning I couldn't find jack shyte. Becoming quite annoying.

GOOD NEWS:

Looks like Patch 1.5 dropped and updated last night. The Stash side of inventory (left side) has been expaned from half height to full height like your inventory (right side) and icons added to help you ID bullet types within the same class as either (Standard, Expanding, or Armor Piercing). Both nice.

But the best part is they appear to have fixed the inventory display in the Stash so that once you close it and reopen it the Stash side of inventory management resorts consilidating not only the order of items - putting like items together - but also removes the annoying blank space.
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All and all a breath of fresh air to say the least.

STALKER 2 is supposed to be a survival type game, you are supposed to have limited resources and therefore have to make hard choices about what loot to keep, what to drop, what to carry, what to sell. But us loot goblins break that mold by making multiple trips to haul loot, meaning we have more money to spend, meaning we can get the cool shyte.

After last nights selling spree, I have about $460,000K in the bank and I'm not in late game. Really nice for keeping your weapons and armor in tip-top shape.

WW