Character creation, attributes, experience

Character creation

Character creation menu.

Character creation consists of two things - appearance and traits. Appearance settings are analogous to vanilla ss13 servers, with a couple of differences - hair color is chosen from a preset list, and certain underwear options are missing. If the character is saved, you will not be able to customize it - use the reset character button to free up the slot and make a new stalker.

Every character, besides appearance, is defined by a combination of traits representing his past life. Your job is the core of your character. Lifestyle penalizes some of your attributes in exchange for others. Education provides a small stat/skill bonus. Hobby is the same, but you also get a mini perk with it, which is described in the description in bold. Clicking the question mark next to the trait will give a brief description.

Attention! Resetting your character will reset your rank and anything saved in the loadout. You can use every character once per launch, but if you reset your slot, and create a new one, you will be able to use it again. This makes players to value their lives, as death will either make you switch characters and halt progression, or will make you reset the slot.

Attributes

Attribute indicator. Black line at the bottom - attribute value of an average human.

Each trait gives a bonus to one of or several of the following attributes.

Strength

Represents characters pure muscle power - ability to cause more damaged unarmed and in melee, being able to take more punishment before penalties (a muscled jock will weather a wolf bite much better than a flimsy nerd), carry weights and the ability to shoot high caliber weapons without an issue.

Health

The sum of your cardiovascular, immune and nervous systems, representing your bodies ability to keep working under strain. Higher health stat will let you run more, faint less from wounds, reduces the chance to die from a serious wound and lets you avoid negative effects of some anomalies.

Intelligence

Your brainpower and attentiveness. A very important attribute in the zone, as it affects your medicine and crafting rolls, and more importantly, used to inspect your surroundings for anomalies. Characters with low intelligence will struggle to notice anomalies, and in an environment, where one wrong step might lead to death, it's crucial to have a pathfinder with high intelligence in your party.

Agility

Makes your hits land. Helps you to dodge in melee. Also you might negate an anomalies effect if your agility is high enough. High encumbrance will give a penalty to this stat, so be mindful of how much you take with you for a trip.

Skills

Clicking the "Skill" button will display your skills. Cursive font - no knowledge. Regular font - basic training. Bold font - experienced. Colored font - legendary.

Your traits also define your characters skills. Skills are a bonus, which is added to your attribute whenever you perform certain actions. For example, shooting a TT pistol will use your agility attribute and your small arms skill. Healing a comrade - intelligence and medicine. This means that especially agile or intelligent characters can compensate for their missing skills. The game has 5 following skills:

Small arms (Agility)

Represents the skill of shooting pistols, SMGs, short barreled shotguns (sawn-off) and portable carbines (AKSu).

Long arms (Agility)

Represents the skill of using semi-automatic and assault rifles, shotguns and carbines.

Brawl (Agility)

Represents how good are you with your fists or with a melee weapon. High skill will give bonus damage and a chance to move the gun barrel away from you before it shoots, if you are shot point blank, of course.

Medicine (Intelligence)

Represents your skills in bandaging wounds, making difficult injections (in particular, using adrenaline injectors which can be used to reanimate a deceased stalker) and patching up wounds using proper medical equipment. A skilled medic will easily restore disabled limbs and heal serious wounds, using a medkit.

Crafting (Intelligence)

Represents how well you can make something useful out of base materials - ability to construct barricades out of planks and nails, rearming used shotgun shells, making splints as a ghetto version of a medkit and etc.

Experience

Experience represents the grit and knowledge of the Zone of your character. Experience is acquired by visiting points of interest, hunting mutants, collecting artifacts and etc. However, there is a soft cap for every source. After hitting it, you will receive five times less experience from it.

Your character gains experience from many different sources, but it will be saved only in two cases:

• Your character has left the zone either via one of the gates at the southern border of the zone, or through the door in Jabas bar.
• Your character was alive during sunrise. Even if you die, any experience gained up to that moment will be saved.

Every character gains experience separately from others, and after resetting all of it will be lost, along with other benefits - rank, loadout etc.

Loadout

Equipment many. For every unspent point you will start the game with extra 5 thousand on your tab.

Before entering the Zone you will have to decide on what you want to bring. Clicking on the backpack in the lobby will bring up the equipment menu. In here you can see your rank, experience left until rank up and chosen equipment.

Loadout points

The higher you rank, the more starting points you get. For every 10 thousand rubles on your tab in Jabas bar you will get 1 extra point. You will also gain extra points for bringing your loot out of the Zone.

Artifacts

Bring artifacts out of the zone won't grant you extra loadout points. Instead, depending on you rank, you will be able to take a couple of artifacts in to the Zone for free.

Backpack

Items on your back are easier to carry, thus, encumbering your character less. You have two choices - a bag and a backpack. A bag has less space, but can be accessed without taking it off your back. Also, when you reach second rank, you will be able to take a duffel bag for one point - it holds more than a backpack and encumbers you even less.

Ranks and perks

Perk selection menu. Text under the image indicates that the Health attribute is high enough to pick this perk.

After collecting enough experience, you will be able to increase your characters rank. With every new rank you will have the option to increase your attributes, skills or pick a perk.

Perks give the characters a certain advantage. It can be something mundane, like being able to carry more because you have a good posture and a strong back, making your shots more lethal thanks to your knowledge of the human body or even a sixth sense, enabling you to always identify some anomalies. Also, perks can increase your attributes and skills.