You wake up underground. The world’s gone to hell. Radiation, mutants, anomalies, and storms that cook you alive. Welcome to the Zone.

Your bunker is all that’s left of civilization and it’s barely holding together.
You go out there to scavenge and bring back what the base needs to keep running.

There’s no “final boss” or “win condition.” yet.
The goal is simple: keep yourself alive, keep your crew fed, and don’t die like an idiot.

If you treat this game like a shooter, you’re gonna die fast. This is a survival grind. You don’t win fights, you survive them.

Prep → Scavenge → Survive → Return → Upgrade → Trade →Repeat

Prep: Craft or Trade for meds, filters, and ammo (if you have guns). Check who’s got what. Don’t all bring the same crap.

Scavenge: Go outside, grab whatever isn’t bolted down. Watch your weight.

Survive: Avoid anomalies, pick your fights, best to AVOID fights and keep moving.

Return: When the world starts humming or the sky turns ugly, you get back underground. Fast.

Upgrade: Dump everything into keeping the generator, storage, and food running.

Trade: Go to the trading post, and find stuff you'll need the most, buy meds first.

That’s the loop. It never changes. The only thing that changes is how far you can push before the Zone decides you’ve had enough.

When you start a new save, you’ll wake up inside your bunker, your only slice of civilization left.
The air tastes like rust and oil, the lights flicker, and the generator sounds like it’s dying. Get used to that sound. It’s your heartbeat now.

Walk to the door. Once you step out, you’ll spawn somewhere inside your old house, the place you lived before everything went to hell. You’ve got 60 seconds to grab whatever you can before the Zone spits you back out. Treat it like your last shopping trip before the apocalypse.

What to loot first:
• Clothing and armor. Jackets, backpacks, helmets, anything to keep you from bleeding out faster.
• Healing items. Bandages, medkits, painkillers. Food and water are common; meds aren’t.
• Weapons. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a machete, best early melee. A bat or axe will do.
• Don’t waste time picking up trash. Every second counts.

Once time’s up, you’ll be thrown into the Zone proper. The house is gone. The world outside shifts every day, new maps, new buildings, new horrors. Every five days or so, the landscape mutates again: more anomalies, new biomes, different kinds of hell. It’s not random; it’s evolving. And it doesn’t care about you.

When you first start, don’t rush out like a hero. You’ve got garbage gear, a pea-shooter, and lungs full of optimism. That’s a bad combo.

Do this:

Loot nearby buildings first. Grab food, water, meds, and crafting junk.

Stay near the bunker. You’ll get caught in your first emission if you wander too far.

Mark anomalies. Some of them are invisible until they fry you. Watch for weird dust, distortion, or flickering air.

Kill only what blocks your way. Ammo’s rare. Don’t waste it showing off.

Leave before the siren. If you wait until you hear it, you’re already dead.

Bring that junk back, dump it in storage, fix your generator, and patch yourself up. That’s how you start.

Your lifeline. When it hits zero, that’s it. Death.

What drains it:

• Getting hit by anything that moves.
  
• Radiation sickness.
  
• Bleeding out after taking damage.
  
• Starvation and dehydration over time.

How to restore it:

• Bandages and Medkits heal you up.
  
• Medkits heal you up and stop bleeding entirely.
  
• Sitting around campfires heals.
  
• Keeping yourself fed and hydrated.

Tip: Keep at least one medkit and two bandages in your quick slots. Don’t leave the bunker without them.

---

Your ability to move, swing, and survive. When it runs out, you’re a sitting duck.

What drains it:

• Sprinting or jumping.
  
• Swinging melee weapons.
  
• Carrying too much junk.
  
• Cold, radiation, or hunger.

How to restore it:

• Stop moving for a few seconds, breathe.
  
• Drop heavy loot if you’re overburdened.
  
• Eat something, low energy tanks your stamina regen.
  
• Walk, dont rush.

Tip: You can’t fight if you can’t move. Don’t get greedy with loot, it’ll get you killed faster than any anomaly. Also, just walk.

---

Invisible death. You won’t always see it coming, but you’ll feel it.
Your health will rot away even if you’re bandaged and fed.

What causes it:

• Standing near irradiated wrecks or scrapyards.
  
• Entering toxic zones without a gas mask or filters.
  
• Drinking dirty water or eating spoiled food.

How to fix it:

• Anti-Rads (anti-radiation meds) slowly cleanse your system.
  
• Vodka lowers radiation but messes with your sanity.
  
• Get back to the bunker, the air is cleaner there.

Tip: Always carry at least one dose of anti-rads. If your Geiger starts ticking faster than your heart, you’re already too deep.

---

You can lose this faster than you think. The Zone whispers when you’re tired, hungry, or alone too long.
Start ignoring it, and you’ll see things that aren’t there, or worse, shoot things that aren’t.

What drains it:

• Radiation poisoning.
  
• Watching teammates die.
  
• Drinking too much vodka.
  
• Starvation or constant fear exposure.

How to restore it:

• Eat cooked food, drink clean water.
  
• Avoid wandering alone too long.

Tip: Don’t think sanity is a gimmick, it’ll mess up your aim, your hearing, and your awareness.
A sane stalker lives longer. A paranoid one doesn’t last a week.


Anomalies are warped patches of the Zone where physics, energy, or chemistry have gone rogue. They don’t show up on your map until you’re almost inside them, and they punish curiosity harder than gunfire.

Behavior you’ll see:

A shimmer in the air, strange steam, flicker, or distortion.
Ground that feels unstable - mud, cracks, weird light.
Random bursts: fire jets, electrical arcs, radiation pockets.

Tactics for survival:

Always approach slow. If something looks off, back out.
Mark any anomaly you see; tell your squad.
Don’t assume an anomaly is “weak.” Some bite on sight.
Use longer range routes rather than cutting through glowing patches.
In co-op, send one scout ahead on a flanking path.



WATCH OUT FOR PLANE, THEY BOMBED THE ♥♥♥♥ OUTTA YOU. FIND SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.


These are the things that roam ruins, dark corridors, and underground wreckage. They vary - some are small and fast, others hulking and brutal. Anomalies i've encountered are the black holes, the spiky thing, the radiation ghost, swamp monsters, and the earthquake spring jump.

Do not go near the black holes, INSTANT DEATH. good thing you can spot them from a distance.
Spiky thing are INVISIBLE, watch out if you see red stuff in the air, theyre not deadly lethal but pretty hurtful.
Radiation Ghosts make you blacked out, watch out for those.
Swamp monster is like dogs, they seem slow when you first watch them. and the second your turn away, they run with FOUR LEGS. Hard to kill with melee, gives you their legs for source of hydration,
Earthquake stuff is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you have to crouch, always.




These are worse than mutant teeth because they understand cover, tactics, and greed. theres two types of human enemies that i've encountered, theyre bandits and plague doctors mofos.

How Bandits act:

They'll chase you to the end of the world.
Melee only.
Hit them and run back, repeat.

How Plague Doctors act:

They shoot on sight.
Unlimited ammo.
Currently hard to melee cause animation for hitting is far too slow, so you have to walk far ahead of him and hit much earlier.

Everything you drag home goes into making the bunker suck a little less.
Start with this order:

Generator – no power = no lights, no air, no crafting.

Storage – fills up faster than you think.

Workshop – unlocks better gear and crafting recipes.

Medical Bay – more meds = fewer funerals.

Hydroponics – lets you stop living off moldy cans.

You don’t need decorations or fancy rooms early on. You need oxygen and soup.

The Zone kills the greedy first. You’ll think you’ve got time for “one more house,” or that last crate in the dark corner - and that’s when the lights flicker, the Geiger spikes, or your buddy starts screaming through comms. Know when to leave. Every extra minute you stay out there is a dice roll against the Zone.

Don’t hoard garbage. You can’t sprint from bandits or anomalies if your pack’s stuffed with rusted junk. Move light, move fast. Scrap is worthless if you’re too slow to make it home.

Talk. Always. A silent partner might as well be dead weight. If you’re bleeding, lost, or panicking - spit it out. Half the deaths I’ve seen weren’t from monsters, but from someone dying quiet.

And for God’s sake, Sanity isn’t optional. Stay awake too long and the Zone starts whispering. You’ll see things that aren’t there, waste rounds shooting shadows, or walk straight into a trap you swear you saw move.

The Zone doesn’t care how smart you think you are. It waits, patient as rot, for you to make one mistake. Then it takes everything.

Once you’ve got power, food, and gear stable, start expanding:

Scout deeper zones for rare parts.

Trade with survivors for ammo and tools.

Farm resources to stay independent.

Harden your bunker with defenses and better facilities.

Eventually, you’ll have everything you need — except safety. There’s no “safe” here. Only “safer than yesterday.”

If you made it this far, both through the guide and through the Zone, you’ve got more grit than most.
Every line here comes from players who bled, froze, and lost half their gear just trying to figure out what the hell was happening out there. We didn’t write this to sound smart. We wrote it so the next poor soul might last another day.

Thanks to everyone in the community who kept sharing notes, maps, and stories, even when nobody believed half of them. You kept the fire burning when it should’ve gone out.

If this guide helped you survive, pay it forward. Update it. Fix it. Add your scars to it. The Zone keeps changing, and so should our stories.

See you out there, or maybe not.
Some of us don’t make it back.

Good Hunting, Stalker.