S T A L K E R: Call of Pripyat - ( 2021 ) Video #34: "The Hit" - Sultan & Beard Variation
5"The Hit" is the first big mission taken in Call of Pripyat that predetermines what Achievements you will end up with later. To initiate it, you have to talk to Sultan first to get the task of helping Knuckles and his men ( who technically are Stalkers and not Bandits yet ) who are going to attack Spartacus and crew of Stalkers, on the Taras Shevchenko.
In this example, I talked to Sultan and then afterwards talked to Beard, of which that second action results in the Stalkers being warned. You ONLY talk to Beard after Sultan, if you intend to get the "Friend of Stalkers" Achievement which means Spartacus is warned and is prepared for the Sultan planned attack. Whether you help the Bandit wannabes, help the Stalkers or do nothing, your fate is set by warning Beard who will be the one to offer the next related mission called "The Transaction".
While nothing happens yet related to "The Hit" other than talking to both parties in this video, I wanted to put up this warning ahead of time. The activity in the video is simply killing time by going out and doing some artifact hunting at the Burnt Farmstead, where I find the free Vintar BC.
I'm going to post the whole sequence of events as they happened. Once I realized my mistake of talking to Beard, which is something you DON'T want to do if you are working to get one of the two OTHER Achievements of either "Boss" or "Man of Balance" which I will explain more later. For this reason, I ended up losing an entire day of my activities and actions by going back to a Manual Save before I talked to Sultan without warning Beard.