S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky's "Impossible" Achievement
16This game has always been regarded as the weakest out of the original three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, but its console release had also brought about a nasty surprise for hunters of trophies and achievements alike. I encourage viewers to also have a thorough read of this video's description as well as watch the video in full as it does aim to put everything on this topic on the table to aid players' understanding on this issue.
This video details what the "Modifier" achievement is in the console versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, why it appears to be impossible to get and some possible solutions for getting it. I also bring up an anomaly (no pun intended) that I had found while looking around for more info on this achievement.
One cannot increase the in-game counter that tracks the amount of flash drives collected by saving the game right before picking up a flash drive, picking it up, reloading the game and repeating this process.
Unlike with other in-game stashes, killing Drifter and searching his body did not allow me to get the stash info to retrieve his flash drive. Even switching between levels and coming back to search his body did not net me the stash info (though one can still acquire info from other stashes, even if they search the dead bodies of other stalkers).
Progress towards the "Modifier" achievement is increased when the player picks up a flash drive that they haven't acquired yet while playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky on that gamer profile, regardless of whether or not they aim to deliver it to a technician.
It makes no difference whether you speak to Wolf or Drifter first after saving Drifter from the pack of mutants. Drifter will still not allow you to buy required stash info from him due to a bug in the game's code.
I've checked around on numerous sites trying to find who it was that earned the "Modifier" achievement (providing the Xbox One's achievement tracker is accurate, which it should be), but could not pin a gamertag to this achievement at all. I had the same result when trying to look for PlayStation users who had earned this trophy on their profiles, too (though only limited info could be found on this).
At 9:00 in this video, I propose a solution that involves editing the treasure_escape.ltx file. Another solution to allowing the player to acquire the flash drive from Drifter would be to edit the game's .xml files that handle NPC dialog, located in this file path: gamedata/configs/gameplay. Slight correction here, but the treasure_escape.ltx file is not the ONLY file that could be fixed, but it is one of the files that can be fixed if the devs wish to make legitimately acquiring Drifter's flash drive possible. Otherwise, diving into the .xml files to fix Drifter's dialog is another possible solution (dialogs.xml and dialogs_agroprom.xml might be good places to start).
As a side note, the bug at shown at 1:12 in this video is not exclusive to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. This bug can happen in all three of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games (Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat). This is an NPC clipping bug where the ragdoll physics and the clipping of a dead stalker's body do not go well together, resulting in the stretched abomination that you see before you (happens when part of a dead body loads inside of an in-game object or part of a level's geometry). Sometimes occurs when loading a saved game when a dead body has been loaded into the game, but can be "fixed" by saving your game and reloading it again. Sometimes, players can also briefly encounter this bug upon killing NPCs, often resulting in the killed NPC being flung into the air.
Additional sources and links:
- GSC Game World's Official Site: https://www.gsc-game.com/
- MATABOO's Official Site: https://www.mataboo.com/index.html
- Flash Drives + Full List (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wiki): https://stalker.fandom.com/wiki/Flash...
- Drifter's Flash Drive, linked to an in-game bug (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wiki): https://stalker.fandom.com/wiki/Flash...
- Drifter's Stash, linked to an in-game bug (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wiki): https://stalker.fandom.com/wiki/Case_...
- Info on Drifter (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Wiki): https://stalker.fandom.com/wiki/Drifter
- Clear Sky's Xbox Achievements Leaderboard: https://www.xboxachievements.com/game...
- Clear Sky's "Modifier" Achievement Info: https://www.xboxachievements.com/game...
- "Modifier" Achievement Trophy Forum Post: https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/1...
- Another "Modifier" Achievement Trophy Forum Post: https://www.stratege.ru/ps4/trophies/...
- Clear Sky's PS Trophies Info: https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/2622...
- My Twitter: / moddersplaygro1
Video recorded and edited by Jacob_MP from Modder's Playground.
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