I finished up my S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat run a couple nights ago. I didn't really want to backtrack to Clear Sky (which I skipped this run-through of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s), so I decided I'd try one of the massive overhaul mods, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly. I quickly figured out that it's way too "realistic" in it's overwhelming crafting system additions, ammunition quality, and bastard-hard-ness for my tastes, but it does some cool stuff (Like gluing all the maps from the original trilogy into one free-roam sandbox, and throwing in the cut maps from the early alpha/demo versions just because, but also re-placing all the anomalies because the Emissions were supposed to change the locations of the anomlies, but that was beyond the scope of the original games). It also updated the maps to show that some time had passed since the games.

Then while trying to learn how to play Anomaly, I found out there's a mod for the mod called Old World, which largely returns the item variety and such back to feeling like the original games, while still adding some neat new features and items. So I immediately sank a half dozen hours into re-exploring the zone 😸.