The Garbage

The garbage is a zone that’s filled with bandits and other assorted nasty folk, although there are a few spots of civility left. Stalkers have set of defensive camps in some of the areas here, but they’ll be under siege by bandits more often than not, so stay on your guard, even when you think you’re in a safe area.

Many of the junkpiles here are highly radioactive, so don’t stray too far from the road if possible. To the north, you can find an outpost of the Duty, a set of military guards for the Zone. They won’t be very friendly now, but you’ll get past them later.

Speak With Gray

The stalker that Fox wants you to speak to is located north, along the road. You’ll probably have to kill off or run away from some bandits to reach him. When you do reach the factory that his marker is located in, you’ll be told to help the stalkers there fight off some bandits that will attack. Do so, and Gray will deign to speak to you. As you might expect from the other guys, he doesn’t have much to offer you at this point, and instead sends you to speak with a stalker named Mole.

Mole is over in the Agropom Research Institute area, so you’ll need to head west from the hangar that Gray is in in order to move out there. There will be plenty of bandits around, and you’ll probably have to fight them solo in order to move on.

Agropom Research Institute

Meet With Mole

As soon as you enter this zone, a stalker will tell you that a military air assault force is about to land near Mole’s group, for some reason or another. If you want to talk to Mole, it sounds like you’ll have to assist him in his defense.

There are a number of quest objectives here, but they all basically boil down to the same thing: you have to prevent mole from getting killed by the paratroopers that are coming in to get him. Why are they after him? Who knows!

Saving Mole

Anyway, heading in via the main entrance is going to be a pain, so you will probably want to head around to the north side of the entrance and wrap around. There are a couple of optional entrances there which will let you sneak into the facility and hopefully find a ladder leading up to a rooftop, from which you can blast the soldiers as they engage the stalkers.

Your goal, again, is to kill all of the soldiers in the area, but take your time; Mole is actually holed up in a building and apparently can’t be killed. All of the soldiers here wield Akm 74/2 assault rifles, which are big and mean, so you’ll want to grab one of them and as much ammo as you can safely carry. It has a lot of kick, so it might not be the best weapon for dealing with distant enemies, but it’ll blast a hole in anything that gets within range.

Anyway, when all of the soldiers here are dead, Mole will exit his building and, when you get near him, move outside to a sewer entrance, where Strelok’s stash is apparently located. Be sure to speak to Mole before heading in to wrap up his related quest and move on to the next section. You appear to be able to screw up your game somewhat if you go into the sewers without speaking to him.

Find Strelok’s Group’s Stash

Head into the sewers, and be ready for some fighting. There should be a group of bandits near the entrance to the zone that you will need to take out, but it can be difficult to see in the dark. Don’t forget that you do, indeed, have a flashlight (default key is L).

After killing the initial batch of bandits, ignore the hallway with the electrical anomoly in it and head west, down the spiral staircase. There’s a bunch of acidic anomolies here, but they’re easy enough to avoid. When you reach the larger room that’s filled with machinery, check out the elevated platform on the western side; you should be able to find an Urchin artifact there, that’ll net you -30 Rad while worn. It’ll increase your bleeding, though, so don’t wear it until you need to.

Near this area there are a couple of nested, curved hallways that have a military-grade guard. When you start to see the number of nearby PDA’s jump up, you’ll know you’re about to face some opposition, so be careful! These guys are clustered around the entrance to Strelok’s stash, which is in the semi-circular inner hallway, near the southern end. If you see a pile of boxes near a hole in the wall, peek in to find a ladder and climb up to find the stash. You’ll find a Fireball artifact here, which also reduces radiation, as well as a small flash drive in a hole in the wall behind the map board, leading to the "Find Ghost" mission. That has the information you need; now you just need to get out of the underground.

Find a Way Out Of The Underground

Follow the path leading on from the stash and fight off more soldiers. You’ll eventually reach the end of the road, but a psi-mutant will attack you before you reach the ladder. Kill it if you want - the psi-attacks are super-annoying - or you can just run to the ladder leading up out of the ground and move on.

Mission: Find The Military’s Documents

The exit to the underground will place you right smack in the middle of the Agropom Research Institute headquarters, which is where you need to be to find the military documents that Sid wants. It’s also populated by perhaps a dozen guards or so, so be careful! We found it best to head into one of the barracks just to the southeast of the exit to the underground and wait there for the soldiers to arrive. Since there’s only one entrance, you can pop them with some shotgun love as they venture in.

The documents that you want are on the third floor of the largest building here. You can also see a loudspeaker on the roof from down below; shoot it, if you like, to turn off the alarms. After reaching the third floor and picking up the briefcase (expect some soldiers to be guarding it), you’ll have to make your way back downstairs. There doesn’t appear to be any other entrances or exits to the building aside from the main one (unless you’re willing to jump off the roof), so fight your way outside, exit the facility, and get the heck out of dodge.

Expect heavy resistance when attempting to leave the ARI zone. Keep in mind that you can switch firing modes with the 9 and 0 buttons. Switching your Akm 74/2 to single-shot mode will help you fire on enemies from long range.

To The Bar

Now that you have the military documents, head back to the Garbage. Sid will have arranged for passage through the Duty encampment to the north towards the Bar. Head that way and approach the Duty soldiers. You may have to help them eliminate the mutants that approach the camp, but when you speak to the guy near the gate, he’ll let you pass through to the Bar area.

When you reach the Bar zone, the first thing you’ll want to do is actually find the eponymous bar, where the Barkeep awaits the documents. He’ll hand you a free stalker suit here, which is a good thing, since it’ll greatly increase your resistance to most forms of damage, and has built-in radiation protection. The Barkeep will give you the next part of the quest: he wants you to find a second set of military documents, locked up in another facility. He’ll give you one of the keys required to enter, but the second key will need to be picked up from Borov. Your goal now is to reach the Dark Valley, which will require you to pass through the Garbage and head east.