S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Crashing, Shipping Errors, and Quest Issues — Troubleshooting Guide

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl did not launch in the most commendable technical state. At the time of release, players encountered critical errors in story missions that hindered game progression. Even after several major updates, users may experience various issues, including crashes to the desktop and other difficulties. In this guide, we have compiled all common problems and offered effective ways to solve them.

Before purchasing the game, we strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the minimum and recommended system requirements. You can also ensure that your PC meets the recommended requirements for a more comfortable gaming experience.

As we noted earlier, even if your system meets the minimum and recommended requirements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 may unexpectedly produce errors and crash to the desktop. This issue has not spared even owners of the most powerful computers. The game may close at random moments or during various actions. In most cases, this is not related to the system configuration but to the technical state of the game itself.

We have investigated this issue and compiled an effective list of steps to follow sequentially. In conclusion, we described non-obvious actions that have helped many players get rid of constant crashes.

Of course, not all problems can be solved by updating graphics card drivers, but an outdated driver version is the cause of errors, crashes, or low frame rates during gameplay in the overwhelming majority of cases. To avoid this, it is recommended to visit the manufacturer's website of your graphics adapter (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel) before launching the game, find the necessary one for your configuration and install it. In addition, we strongly recommend using a clean installation.

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is software that is activated when the computer starts and is responsible for launching hardware components. Follow these steps to update the BIOS:

Overclocking components such as the processor, graphics card, or RAM can significantly improve performance in games and applications. However, it can often lead to system errors or program malfunctions. To rule out overclocking as the cause of problems, it is worth temporarily disabling it and checking how the game functions in standard mode.

Sometimes the absence or corruption of DirectX components can cause various errors and crashes, including unexpected desktop crashes. It is recommended to visit the official Microsoft website to download and install the necessary components.

Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable is one of those utilities without which most games will not run on your PC. We recommend downloading and installing all versions of this product. Download link.

Often, the problem may arise due to missing operating system update files. To do this:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 initially launches in DirectX 12 mode, but depending on your hardware, you may try changing the launch settings to an earlier version of DirectX. To do this, open Steam, find the game in your library, and go to its properties. In the launch options, enter -dx11. Then check if the error has disappeared.

If the previous recommendations did not yield results, it's worth considering this step. Start by setting all the game's graphics settings to their minimum values, then gradually increase them individually. Monitor whether the error reoccurs when changing each parameter.

The issue may be caused by using DLSS technology. Try switching to a different scaling method, such as DLAA or TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) combined with Frame Generator. However, it should be noted that DLAA may also cause crashes for some users, so the second option is considered more relevant.

Additionally, for further optimization, it is recommended to install a mod available at this link. Although this mod is not perfect, it can significantly help in resolving performance and stability issues in the game.

Some gamers have noticed that when loading an autosave, the issues you may have encountered often reoccur. To avoid this, it is recommended to create and load only manual saves.

Currently, shader compilation is encountered by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 gamers at every launch, but even at this stage, errors can occur, including desktop crashes. This is a rather important point that we do not recommend skipping on the first launch, but later you can use this method to disable compilation.

Here is a list of methods that can fix the shader compilation error:

In the overwhelming majority of cases, this problem occurs for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 owners on the Steam platform. It means that upon launch, the game cannot find the executable file Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe. But how to fix the error?

If you attempt to run a file integrity check for the game, you will notice that the launcher will download the missing data. However, after the next launch, you might encounter the error again. This is due to the antivirus being enabled, which recognizes the Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe file as a potential threat and deletes it immediately after downloading.

Before running the file integrity check, we recommend temporarily disabling the antivirus and then adding the Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe file to the exceptions list.

Recently, most of the critical errors present at the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 have been fixed thanks to major patches. Although the game still features local anomalies such as disappearing items, missing artifacts, NPCs passing through textures, and other amusing glitches, they generally do not have a significant negative impact on the gameplay.

The advice may seem simple, but manual saves help bypass the vast majority of bugs in the game. We don't fully understand how this works, but when loading an autosave, the error most often repeats. However, if you make a manual save and load it, you are very likely to avoid troubles and find the necessary item.

Additionally, gamers can also use console commands for UE5, allowing you to complete a quest with an error in a matter of seconds.

Although some time ago the game developers released a major patch fixing many errors and bugs in the game, including the issue with the On the Edge quest, some gamers may still encounter it. If you are among them, be sure to check out this guide. It describes in detail the actions that will help bypass the problem and continue the storyline.

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If you encounter a critical error and cannot continue the storyline quests for any reason, write about it in the comments below. We will try to investigate the problem and update the guide.