Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl - How To Get Good Armor Early Game (2024)

The weapons and ammunition you use in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl are important, as are the healing items that keep you alive. The armor you use is just as important, especially at resisting the more passive dangers of the Zone: radiation, chemicals, and the psi-energy that permeates anomalies. With the right set of armor early in your adventure, you'll be much better off much faster.

The entire Zone is available to you very early in the story of Stalker 2, but there's one armor in particular that's incredibly useful from the beginning into the endgame. Find out all about it here.

How To Get The Seva-D Suit

The Seva-D Suit is probably the best overall armor available after you leave the Lesser Zone tutorial after completing the Beyond Seven Seals mission.

After you get the Key to the Northern Checkpoint and hear the Ward announcement in Zalissya that the lockdown is lifted, you can start the journey north to where you'll find the Suit.

Take the road north from Zalissya. Using the key, open the door at the left building of the northern checkpoint. Throw a bolt through the window to dispel the anomaly and cross the broken bridge into the Garbage region.

You can also leave via the southeastern gate of Lesser Zone, though the trek to the armor is longer if you go that way.

From the broken bridge, you'll be heading northeast to a point of interest called The Cage, a ruined construction site in the Cement Factory region. It's about 1.5 kilometers or a five-minute run without buffs or stamina refills.

You'll see the Cage from a way out, as there's a strange altar-like structure on its top. It's also the biggest, most angular empty building for hundreds of meters. When you do reach it, to get the Seva-D suit, you need to get to the top, where the Suit waits.

How To Get To The Top Of The Cage

Reaching the top of The Cage is a tricky bit of platforming and, depending on how many healing items you have, a time trial as well. The Cage is affected by an anomaly that not only saps your health but distorts your vision, and you'll need to use at least a few medkits to ascend it.

The process starts by taking the staircase from the ground floor.

Turn north at the top of those stairs and use the beams to cross to the next set of stairs.

Once at the top of those stairs, turn roughly south and look across the gap. There is a set of ladders behind the wall you need to reach.

Cross the gaps to the east, then carefully traverse the beams south toward the ladders. Climb up and turn around to find a stack of boxes you can jump on to reach the next level.

Jump onto the platform to the north. There'll be a death drop on your left, and things get tricky from here. Take these directions to reach the next part of the platforming puzzle:

• Go down the first platform you reach and turn right at its end.
• Turn left at the larger beam.
• Turn right down the thin beam with the wire hanging down. Don't worry about the wire itself. You'll go straight through it.
• Jump around the corner to the platform with the puddle on the ground.
• Head across the wooden boards, through the doorway, and up the stairs.

When you reach the top of this penultimate staircase, there's only one challenge between you and the Seva-D Suit: a sprint-jump over a death pit with a small safe space to land. Save your game before trying the jump in case something goes wrong.

There's just one more staircase after the jump, then you can go southwest to the Cage's roof's edge, where you'll find a small camp, a stash, and most importantly, the Seva-D Suit.

Seva-D Suit Stats

The Seva-D is one of the best story campaign armors for a few reasons. No, it doesn't have the most artifact slots by default, nor are its stats the highest in the game, but its stat spread is incredibly balanced and high for something so "easily" attained.

• Thermal Protection: 1.1
• Electrical Protection: 1.4
• Chemical Protection: 1.3
• Radiation Protection: 2.5
• Psi Protection: 1.6
• Physical Protection: 3.0

The real kicker about this Suit is its Psi-Protection stat, which is a solid 1.6, something few other early-game armors can boast. There is even a late-game quest that asks if you can find armor with psi resistance, and the Seva-D fulfills that role, even if its durability is exhausted.

The Seva-D is relatively light as armor goes, at just 8 kilograms, and comes with a respectable 3 artifact slots with upgrades available to expand that capacity.

You will feel a difference when you put it on compared to anything you found in the Lesser Zone, especially in a gunfight and when exploring anomaly areas.

You technically don't need any new armor after getting the Seva-D, with the only reason to switch being situational. The one caveat is that the Suit is expensive to repair, coming in at over 30,000 coupons to fix when heavily degraded.

Take care to not let it get to that point and you'll be golden for hours of fighting and exploring in the Zone.