Maybe they fixed some of these things:

- Steerpike's last point. When you open someone's inventory and it beeps, if you exit quickly you can see a transient text message that tells you what you found/did/encountered. If you keep the inventory screen open, this message disappears. I found this disorienting early on.

- In Shadow you will pick up quests just by walking around. Sometimes these quests will time out and a message will pop-up telling you that a quest has failed. Sometimes this message can be confused with other more important quests. I didn't find it to be any problem at all to let these transient quests just expire as I got on with more important things. I found this disorienting.

- There will be important information that you need to know that appears in your PDA without warning. At least I think it's without warning. There is a system that colors all you 'read' information bits a different color but when I played these colors would sometimes get lost. Do peruse the notes every once in a while. I found this disorienting early on.

- Do complete the quests in the intended manner. Early on in my first playthrough, I entered a tunnel system through one entrance, solved the quest, but then backtracked rather than going through the much harder developed-for-cinematic-purposes only alternate exit thereby failing to get ultimate credit for completing the quest. This broke all sorts of subsequent quests resulting in a disoriented, irradiated, ammo starved stalker wandering the wastelands for days in a futile effort to pick up the narrative.

- In a way that's not entirely clear, I kept winding up with loads of weapons in my inventory after searching corpses. I think it has to do with the way that the weapons are laying on the ground and you pick them up with the same key as you open a body's inventory. If you find yourself bogged down suddenly, have a look in your kit.

- Prune your inventory ceaselessly and be ruthless. Shadow had a lot of long distances and running was very very nice. There are two weight thresholds. The larger one is where you can't even move, but there's a smaller limit where either (I can't remember) you can't run, or you can't run very long. As hard as it is to drop the shiny happy new things, I was very happy with being able to run everywhere. Don't hesitate to run away from enemy soldiers.

- In my second play, very early on, after I got through the soldiers under the bridge, I was able to hide behind a tree and kill them all with a pistol and well placed grenade. Even with the crappy aim. This gave me an AK and enabled a much easier time of it in the disorientingly difficult early game. You might try this (quicksave protected of course) particularly if they've eased the pistol accuracy.

Anything of relevance in a dead Stalker's PDA is automatically moved to yours, and 99% of the time it's the location of a stash. Purple dots on your big PDA map indicate them, and mousing over the dots - I think - reveals the text block Helmut mentioned (the one you can't see).

As far as the boars are concerned, either the third one wandered away or you needed to return something from that stash to Wolf. I only recall two, but I haven't started the game yet so I'll see what I see this evening!

In my experience it takes about 3-5 hours for the game to click. The rough interface, complete absence of clear goals, and bad translation make immersion hard at the outset, but it all dissolves in a while.

To my recollection, none of the main story quests are timed, and timed ones may impact the ending but don't really hurt you if you fail . Plus the sidequests in the first STALKER are so inane that it's best to just ignore them; make your own objectives and adventures, and go on story quests when you feel ready.

As far as endings are concerned, there are seven, broken into two groups. You may want to save near the end so you can experience one of each, just to get the whole picture. It gauges your decisions throughout the game, but you'll never get any indication of how your activities are affecting the finale.

If you're having issues with the patches, I believe the US patch is 1.5.05 – that'll do the trick. I also note that there's a weapon accuracy and realism mod from the guy who did STALKER Complete, which makes guns a bit more realistic. Unmodded, early weapons are so inaccurate that you can aim for a dude's face from three feet away and miss by a mile. Always remember to use RMB to aim!

Just got myself all loaded up with the mods and what have you. Nimble is safe!

BTW – after you save Nimble, you can ask him for a job. He'll give you a tip about some better body armor he wants you to find and return. As always in STALKER, whether or not you return it or keep it is entirely up to you… I will say that armor is hard to come by early on, and good armor even more so.

EDIT: one more thing. It looks like the A-Life artificial intelligence system has been turned on in the Complete mod. While in this first game it will mostly affect animal behavior (like Spike's boar going on walkabout rather than staying near the stash), you may also observe humans behaving smartly. They do it in combat already - there's never been a combat AI like Shadow of Chernobyl's - but with A-Life fully activated it should also influence their normal behavior. Just a bit of trivia for you.

Kay, try this link for a US patch - STALKER Complete won't work without it.

Spike - only two boars. I killed them and got a quest complete notification. It's possible the game didn't notify you... have you spoken to Wolf since he gave you the quest? If not, go back and say you're there about the job. I'm guessing it's completed and you'll get your reward.

It's not necessary to be friendly with Wolf or do any of his quests, but they can be lucrative.