GSC Game World released the Stories Untold update for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl on December 17, 2025, and published the full patch notes. The free content drop introduces new missions and locations, a unique weapon, quality of life changes to saves for harder playthroughs, and several bug and AI fixes.
The update adds eight story missions estimated at over five hours of play depending on player pace, seven explorable locations, six new characters, and three unique items including the GP37V2 rifle. Players who prefer harder settings can enable a Manual Save option for runs started on Master difficulty or Expedition mode. The patch also adjusts DualSense dead zones on PC, optimizes mutant models, and addresses a spawn issue that could produce massive mutant hordes at the Plant area of the Garbage region.
This release follows recent stability and controller fixes in the December 9 Title Update 1.7.1, which implemented a mod fail-safe and DualSense adjustments for PC players. More details on that update are available in the recent 1.7.1 report.
Patch Notes – Stories Untold
Over five hours of gameplay have been added, depending on your pace. Discover the mysterious transmission that gives stalkers headaches, nosebleeds, and even hallucinations.
As the story unfolds, you can choose to help the stalkers and scientists figure out what’s going on. Make decisions, fight for what you believe in, search for answers, and more.
You can catch a PDA message anywhere on the map, with the biggest chance around the Burnt Forest. How you deal with it will shape the fates of stalkers you meet. This mission will become available after leaving the Zalissya region in the early stages of the game.
This new storyline brings to life 8 new missions, 7 new locations, 6 new characters, 3 new unique items, unique weapon, and more.
Speaking of new locations, if you decide to explore untold stories, you are going to visit and explore new places. They are free to explore for everyone in the Zone, some locations that were previously occupied only by rusty metal or mutants are now used by stalkers. The storyline also might lead you to creating a new hub in the Burnt Forest region. The new place on the map will draw the stalker’s attention, so you can expect the whole area to become more populated. But again, this outcome of the quest is not granted. You may choose to play another way.
The GP37V2 is a modified version of the GP37 rifle, crafted for the most tactically proficient players. It features a pre-installed suppressor and a low-magnification scope. The trigger group has been modified to support single and burst fire modes only.
The cost of failure is higher, but in the hands of a skillful operator, the GP37V2 can reward you with its precision and power. This thing you can get during the completion of the questline.
This change allows you to simplify the save system if you want to play on “Master” difficulty or any other difficulty with the “Expedition mode” enabled.
After starting the game (if Master difficulty or difficulty with Expedition mode enabled is selected), you can enable the Manual Save system in the settings menu. This option is enabled once and permanently (for the current playthrough) and allows you to save with:
- Quick Save (F5).
- Regular Manual Save via the menu.
If these saves are enabled, the player’s progress status, which is displayed in the Pause menu, will change.
- Fixed an issue where multiple artifacts could spawn in one place.
- Optimized multiple mutant models.
- Fixed an issue where NPC could not find a way to the shelter during an Emission at the Cement Factory location.
- Fixed an issue where NPC could not find a way to the shelter during an Emission in Zalissya.
- Fixed an issue that could cause massive mutant hordes to spawn at the Plant location of the Garbage region.
- Adjusted dead zone settings for DualSense controller on PC.
- Fixed an issue where the player could obtain the Heart of Chornobyl artifact from the regular anomalies.
Screenshots and the update thumbnail are hosted on Steam’s content servers and the update trailer thumbnail is available from YouTube.
Watch the update video:
