It won’t take long before The Zone teaches you one very important tip for surviving in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which is to avoid fighting whenever possible. You can only carry so many resources, and prolonged fights can leave you with almost nothing left. And that’s if you even manage to survive. There are some fights you just can’t get around, though, but going in guns blazing isn’t the best strategy. There’s a handy stealth kill mechanic in Stalker 2, but you won’t find it in any of the tutorials.
How to stealth kill in Stalker 2
You have the ability to stealth kill right off the bat, though it is not something the game will ever explain or tell you. It works how you would think, but is tricky enough to pull off that you might not think it’s possible even if you try the right thing.
To stealth kill, you need to equip your knife and sneak up behind an unaware enemy. You need to get close enough that you see your character change their grip and ready the knife for a stab and then press the heavy attack button. This will cause a small animation where you take down the enemy in one blow without making noise. There’s no prompt to let you know you’re close enough, so you need to watch for that hand signal to know it will work. If you’re not that close, but still close enough, you will just slash the enemy and not kill them.