Beyond that, Yavorsky told us of how artifact collection has been switched around. In the first game, equipping artifacts was one of the ways you could customize your character with resistance against various damage types. These things sat within weird temporal distortions called anomalies scattered around the landscape which would blow out in twisters or explosions when disturbed, leaving behind the collectible artifact. GSC is adding a greater variety of these things in Clear Sky and though you can still only equip five at a time, they'll have more varied forms and, if you take the time to hunt down the rarer versions, more significantly affect your statistics.

GSC is making artifact collection a little more engaging by adding in an element of puzzle solving. You can still toss bolts around, but now the system of anomaly detection and detonation will involve the use of several kinds of detectors. In order to get the artifacts to appear, you'll need to successfully navigate through patterned constructs of anomalies, detonating them according to where the detector indicates the artifact is hidden. Things get a little more complicated when you have to consider the artifact will move between anomalies while in its invisible state and that there are three types of detectors.

To prevent players from just walking into any anomalous construct right from the beginning of the game, GSC says you'll need to make sure you have the right damage resistances on your armor to make it in. As would make sense, the more valuable artifacts are hidden within more complicated anomaly setups. "This thing is actually something which was supposed to be done with the first game," said Yavorsky. "The first idea was that Stalkers would go with detectors and would really explore an area to find those artifacts."