Although I know these days the actual new players of S.T.A.L.K.E.R maybe scarce, especially for players who just finish Clear Sky and get attracted by this game series and ready to proceed playing Call of Pripyat, I still want to do this simply because I like this game.

Here are the tips. These tips are categorized neither logistically nor time so far; however, I may try to update and refine it if I have time, so for your convenience I recommend that please copy these to somewhere else(Notepad, for example) and press Ctrl+F in order to get quick access to the info you think handy.

By the way, English IS NOT my native language, hence feel free to correct grammar mistakes or weired word choices if you like.

# This guide will be updated and revised further unless you can't see this line anymore.
* Cover image comes from kraytos, all credits go to him.

1. During the first side quest "Strange Phenomenon" of Beard at Skadovsk DON'T GIVE AWAY the artifact to other Stalkers because you don't want to waste your ammo or medkits. By the way, you can at least finish off one of them by throwing GRENADES out of the window locates near the artifact.
The other peaceful solution to this is follow Tuna after you have handed the artifact over, and that stalker would go all the way to Skadovsk. WITHOUT threat he will give you HALF the price, but the quest FAILS thereafter.
Or, if you don't want to take the risk of fighting three well-armed stalkers at the beginning at the game while want to finish the quest, hand it over and follow the guy. Once he has run away from his partner, you suddenly know how to deal with him.

2. NEVER try to become a hoarder of artifacts as you do in the previous two vanilla games---In fact, artifacts are frequently RESPAWNED right after the occurrence of Blowouts; therefore, take advantage of this to quickly get over the finance issue at the beginning of game.

3. Just like what I mentioned above, Blowouts most likely occur when you sleep for more than 5 hours, thus take multiple 5-hour sleep if you want to intentionally hunt for high-end artifacts, and DON'T FORGET to eat something each time you wake up!

4. Press "P" by defauly to turn on your PDA to check out a district named as Boiler Anomaly right after you ENTER the game for the FIRST TIME, and that location is in the northwest. Wait for a stalker named Petruha to enter the anomaly field, then carefully go through the anomaly field RIGHT AFTER he gets knocked off by the anomaly and give him a medkit, you will get A) Bear Detector if you currently has an Echo Detector B) Fireball artifact if you already have a Bear Detector

5. Unlike in Clear Sky, the medkits in this game NO LONGER recover your health INSTANTLY, so DON'T delay using it!

6. Military Medkits(Blue)' recover rate and amount is the most among all three kinds of medits, so don't regard Scientist Medkits as the best as they do in the two prequels.

7. You NO LONGER have to patch yourself up with BANDAGES before you consuming medkits--medkits can stop bleeding,as well. Consequently you can sell spare bandages to vendors if you really meet a scarce situation.

8. DON'T loot all the weapons and armors you see because vendors NO LONGER BUY them from you if the condition is quite poor(<70%).

9. However, the former tip no longer applies ONCE you have arrived Pripyat since Yar at the Yanov Station would provide free repair service(PRESS "X" when you talk to him), so take enough Hercules and get a exoskeleton prior to go to Pripyat, soon later you would find that sell these is much more profitable than selling artifacts.

10. You don't need to sell low-level artifacts once you have found high-tier ones--Remember to leave each one kind of them in your personal storage box, and then "Artifact Hunter" + "A Wealthy Client" achievement can let you know what is the delight of shopping in the Zone.

11. There is no Faction War anymore, so you dont't need to worry about the hostility of his teammates if you kill someone accidently or deliberately.

12. Gameplay change of BloodSuckers: In Clear Sky, you can't hurt bloodsuckers if they are in "wandering" status, at that time they are half invisible; In Call of Pripyat, they become fully invisible almost all the time but you can hurt them no matter what status they are in.