How To Complete The Forge Of Progress In Stalker 2

Later in your adventures in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, you’ll venture to the advanced labs at SIRCAA in the eastern part of the Zone. You’ll split your time there across several missions, one of which, The Forge of Progress, sees you diving into the depths of the facility and discovering some unsavory secrets the Association doesn’t want you to know.

The mission isn’t particularly difficult, as much of the content during the SIRCAA section of Stalker 2 is focused first on major narrative beats. There are still a few tricky bits to The Forge of Progress mission, and you’ll learn about them here.

How To Complete The Forge Of Progress

You start The Forge of Progress rather innocuously. After talking to Dr. Dalin at the end of the mission, A Long Overdue Visit, you’ll be sent to the ARL to meet Dr. Kryvenko. The Forge mission begins shortly after leaving the meeting and starting your way toward the lab.

Exit the meeting room and turn right, then take the door on your left out into the large garden, then keep right toward the building in the distance covered in scaffolding.

Dr. Kryvenko is waiting just beyond the doors to the lab, and he’ll ask you to walk and talk with him. Once you reach the shuttered windows, speak with him one last time and select “I’m gonna go take a look.” when the opportunity arises.

Return to the main foyer where you met the doctor and go through the door that was behind him, with the one glass window pane. Head up the stairs and turn right to reach a control room that, once crossed, will lead to a hallway with a door leading outside to another clearing. Head through the door on the other side.

Gather ammo and healing items in the room, then destroy the yellow-painted boards to reach the tunnels. Head down into the fan room and take the open pipe at the bottom. Continue forward, making your way lower at every opportunity until you reach a pipe blowing steam over a watery hallway.

When you get to the room with the large pit in the center, throw a few grenades across the area to clear out the rat swarm, then head to the other end of the room and shoot the lock on the ladder to drop it.

Proceed through to the next large room where the spacial anomaly rests. Unfortunately, it’ll take a bit of doing to reach it. First and foremost is defeating the Burer mutant guarding the way forward.

This Burer isn’t as resilient as a Controller, and so long as you for it to drop its shield, damaging it is easy. The best plan is to use a shotgun and get close to the beast, as
it has few defenses at point-blank range and can’t maintain its shield indefinitely.

The mutant can telekinetically pick up guns and use them to attack. It can also make you drop yours, forcing you to pick it up off the ground.

Whenever the mutant is unshielded, unload into it with whatever you have to hand, and it should go down easily enough. Head through the red-lit door under the stairs to proceed deeper.

The hallway through the red-lit doorway leads to a staircase if you go straight, and if you turn right at the intersection, you can meet a trapped scientist and, provided you kill the mutant “guarding” him, he’ll give you a key to a supply room on an upper level. Deciding to save him is up to you.

If you do save him, the supply room is on the right-hand side of the room at the top of the stairs and contains a large stash with ammo, food, and healing items.

Directly across from the supply room is a long hallway that gives you a tantalizing view of the spatial anomaly. Proceed through and head down the stairs you reach in the next room.

Now, the fun part: the Guardian Program, a combat training regimen spread across four rooms with various combat and platforming challenges.

How To Complete The Guardian Program

The first calling in the Guardian program has you avoiding anomalies, and the best way is to jump across the tops of the lower walls. Use the large steps at the beginning of the room to get up.

To get to the open door leading out of the room, keep left, jumping through the floating glass and avoiding the elemental anomalies as you encounter them, then looping back around to the right to find the door.

The next room is a simple button-pressing minigame. You have four buttons, and you need to push them in the right order to proceed. The correct order is 1-3-4-2.

Your next challenge is “simple” enough: kill a Bloodsucker, then turn some knobs. The first room is Bloodsucker territory, so kill the thing and proceed into the next room, which is filled with corrosive, radioactive gas.

To clear the gas, you need to turn three pipes to the “off” position by rotating their cranks to the right. The first one you’re likely to see is directly to the right of the entry door.

There’s a walkway along the wall opposite the door. Jump on it and turn left, duck under the grating, climb the ladder, and look left to find the second crank.

The final crank is sitting over a set of blue pipes. There’s a light and a red metal number two behind it. Turn this third crank to vent the gas and open the door going forward.

Grab the healing items from the lockers beyond the door, go through the decontamination area, and then go through the door.

Don’t immediately proceed toward the objective. Instead, turn right into the bathroom to find
a tricked-out Fora-221 rifle, M860 Cracker, and the SSP-99 Ecologist Suit.

Continue forward through the lab rooms until you finallyreach the spacial anomaly. Jump inside for a fun little trip through dimensions.

Beyond the anomaly is an underground facility filled with Snorks, the masked, humanoid mutants covered in blood sores. Clear them and keep to the right until you hear that snake Hermann call out to you beyond a set of turnstiles. Speak to him through some windows and he’ll “open the door for you,” which means there are more dangers to overcome.

Take the door to the right of Hermann’s windows and drop underneath the anomaly guarding the way forward.

Drop down and turn left, then, when you reach the room filled with dead Snorks and floating glass, make your way to the other side, either through the anomalies or around them. Continue until you reach the stairs, and head up. Behind one last set of doors is Hermann, who has a lot of lore to drop and one more spacial anomaly to go through.

Going through the anomaly teleports you first into a large, hostile herd of pig mutants, and then into a small box with a chimera, but luckily, the third teleport will put you back in the relative safety of the Zone. And once you’re out of the SIRCAA facility, you’ll have completed The Forge of Empires mission.