STALKER 2 Money Glitch Patched: Custom Rules Explained

The 2.0 "Back to the Zone" update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl came out yesterday, Thursday, August 20, 2026, free of charge on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. It packs more than 500 fixes, and two of them close shortcuts that let players farm coupons without really playing.

The first removes the farming of Malachite guards killed via stealth. The second removes the duplication of SD-cards containing coupons, achievable with a gamepad. In the first case, GSC Game World itself uses the word exploit: this is a deliberate closure, not a rebalancing.

Alongside these two closures, 2.0 does three things that work in the player's favor: artifacts finally stack in the inventory, the overload that used to persist after a trade with a merchant is gone, and a "Custom Rules" difficulty lets you set the harshness of the economy independently from that of combat. Here are the details, and what you need to change in your habits.

A note on methodology before we begin: GSC only publishes its patch notes in English. The content management system that feeds the official blog only declares two languages, English and Ukrainian — we double-checked this on Friday, August 21. We therefore quote the wording exactly as the studio writes it, without manufacturing an English translation.

The two coupon farms that 2.0 closed

The two fixes aren't listed in the same place in the August 20 notes, which explains why they went unnoticed. The first appears in the Main & Side Quests, Open World Encounters section:

Fixed exploit when player was able to farm coupons by stealth killing guards on Malachite location.

The second is in the Gameplay section:

Fixed an issue where the player was able to duplicate SD-cards with coupons using a gamepad.

GSC describes neither the exact manipulation nor the yield of either one. What we can say without extrapolating: Malachite's guards are no longer a repeatable coupon source, and gamepad duplication no longer exists. If your fortune comes from either of these two routes, it isn't being confiscated — neither fix mentions removing coupons already earned — but it won't renew itself.

And is our August 8 guide now outdated?

On August 8 we published a guide devoted to the Zone's economy. We reread it line by line before writing this one: it recommended neither of these two shortcuts. The methods it describes — the artifact-hunting loop, skinning mutants, repeatable missions, refusing repairs in order to resell — are all legitimate routes, and 2.0 doesn't touch any of them. You can keep using them as is.

Two of its tips even become more comfortable to apply, for the reasons detailed in the next section.

Artifacts finally stack in the inventory

This is the most useful line in the entire Items / Inventory section:

Fixed an issue that caused artifacts to not stack in inventory.

Until now, each artifact took up its own slot, even when you brought back five identical ones. Selling off duplicates therefore had to be done one at a time, and the stash quickly became unreadable. They now group together.

One nuance, because it matters for your budget: GSC does not say that stacking lightens anything. Nothing in the notes promises additional carry capacity. The gain is one of time and readability at the counter, not a gain in carrying capacity. We'll verify this in-game.

Two other patches from the same family bear, meanwhile, directly on the effectiveness of a run. The first fixes an overweight effect that remained active after lightening your bag by selling to a trader: you had paid the price of sorting through your inventory without recovering the benefit. The second fixes a total loss of character control when attempting to use a ladder while overloaded — a bug that could cost an entire loot run.

"Custom Rules": six settings, including one dedicated to the economy

This is the structural novelty of 2.0 for anyone who finds the Zone too stingy. GSC presents the concept in two questions, in its official post:

Want more hardcore fights but a less punishing economy? Or do you find dodging anomalies far harder than managing coupons?

In other words, difficulty stops being a single slider. The screenshot published by the studio shows a menu with six independent lines, including one titled Economy. Here is what it displays — keeping in mind that these are the values chosen for the illustration, not the complete list of available settings, which GSC has not published.

The help panel in the screenshot adds a detail about the Zone axis: at the Deadly Grounds value, the compass and crosshair are disabled and cannot be reactivated. The mode's banner, meanwhile, sums up the philosophy of the whole thing: "Perfect for players who want full control over their game experience."

In practice, a player who enjoyed the tension of combat but kept quitting for lack of ammunition can now soften just the Economy line while leaving Mutants at maximum. The reverse works too. GSC is now presenting this decoupling as a selling point in its own right.

Two reminders from the same page, so as not to confuse the levels: the Master difficulty and the Expedition mode that can be activated on top of the other difficulties already existed before 2.0. The update adds a long-awaited fix: Master no longer resets itself under certain circumstances.

On the trader side: exoskeletons back in stock

Three lines in the patch notes directly concern traders' stock and what you buy from them.

• The missing exoskeletons are back. Several exoskeleton-type armors were absent from various traders' stocks. If you were saving up for a hard-to-find piece, make the rounds of the vendors again.
• A mislabeled upgrade has been fixed. The effect of the "Protective coating" upgrade for the SSP-100 Survey armor carried the wrong label. Note the nuance: GSC is talking about the name of the effect, not the effect itself. You may have paid for an upgrade based on a false label, but what you bought wasn't broken.
• A new spending item appears. Update 2.0 adds three binoculars — FOB-45, "Yastrub" and "Fighter". They can be found in the Zone, but also, GSC says, "from certain traders for a less-than-fair price." In practical terms: if you don't want to search, you'll have to pay, and the studio itself warns that the price isn't fair.

A Burer that no longer kills in one hit is also a matter of money

A fix in the Gameplay section has economic consequences that are easy to underestimate: the Burer no longer instantly kills the player on Stalker difficulty. Every death costs healing items, burned ammunition, and a round trip to the technician. A mutant that no longer threatened but executed was, in practice, a line item of expenses.

Prices as of August 21, 2026

Recorded this Friday on the French Steam listing:

What to prioritize this weekend

1. Check your mods before relaunching the game. GSC warns that mods may not survive the update, and recommends disabling them if you experience performance or stability issues. Official support is available at support.stalker2.com.
2. Open the settings before resuming your game. Now's the time to decide whether you want a gentler economy without touching combat difficulty. Your previous saves remain compatible, no new playthrough is required.
3. Sort out your artifact stash. Now that they stack, duplicates accumulated over the weeks can be resold in a single operation.
4. Check back with traders. The exoskeletons that were missing from stock are back, and the binoculars are now among the purchasable items.
5. Don't count on Malachite or controller duplication anymore. Both have been closed off. The sustainable routes remain artifact hunting, skinning mutants, and repeatable missions.

One last word on vocabulary: the Zone's currency is called coupons in the French version of the game, never rubles or credits. The setting and item names quoted here, however, have no published French equivalent: what your client displays may differ.