Stalker 2 The Lost Boys walkthrough and should you side with Dew or the Ninth?

Nov. 20, 2024

After discovering what happened to the Lost Boys in Stalker 2, you need to decide if you’ll help Dew or the Ninth

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The STALKER 2 Lost Boys choice forces you to side with either the Ninth, a Monolith soldier, or Dew and his men, a gang of hired gun. However, the side mission begins with you tracking down a gang of diggers who have not returned to Lens after their last outing. Eventually, you’ll come across the Ninth, who helped Mastiff, one of the missing men, and Dew who is convinced that any member of the Monolith cult inStalker 2can’t be trusted, believing he has to gun down the Ninth before he can turn Mastiff into a zombie mutant.

It’s not the most straightforward side mission in Heart of Chornobyl, ending in choice with little context. This Lost Boys walkthrough for STALKER 2 will tell you how to complete the quest and what the best choice is out of siding with the Ninth or Dew.

Mastiff’s group last location in Stalker 2

Firstly, you need to find where Mastiff and his gang went missing. The blue waypoint will guide you there, but you essentially need tohead south of Zalissya for a few hundred meters until you find a concrete bunker-like entrance. Head inside and you’ll now need to figure out what happened to the gang.

Loot any bodies you see and keep heading deeper into the facility - watch out as you’ll come across plenty of electricalStalker 2 anomalies- until you find anincapacitated man called Max Saturday. Heal him up then speak to him to learn that a Monolithian took Mastiff. Next, turn on the power using the level behind Max, then use the nearby door to escape the facility.

Now you need to find Mastiff, which means you’ve got tohead southeast of the facility you were just in for several hundred meters, following the blue waypoint. You’ll eventually reach a small collection of buildings, one of which is a house which Mastiff is in as you can hear him groaning in pain. However, the door inside is locked and there’s no way to open it.

To get inside,head to the smaller shack next to the house(it’s to the right of the front door)break the yellow padlock to get insidethe shack. You’ll notice a large hole in the floor which leads into an underground tunnel that conveniently ends on the other side of that locked door in the house, and you’ll also find Mastiff lying on a bed here.

He’s babbling about checking the attic, so doing that leads you to finding the Ninth. Speak to him, and you’ll eventually be interrupted by Dew and his cronies. At this point, you’ve now got to choose if you’ll help the Ninth fight Dew, or if you’ll kill the Ninth now or agree to help Dew do the same.

If you side with the Ninth and defend him from Dew’s forces,you’ll have to kill the mercenaries outside, though the Ninth will help you do this. This isn’t an easy fight - there are several of them with strong weapons, though if the fight goes inside, the Ninth should help you (though he risks getting killed in the process).

After the shootout, speak with the Ninth again to get a little information about him and his faction, as well as theRubber Layer blueprint,an upgrade you can apply to improve certain equipment at any Technician (the merchants where you go torepair weapons in STALKER 2).

Once you go back to Lens,he’ll still pay you 500 couponsfor finding Mastiff, though warn you that the average character in STALKER 2 won’t even be as tolerant towards Monolithians as he is (and he gets off some nasty words about them along the way).

If you choose Dew, you’ll have tofight the Ninth.He’s only one man, but he has notably more health than any of Dew’s forces, acting as a kind of tank. Still, once you bring him down, you’ll see that he doesn’t have much in the way of loot.

Instead, the value to this choice comes when yougo back to Lens, who will give you 1000 coupons for completing the quest, double what he gives you otherwise.Still, this choice means you don’t get the blueprint, so there are pros and cons to doing so.

Trying to get a non-violent route through the Lost Boys quest where you talk down Dew from attacking the Ninth is impossible, despite the Ninth suggesting that you could try doing so.If you try to tell him the house is empty, he searches it anyway (leading to a firefight where he attacks the Ninth) and if you tell him the Monolithian is telling the truth, he decides you’re a traitor and begins combat.It means that going the dialogue route won’t save anybody - one way or another, either Dew and his team or the Ninth have to die.

Want more choices laid out? See if you shouldhelp or kill Squint in STALKER 2, orwho should you give the religious icon to in STALKER 2.© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.

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