Stalker 2 Fast Travel: Guides, Squad Leaders and Costs

Fast travel in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl works through paid guides: you talk to a guide at a base, pay a fee in coupons and pick another base you have already visited. Since Update 2.1 in late October 2026 there is a second option, as some friendly or neutral squad leaders in the field will also guide you to nearby explored spots for a price.

We checked this against GSC Game World's official Update 2.1 and Stories Untold posts and Game8's fast travel and guide location pages in November 2026. Guide availability can change with story events, so always confirm in your own game.

How Fast Travel Works With Guides

The system follows the earlier games in the series. Game8 describes it as talking to a guide, paying a fee in coupons and telling them where you want to go, the same approach Call of Pripyat and Clear Sky used. There is no map-click teleport and no free travel between campfires.

Three rules shape everything else:

• Bases only. Guides live in bases and only take you to other bases. You cannot fast travel to a specific point of interest or stash.
• Visited destinations only. A guide will not take you somewhere you have not reached on foot first, so exploring each region properly pays off later.
• Distance sets the price. The farther the destination from the guide, the more coupons it costs. Game8 warns that the fees add up quickly if you use guides for every errand.

Faction standing matters as well. Game8 notes that some bases become unavailable as destinations if your relations with the people who run them are bad, which ties fast travel to the story choices you make.

Unlocking Fast Travel Early

Fast travel stays locked until you have more than one base. Game8 says you need to find at least one more base after Zalissya in the Lesser Zone before guides become useful, and recommends the Slag Heap in Garbage as the first target because many early main missions send you back there.

Once the Slag Heap is unlocked you can travel between it and Zalissya, and Game8 suggests making Rostok your next priority to build a useful network. From there, every new base you walk into becomes another destination, so it pays to step inside each settlement you pass even if you have nothing to do there yet. Talking to the guide once on arrival is also a quick way to see which destinations your network already covers and which bases you still need to find.

One early tip: do your shopping and turn-ins before you pay a guide. Because the fee scales with distance, a habit of bouncing back and forth for single errands drains coupons fast, especially on the harder difficulties where missions pay less.

Every Guide and Where to Find Them

Game8's guide location list covers almost one guide per region. The table below names each guide and the base they work from, including the two added with the Cost of Hope expansion.

Fast travel guides by base (Game8, November 2026)

Guide	Base	Region
Uncle Lyonya	Zalissya	Lesser Zone
Wolf	Rookie Village	Cordon
Bonkers	Slag Heap	Garbage
Toadstool	Chemical Plant	Chemical Plant
Jager	Cement Factory	Cement Factory
Machine	Shelter	Wild Island
Ducat	Sultansk	Zaton
Toad	Rostok	Rostok
Viktor Kishka	STC Malachite	Malachite
Scoutmaster	Kazkovyi Camp	Burnt Forest
Garry	Yaniv Station	Yaniv
Telegraph	Enerhetyk Palace of Culture	Prypiat
Beethoven	Chief's Bunker	Iron Forest
Skier	Water Purification Facility	CNPP

The Burnt Forest entry is worth a note. Game8's older fast travel page, last updated in January 2025, lists the Burnt Forest among regions with no guide. Its current guide list includes Scoutmaster at Kazkovyi Camp, which fits GSC's Stories Untold update from December 2025 adding a new hub deep in the Burnt Forest. If your save predates that content, you may not have that option yet.

The Iron Forest and CNPP guides come with the expansion, so they are only useful if you own Cost of Hope. Our Cost of Hope guide explains when you can reach those regions.

New in Update 2.1: Squad Leaders

GSC added a second kind of fast travel in Update 2.1, The Zone Lookout, released on October 26, 2026. As you cross the Zone, friendly or neutral squad leaders are now marked on your compass, and talking to one shows where they can guide you.

The official post sets clear limits on this service:

• Squad leaders only go to places along their own travel route.
• Only nearby destinations you have already explored are offered, and GSC's example is that a stalker from Zalissya will not take you all the way to Prypiat.
• Expect to pay well for it.
• Do not be overloaded, because no one will carry your bag for you.

In practice, squad leaders fill the gap between bases. They are useful when you are halfway across a region with a full pack and the nearest guide is a long walk away. The weight warning matters most if you are wearing a heavy suit; our exoskeleton guide compares suit weights and carry bonuses.

The same update also let you raise how far away A-Life NPCs are drawn through presets under Settings, then Game, then Visualisation options. A longer range means you can spot squads, and their leaders, from farther off, though GSC recommends the default preset for stability. Console players can find more on those presets in our PS5 guide.

When Fast Travel Is Blocked

A few situations shut guides down, and they catch players off guard if they rely on them. Game8 lists these:

• During an Emission. No guide will risk the trip, so fast travel is disabled until it passes.
• Zalissya after the SIRCAA arc. During the mission On the Edge, an event changes the town and its guide moves, removing fast travel to and from Zalissya.
• Chemical Plant with a hostile Ward. If you anger the Ward, the guide's shack just outside the perimeter wall stays locked.
• STC Malachite after it turns hostile. Depending on story events, you may still be able to travel there but not leave using its guide.

Game8 also points out that there are no drivable vehicles anywhere in the Zone, even though the side mission Car for Sale has you "buy" one. Walking, guides and now squad leaders are the only ways around.

Regions You Still Have to Walk

Several regions have no base and therefore no guide. Game8's older list pairs each one with the nearest base you can fast travel to:

• Swamps: start from Sultansk.
• Yantar: start from Rostok.
• Duga: start from STC Malachite.
• Red Forest: start from Yaniv Station.
• Cooling Towers: start from the Cement Factory.

Plan these trips carefully, since the walk back to safe ground is long. Bring enough medical supplies, keep an eye on your weight, and make sure your detector is equipped if you plan to pick up artifacts on the way; the Cooling Towers also hold the Cuirass exoskeleton, one of the earliest heavy suits.

Walking is not wasted time, either. Most of the content that inflates completion times lives between bases, which is why our breakdown of how long the game takes shows such a big gap between a focused story run and a full one.

Planning Routes Around the Guide Network

The trick to using guides well is treating them as the first leg of a trip rather than the whole trip. Pick the base closest to where you are going, pay once, and walk the last stretch. A few routes come up again and again:

• Yantar runs: travel to Rostok, then head out on foot, since Yantar has no guide of its own.
• Red Forest trips: use Garry at Yaniv Station as your jumping-off point.
• Duga: start from STC Malachite, as long as the settlement is still friendly to you.
• The Iron Forest on a base game save: a PSNProfiles player guide notes you reach the Iron Forest gate north of Garbage, so the Slag Heap guide gets you most of the way.
• The CNPP area: the same guide says to follow the train tracks east from Yaniv until you reach the Bridge of Death, which makes Yaniv Station the natural starting base.

Completionists have another reason to walk. The trophy The four winds asks you to unlock the whole map, and only about 2.4 percent of PSN players on PSNProfiles have it, largely because some areas are far from any guide. Visiting every region once on foot also adds each new base to your guide network, so the walking pays you back later.

Finally, remember that what you carry affects both the walk and the new squad leader option. Clearing your pack into a stash before a long trip keeps you under the weight limit and makes every leg faster. Our existing guide to how stashes work explains your options.

Spending Coupons on Travel Instead of Repairs

Guide fees, squad leader fees, repairs and upgrades all draw from the same wallet, and on Veteran or Master that wallet is thin. If you would rather travel freely without counting coupons, the store's fully upgraded gear save gives you 99,999,999 coupons on hand plus a personal stash worth over 896,000,000, along with every weapon and armor set stacked x9999, all ammo and crafting resources. It is set up on a fresh early-game profile, so you still unlock bases and guides yourself as the story goes.

Its stash is reachable from any base in the Zone, though your carry weight is unchanged, which matters for squad leaders who refuse overloaded travelers. It supports PS5 and PC only, and you need to own the game. More is on the Stalker 2 hub.

Frequently Asked Questions