Pyrogeist

The Pyrogeist is a mutant of unknown origin which appears in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Lost Alpha standalone mod and many S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

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Overview[]

Appearing as a floating form of heat haze surrounded by a fiery glow, the Pyrogeists appear a lot like their telekinetic cousin.
They are easily distinguishable from the latter with their orange glow instead of blue.
On death, they explode in a mess of blood and fire somewhat similar to the way Poltergeists die in the later two canon games.

v1.30013 - 1.4005:

A Pyrogeists' primary and only attack is spawning pillars of fire, with effects similar to Burner anomalies. While hard to shoot or aim at and being generally quite fast, they are far from invulnerable. A couple of shotgun blasts at close range or a couple of magazines from an assault rifle are usually all it takes to get rid of these mutants.
No body part is usually recoverable from the remains when they are dispatched, although they are easy to lure into anomaly clusters and may trigger Artifact Spawns.

v1.4007:

Provided that the player is equipping high enough burn protection to mitigate the opponent's attacks and provided that the opponent becomes stationary, it is possible to dispatch the beast with the knife.
During knife blows a high-pitched muted scream may be heard and blood will spatter nearby surfaces.
The mutant will usually expire in the Pyrogeist 'disintegration' but will drop an invisible corpse that may be looted or moved.
This body is that of a dead Poltergeist and may come with the associated Poltergeist's brain (see gallery)

All versions:

The Pyrogeist can be a formidable opponent if the player has the misfortune to encounter one of the many "fire-traps" that it spawns.
Although robust of constitution, the Pyrogeist can be taken out with pistol fire.
In the open, they frequently run through anomalies (or may be lured into doing so) and are quite susceptible to Electro anomaly damage.
In the event that one of these opponents 'rests' in a particular area, F1 Grenades or RGD-5 Grenades are very useful aids in defeating it.

v1.4007:

The beast may be profitably stabbed. This was probably feasible in all earlier releases but was a suicidal strategy due to the lack of sufficient burn warding measures in those earlier releases.

The strategy noted above for v1.4007 may also be feasible at the Monolith Control Center in the Base Game if the associated Pyrogeists become stationary.