The STALKER 2 Poppy Field mission has a choice about the Religious Icon - do you give it to Mityay, the initial quest giver, or do you sell it to Pomor, who told you how to navigate the Poppy Field in the first place? Well, the actual best choice is simultaneously to do both and neither - as we'll explain below, you can get a lot more out of the Religious Icon choice if you think a little creatively (and violently), as well as covering the location of the STALKER 2 Poppy Field Stash itself, if you're having trouble finding it.
What should you do with the Religious Icon in the Poppy Field in STALKER 2?
The best choice for the Religious Icon in the Poppy Field in STALKER 2 is to give it to Pomor, kill him, take it off his body and give it to Mityay afterwards. As brutal as this is, it means you can get both rewards and effectively get the benefits of both choices, and as we've seen so far there aren't any downsides or negative penalties to killing Pomor (who is already characterised as a slightly shady grave robber who is, at the very least, not warning people about the dangers of the Poppy Field so he can loot their bodies).
If you give the Religious Icon to Pomor, you get the Unknown Stalker's AR416, a full auto assault rifle. It's fair as an early game weapon, but there's one issue - despite the description saying it's been well-taken care of, it's at a mere 10% durability and jams with use. You'll need to bring it to a technician (which is how to repair weapons in STALKER 2, if you weren't aware), though this is an expensive repair job - over 7000k when we tried.
If you give the Religious Icon to Mityay, you simply get 1000k and Mityay's thanks. If you killed Pomor before this, it doesn't even get mentioned - the dialogue is the same regardless.
With that in mind, the best thing to do is simply hand over the Icon to Pomor, get the AR416 reward, kill Pomor, loot the Icon off his body (you can also get back the weapons and ammo from the Poppy Field bodies if you handed those over), and even raid his locked back room with the key on his corpse. Then give the Orthodox Icon to Mityay and close the quest with the money too.
STALKER 2 Poppy Field stash location
If you're trying to find the actual Poppy Field Stash, we've marked its location at the map above. What you're looking for is a simple hole in the ground at that point with a ladder going down into a cellar - the Religious Orthodox Icon is down there in the open.
Keep in mind that you can get to this stash in the Poppy Field without helping Pomor in the first place - it'll still be there, all that collecting the guns and ammo from the bodies does is have him explicitly mark it on your map so you can go straight there.
The Poppy Field isn't the only quest with a choice involved. Find out about the STALKER 2 Lost Boys choice here, or Should you shoot Solder or knock him out in STALKER 2.
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