>>316038719
Play hardcore mode. The game is designed around it. With no save/load inside the zone, dying is more daunting and it encourages you to set up stashes and halfway points for resupply and healing. It's also good to leave valuable loot in those safe spots so you can recover it after dying without having to do a full corpse run into a hot area full of respawns.

Feels a lot more like STALKER with that one simple change.