S2 Did not finish on launch and have started again after 1.5 - Mods or not

As the title states, I got the game at launch and played around 40h but stopped just after garbage.

I stopped because I wanted a more polished experience and now with 1.5 I came back to the game and I’m really enjoying so far the experience on a new fresh save.

My question is for hearing about recommendations or opinions regarding if I should add mods for this first run or should I complete a vanilla run. I’ve seen some of the mods that make the game more hardcore and they are really appealing to me, I do not use to play games more than once but Stalker is one of my favorite series so if any game has the chance for it is this one.

Not getting achievements was a clear dealbreaker for me but have seen it is possible to enable them with mods so the doubt came back!

Really looking forward to listening opinions of others on the matter!