Escape From Tarkov is a hardcore extraction shooter–and one that’s been credited with setting the tone for the genre. With realistic gunplay, an insatiable high-risk, high-reward game loop, and intelligent AI enemies, Battlestate Games has truly created something special.
However, Escape From Tarkov isn’t an easy game to play, especially if you’re new to the genre. The game doesn’t really hold your hand beyond the tutorial, leading to a frustrating early-game experience if you’re playing alone.
Fortunately for you, I’ve logged thousands of hours in the game across multiple wipes–and I’ve got the very best Escape From Tarkov tips to help you survive in this hostile world.
Map knowledge is everything
In Escape From Tarkov, map knowledge is everything. While the game’s Tour mode will force you to explore different maps, knowing where spawn points, objective locations, secret stashes, and extraction locations are is what separates successful players from those who go MIA. By learning each map’s choke points and sightlines, you can take control over your raids and ensure most are calculated, strategic runs.
Mastering a map also helps you anticipate enemy routes and behaviors, and gives you more opportunities to ambush, flank, or avoid them.
It may sound boring to study maps before going into a raid, but if you’re serious about learning Escape From Tarkov, this is an absolute must.
Slow down and listen for environmental clues
You can play however you want in Escape From Tarkov, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the game rewards patience. Sprinting everywhere is one of the fastest ways of getting ambushed by another player. Slowing down, using crouch-walking and tactical pauses lets you take in the world and its audio cues–and helps warn you if there’s someone waiting around the next corner.
Every floor, bush, lootable container, and interaction has an audio cue, and if you just slow down for a second, you’ll get much more out of the experience.
Level your Scav up for free gear
Tarkov is utterly relentless, but if you’re down on your luck, Scav runs are a great way to turn your fortunes around. Scavs are a secondary character that you can play as–they’re basically a local raider with randomly assigned gear and weapons. Unlike your PMC, Scavs aren’t tied to your overall progression, and if you die, you lose nothing. They also won’t activate other AI Scavs unless provoked, meaning you can move around most players without instantly drawing fire, giving you more time and space to loot.
Since Scavs are relatively risk-free, they’re a powerful tool to your Tarkov arsenal, especially if you’re close to bottoming out on PMC gear. Every successful extract returns everything your Scav was carrying to your PMC’s stash, giving you lots to use, sell, and barter.
Like your PMC, you can level up your Scav by shooting PMCs and extracting safely. By improving your Scav Karma, you’ll be rewarded with better gear, better AI interactions, and shorter Scav cooldowns–something you’ll want to do if you’re just starting out. Be warned, though: shooting other Scavs will lose you Karma and turn the whole lobby against you. It’s more enjoyable to improve your Scav standing and hunt down PMC players using proximity chat.
Understand your equipment and learn ammo types
In Tarkov, equipment isn’t cosmetic–it influences your likelihood of survival. Learning which armor to wear or what ammunition to use can be the difference between life and death. Ammunition is arguably the most important part of building your loadout, as every type has different damage and penetration stats. Ideally, you want rounds with the highest penetration you can find, as they’re more likely to pierce through top-tier armor.
Beyond ammo, you also need to think about your helmet and armor. You’ll need to consider what level they are, what areas they actually protect, and their durability. Remember, you can replace the plates inside armor at any time–and if your plates have been shot to high heaven, they’re not doing much to protect you.
Learn how medical items work and use stims
Tarkov has an incredibly complex healing system, and it’s not very well explained in the tutorial. You have items for fixing small bleeds, heavy bleeds, fractures, headaches, and much more. It’s really important to make sure you go into a raid with everything you need to patch yourself up in the midst of battle. We’d recommend taking in things like a CMS, Splints, CALOK-B, and AFAKs.
As you get better and start climbing the ranks, we’d recommend experimenting with stims–especially before going into big fights. Morphine and Propital are a great combination to reduce pain and regenerate health, while SJ6 TGLabs and 3-(b-TG) are brilliant at boosting stamina.
Build and upgrade your hideout
It’s easy to get sucked into the mainline quests in Tarkov, but don’t forget about your Hideout. If you spend the time finding the objects required to upgrade and unlock new features, you’ll reap the rewards in time. Certain unlocks will allow you to craft items, ammunition, and more–some of which are required for tricky tasks. You can even earn passive income with things like Bitcoin Farms, which are well worth the hefty upfront investments.
Upgrading your hideout will take time, but it’s easily one of the most efficient ways to grab resources without needing to travel to highly congested zones in raids.
Become an insurance fraud
Insurance fraud–dropping valuable insured items to pick up better loot–is a legitimate Tarkov tactic, and it’s something newcomers don’t use often enough. If you find nice shiny new armor in a secret stash or on another player, don’t carry it out–stash your insured gear in a bush, equip your new gear, and wait for your insured stuff to come back. If you’re playing exclusively on PvE servers, you don’t even need to hide your stuff–you can just drop it on the ground.
You can also drop gear into shallow water and have it come back on insurance. Don’t drop it into deep water though, or it’ll be lost to the sands of time.
Learn how to loot faster
Looting in the open in an extraction shooter is terrifying–especially if you’re playing alone and have no one to cover your back. By using Ctrl + Left Click, you can instantly transfer items between your looted container and inventory, massively reducing the amount of time you’d need to drag, drop, and rotate gear in normal circumstances.
This does add the gear to the first available slot though, so you might want to organise it later, once you’re in a safe spot.
Slow key targets down with leg shots
There are countless ways to play Tarkov, but if you’re looking to maximise your chances of winning an engagement, the leg meta is surprisingly effective. Because the legs don’t have much protection, leg shots slow down enemies and open them up for clean follow-ups. If you’re sniping from a distance or you’re engaging heavily protected players, slowing them down by going for the legs is an effective tactic.
It’s particularly useful if you’re running ammunition with low penetration stats. Firing cheap, beginner-friendly ammunition into a player wearing a Korund isn’t going to do much–if anything at all–so aim for the fleshy bits.
Prioritize upgrading your traders
Every trader in-game has a level, which you can upgrade by selling them things. These upgrades are usually tied to your PMC level and how much you’ve sold to them. There’s no right or wrong way to upgrade your traders, but don’t understate its importance–upgrades give you vital access to improved gear, weapons, and items that you’ll need to improve your game.
If you’re Scavving a lot, don’t auto-sell everything to Fence. Drop the valuable items into your inventory and sell them to traders to speed your upgrade path up.
Save weapon presets
With so many guns and attachments available, you’re going to want to save your favorite setups as weapon presets. These presets allow you to quickly rebuild your favorite guns without manually adding every attachment each time. Presets will even give you a shopping list and allow you to bulk-buy attachments if you’re missing them, saving you valuable time between raids.
Tweak your keybinds
This is an obvious one, but tweak your keybinds to fit your playstyle. Adjusting your keybinds, changing your controls to press, hold, and release can save you time, improve your reaction speed, and give you the upper hand in some situations.
I’ve always disliked the default keybinding for malfunctions, for example, so I changed inspect to L + Shift to press and then fix malfunctions to the same bindings but on release. This reduces the number of keybindings I have to remember and improves the speed at which I can get my gun up and running again.
Tarkov gives you a lot of freedom over your controls, so experiment and use them to your advantage.
