Git gud.
No, seriously, git gud. You suck at Tarkov because you suck. We can spend all day discussing the tiny macro and micro improvements to your game, but the truth is that the only thing that can improve your play is playing more.
And, as though to contradict myself, we’ll move forward by discussing pragmatic changes you can make to experience more consistent raids. This guide will start with generic advice and slowly move forward into the specifics of your mechanics.
- Go scaving right now
- Create a raid plan
- Play to your armor’s strengths
- Play to your ammunition’s strengths
- Rat more
- Rat less
- Push forward, listen.
- Use your eyes more, use your ears less
- Bullets don’t work unless they hit a target
- Good luck, have fun
Go Scaving Right Now
Your scav timer is off its cooldown, and you’re busy loading into another raid with your PMC while reading an article. Stop that!
Scaving is a core component to every single PMC character’s progression aside from Pestily’s hardcore. Especially for players trying to improve at the game, scav runs open up the opportunity to learn map layouts, practice niche mechanics, and get some free loot all the while.
Even if all you do is jump into a factory raid and exit, stop ignoring your scav runs. Do them. Right now.
Create a Raid Plan
Sounds simple enough, but as with most fundamental aspects of a craft, it’s easy to forget as you become increasingly tilted or mid-tiered in your skill. That is to say, you’re being foolish: stop going into raids with the wrong keys lmao
Your raids are frustrating you because you don’t understand why you’re going into them. Each raid has a percentage chance of going your way and a percentage chance of going south. For most of us, that percentage for a positive outcome hangs somewhere between 30 to 50 percent. That is to say, the odds are not on our side, which means they probably aren’t on yours.
If you’re going into a raid solely to complete a quest, then you’re setting yourself for failure 95% of the time. Instead, go into a raid to complete a quest while you raid. Don’t skip out on loot, don’t neglect taking firefights, and don’t be afraid to take a risk or two. After all, playing purely from a defensive standpoint makes raids take longer and, counterintuitively, also makes them more dangerous.
Think of it in terms of poker: if you never play a hand and always fold under pressure, your opponents will shove you out of the game. And when it comes time to act, your chip stack will be too small to throw your weight around with any reliability.
In Tarkov terms, this is the equivalent of scurrying around the outskirts of a map trying to avoid conflict while your PMC opponents spent their time fighting. By the time you run into a PMC (and you almost certainly will run into a PMC), they’ll have looted the best weapons, armor, medical equipment, and munitions that were brought into the raid. They’ll have established themselves in strong positions, they’ll be warmed up, and after defeating aggressive chads early in the raid, they’ll be more than confident taking on someone who’s constantly hiding and is reluctant to fight back.
So to recap: Have a raid plan, play aggressive, and regardless of what your ultimate goal is, incorporate it into an actual raid. Quests should not be done (in the vast majority of cases) without holding hands with actually playing the game. That’s a recipe for tilt like no other.
(And make sure you brought the right keys, this time.)
Play to Your Armor’s Strengths
Another thrown aside piece of knowledge is actually playing around your armor’s strengths. There isn’t a single person reading this article who doesn’t know that different armors give different buffs and debuffs, that’s a given.
Despite everyone knowing this, it’s incredible how many people play the same way regardless of what body armor is protecting them.
If you’re sporting the tier 4 6B13, as so many of us do, you should be playing more aggressively than someone wearing a tier 2 PACA. And if you spot someone wearing a tier 5 piece of armor, understand that your tier-4 armor, in a point-firing battle with them, is probably not going to save you given the ammunition they are most likely running in tandem with their high-grade equipment, and thus, you should be isolating the fights into marksman contests around corners and line-of-sight breakers.
Despite the many nuances that take place during a fight in Escape from Tarkov, most players will play the exact same way regardless of the circumstances that change around their protection.
A smart player in a PACA is infinitely more dangerous than a tilted gamer in tier 5 armor who is rushing dorms to try and swing some poor Timmy. This is doubly true ever since the armor rework which has opened up the possibility for well-placed low to mid-tier ammunition to sneak through weak-spots in every armor’s hitbox.
If you’re armor is high tiered, do everything you can to make fights short. If your armor is low tiered, use your likely superior speed and ergonomics to extend the fights as long possible while keeping angles tight and distances to opponents far.
In summary: you shouldn’t always be swinging opponents, and you should sometimes be reluctant to hold angles where pushing aggressively is the play with the highest percentage for a positive outcome.
Stop playing the same way every raid and consider your armor carefully.
Play to your Ammunition’s Strengths
If your armor is life insurance, then your ammunition is life itself. Understanding the differences in flat damage, armor-piercing capabilities, fragmentation characteristics, effective distances, and recoil adjustments in various types of ammunition is key to optimizing an offensive play.
In the hands of an accurate, patient player, .366 Geksa ammunition, which has trouble penetrating even the most basic of armors, is just as dangerous as M80 ammunition in the hands of a player that doesn’t do the work to try and dictate the pace and location of a fight.
With a well placed shot to the thorax, the cheap and readily available Geksa ammunition will one tap a PMC dead. The more expensive, harder to obtain M80 ammunition, with all of its penetration capabilities, cannot do such a thing without fragmentation.
Additionally, one shot to the legs of a PMC with Geksa will render a “un-painkillered” PMC unable to flee or quickly reposition, opening up the opportunity to let a well-placed grenade easily take care of the rest.
This is the kind of power some of the cheapest ammunition has in the game, so when you’re running the good stuff (like M855A1) keep in mind that you have access to certain plays that other players do not, and vice versa.
Swinging wide with lighter ammunition that can be used in high RPM weapons is often a stronger play than holding an angle at distance. Likewise, holding a corner with your .366 ammunition is almost always going to yield better outcomes than hard shoving an opponent at close quarters.
As far as knowing what ammo is considered meta and what isn’t, you can checkout this detailed chart here and memorize these numbers on your favorite calibers. BSG updated the in-game info to show accurate penetrative and damage numbers, but still doesn’t show fragmentation characteristics or flea market availability, not that it that latter point will matter for the upcoming hardcore wipe.
Take stock of what your weapon is firing and incorporate said ammo’s strengths into your raid plan.
Rat More
Everyone hates a rat who hides for the entire match at an extract: this is not what I’m recommending when I say “rat more”.
What I do want you to do is take extra time during a raid, whether in between firefights, after looting, or after taking out some scavs, to sit down, hold still, and listen: Get yourself in a bush and re-pack your magazines, organize your bag’s space, sift through your available equipment and alter your raid plan, whatever you want. Just hold still and listen.
Take stock of the firefights happening elsewhere. Try to identify the weapons being fired, how many players are taking part, and where they are on the map. Listen for incoming players, bush rustles, or someone prepping to ambush you with a quiet ADS.
These moments, which should last no more than 15 to 30 seconds, can be the difference between planning your next move properly and being cracked from an opponent out of sight.
Remember: a good player can often get themselves out of a bad situation after being caught off-guard. A great player is simply caught off-guard less often.
Hold still, be as the rat, if only for a moment. When you don’t know what your next move is, do nothing.
Rat Less
If you find yourself holding still too often or taking too much time to make decisions, it’s time to rip off the band-aid and get moving. A good PMC is defined by how well they can use their allotted time to accomplish their goals.
This principle extends to looting, map traversal, enemy acquisition, and extracting. Really, it applies to everything. Holding still to gain information is a useful skill, but executing on the plan to use that information requires commitment and mathematical efficiency. Let go of the gear fear, let go of pretending that you’ll never get one tapped, and let go of the idea that playing slower is always the best move: it isn’t.
Get up and stop ratting.
Push Forward, Listen.
Aggressive play is defined by proactive risk taking, not just by swinging angles. Sometimes, rushing a corner that an enemy is behind and not peaking it is the correct play. In Tarkov, the best players are not primarily marksmen, they’re info-gatherers.
Yes, NoGenerals can one tap people anytime, anywhere. But his consistency doesn’t come from his accuracy. If you want his streams or his youtube videos, you’ll notice that his ability to make the correct decision, 99% of the time, stems from that fact he can take in a large amount of info at once and accurately deduce what all of it means for someone in his position. His skill in this regard is so great that people who retroactively watch his videos and streams with the benefit of being able to rewind and slow down what’s taking place still have a hard time understanding how he makes the decisions he makes.
So push forward, and then don’t peak. Mess with your opponents, gather information. shoot out a window and pretend to jump through it. Pull out a grenade and then put it away. Shoot at a random spot near your opponent and cause panic. Remember, you’re trying to info-gather as much as possible to increase the likelihood of a positive outcome: be unorthodox.
Use Your Eyes More, Use Your Ears Less.
Yes, audio is the most important thing in Tarkov. And ever since the audio update in 16.7, it’s been doubly impressive and useful.
Let’s not spend unnecessary time on this point: Your ears can give you a lot of information, but it can’t tell you what exact armor your opponent is wearing, it can’t show you if you a bush looks a little discolored, and it can’t help you identify a flash from a dark window.
Open your eyes, pay attention.
Bullets Don’t Work Unless They Hit a Target
Yes, aiming for weak spots in armor or head/eyes’ing your opponent is always the best move, but at some point, you’re going to have to learn to put accurate rounds down range.
Sometimes, its better to just relax, crouch down, and aim your weapon at your opponent and hope for the best. A low-tiered bullet that hits strong plating is more effective than a high-tiered bullet that misses the target, even if by a hair.
Aim the gun with intent, pull the trigger often, and practice hitting your opponent with bullets. Even if this means going into your shooting range and actually using it for its intended purpose, do it. I know the hideout hasn’t exactly lived up to to its name in terms of something you’d want to interact with and actually spend time in, but it does, still, have its uses. One of them is practicing your firefights and getting more intimate with your weapons of choice.
If you get better at that alone, I promise you’ll win more fights, go figure.
Good Luck, Have Fun
It’s a video game, and a damn good one at that. Escape from Tarkov has incredible immersion, a high skill-ceiling, and appeases FPS crowds and resource management enjoyers alike. If you’re tilted or frustrated, take a break. Step away. The game isn’t there to make your life worse.
In any case, understand that no matter how good you get, there will always be an element of luck in Tarkov, and anyone can defeat any number of opponents with a good string of it (and this works in reverse, too).
Don’t take it too seriously and go get stuck in.
GLHF,
-E
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