Plan for the Early-Game
Now that you’re familiar with a couple of the maps make a plan for yourself. Your plan can be as simple as "I want an M4", or as complex as "I want to get my traders up to level 4". In the beginning, it’s best to focus on two things.
Find a way you’re comfortable earning Escape from Tarkov money and experience
Level up your traders
Traders offer more and better gear the higher your reputation with them. We’ll cover this more later.
What to Bring in Escape from Tarkov?
In the beginning, I would start running with a hatchet. I don’t advise people to do this because too many people decide they never want to risk their hard-earned guns. They are learning when to run from a fight, when to speak, and when to sprint a whole hog and axe someone in the face. However, there’s no easier way to learn the habits of other players.
Hatchet Runs
The philosophy of the hatchet run is simple: No Risk, Low-Reward. This means you go in with nothing but your hatchet and your secure container. The factory is the most common map for this. However, there are plenty of opportunities on the larger maps as well. There are several hatchet strategies, but I’ll only cover a few. The simplest is to be speedy.
Speed
Sprint from your spawn to the nearest loot box put the most valuable stuff into your secure container, and then move on to the next loot box. You empty your safe container and rerun it when you inevitably die.
Stealth
Another strategy is to be Stealthy. When you spawn in you, move slowly and surely, listening for anyone nearby. Ideally, you’ll know where people around you are, and they won’t know you exist. Then you have a choice to make. Do you let them move on and then keep moving slowly to a loot crate, or do you try and stab them in the face. Even when playing sneakily, there are times when you’ll need to move quickly.
You don’t want to sneak across a wide-open road or field in broad daylight. You may need to sprint away if someone’s shooting at you, weaving left and right. Or you may need to sprint the last 30 feet at someone to hatchet them down. Generally, however, you’ll locate a player, approach them quickly, and hatchet them in the face before they kill you. You’ll pick up their gun and use that while trying to get to extract.
Patience
The last strategy I’ll cover is Patience. This is fairly similar to Stealth, except you’ll hardly move. Your goal is to wait until other players have killed each other, killed scavs, looted crates, and finally extracted. Ideally, you will be the last player in the game. After waiting what’ll seem like an eternity, you’ll come out and pick up all the loot left behind. Even five players with the enormous backpack and chest rig won’t be able to take every piece of loot in the game. That’s where you come in.
Take everything they left behind. In truth, you’ll likely combine a little bit of each of these strategies in your runs. Perhaps you sprint to one loot box, grab the stuff inside, hide for 10 minutes, and then try and sneak up on a player to hatchet them. Good luck, but remember not to get too hung up on hatchet runs. My advice is to do NO MORE than 5-6 hatchet runs a day. I would use the weapons you found on those hatchet runs the rest of the time. You should have stopped entirely hatchet running by reaching level 15.
Makarov Runs
Ahh, the Makarov, the slightly less poor man’s hatchet. Don’t underestimate this weapon. It may be the cheapest in the game, have a piss-poor magazine size, and little damage, but it can still destroy a fully geared player when appropriately used (something I can attest to from both sides).
Once you have a decent buildup of cash (300-400k), you should be set for a lifetime of Makarov runs. The Makarov run is what I do whenever I feel like I’m low on cash. A reasonable Makarov run costs no more than 6,000 RUB (roubles). Buy a single Makarov (~4500 roubles), an extra magazine (~720 roubles), 67 rounds of ammo, fill up your two magazines, put one in the chamber of the Makarov, and put the 50 spare rounds in your secure container.
It would be best to keep medical supplies in your secure container, such as a single AI-2 (or an IFAK once you have more cash to spend). The strategies will be similar to those of the hatchet run, except now you’ll be able to kill scavs far more quickly. When you kill a scav and loot his weapon, put your Makarov in your secure container (or if the scav has a better weapon that’ll fit in your secure container, put that in, and keep using your Makarov).
From there, you can decide whether to extract or keep playing in the hopes of finding more stuff. If you get a black limb, are bleeding badly and don’t have a bandage, or are out of ammo, then make your way to extract right away.
Where to loot in Escape from Tarkov?
Some loot spawns aren’t immediately apparent to the newer player. Sometimes the item is small and so is very hard to see. If you’re having trouble finding loot spots, then a couple of things can help. Firstly, watch YouTube videos of people playing.
They’ll lead you to loot sites. It may have taken you days to notice. If you play in a group, you can easily see where your groupmates are running to steal and file that information away for later. The best way to learn the loot spawns is to run the maps repeatedly. You’ll soon know where in Tarkov you can find an ostrich feather at midnight on a Tuesday.
Loot spawns have been changed in the most recent patch so that now you’re able to find weapons in loot crates, whereas before, you could only find weapons in minimal areas. It’s not clear whether the best weapons will spawn in these crates or whether they’re limited to pistols.
How to loot & What to loot in Escape from Tarkov?
In this guide, I’ll link my Reference Sheets which contain all the information you’ll need to locate loot and choose what is worth keeping and what should be dropped to free up inventory space. The most beneficial approach to taking care of loot is always to prioritize the stuff you must survive this game (meds, maybe some liquid, and ammo), then the stuff you want to use in the future (better guns, armor, backpacks), then the stuff that sells for the most (drop 2 Bolts and pick up that Graphics Card).