Escape from Tarkov is a very hardcore shooter that is quite difficult to figure out without someone's help. Therefore, we have prepared a complete guide for beginners, where we will consider all the main points that you need to know when starting the game.
Briefly by edition
If you bought the minimum pack, and you liked the game when the edition is improved, the account will not be reset, and all bonuses are sent to your mail.
Beginning of the game
First, you need to choose who to play for. The differences between BEAR and USEC are as cosmetic as possible. The voice, appearance, costumes, and tokens of PMCs are different. There are also small differences in the initial loot, but these differences are so insignificant that they do not affect absolutely anything.
After choosing PMCs, it is better to go to the settings and check the box "Use only physical cores", since the game runs more stable on them. You should enable "Autocleaning" if you have little RAM. And "Always show interface elements" is up to your taste. And as you like, you will understand after the first raids.
Menu Tabs
Next, finally, go to the menu.
Character
General. Responsible for the complete statistics of your PMC. The number of raids, your AC, the cost of all items in the stash, and so on.
Synchronization (things). The main menu where you will spend most of your time outside the raid. This contains all your loot. Depending on the edition purchased, the cache will initially be of different sizes for everyone. But owners of an incomplete edition can always increase the number of slots in the warehouse by pumping a shelter, or by improving the edition of the game. Also, in the future, it will be possible to purchase various cases that take up few slots but contain much more.
Health. A very important tab during raids. Here, the health of body parts and various buffs and debuffs are tracked. Here you can also choose which part of the body to treat first by pointing the first aid kit.
Skills. All the skills of your character and the progress of their pumping are shown here.
Map. If you have a map of any location in your inventory, you can examine it here. The cards are bought from the Therapist. But you can use an alternative - find the game cards on the Internet.
Tasks. This is where your quests and their progress are located.
Trade
Here are the merchants who sell and exchange various goods, and to whom you will sell the loot collected in the raid. Please note that each merchant buys a particular item at different prices. On the first visits to the merchants, you will see gray unexplored objects - it is better to always study them, and you can do this quickly by clicking on the mouse wheel.
Also, merchants have a reputation, which is pumped by completing quests. The higher the reputation and level of the player, the more assortment of goods become available to you.
When the PMC reaches level 10, the Flea Market opens - a local auction, where you can buy various necessary items from players bypassing the reputation of merchants and, accordingly, more expensive, well, and just bargain. And since all Tarkov's items are present at the flea market, I advise you to study them as much as possible so that it does not take up time in the raid. If you really need Escape from Tarkov Roubles, you can visit Eznpc.com
Asylum
At the initial stages, the shelter takes up a lot of resources, and now it makes little sense to go deeper into its pumping, so we will talk about it at the end.
Preparing for the raid
The starting loot from the edition is what we will learn to play with. What to sell and what to keep is up to you to decide as you play. But for starters, let's leave everything that is.
The medicine. For the first raids, we only need to have bandages, pain relievers, splints and first aid kits. What they are for, I will tell you already in the raid.
Headphones. My personal advice is to start wearing headphones as early as possible, as they change hearing quite a lot while playing. And the sooner you get used to them, the easier it will be for you. The most basic and cheapest option is sold by the Junkie. More expensive headphones can be bought by raising the level of reputation, or at a flea market. They do not differ in loudness from each other, but they have different frequencies - in some there is more bass, in some the sound is duller. So what to wear is a matter of taste.
Armor. For starters, in a raid with a pistol, you can walk without armor at all. And when you have already studied the maps and will take good weapons into the raid, you can start putting on armor. For starters, you can take a PACA body armor class 2. He will protect you from the Wilds and PMCs with bad ammunition. And as your game improves, switch to 3rd or 4th armor class.
Helmet. Again, at the beginning without a helmet. In the future, the most initial helmet at the Ranger SSh-68, and then move on to more expensive helmets.
Unloading. The cheapest, not counting the Wild's vest, is currently sold by the Ragger for 10,000 roubles. There are also unloading with armor plates, at the same time with which you cannot put on body armor.
Backpack. In it, we will collect the found loot. But since it is impossible to buy a large backpack initially, we take a small bag from the Hoarder, or even run without it and try to steal the bag from the Wild.
Food and water. In the starter pack, you have enough food and water to develop your character a little. In the future, we buy water from the Therapist and dry rations at the Flea market. And also do not pass by food in raids. Firstly, it will save you money, and secondly, when you restore energy reserves, you pump up your metabolism.
Weapon. In general, it is better to use all weapons so that you yourself decide for yourself what you like to run with more since there are a lot of them in games. But to begin with, these are, of course, pistols, and then I personally recommend switching to SKS, AK-74, and VPO "Hunter". In the future, tuning will decide a lot, which improves the characteristics of the weapon. But at the start, you will still be walking with a standard one.
Cartridges. The table shows the characteristics of cartridges of all calibers. Since everyone has different penetration and damage, there is no point in delving into them in this guide. The only thing I will say - never skimp on cartridges. And to kill your first bot, the cheapest one will go.
After purchasing, go to inventory and dress up for our first raid. In the stash, you can pick up a few items for convenience. And to turn the object over, press the R key. In order to dress faster, we memorize the hotkeys. For those items that are worn on your character, hold down ALT + LMB on weapons, armor, helmet, backpack, and unloading. For the items that we take with us, hold down CTRL + LMB on shops, bandages, and so on. Also, in order to put a first-aid kit or a bandage on the quick access panel, we need this item to lie either in our pocket or in the unloading, and, hovering over it with the mouse, press the corresponding number. You also have a pouch that will differ from the type of your publication. This is a container from which loot does not disappear in case of death. There you can put medicine, ammunition, as well as various expensive loot that you found in the raid and do not want to lose. Please note that some categories of items cannot be put into it, for example, weapons.
Raid
Raid menu
We press the button Escape from Tarkov and we see two characters - the Wild one and our PMC. I'll tell you about the Wild one below. And now we select the main character and proceed to the choice of location. The difficulty is written in the description of each location. This is the complexity of bots. The time of day is shown below with a difference of 12 hours to select day and night raids.
The next menu is PVE mode. To enable the PVE mode, you need to check the box and after that, the settings for the number of bots, their complexity, and so on will become available. In PVE mode, you can explore maps and exits from them, practice shooting, adjust controls, and test new weapons with or without bots. In any case, when you die in PVE mode, you do not lose anything, but you cannot take out loot either.
Next comes Insurance. By ensuring items, you have a chance to return them to yourself if you are killed, but only if none of the players picks them up. You can insure with different merchants, the differences are only in the price and speed of return.
And the last menu is the Lobby. Here you can add your friend to the group, or go to the search to invite you. Now we are ready and can enter the raid.
Raid start
When entering the raid, go to the control settings and adjust the mouse sensitivity and change the modes of clicking on various settings. For example, you can change the aiming from pressing to clamping (it's more convenient for me personally).
Next, we begin to study the main key combinations - multiplicity, change the sight pattern, change the firing mode, check the firing mode and check the store. Absolutely all of these combinations will be used while playing Escape from Tarkov. But these are not all key combinations. You can familiarize yourself with the rest in the raid.
Exits from locations in most cases are located in the opposite part of the map. That is, in any case, you will have to run through the entire location to get out of it. At this moment, the card that we bought from the Therapist comes to our aid, or alternative cards, according to which we will have to orient ourselves and understand where to run.
The task for the first raids is to study the map as thoroughly as possible in order to get lost in the future, and of course, it is advisable to find good loot and not die.
The game also has doors that are locked with a key. The keys to the doors can be found at locations, in the inventory of the Wilds, or bought at a flea market. In the future, you will use the key holder to store the keys and carry them in a pouch.
A certain number of players will spawn at each location. After a while, bots and the Wild Boss will spawn. The Wild Boss does not always spawn, he has an increased amount of health, good armor, and weapons, as well as a retinue that protects him. Even during the game, Wild players, or as they are usually called, petitioners, can connect to the location. If an ordinary bot, when it sees you, shouts something, the petitioner will silently shoot. In general, it is better not to expect screams - shoot everyone.
Interaction mechanics
Sound mechanics. All actions that you perform make their own specific sounds. Changing weapons, switching the firing mode, footsteps, and the use of objects will be heard by other players at a certain distance. Accordingly, the louder the sound, the better and farther it is heard. Consider this when shooting, running, and rustling in the bushes. This is where our headphones come in handy.
The game also has its own healing mechanic. There are pain relievers that improve visibility, allow you to ignore fractures and pain from injuries, and also allow you to run with broken or completely damaged legs. Splints treat limb fractures, bandages stop bleeding, and first-aid kits are of different types - ordinary, restoring health; with a bandage in a set, which, in addition to treatment, stop bleeding; and, for example, the Grizzly first aid kit, which additionally treats fractures. If you have been hit hard enough in battle, it is best to heal your head and chest initially, and then everything else. Since without an arm, you can survive, but without a head and chest, you cannot. Also in the game, there is a surgical kit that completely heals the lost body parts. But since it is quite expensive for a beginner, at the start you will walk without it.
Reload mechanics. When playing, always have an empty slot in the offload for the store. Otherwise, when reloading, the character will throw the magazine from the weapon to the ground. If this happens, do not forget to pick it up.
Mechanics of grenades. The default grenade throw is on the G key. You can also put a grenade on the quick access bar and throw it manually - in the usual way with LMB or a weaker throw with RMB.
A few more tips
After the raid, do not forget to heal your character. But if you come out with a fracture, don't forget to heal it too.
It is also extremely important not to forget to eat and drink before the raid. Dying of thirst is a dubious pleasure.
If your armor is damaged, it can be repaired by merchants. The price and quality of the repair vary depending on the chosen dealer.
Playing as the Wild
A wild is an option for getting lost without losing anything. It is given to you with random loot, and you can take everything that you find in the raid and take it out for yourself. You appear already in the middle of the game. And since you are Wild, the rest of the bots consider you an ally and do not shoot at you until you kill one of them. For the Wild Boss, you will always be the enemy.
There may also be other Wild players on the map, who are more likely to shoot rather than greet. The bot does not have a pouch, so you definitely cannot save something at death. And the outputs of PMCs and Dikiy are in most cases different. And when you survive, you need to put down all the items found in the cache, otherwise, they will disappear.
There is a slight flaw in playing the Wild one. Your main character is not pumped. And since pumping your PMC is a very important aspect, I advise you to play for the Wild one less and less every day.
What to do after the first raids
After the first raids, you can start completing quests to level up your reputation with merchants.
It is definitely worth pumping the shelter. Initially from what you yourself get in the raid. And after you dig up the money, you can buy the missing parts at the flea market. There are many different functions in the shelter - a shooting gallery for testing weapons, various places for crafting useful things, and there is also a workbench that opens up access to quick assembly of weapons. And for owners of an incomplete edition, using the shelter, you can pump the cache. This is wildly expensive for a beginner, but you can gradually get to it.
As I said, play less often as the Wild and more often as your character. The game has a huge number of skills that take a long time to pump. But the more you play as a PMC, the faster your pumping goes. Even if you ran 200 meters and died, you pumped your stamina anyway.