Escape from Tarkov Beginner’s Guide – How to get started

Here is our Escape from Tarkov beginner's guide so that you know how to get started on the game, whether it's because of the new map and patch or because of the ongoing sale.

Let me preface this by saying that this will not be a comprehensive guide to Escape from Tarkov. I will not be teaching you which guns to use when, or what routes to take on each map. Instead, I will be telling you the tips and tricks I've come to learn during my time playing the game. I will also be teaching you some of the things I learned from my friends, who play the game way more than I do. With that out of the way, let's dive into our Escape from Tarkov beginner's guide so that you know where to start.

Escape from Tarkov Beginner's Guide

Familiarize yourself with the main menu

While you will spend a lot of your time in the game's now 9 maps, you will spend most of your downtime on the main menu. This is where you can access your inventory, or your stash, as well as the traders and your hideout. It's important to familiarize yourself with the menu as it's very easy to get lost and overwhelmed.

Let's start with Character. This is where you access your Stash, Gear, Health, Skills, Maps, Tasks, and Overall stats. Health, Skills, and Map are pretty self-explanatory, so I'll be focusing on the others. The Stash is basically your character's storage. This is where you will place the items you find in your raids. This includes your equipment, money, ammunition, barter items, and the like. Gear is what your character, or PMC, is bringing into the raid. These are the items that you will lose is you die.

The Tasks tab is where you can see any tasks the game's eight traders may have given you. You can see your progress with each task, as well as details about them. Finally, there is the Overall tab, which gives you a summary of your progress and gameplay stats for the current wipe. This includes your K/D, how many raids you've done and survived, and more. Now, let's talk about the Traders.

The game has eight total readers at the moment, although you have to unlock one of them (Jaeger) through a quest. They are your main source of items, which you can buy using Roubles, Euros, or Dollars (depending on who you are buying from). The are also who you sell your items to while you still don't have access to the Flea Market (unlocks at Level 15). Below is a quick summary of what each Trader buys and Sells

• Prapor
  • Sells: Mainly sells Russian weapons and weapon accessories.
  • Buys: Weapons and barter items
• Therapist
  • Sells: Medicines, food, and similar items.
  • Buys: Barter items, food, medicine
• Fence
  • Sells: Whatever players sold to him
  • Buys: Whatever players sell him
• Skier
  • Sells: Various guns and attachments, mostly western weapons
  • Buys: Weapons, barter items, helmets, headsets
• Peacekeeper
  • Sells: Mostly Western guns and weapon attachments
  • Buys: Guns, equipment, barter items
• Mechanic
  • Sells: Various gun attachments and guns.
  • Buys: Weapons, weapon attachments, barter items
• Ragman
  • Sells: Armors, rigs, helmets, headsets
  • Buys: Armors, rigs, helmets, headsets
• Jaeger
  • Sells: Shotguns, rifles, and accessories for those
  • Buys: Knives, food, and some barter items

When selling to the traders, it's important to go in this order to maximize profits before hitting level 15: Therapist -> Mechanic (Roubles)/Peacekeeper (Dollars) -> Ragman -> Fence. Once you reach level 15, you can sell items on the flea market, which should give you more money if your items get sold.

They will also be giving you your Tasks. Some of them are permanent tasks, which you can consider as the game's semblance of a story. Others are daily, or even weekly quests. These unlock at Levels 5 and 15 respectively. These provide players with a constant flow of items, EXP, and money, so it's important to always do these.

Finally, there's the Hideout. The hideout gives you various perks, like faster health, energy, and thirst regeneration. You also have access to various crafting options, as well as a gun range. Of course, you will need to upgrade your Hideout before you can use any of these features.

Maximize the game's Practice Mode

It can get very overwhelming playing Escape from Tarkov. From learning the various maps to getting used to the gunplay, and more. Practice Mode is the perfect way to get used to them. The mode lets you load up any of the game's maps, letting you roam around in them. You can use this mode to find the game's various stashes, loot spots, exfiltrations, and more. You can also use this mode to practice taking on and hunting down Scavs, which are NPC enemies that patrol various locations on the map. This can help you get used to the game's combat, as well as study where to find them

Take advantage of your Scav

Speaking of Scavs, you won't just be playing as your PMC. On a cooldown, you can run raids as a Scav, which gives you random equipment. You spawn into an ongoing raid and can loot as you would a PMC. One of the main differences, however, is that Scavs don't normally attack you on-site. This makes PMCs the only danger to you, and they really will be here. You normally do not have the proper equipment, nor do you have your Skills as a PMC. What you do normally have is an advantage in numbers and the almost ungodly aim of the NPC Scavs. If you're lucky, you might even find a dead PMC that still has their guns and equipment.

Either way, playing Scav lets you potentially get items, which is important as you will need a lot of barter items and money down the line. Not only that, but it lets you enter raids without the fear of losing your equipment.

Learn to get rid of gear fear

Gear fear is one of the things that hold beginners back when they're starting out in Escape from Tarkov. The idea of losing the gear you spent hours grinding can prove daunting for some players. However, if you plan on starting this game, that's one of the things you will have to learn to ignore. This also happens to be the hardest thing to teach beginners when starting out in Escape from Tarkov. You will die in this game. I don't just mean once or twice. You will fail raids over and over again, and that's honestly part of the game. The sooner you adopt the mindset of “If we die, we die. It do be like that.”, the faster it would be for you to play this game. You will lose equipment, yes. But over the course of your raids, you will gain even more.

Once you get rid of your gear fear, you will find that you will play better, without the fear of losing your gear holding you back. You will start taking fights that you originally would never take. You start hunting down scavs instead of getting scared of them. Once you get rid of your gear fear, you will be able to experience Tarkov to its fullest.

All in all, I believe that these are the things beginners need to learn when starting out Escape from Tarkov. Once you get used to these tips and familiarize yourself, you will be well on your way from being a beginner to becoming someone the Scavs of Tarkov fear.

That's all we have right now for our beginner guide to Escape from Tarkov. To stay updated on gaming news, you can check out our gaming news articles.