4Game

Hey all, new player here who just managed to grind to lvl 15 in his first wipe (mostly solo). I have many years of experience with RPGs and FPS games (and a psychology degree due to my job), but I never encountered something as tense as Tarkov.

Even before installing I have read on here that Tarkov is a game that demands a lot of time, effort and resilience to failure in order to learn before it really gets fun and rewarding. After these first two weeks of playing aprox 10+ hours a day (covid is still a big thing here) and consuming every bit of Tarkov intel I could soak up and learn, I can totally confirm that.

I had lots of fun, great moments and are not even as bad as expected, but I also noticed me being more nervous (even when reading/watching other peoples raid experiences sometimes), sleeping worse and also sometimes being slightly pissed towards my gf after having a few bad runs. I feel like this is the closest I have ever felt to post traumatic stress that some of my friends who went to the army describe. Such mental states I usually really try to avoid as I know that they’re not good for longterm mental health and my social surroundings at all, but still I keep sticking to this game because it is so fascinating, well made, tense and most importantly because I know it will be very rewarding once I learned the ropes.

My question and TLDR: How do long term Tarkov players cope with ingame related stress that translates to real life and the potential negative mental states that can result from it? Do you have methods to decrease or avoid the effects of game related stress on you?