Have you ever wondered the insane amount of suffering our PMC has to endure to complete every quest in the game and have the Hideout maxed out? Well, wonder no longer, because I've done the math.
Disclaimer: Long post ahead. I've used guides, data and analysis by other content creators, like Pestily, Europino and Questalace, as well as the all-mighty Tarkov Wiki to make this list. The resulting data would reflect the almost-perfect 100% Tarkov Speedrun starting with a Standard Account at the end of 12.7.
I don't know if this has been done before, so cut me some slack for any inconsistencies, as I did this for fun.
Killing:
The PMCs character arc will take our poor USECs and BEARs from battle-tested veterans to blood-thirsty killing machines the likes of Atila, with an indescribable amount of mental and fisical trauma. This is all on the traders, who force us to commit genocide just to gain a standing with them. Here is the ranking:
- Mechanic: He just wants to farm bitcoins and assemble weapons in peace. He is responsible for the lowest bodycount of all the traders, at 0 Scavs and 12 PMCs / 12 total
- Therapist: In a OSHA-violating effort to overwork the hospital's mortician, this twisted practitioner will make us take the lives of 45 Scavs and 0 PMCs / 45 total
- Skier: Turns out the most notorious mobster of the Tarkov underworld isn't as bad as we all imagined. His quests will grant him a seat at the Hague, nontheless, after ordering the execution of 20 Scavs and 40 PMCs / 60 total
- Peacekeeper: There is no better way of keeping peace than eliminating all the warring factions I guess. This war criminal will taint the UNTAR reputation for decades, after demanding the scalps of 75 Scavs and 0 PMCs / 75 total
- Ragman: This American-psycho wannabe deserves life without parole at Russia's most dangerous prison. 125 Scavs and 0 PMCs weight on his conscience / 125 total
- Jaeger: It seems the Huntsman Path leads to a mass grave. This old man wants organic compost for his garden, so he demands the corpses of 116 Scavs and 32 PMCs to be laid on his doorstep / 148 total
- Prapor: The Russian military hasn't had such a prolific enemy combatant-squanching commander since Georgy Zhukov. 107 Scavs and 82 PMCs. Docens upon docens of unmarked graves will litter the wasteland of Tarkov / 189 total
This totals to a staggering 488 Scavs and 166 PMCs. 654 mothers will mourn the deaths of their sons, as you long surpass Simo Häyhä as the most effective soldier in recorded history.
Use, place, find in raid or deliver:
Apart from sustaining irreparable psichological damage as the bringer of so much death, your PMC is also expected to retrieve a back-breaking amount of loot for his Hideout and the 7 Traders of the Apocalypse. From life-saving devices to mere cigarettes, your PMC will have to.
- Deliver 12 special items (the bronze pocket watch, gilded zibbo lighter…)
- Deliver 27 secure cases, books, letters and the likes
- Place 71 GPS markers, WIFI cameras, Jammers and Multitools
- Find 47 different locations
- Collect 66 medical or food items
- Collect 49 clothing items and armor pieces
- Deliver 55 weapons
- Deliver 21 dogtags
- Deliver and Collect a truckload of loose loot, with an ever-expanding shopping list of 652 items
- Pay 13,867,000 roubles, 27,500 dollars and 215,000 euros of full-on extorsion
Skills:
After all this Devil wears Prada reenactment, your PMC is faced with a Sisyphus-like destiny. You need to improve your skills until you get to Health level 9, Stress Resistance level 6, Sniper level 9, Memory level 8, Searching level 9, Charisma level 10, Vitality level 5, Endurance level 2, Attention level 3, Metabolism level 3 and Strenght level 2. Some of this skills improve others, so let's start by the independent ones and asume you can completely avoid the deminishing returns mechanic.
- Metabolism: You can gain around 3 skill points for a complete dehydration-hydration cycle: 100-0-100. The fastest way to achieve this is to gulp down 20 full jars of mayonnaise, that would be 10Kg of mayo, followed by 20 litres of water.
- Sniper: To please your quest-giving overlords, your PMC will have to topload over 4,500 rounds on a sniper rifle. That would be over 100kg of LPS Gzh ammo, at a 401k-destroying price of 1,280,00 roubles in the flea market.
- Memory, Search, Charisma and Attention: This 4 skills improve at the same time, by searching bodies and looting containers. As far as I know, you can actively get points in all of them except for Memory, that derives the XP points from the other 3. Long story short, with an average of 0.1 skill points per object found and looted, and 550 total points to get, your PMC will have to loot everything that is not bolted to the floor, ransack and leave stripped clean over 5.500 containers and bodies. A one-man locust plague.
- Endurance: You gain XP for sprinting while not-overencumbered. Based on the data I checked, you need to run for roughly 30km. Usain Bolt ran at 44km/h, so let's asume our battle-hardened PMC can run at a 30km/h max for the sake of simplicity. That means an hour of non-stop full-sprint.
- Stress Resistance: The fastest way to increase this skill is by receiving damage, and the most consistent way of receiving damage is by placing yourself over a fire, like the ones on Shoreline. At roughly 3 skill points every 30 seconds of flame-induced agony, and a goal of 210 points, you will need to withstand this torture for 34 minutes like a rotisserie chicken. Nothing will stress you after that!
- Strenght: The most common way of leveling this skill is by walking while overweight. With 0.1 skill points every 23 seconds, with no FP-100 filter and 50kg of shotgun shells in your backpack, this would take 1:55 hours of non-stop walking. Asuming the normal human walks at a 5km/h pace, that means our PMC has to walk the knee-shattering distance of 10km while carrying around 60% of their bodyweight.
- Vitality: The most horrendous of them all. To increase vitality you need to suffer, scream and bleed. The most viable way to increase your Vitality is by crawling through barbed wire. This atrocity of a wire makes around 10 damage per second. You level 1 point for every 100 points of damage taken. As we are aiming to get 150 points of XP, we will need to fillet ourselves for 150,000 seconds. That's 41.6 hours. At a crawling speed of 2km/h, that means our PMC will have to drag his balls over 83km of barbed wire.
- Health: The 3 previous skills give 25% of their XP to this one, so by leveling all of them to their respective threshold, we would be sitting at around 50 Health skill points. As throwing 10 grenades gives us 0.5 skill points, and we are aiming for 500 skill points, we would need to throw over 10,000 nades. That's 76,000,000 roubles in Zarya stun grenades alone.
And that's it. You want to escape Tarkov? Pay the toll!