Be a Smarter Scav

When playing as a scav people need to play smarter.

I have brutally betrayed scavs before. I don’t enjoy losing rep, but there are some habits that scavs need to practice to be a good scav and get out with loot frequently and efficiently. Sometimes that involves killing a friendly scav.

The wiggle works most of the time, but if a scav is alone with no other scavs near him, don’t wiggle at him and approach him. This is a good way to make that scav potentially panic shoot. Wiggle at him and go on your way or take a route around them. Respect the distance of other scavs, not all scavs want to be friends. And many that act like friends will betray you anyway.

Remember first and foremost, the PMC is the main character, which means most scavs are going in with a mind set to better their PMCs. This means if you spawn in as a scav and you have a cowboy hat or a ushanka put it in your backpack. those items are an in-raid quest item. Running around with a quest item strapped to your head is appealing to pmcs and might be enough for a scav to betray you. Same goes for other quest items or good guns or armor. It may be even worth taking weapon attachments off your gun if it looks too kitted out. Walking around with level five armor is a good way to domed too if you don’t avoid player scavs.

Lastly spam voice if you are approaching or near a scav (unless you are attempting to hide from them). Voices are different for pmc and bear. That’s the easiest/surest way to identify a scav.

Play smart and don’t trust anyone. Don’t shoot everyone, but practice avoidance and do your best to show other player scavs you don’t want the company.

In one game I had a dude with a cowboy hat tailed me for twenty minutes. I didn’t want his company as it meant I was getting 1/2 the loot in the same amount of time and I didn’t know if I could trust him. I remembered I needed one more cowboy hat for my quest domed him and extracted.

Part of me felt genuinely bad for the kid, but the other part of me thought “welcome to Tarkov.” Don’t be naive. It’s war out there.