Budget Build Update

Hi, I made a budget build post comment a while back that was quite popular, and even today people seemed to be reading it. However, some of the information there is out of date due to market fluctuations, so here is an updated version for today's market 😀

AMMO

The most important part of your loadout is your ammo, by far. Its no use running a meta M4 with M855, while even a AKS-74U is a dangerous foe when its firing BS. Here's a list of ammo types that are good without killing your wallet today 😀

7.62x51mm – M80 is by far the most cost efficient high tier ammo in the game. This ammo has high recoil and is ill suited for automatic fire at anything past 20m, but has a one shot kill thorax potential. At only 2$ a shot, or around 230 roubles, this is a steal. M61 laughs at armor, but its price is a bit much.

7.62x54Rmm – Even the cheap LPs Gzh round will go through level 4 armor and ohko people to the chest. 7N1 is expensive at around 700 roubles a shot, but will cleanly kill through level 5 and usually 2 shots through level 6. For its performance, it is considered rather cheap. SNB is the third option. SNB will NOT one shot to the chest, but it effectively ignores armor. You are almost guaranteed a 2 shot thorax kill on even the chonkiest of chads. And it only costs 270 roubles a shot! I would not use SNB on a bolt action, but on a semi auto, its scary.

5.45x39mm – By far the biggest change since the last time I posed. The price of 5.45x39mm BT has returned to sanity. At just 270 roubles a shot now, its affordable to spam out of a fully automatic gun. BS and igolnik are still wildly expensive, but you can mix a 1:4 ratio of BS to BT in your mags and have decent armor piercing potential while still keeping prices down.

9x39mm – SP5 is the only budget ammo in this category. But SP-5 is a good ammo. Anything level 4 or below in armor is disappearing in a few bullets, and even level 5 will get shredded in moments from the high RoF. Level 6 will hold up better, but the high armor damage of SP-5 means that even it will eventually fail.

12.7x55mm – This is really a sleeper ammo. Capable of punching through level 5 armor AND one shotting to the thorax AND completely shredding level 6 armor in a few shots ABD costing only 600 roubles a shot? The main downside to this ammo is the high recoil, but if you are using it for semi automatic, it really isnt that bad.

AMMO TO AVOID

5.56mm – This is a very very good ammo type, and has some of the best guns in the game attached to it. It is also a very expensive ammo type. It does low damage per shot, so you will end up using more bullets than 7.62, so that ammo price is gonna go up even more. Ignoring M995, even M855A1 is 500 roubles a shot, and offers marginally better performance than 5.45mm BT. A BS/BT mix will do better than M855A1 straight load and be cheaper.

7.62x39mm – Right now, this ammo is stuck in an awkward spot. If you wanna go semi automatic guns, the 7.62×51 is just better with its M80 rounds. If you wanna go with fully automatic guns, 5.45x39mm is there for you. The issue with 7.62x39mm is that its top tier ammo, BP, isnt quite that good (competitive with 7N1 for penetration, but lacks the damage to oneshot), while also costing 800 roubles a shot. At that point its better to just go for 5.45x39mm BS. Its second best ammo, PS, is… well… not great. While it is competitive with 5.45×39 BT, the lower recoil of the smaller round makes it vastly superior for automatic purposes, and it cannot hold a candle to 7.62×51 M80's performance.

9x19mm – There are simply no good ammo for this. Even 9x19mm RIP is tricky to use since you need to be good with leg meta, and at 800 roubles a shot it is not meta. For that price I can basically buy BS ammo!

.366 TKM – Just dont. Dont touch it. Not even with a ten foot pole.

GUNS

And now we can talk guns 😀

7.62x51mm

Vepr Hunter – 35k option, as cheap as it gets. Slap a scope on it and you have a formidable weapon that even chonked out chads will be afraid of.

M1A – For 10k more than the hunter you can get double the ammo capacity AND a third less recoil :D, not a bad tradeoff. The M1A also has a rail, so it is more flexible at mounting sights than the Hunter.

SA-58 – For another 10k more than the M1A, you can get the SA-58, which has 30 round mags and an option to full auto. Note that if you want to use that full auto, you wanna slap a new handguard, foregrip and pistol grip on it. All in all though, the modded gun + ammo should cost you less than 100k if you are cost efficient about it.

7.62x54mmR

Mosin/SV-98 – The SV-98 has a bit of a trigger delay, so be careful of that, but it comes stock with rails and can mount a solid variety of scopes. The Mosins are much more limited in scope options, but have better trigger responses. 7N1 is by far the optimal ammo for these guns, but LPs Gzh is also solid. Avoid running SNB on them. AT 20k for the SV-98 and 20/25k for the Mosin infantry/sniper variants, they are cheap as hell, even for bolt actions.

SVDS – Semi Automatic Mosin. That sums up the SVDS. At 65k, its a tad pricy, but doesnt require much modding to be effective. Coupled with SNB, it is capable of tearing through even the most robust of chad loadouts, and will one shot headshot all raiders and most scav bosses. (Glucar might take 2). All in all, because the ammo is so cheap, its not gonna break the 100k barrier.

5.45x39mm

RPK-16 – Ever wanted a M4 that didnt break the bank? Wished that M855A1 ammo was cheaper? Well we have the gun for you. The RPK-16 with 22" barrel comes in at around 50k. It also comes with all the rails you ever need, making it a breeze to mount your favorite sights, foregrips, lasers, etc. With a RK-3 pistol grip, a RK-0 foregrip, a SRVV muzzle break, the cheap blue laser, the RPK approaches M4 levels of recoil performance. And 5.45 BT being as cheap as it is, means that you wont break 100k doing this :D. While you can get better performance out of some of the AKs, its gonna cost more for a small improvement, hence why I recommend the RPK over them.

9x39mm

VSS – Integrally silenced Fully Automatic weapon with no recoil, pinpoint accuracy, and ammunition that is cheap as dirt? Sign me up. SP-5 fired out of a VSS is scary effective, and with the introduction of the SVDS mounts, you have a wider selection of sights to slap onto a VSS as well. The main drawbacks of the VSS are the bullet drop and struggling against level 6 armor, but it is one of the best budget FA weapons in the game right now. 55k for the gun is really cheap, although you do need to splurge a little for the largest mags.

12.7x55mm

Ash-12 – On the flipside, here is a gun with ALL the recoil. You can fully automatic it, but you shouldnt. You wont be able to hit a barn door from ten feet away with this gun on full auto. Instead treat it as a semi automatic rifle. Its ammunition costs 600 roubles a shot, but will penetrate level 5 cleanly and one hit kill on a thorax shot. It will also destroy level 6 armor within a few shots. At around 67k for the gun, it also comes with all the rails you need to mount your favorite attachments. The main expensive part of the gun is the magazine. If you want 20 round mags, you need to splurge 20k for them :c This gun will likely break the 100k barrier if you opt for the 20 rounders, but not by much.

GUNS TO AVOID

Any Bolt Action gun that isnt 7.62x54mmR – The only good ammo for bolt action guns right now is LPs Gzh and 7N1 (especially the latter). M80 is decent, but sometimes wont one shot through level 4 armor, which makes it problematic for bolt action guns. And other ammo types are even worse.

Any .366 rifle – It is so bad it is worth restating twice. .366 is a TERRIBLE round. NEVER use it.

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NOTE: Most of the guns on this list are semi auto for a reason. Full auto guns tend to be expensive to kit out, (recoil compensation mods are expensice) and expensive to maintain (full auto guns burn ammo, and ammo is expensive). Alternatively, skimping on ammo for a fully auto weapon will have you run into bullet sponge problems, where you can shoot a guy 5 or 6 times but they shrug it off. This is a fundamental issue with 9×18 and 9x19mm guns.

I strongly recommend getting used to a semi automatic rifle as opposed to using a full automatic one. Go into offline mode to practice vs scavs, it'll give u some valuable training with those kinds of rifles.

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ARMOR

Armor is important in Tarkov, especially to keep you alive from scav fire. This is why it is often regarded that level 4 is the minimum recommended level of armor going into a raid, since level 4 will protect against most scavs. Level 5 and 6 are generally recommended if you have expensive weapons and gear, but that wouldnt be the purpose of a budget build would it 😉

As such, here is a short list of the most cost efficient armors I could find.

6B3TM – This is by far the cheapest level 4 armor. Coming in at around 50k, it offers solid protection while also doubling up as a cheap tactical rig. 2 for the price of one 😀 This is by far the bread and butter armor, and is miles ahead of its competitors in terms of budget.

Highcom Trooper – If you have a tactical rig you like, and dont want to wear an armored rig, the Highcom trooper is the best T4 armored vest at 80k.

Tactec – If you want to step up to Level 5, its gonna be a big jump, and the Tactec armor rig is gonna be the most budget at 150k. The Gzhel-K is technically slightly cheaper at 135k, but it isnt an armored rig, (and the Tactec is a pretty good rig at that), so its gonna cost more once you buy a rig. In addition, the Gzhel-K is almost has heavy as the tactec, and will be heavier once you put a rig on.

There are no really budget level 6 armors. Once you reach level 6, you are a chad 😛

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HELMET

Always wear a helmet, no matter what. Its cheap, and they can bounce ammo way above what they are supposed to protect.

SSh-68 – 18k, protects the head, level 3 with a high ricochet chance, compatible with headphones and will rarely be looted? At the minimum, wear this for every run you do, because there is no reason not to. This helmet has saved me from M995 before out of sheer dumb luck.

6B47 – If you need to bring NVGs on a run, upgrade to the 6B47, it still offers level 3 protection with a high ricochet chance, but only costs 25k

ACH TC-2001 If you are looking for something a little sturdier for your helmet, at 50k you can get the TC-2001, which grants level 4 protection and also sports mounts for a NVG, as well as a slap plate that can upgrade it to level 5 protection 😀

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BACKPACKS

There is one rule about backpacks. NEVER use anything smaller than a Berkut. The Berkut and Scav backpacks usually hover around 15 to 20k, and come back in insurance all the time. You make money by looting, and not having a large backpack makes it hard for you to loot. Backpack prices tend to be the most volatile, so treat the following suggestions and numbers as a trend, not a guarantee.

Berkut – By far one of the most cost effective backpacks, the Berkut hovers around 15 to 20k I generally recommend spending the 5k roubles to get the Berkut over the Scav backpack because the Scav backpack has bright colors that can give away your position, while the Berkut blends in well with vegetation.

Paratus – The introduction of the Slim seemed to have caused Paratus prices to crash. Its hovering around 40k right now, which for a backpack the size of an Attack 2, is pretty solid. Note that the Paratus distributes its slots in a rather unusual way, with a 5×5, a 2×3 and 2 2×1 slots. This however, makes it difficult to backpack stack, which means it often goes unlooted 😀

Blackjack – Ok, I know what you are thinking. This is an 85k backpack, how the heck is this supposed to be budget, and whats the purpose of one of these anyway with the weight changes. Well, its useful if you are going on runs into say… reserve, where you expect to pick up a lot of decent value small, light items, such as BT and BS ammo :P. You arent getting this back in insurance, but usually one successful run where you mostly filled up the blackjack is gonna more than make up for it.

Headphones

Always bring headphones, no matter what.

Gssh – They kinda suck in that they make everything loud, but they are cheap and once you get used to them, they arent that bad. You will need to turn down your computer's volume a few notches so you dont deafen yourself, but they will let you hear footsteps at a much further distance (even when you have turned your sound down) than without them, and they wont distort the sound. At 10k for a set, its not worth the space it takes up for looters, and people not used to them hate putting them on, so you will almost always get them back in insurance

Sordins – A crowd favorite, and arguably one of the best for its price. If you are willing to spend a little more on every run, this is a good option ^^

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That summarizes the budget build update as of the market on March 16th 2020. I hope this was useful to you all ^^