Hello everyone.
This is a massive post but hopefully gets people to experience what I consider the most amusing thing in Tarkov right now. If you're already having a lot of success co-op extracting, awesome — save your eyes and skip!
I've successfully co-op extracted as a PMC with scavs probably close to 100 times over the past five days. Based on the messages I've received on reddit and from in game after extracts, it seems like a lot of people don't know how to properly go about maximizing your chances of getting a co-op extract. Depending on the map, you should always be able to co-op extract with very little danger, with potentially gamechanging rewards up for grabs for you and your minions. I have extracted with a pscav in all but two of my dozens and dozens of interchange runs in the last week.
Here's the step by step guide:
Part 1: Survive. I can feel everyone rolling their eyes at this obvious piece of advice, but hang on. On Interchange (the easiest map to co-op extract on), a lot of people will instantly rush Killa, tech stores, or mid-mall for Kiba. Reserve — everyone's trying to get bunker raiders or Glukhar or Shturman on Woods. A massive brawl breaks out, and the winner is running for the extract, massively overweight. While this playstyle can work for co-op extracts, it's sub par. Firstly, you may die quickly, and even if you don't, there's 40 minutes left in the raid and you have 60kg on your shoulders and need to leave. You won't be finding any scavs to extract with that way, unless you're happy to stash your 40kg pack somewhere and wander the map after already having all the loot you can carry, just so the pscavs can appear. Depending on my spawn, I'll hit the nearest tech store or loot area and then get out of the 'routes' people run so I minimize my chance for a mishap.
Part 2: Find a friend. The raid timer now reads 20-15 minutes remaining, you've killed one PMC and found a mil cable and a tetriz and some junk. Congratulations. You've already done the hardest part. By this point, extraction is basically assured if you follow the steps. I've only had one extract fail at this point, for reasons I'll explain later. Now it's time to find a guy to drive the car. There's a delicate balance to this. You do not want the player scav to detect you first — most player scavs will justifiably believe every PMC on the map is going to KOS. As a result, they'll either run the second they see you, or they'll stalk you and wait until you're not moving and shoot you for the fence rep/loot.
So, turn off your laser — a laser dot bouncing on the wall will instantly make every pscav assume the worst and act accordingly. Thankfully, most scavs do not spawn in with earpieces, and sprint arond with the suicidal urgency not risking your own gear induces. Assuming you're in the right spot, you'll have no issues finding them before they find you. Do not wait at the extract. I do not know why people say to do this — it hardly ever works. Instead, hang around near (but not IN) high loot locations. I use Adik or Furniture to watch Rasmussen/Kiba and Techlight/Techxo respectively. On woods, I watch Emercon Camp, USEC camp, or the main white building. Reserve, any of the buildings around the heli are best in my experience — don't use the bunker, for reasons explained in the following part. If you don't know how to tell pscavs apart from PMCs — look at the sleeves. Scavs typically wear blue, or red and white. PMCs are in camo, either artic, urban, or forest (with some exceptions). Don't rely on the backpack — they could loot a PMC or spawn with a pilgrim.
Part 3: Handshake. Time to initiate docking procedures. You've seen the scav first. Now comes the other side of the balance — you want him to know you're coming, and you want him to know you know he knows. Keybind cease fire and knives only to your F keys. Sprint to where you know the scav is, but make sure to keep cover. Let him hear you before he sees you — seeing a massive raid pack bouncing towards him will spook him. The worst thing you can do is come around a corner unexpectedly onto a pscav — which is why I don't think the bunker works well. Once they hear your cease fire, the usual routine is both of you guys will jiggle peak each other to confirm nobody is bullshitting before coming out of cover. A lot of pscavs will come out with only their knives, but I don't require this. I'm wearing level 6 and a faceshield, I'm pretty confident in a straight fight with a homeless man. At this point, if you're a cool dude and want to prove it, you can throw him that 1gphone you found. Out of several hundred scavs I've extracted with (multiple at a time), I've had one single time a scav shot at me during the handshake. He died and I found a more amiable scav.
Part 4: Get outta there. No point sticking around. Hoof it to the extract. Depending on the map, AI scavs might get in the way. Stay in front. You do not want your buddy to cross in front of you when you're about to pop an ai scav and lose your extract. Depending on the map, any scav seeing a PMC running with another scav is going to get the hint and fall in immediately. I've extracted with eight scavs before. The extract is only valid once, so if you are running a duo or more, make sure everyone's there, all scavs and PMCs, or your buddy is going to have to do an awkward, potentially lethal walk of shame with the remaining scavs to a normal extract. Make sure to press Y to cooperate with your scavs so they see your name — people message me what loot they get all the time and most of them just want to thank you for being chill.
Part 5: Secure the bag. Fence will message you a care package. It isn't bugged. It just takes forever sometimes, up to 10 minutes. There's clearly some sort of server tick going on in the background, but when and why is beyond me. A lot of people reading this have probably been waiting to ask — is this even worth staying in the raid three times longer than I normally would? Short answer: yes. Long answer: .
So far I have gotten both a blue and a green keycard from fence drops — together totalling over 11mil when I sold them on, after taxes (level 3 int center). This fully funded my 25/25 bitcoin farm and solar power and will probably get me most of the way to 50/50. It is definitely worth 15 extra minutes in a raid unless you're a gigachad player just stripping millions off other people and running it back every five minutes.
50% of the time the package is pointless. 48% of the time the fence chucks you some good stuff (nice armor, I've gotten over 100 rounds of m993), worth around 150-250k. And then 2% of the time you get a God drop worth millions or tens of millions. It is absolutely worth it.
Conclusion: So what can go wrong? In my experience, pscavs are ALWAYS willing to do this and are very cool dudes, with very rare exceptions. I've had pscavs throw themselves into a hail of PMC bullets to defend me on the way to extract. The real problem is just that — other PMCs. Not necessarily that they'll kill you, but if they hang around the loot spots instead of leaving the raid, they'll mow down all the pscavs and you'll have nobody to drive the car. This is the only reason an extract fails for me if I get to 20minutes left. If you hear someone camping a loot location, consider either finding somewhere you can intercept a scav before they slam into the murderhobo, or if you have a giant neck, you can go kill the altyn-topped monstrosity and save everyone.
Anyway, that's my giant rambling post. Have fun and make sure to
