Skills in Escape from Tarkov are, simply put, a grind to get through. This is by design, but some of the skills are straight up close to impossible to level without cheesing them. Also, there is a CRIMINALLY LOW AMOUNT OF INFORMATION ABOUT SKILLS IN ESCAPE FROM TARKOV.
So, Let’s talk about how to level your PMC’s Skills.
You get 8 experience for each skill before Skill Exhaustion happens.
Skill Exhaustion is how skills are leveled.
If you do not level a skill for 5 minutes, you can level it in the same raid again. (+8 exp, then +8 more for each cycle)
If you play “naturally”, you should only gain 8 or less exp per skill per raid.
When you have your Air Filtration unit on, then you can gain 40%-60% more experience in your physical skills per raid.
I got my air filtration unit at 25~ hideout management, and when it was running, I got 12 exp before skill fatigue set in.
You need a total of 4,450 EXP (4100 from level 10-51) to level each skill to max.
This would take roughly 560 raids (if you got all 8 exp before you die, and no air filter absorber) to fulfill.
Here's a good way to ‘level’ your strength/endurance!
Choose which one you want to focus (I will be using Endurance as an example).
Put 2 docs cases FULL of SAS drives in secure container, and remove one SAS at a time until WHEN YOU REMOVE YOUR BACKPACK you go underweight.
(if you only put loot inside your backpack, when you drop it, you will always go underweight)
When the raid starts, run in circles in spawn backpack OFF (+12 END EXP)
Pick up my backpack and go to wherever I need to go ( +12 STR EXP)
Press ‘O’ twice, and look at the time. In 8 mins (being safe!), Drop the backpack to go underweight, and use your stamina bar twice to get another ( +12 END EXP )
If you want MORE EXP, clear the area with your backpack off! When you get back to your backpack, 5+ mins SHOULD have passed and you will get (+12 STR EXP) again!
Rinse and repeat until you get GAINZ
In some crazy ass reserve and shoreline raids, I could sometimes get +48/+64 (48%-64% of an ENTIRE ENDURANCE LEVEL in ONE raid)
After getting 50 END, it only took 200 raids or so (same-ish technique, but really laid back) to get strength from 33 to 50.
— Now that we have covered the basics of skill experience —
The current BEST way to level your skills in Escape From Tarkov is through a ‘training camp’ – This training camp is located on Shoreline, about 200 meters east of the CCCP Temporary extract. It is at a train car covered in barbed wire. Perfect little ditch to run in, out of the way from every quest in the game, perfect.
You can sit in the barbed wire and move your mouse back and forth to “move” your character inside it and take damage. This will level your Vitality and Stress Resistance. You can heal without taking damage inside the barbed wire.
Do this to gain max EXP for both of those skills, heal to full, and get out of the barbed wire.
While VIT/RESIST are on skill exhaustion, you can run for Strength, drop your backpack and run for Endurance, turn your movement speed down to “low” to level covert movement – by the time you do these 3,
your VIT and RESIST will be off of exhaustion and you can relevel these again.
You can cheese Metabolism by bringing in Meldonins. (1 for each skill exhaustion that you want to do, or 1 per raid normal play)
After 900 seconds, you will be at -90 energy and -90 hydration.
BRING LOTS OF FOOD AND WATER!
If you do this method, it would only take 560 raids from level 1 (Excluding strength) to level your endurance, vitality, stress resistance, health, covert movement, and (possibly strength) with close to no effort.
If you took this SERIOUSLY and TRAINED YOUR SKILLS this would take 100 RAIDS OF TRAINING to COMPLETELY MAX ALL of these skills.
Math Time!
48xp per raid (4 resets of each skill)
over 100 raids = 4,800xp for each skill individually.
All of these raids would be 30+ mins long, to be fair, but let's compare 50 hours of time to MAX your skills compared to the THOUSANDS that are wanted by EFT devs.
2+ Players NEEDED (same party OK), YOU CAN DO THIS WITH UP TO 5 MEMBERS AT ONCE
Valuable items PREFERRED
The method for this is as follows: Drop a BIGASS Backpack on the ground.
One person 'shuffles' items by moving them from square to square. The other person 'searches' the bag, and CONTINUALLY GAINS EXP while the bag is being searched. You gain more EXP the more valuable the items in the bag are. Do this until skill exhaustion, and repeat!
YOU CAN ALSO DO THIS IN TRAINING CAMP IF YOU DO THAT WITH A FRIEND
If doing this casually, like I did, you would only need to go to this location once per shoreline raid in the early days of wipe – I could get this done in 2 weeks of COVID EASILY, especially because I am a student at university with a metric shitload of free time.
You can do this while watching movies, watching anime, doing anything you please.
–Let’s talk about each skill in the game more in-depth, now that we know how to max them out easily. We are going to talk about the skills that actually CAN be leveled normally without cheesing–
You get +1% extra stamina PER LEVEL of Endurance.
At level 50, this is +50% Stamina.
At ELITE, you get +25% extra for a total of +75% stamina pool.
This also applies to your ADS (ARMS STAMINA)
In addition, you get +100% Breathholding time, you do not breath heavily, and your Jumping Stamina Cost is reduced by 30%.
Endurance is super easy to level right now, all you have to do is hold down that sprint key while underweight.
You get 8 EXP per raid if you aren’t specifically leveling endurance.
I got my maxed endurance around 400~ raids this wipe.
I don't think anything is “broken” about this skill, especially after the 1/2 nerf that happened to the max stamina pool. The “breathing is independent of energy” is broken atm (USEC 3).
Strength is absolutely broken!
You get 20% base movement speed, and sprint 20% faster.
This does add together, for a 40% increased total sprint speed.
You jump 20% higher!
You get 20% more arms stamina!
Also, you get +30% increased carrying capacity!
You get to hit people harder and throw your nades farther! Yay!
In addition to these BONKERS benefits, NOTHING YOU WEAR other than your rig, pockets, backpack, and their contents is counted towards your weight total.
I regularly wear big honkin level 5-6 armors and i enter raid with <10KG weight lol.
Strength is a little harder to level.
All you have to do is sprint around when that little KG number turns yellow.
You can also throw nades, but this is not viable at the moment.
I got my maxed strength around 600~ raids in this wipe.
This skill is USEFUL
The Primary Effect is it INCREASES YOUR HEARING DISTANCE (+40% at MAX)
This is the actual distance that the sound will START PLAYING in-game in relation to your character. (footsteps, gunshots, voice)
You get a little dot in the middle of your screen when you look at loot. The range of this dot increases per level.
At MAX level, you always get a dot in the middle of your screen when you’re adjacent to loot.
I have got the drop on many players, and have an advantage over many of my teammates because of this!
I think you should level this whenever you HEAR FOOTSTEPS OR GUNSHOTS THAT ARE NOT PART OF YOUR PART as well.
My perception skill is level 36.
This increases the looting speed (doesn't search do this too?)
Increases Chance to UNCOVER THE MOST VALUABLE LOOT FIRST in a container.
ELITE: Chance of INSTANT item discovery (on every item in containers)
ELITE: DOUBLES your Looting EXP
You increase this by searching anything!
Mine is level 15.
“Increases search speed” – UNKNOWN PERCENT OR EFFECT
ELITE: You can Loot MULTIPLE CONTAINERS at once
You increase this by searching bodies.
Mine is level 29.
This skill doesn't DO anything other than being a requirement for ragman (level 10)
I put these two in the same category.
You get Vitality and Stress Resistance experience for taking damage, and sustaining that damage.
This includes bloodloss, walking on broken legs, etc.
You do not get Stress Resistance EXP if you have the effects of “painkillers” on.
The Effects of Vitality are as follows.
Reduced Chance of Bleeding (-60% at MAX)
You Die Less when Losing a Limb (-20% at MAX)
lol this dont matter
ELITE SKILL BUSTED: YOUR BLEEDS SPONTANEOUSLY STOP
The Effects of Stress Resistance are as follows.
Reduced chance of "Pain" effect (-50% at MAX) (this is when your character's vision gets blurry)
Reduced Tremor Oscillation (-60% at MAX)(this is when your character's vision tunnels in)
ELITE LEVEL: BERSERK MODE What this does is completely IGNORE any pain – you always have 'painkillers' on.
Right now, with over 1000 raids in Escape From Tarkov this wipe, I have level 13 vitality and level 14 stress resistance.
I usually do not run around with painkillers on (labs excluded), so I get more stress resistance than vitality I believe.
HEALTH is super simple.
When you gain Strength, Endurance, Vitality, or Stress Resist EXP, you gain (30%) of it towards Health.
You do NOT gain any points if the skill is exhausted(in-raid) or at MAX level.
The Effects of Health are as follows:
Reduces chance of Fractures by 60% (broken limbs)
Decreases food/water consumption (how fast you run out) by 30%
Wiki says it increases offline regen?
ELITE: Damage Absorption (no use atm)
ELITE: Poision immunity (cultists?)
One of the reasons I know Vitality and Stress Resistance are especially fucked right now is because of Health.
I got max STR on March 30, and its been 2 weeks of relatively regular play.
When i hit max STR, I was at 49 health level.
Now, 2 weeks later, im STILL AT 49 health level.
As a matter of fact, I’ve only gained 35 skill exp in 2 weeks for health.
Eat food!
Metabolism Effects:
Reduction to the ACTIVE TIME Negative Effects of STIMS (-50% at MAX)
Increases how much Energy/Hydration you get from consuming food/water items (+50% at Max)
ELITE LEVEL: You no longer will dehydrate/experience energy loss effects (you NEVER have to eat/drink in-game again)
-90 HYDRATION
-90 ENERGY
Takes 10 minutes for 'full use'
After this runs out, eat a lunchbox, and drink some aquamari water bottle.
THIS PROCESS IS REPEATABLE
You also benefit from the Effects of the stim as well.
I have only seen this on ONE person and he estimated 500 raids to complete
My metabolism level is 19 right now, and I consciously try and level it. Every time I have food/water in raid, I use it. Whenever i get out of raid, I try and fill up my energy/hydration.
My metabolism skill is one of the highest that i've seen, other than from level 65+ streamers, AND ONE FUCKIN LEGEND THAT TOLD ME ABOUT THE CHEESING HOLY SHIT
So this actually has a lot more effect than most people realize, because the effect stacks with your own personal recoil compensation, and you'll get better at it personally as well.
Reduces Recoil (-45% at MAX)
ELITE: IMPROVES RECOIL CONTROL MORE
ADS (AIM DOWN SIGHT) and LAND HITS
Reduces aiming sound and makes aiming faster (increases ergonomics?)
ELITE: NO HANDS SHAKING
ELITE: REDUCED HANDS SHAKING WHEN BROKEN/BLACKED ARM
After 1100 raids, mine is level 7. I use my weapons almost every raid, and primarily fire ADS. point firing is super viable in tarkov, but i prefer midrange engagements over close-range or long-range.
So this skill has been broken as fuck for 90% of this wipe, and i think its still broken. I pack mags more than all of my friends, and mine is the highest of all of them. After 1000 raids, mine is level 3.
Pack and repack mags to (attempt to) level this.
This is not worth giving info on at the moment, becuase it is IMPOSSIBLE TO LEVEL
Effects
Sound Reduction on FOOTSTEPS –
MOVEMENT ON COMMON SURFACES IS 50% QUIETER MAX
MOVEMENT ON UNCOMMON SURFACES IS 25% QUIETER MAX
NOISES BY GEAR/EQUIPMENT (RUSTLING) IS 50% QUIETER MAX
Increases the max speed of 'covert' movement
ELITE: MOVEMENT ON ALL SURFACES IS THE SAME VOLUME
I know someone who has maxed this skill, and its actually not that hard to level! You can easily put it into your strength/endurance training rotation (you need to walk around for 30secs to 1 min to get all 8 EXP)
When you walk normally for 5 mins, it resets the skill fatigue.
Mine is level 3 cuz I havent focused it this wipe. Last wipe I maxed it. Absolutely BUSTED
FINALLY, we have one of the hardest skills to level normally, Surgery!
Since nothing gets blacked anymore, you just die outright rather than ‘taking damage’, its super hard to level.
Use CMS kits and Surv12s to level this!
At MAX level you get (40% Increased surgery speed) and NO durability loss to limbs for repairing them!
Mine is level 8. You need to cheese this to get any significant levels.
Thankfully, they’re all the same to level.
The way you get experience is you score hits on enemies – total damage dealt and HITS are more important than securing the kill.
Snipers are all bolt-actions (need this for quests) – hit scavs in the legs for the most exp per kill.
DMRs are snipers that arent bolt-action lol
LMGs are the RPK and whenever you use one of the mounted guns (HMGs).
Throwables always give a set amount of exp (i think) when they hit a target.
Assault, SMG, Pistol, Shotgun, and Melee are pretty self-explanatory.
It took me roughly 250 raids to level my sniper skill to level 6, so I could 'buy' the last 3 levels (Mentor) and finish the requirement for kappa.
So this skill USED to work, and I actually thought it was a good idea. I had max str multiple wipes in the past when you got (+100% SPEED BACK THEN HOLY SHIT)
And sometimes I would take a break for a week and I wouldn't have elite skills anymore! 2 raids later they were back np
This don't do anything right now while skill rollback is disabled.
Lol this dont do anything either – i think the MAX level you can possibly get is level 8 atm.
Mine is level 8.
The way you level this is “examining items” but since you dont forget items, and you remember them forever, you can examine everything in the game super ez
This dont do anything other than maybe poison resist?
It increases painkiller time but good luck actually leveling it.
Mine is level 4!
Thats it!
I will be having multiple of these posts over the next few days/weeks talking about Escape From Tarkov. I look forward to sharing these with you! They will all be just as in-depth as this one.
If you want to discuss my post easier, come join my discord! It'd also be cool to interact with more members of the community :)
I’ll be able to answer any questions much easier, and then make a FAQ if needed!
I want to make these into videos, and I'm looking for an editor to help. If you want to contact me, discord me!
When I see you content creators use this as a video, and if you don't mention this post – I'm putting this in here to make you look like an asshole
Otherwise, let’s destroy some nerds in Tarkov!
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