This is going to be fucking long so buckle in.
Hey guys, ive seen lots of posts on here from new players struggling to adjust to the difficulty of Tarkov specifically the scavs.
My friends just picked this game up about a month ago and I told them to do what I did to learn how to deal with the AI because they can be brutal. They said it helped them a lot so maybe some people will get value out of this too.
Side note I only have 500 hours in the game so I'm no pro.
This is what I did.
Buy a MP-443 Grach pistol from prapor I think it's lvl 1 and buy an extra mag from him with 50 bullets of pst_gzh it's 9×19. Have two full clips as well as some bullets left over.
Put a band-aid and painkiller in your container and go into factory OFFLINE. Put scavs at hard difficulty and put the spawn rate at high.
No armor, no rig, no backpack just a pistol. I'll explain why later.
Your goal going into this raid is to practice your FACE SHOT flicks. Not just head shot but face. You have to get use to flicking and predicting scav movement aka aiming where the scav is moving.
Not only does this teach you how fast you must react to scavs but the importance of playing corners, doors, not fighting them in the open, baiting them, and using doors to limit scav pathing. A giveaway that a scav is close by the door opening can save your life. Examples are at the top floor of factory, closing the door behind you while you hold the stairs and the bathroom doors second floor.
I also recommend the scav spawn amount as high because it teaches you how to loot fast and when not to loot. *there is always going to be 1 more is a golden law of Tarkov.
This is going to be brutal at first and your going to die a lot. But you won't lose your gear and learning flick shot someone's face will save your life over and over again in this game.
If it's too hard I would recommend buying the paca armor it's cheap and will save you from getting 1 shot blasted by a shotgun.
The reason you only bring in a bandage and painkiller is so that you can learn the med spawns in factory as they have saved my life a few times. This also teaches you how to move around the map stealthily especially if your a solo player.
- Tip here if you here a scav randomly scream by you, sprint anywhere because they will kill you so damn fast, get to cover and find them.
Once you start getting a few good kills and flicks then learning to click loot is the next step. Clearing the area and then looting quickly will save your life over and over in this game. This is why I recommended you don't bring a rig or backpack because you get them from the scavs you kill.
Once your pistol runs out of ammo you will see how easy it is to kill scavs with shotguns, vepr hunters, the sks, and even the toz. Try to kill as many scavs as you can then die.
Rinse and repeat until you feel comfortable going into actual raids. I still, even this late into a patch go into factory with a pistol only and have left with 500,000 in gear. It's low risk, high reward and 0 to hero runs can be the most intense moments of the game.
As a side note if the scavs are spawning too high then turn it down to medium but I really think the value of having scavs spawn on high can teach you an important lesson about the 3rd party nature of Tarkov.
You can do this with any gun you want to learn and it helps wonders. Reaction time and face shots are king in Tarkov and that's how I learned the game/my flaws in reaction time and flick accuracy.
This is one of the best games I've ever played and also one of the most frustrating. Don't give up new players it's only going to get better and it's one of the most rewarding games I've ever played as well.
Best of luck out there.
