Combat Guide and Tips - Escape From Tarkov Guide - IGN (2024)

There are lots of systems, details, and features that aren't always so clear or even explained in Escape from Tarkov. IGN's Combat Guide contains various tips, tricks, and small explainers that will try to help you survive while fighting in a Raid. EFT is a hardcore experience that will require all your senses, with knowledge about every system and its layers.

This article will go over a series of different tips about several mechanics and details of the game. Below you can find quick links to all the entries.

• Hear Their Footsteps
• Unloading Magazines
• Mixing Your Ammo
• Counting Bullets
• Money, Money, Money!
• Leveling up Your Traders
• Insurance Fraud
• Not All Backpacks Are Your Friends
• Quick Use Hotkeys
• Work on Your Metabolism!
• Attack With Doors
• Use the Map Borders
• Loot With Cover

Hear Their Footsteps

Always be reasonable with how high the volume is because you can hurt your ears by listening to loud sounds and noises for a while.

Unloading Magazines

You can unload magazines that contain ammunition you might want to use for a gun, which will end up giving you a stack of ammo and the empty magazine. This can be useful as the ammunition utilizes smaller space in your inventory and you can put a lot more onto one stack than just having a full magazine in your inventory.

To do so, simply right-click over the weapon you want to unload, press the option, and then unload the magazine with another right-click. The ammo will be moved to the closest free space you have.

The reverse is actually very helpful, too! If you take a full stack of ammunition with you, it will be all the ammo you need for a full playthrough with very little space utilized. All you gotta do is unload the gun when you're empty and then drag and drop the ammo onto the magazine and it will fill up. You can actually carry an extra magazine (or more) that's always filled up, and once you run out you can just switch it out in the menu, proceed to refill it, and by doing so you will reload pretty efficiently.

Mixing Your Ammo

Using the previous tip, you can actually split some different ammunition into smaller stacks, such as five bullets, and then throw that onto an empty magazine. Then you can fill the rest up with regular ammunition, and once you use that gun and fire all the regular ammunition, you'll know that you're almost out of ammo and that you'll need to reload soon.

Another thing you can do is load your magazine with a few bullets that can penetrate most high-tier armor and some cheap ammo for the rest of the capacity. This way, your first shots could do serious damage to the enemy's protection, while the following shots will work just fine with the flesh and bones. You won't waste valuable bullets with this tip.

Counting Bullets

Alright, this might not be the easiest tip when you are just starting, but it is something to keep in mind for the future. Before joining a Raid with your PMC, you'll normally load your magazines to their fullest capacity. That means that you'll know how many bullets you'll have in that mag. However, as you shoot, you won't have any HUD telling you exactly how many bullets you have left.

A good strategy for this is to use the single fire option in your weapons whenever you can (not all of them support it) and count how many shots you make. With a bit of luck and good memory, you'll know exactly when you'll have to reload.

You can also press ALT + T and your character will remove the magazine and give it a look. You won't know exactly the number of bullets left (unless it's full or empty), but it will give you an idea.

Money, Money, Money!

Similar to how you can stack ammunition, you can stack all the money you find in one stack which will save you space. However, you can't stack different money types (Roubles and Dollars, for example), and you can't have more than 500,000 of any currency in one slot.

Also, you can get a wallet as an item for your stash. This item will occupy only one square and it will let you fill it with four stacks of money.

Leveling up Your Traders

The most honest tip for this is that you should purchase the most expensive editions of the game (if you can afford them, of course) and start your profile with the biggest Loyalty Level possible with every Trader. This is a mechanic that requires a lot of grinding and will take you many hours.

If that's not an option, don't worry. Focus firstly on completing quests from the NPCs, which will normally give you some reputation points. You'll get more opportunities as you level up your character, which will unlock the daily and weekly quests (at level five and level ten, respectively).

Then, remember that you have to spend a certain amount of money with every Trader to complete one of the requisites of leveling up. To spend the money means that you can both purchase or sell items to that NPC. Start with the easiest ones, like Prapor and the Therapist, and leave Peacekeeper (who only uses Dollars as currency) for last.

Insurance Fraud

Let's suppose that you kill someone, check that they have a lot of good gear, and you want to bring it to your base. However, you don't have any more space in your backpack, pockets, and rig, and you don't want to discard your stuff. There's a pretty hardcore (and not really secure) thing you can do: if you got insurance for your gear before jumping into the Raid, you can try to hide your equipment in some bush or something and escape with your new loot. Then, a day later or so, you might get your equipment back

This is not a guaranteed move by any means, but it can actually happen. Also, you can do this when you're losing your health, can't heal, and think you aren't going to make it. Quickly drop your gear somewhere safe and wait for the best.

If you're playing with friends, they can also save your equipment (or part of it, depending on how much space they have), survive the Raid, and drop it to you in the next Raid you play together. However, please note that most items without the "found in Raid" mark will be discarded when dropped.

Not All Backpacks Are Your Friends

Simply put, there are backpacks that might be cheap, but you aren't able to really store a lot of items inside of them. If you already have it in your stash, don't worry, use it. Other more useful backpacks might be more expensive, but maybe you don't have the money or you don't want to use it.

However, if you're about to buy a backpack so you don't go out in a Raid with your empty hand, well, maybe you shouldn't. It's more recommended to play as a Scav and see what you can find. And if you don't find anything, don't worry: Scavs usually respawn with a backpack, so you'll always have something.

This tip could also apply to any other kind of cheap equipment that you might want to purchase (headsets, bulletproof vests, weapons, etc.). However, you'll only have a backpack and a weapon assured as a Scav, and the weapons you get here can be pretty useless.

Quick Use Hotkeys

You can place items such as medical and consumable items into your pockets, and then proceed to drag them into a hotkey (from 4 to 0 on your keyboard) at the bottom of the screen so that you can use them easily. This is useful so that you don't have to keep opening up your menu to utilize bandages, med-kits, and other items.

Work on Your Metabolism!

Metabolism is an important character skill in Escape from Tarkov. It can give some very good effects such as not being able to forget physical abilities once you max your metabolism out. You can max it out easily by eating any and all food that you come across in the game.

It does not take a long time and you will be able to quickly max it out and thus retain all physical abilities, among other great effects like being able to last longer without food and water.

This also applies to your medical-related skill. Use your painkillers and other meds, overcome their negative effects, and become better against them.

Attack With Doors

This is pretty self-explanatory: Doors being open normally mean that someone has been around that area. If you leave them open, you're leaving a trail leading back to you. If you close them, nobody will know for sure if anyone has been there yet.

Please note that some buildings from the different maps start with their doors always open.

This tip doesn't end here. A good piece of advice for any Escape from Tarkov player is that you should learn how to bait enemies, especially when you are inside the same building. A good tip for this could be opening a door from a room near your enemy, without entering that room. If you can move to another location quickly and without making much noise, you might surprise your enemy when they come looking for you.

Use the Map Borders

Are you lost in one of the game's huge open-air maps (like Woods) and you don't know what to do to get anywhere? You can always try to get to the border of the map and follow your trail from here. Frequently, there will be a wall that you can stick to and keep walking from there to the left or to the right.

There will always be an extraction point in some of the map corners, and you'll have some good visibility against any threats (although you'll also be exposed, of course).

Loot With Cover

When you kill someone, you should know that any players around might come and see what happened. You can either let them come while hiding, escape, or try to loot as quickly as possible.

If you decide to do the latter, you should loot fast while having your body on the ground. If there's a bush or something, you might be lucky and have the best chance of not getting shot while filling your pockets.