I Tarkov Poorly

Boss Spawn 100% There is an event going on where the odds of the bosses spawning on a map is now 100%.  I also landed a " Kill Sanitar 2 Times" Operational Task, so I set out to do that. I didn't see Sanitar even once, but I had some great fights with Scavs and PMCs and possibly his nurses, so no complaints.   While I didn't bag Sanitar, I did kill Partisan. Thought he was a scav, killed him from atop some rocks. This wipe Partisan and I have a co-dependent relationship. I kill him, he kills me.  We trade back and forth, though, honestly I don't see him very often.  Until now.  Apparently the guy can hold a grudge. After killing Partisan I then encountered him in my next five raids.  He'd just appear out of nowhere and shoot me dead. I only had eyes on him two times, the other three he just killed me from nowhere. Awesome. I have been avoiding the Streets map, because no frames per second. But I have a ton of quests backlogged for that map. I guess I'...

Finally, after years of playing EFT, I have completed Punisher 6 and have secured my own Secure Container Epsilon. That thing has 8 slots - it's huge. Twice the size of the little alpha I've used all these years. I started it on Shoreline, because I was doubling with some Peacekeeper tasks.  I even used the SVD at long range (as it was intended) and sniped some PMCS from afar.  I tried sniping on Reserve and that was boring. Ran some of my ammo runs on Reserve carrying that SVD around, but never encountered PMCs.  I finally decided to just cheese it and run dorms on Customs over and over. That mostly worked. I also tried fighting the PMCs in the industrial area, but that rarely went well.  The SVD is really big and ungainly for a cramped place like dorms, but it's easier to control the fights there.  My very last raid I needed only one PMC kill to finish the quest.  I went to dorms. Two story was completely empty. Three story the same. I was descending the ...

Halloween The Halloween event is behind us now. It was mostly fun. I switched to the MCX using .300 Whisper and the VPO-209 with Geksa.  Both suppressed to avoid attracting too much zombie attention.  Carried a pistol too for when I'd inevitably run out of ammo. Leaned on it on several occasions. The MCX was awesome. The VPO-209 was perfectly adequate. Died a lot. Survived a lot. Killed a lot. I think my record was 65 zombie kills in a raid (from which I survived).  Anyway, it was a fun event.  My goal for every raid became reduced to simply kill zombies and extract.  As a solo, trying to conduct a moving gun fight was just too difficult with the zombies.  So my strategy was to try and plot of path of safe spots on the high ground, like cars and trash bins, that I could clamber on and use as a firing platform. I'd prioritize pistol zombies first, followed by the fast ones. The slow ones could be ignored if ammo concerns loomed (pretty much always). So kill ...

Before the current Halloween event I was pursuing the Punisher quest line and trying to level up Mechanic and Peacekeeper, which meant I was running a lot of raids on Shoreline. In several of my raids the weather station was the first real hot spot that I encountered. Sometimes in the first minutes after spawning, sometimes a bit later. But in four of the times that has happened, I have encountered a trio of PMCs at the weather station - them having gotten there before me.  Once I engaged and got killed. Once I approached very cautiously and killed them. And twice I approached cautiously and watch them leave the area, heading toward power or the resort.  And on one of those two occasions where they were leaving, I tried to follow them, hoping to snipe them from behind. But when I got to the edge of the weather station cliffs, looking over where they had just departed seconds before, there was no sign of them.  Did they vanish? Were they removed by the game, or did I ...

Apocalypse  EFT has a new Halloween event: Zombie Apocalypse.  Cool concept, but has been decidedly "meh" for me.  I have yet to survive a single raid. During this event PVE is no longer using local servers, but the official remote ones. The whole reason I play PVE is to avoid those servers. Unsurprisingly my first raid had a Disconnect after I killed one zombie and then the game was aborted. Nice.  I've tried this several times, but it mostly hasn't gone well.   Lately I've been running a very high ergo AK-105. That weapon has been great to me, and I can easily stock up on good ammo on Reserve.  I never run scav runs ( I hate those ), instead I occasionally run Reserve looking for Raiders and ammo.  It's been good, and in PVE mode, D-2 is a safe easy extract. But for the zombie event, the AK-105 just isn't cutting it. I load up HP rounds, which, in theory, should have plenty of flesh damage but I'm just struggling.  Maybe it's because of the...

 In my last post I boasted how the "E" in PVE stands for "Easy".  Tarkov is showing me the error of my ways. I've been dying left, right and center since making that post.  Punisher Part 1 I want to finish the Punisher quest line. It's something I've never done, and I've always wanted the larger secure container than my little four slot alpha.  First up: kill 15 scavs on Shoreline with an AKM.  Shouldn't be too hard. First raid goes well, moving around the map, killing scavs. In the last battle I run into a PMC, who messes me up a bit, but I prevail.  It's getting late, my meds are low, my food and drink are low. Let's call it. Plus, I have a daily to extract alive. In the post mortem I see that I got 8 of the 15 scavs.  Nice. Tomorrow I'll finish this out. For the second raid I'm also trying to do Anaesthesia and Scrap Metal. So I have 6 markers on me, to mark tanks and Sanitars lurking spots. Best get to it. I move out, marking ...

As mentioned in my previous post, I started playing Tarkov again after a long break.  It was going as it ever did: lots of death.  The desync was becoming very trying and after a particularly frustrating fail I went and bought the PvE expansion and have been playing that now instead. At the time of the switch, I was level 16 or so in PvP mode, with maybe 300,000 rubles in cash, and exactly 0 PMC kills. A new record low.  Even when I started playing EFT four years ago and was an absolute noob I had more PMC kills than that by the time I reached level 16.  Of course, Arena makes me level up faster, so the comparison is not equal.   Nikita, if you are reading this, please bring back the ability to choose an individual server. Or at least give me the choice of prioritizing low ping at the expense of a longer wait time.  So I've been playing PvE.   It's fun. It's far better than simply dying every time I draw near another player. But it's too easy...

 Some years ago I stopped playing Escape from Tarkov.  I switched to DMZ for awhile. Then I dropped that and didn't play anything for a long spell. But I followed developments from afar. Arena, the Unheard Edition, the introduction of a persistent PVE mode, new bosses, map expansions, improvements in performance, etc.  Finally, when patch 15 dropped I decided to return. I purchased Arena and started playing again. The Good Arena is great. Not only does it let me practice my PvP, but it provides XP and rubles. I ended up reaching level 15 after ignoring most of the beginner quests I've done too many times. Got the bronze pocketwatch, but didn't even try Delivery from the Past. Haven't bothered to give Mechanic any gun builds, still haven't found salewas for Therapist.  Haven't had to scav too much, money being somewhat easier to come to. The Bad I don't live in a city with an EFT server. The closest to me is Seattle, to which I consistently have a good low pi...

I have started playing DMZ. I think it's full name is Call of Duty Modern Warfare II Warzone DMZ, which is ridiculous. The game is worse than Escape for Tarkov in many (so many) ways, but there are a few notable things it does better than Tarkov, so I thought I'd call them out. much better network (for me) most of real world game play time spent in raids no downside to dying  doesn't waste my time way more fun Network I don't live near any EFT server site, so playing EFT has always been dicey.  The difference in game performance offline vs. online has always been marked for me.  But with DMZ, while I have the occasional rubber banding and dropped texture, it mostly plays very smooth.  Nice. Out of Raid Unlike Tarkov, there is practically nothing to do in DMZ if you aren't in a raid. You can change a few skins, do the bare minimum of weapon mod, review and select some missions, change a device in a slot or two when kitting out. But that's it. There's no craft...

Customs  I've been playing Customs a lot this wipe. For every spawn I have either a destination to rush where I can hopefully catch other players when they are moving, or a place to hide and wait for five minutes, so the scavs can spawn, the players can move.  Either way, I often spend the first part of the raid just sitting. I haven't died to an AI Scav in a long time. But I still die a lot. And on customs that death is usually just me walking by a bush or a dark corner and getting blasted unawares. Probably half of my deaths I don't see my assailant, and maybe in a quarter of them I don't even hear them beforehand.  While I've had a lot of fun raids, it is tiring doing nothing at the beginning of the raid for five minutes and then getting killed later without much warning - without conducting a "real fight". Factory So I started running Factory, a map I normally don't like. It's been awesome.  I'm still dying. Killing too. Surviving a bit.  B...

How It's Going I haven't been actively questing this wipe, so my progress has been slow. I'm not complaining. It's been fine - the raids have mostly been fun.  Unless there are connection problems, or just really bad luck, I'm rarely killed by AI Scavs anymore.  That's nice. After BSG increased their banning activity and posting the names of ban recipients, it has seemed to me like cheating has lessened.  I'm definitely surviving more raids, winning more fights, and having fewer "sus" deaths.  All good. Level 15 Achieved I needed just over 5000 XP to make Level 15. I figured that'd take me about 5 raids, maybe more, because I have to plan on the failed 0XP raids that I'd inevitably have.  As luck would have it, I garnered those XP in two raids, without any quests.  On my last scav run, I'd gotten myself a Level 5 armored rig and a 9mm Vector with mag after mag of AP 6.3 off of some unfortunate PMC.  In all my wipes, I'd never run th...

To Not Lose Goat released a second video discussing cheating.  The part that I found the most compelling was the interview with one of the anti-cheat devs who work on The Cycle Frontier.  He made the comment that while RMT was definitely a motivator for cheating, their experience suggests that "most cheaters cheat to win. Or, more specifically, to not lose." I feel like that's the crux of it right there, and it aligns with the various comments I've seen elsewhere on the internet from people who admit to cheating.    People cheat to not lose .    Frankly, I'm sympathetic.  Tarkov is difficult and has often crossed the line from grueling to grinding. As a casual player myself, who still hasn't even reached the flea market (where the game becomes an entirely different game), I can understand the motivation.   But if "to not lose" is the main motivator, that's entirely within BSG's control.  Here are some suggestions.  Lower the Flea M...

 No doubt, anyone following Tarkov has seen the video from Goat:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LfGcDB7Ek If you've read my blog before, you know I've tried tracking cheaters in the past by checking all my kills and killers in the in-game chat tool over time. I made several posts, the last of which was this one:  https://itarkovpoorly.blogspot.com/2022/06/counting-cheater-part-4.html My take on the video?  The reason it's called "The wiggle that killed tarkov" is because if cheaters are signaling each other via wiggling, it means there is a CULTURE of cheating and cheaters. And that's the shocking thing. It's not just "some people cheat", it's that there is a whole CULTURE of people cheating, with their own set of spoken/unspoken rules, behaviors, norms and manners. And if you've got a whole culture around something, then it's likely widespread and endemic. And disappointing.  Someone made the remark on Reddit that watching the vi...

My progress this wipe is slow. I don't even care.  I made level 9 yesterday. Survival rate of 29%. I inadvertently formed a collection of SMGs: three Vityaz and three Kedrs.  What's a good map for an SMG? Factory, obviously. But what about Reserve?   I decided I would run Reserve until the SMGs were gone.  Took about 5 raids to go through the Vityazs.  Survived one raid, insurance brought it back once, but otherwise they were gone, looted by my killers or player scavs.   But the Kedrs were a different story, no one wants those. I'm not sure how many raids those lasted, 10, 15? I took screenshots, so I could go back and check if I wanted, but I don't. It was a long string of death mostly, and I finally gave up. Still had one last Kedr which no one was looting, so I vendored it and moved on. Experiment complete. This experiment was mostly unfun.  The combination of weak ammo and PACA armor meant I couldn't take on real fights with PMCS. So my s...

Two Psychos Destination: Customs.  Level 4.  PACA armor and a VPO-136.  Raid before this I had a lot of luck killing scavs in the storage shed area. It was great - no one bothers me over there, and I racked up a bunch of kills. The fights weren't ever exciting, but PACA and VPO-136.   Spawned on the river Customs house side. Awesome! I back tracked toward the storage sheds.  A player could easily be heading in my direction this early in the raid, so I ducked down into a bush and decided to just wait and listen.  Supposedly half the players die in the first five minutes of the raid. I have no idea if that's true or not, but I'll pretend it is. At around the three minute mark a grenade launcher began firing.  Sounded like it was on my side of the river, firing across.  A grenade would fire, small pause, and then another. Grenade, grenade, grenade, grenade, grenade. How many grenades does this guy have? Five minutes have passed. He's still firin...

How It Went Didn't play too much last wipe.  Had a lot trouble with desync.  Once I reached the flea, I stopped running crappy AKs and started running whatever weapon I wanted. Mostly the VSS and the Ash-12. Mostly because those weapons had good ammo available on the flea. And then I ran offline raids, Reserve mostly.  I'd head to the basement, keeping an eye and ear open for Gluhar. Kill the raiders down below, pull the hermetic door switch and head over to the tracks to fight any raiders that might be there (or arriving later with the train), again looking for Gluhar. If at any time I figured out where Gluhar was, I'd go fight him and his crew.  I died a lot. But also killed Gluhar quite a bit, and a lot of raiders.  It was fun. If anyone is interested, in offline mode with Bosses ON, three or four raiders will spawn in the basement at the beginning of the raid.  Gluhar and his crew will be somewhere on the map too. The hermetic switch raiders or train ra...

 I've reached Level 16 now, and have levelled up half my traders (Skier, Prapor, Therapist, Peacekeeper) to level 2, and have flea market access. Awesome. So now I can pretty much run any weapon I want, excepting the ones banned from the flea. That's nice too.  But there is a hitch: the ammo.  Most of the better ammos are locked behind top trader levels and are not available on the flea.  Leveling up my traders to Level 2 got me access to 9x18 Pst gzh and M856, and PP. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? There is a new weapon called the SAG, which is a 5.45 single shot carbine.  It has super low recoil and good ergo, much like an STM-9, but unlike the STM-9, it has the potential to use decent ammo, with rounds that can fly a fair distance.  With a little modification, the SAG becomes even better. It's responsive and zippy. A great little headshot machine. There are also some Prapor trades for BT ammo, so I started running the SAG with BT. Ran a num...

Last wipe I focused on questing and avoided scavving, preferring loot runs so as to optimize any experience gained, since scav XP does not count toward the PMC. It took me about 50 raids to reach level 15 last wipe. This wipe it took 81, plus a whole lot of scav raids.  In part because I did not really focus much on questing, and when I finally did I was already 20 raids in.  Looking forward to the new game that is Tarkov with the flea market. Not sure I'll do many quests after this. I never did complete the Punisher series, and that nags at me, but I just don't see it in the cards, especially if the next wipe were to come around Christmas time again. I may just try out some weapons and runs raids for fun.   I have a bunch of AKs in my stash. Maybe I should just sell them to Mechanic and buy something I really want. Not sure. But what does it matter? The important thing is that with the flea market, the game becomes simpler - now it's just a matter of garnering ruble...

While pursuing The Bunker Part 1, I killed a scav and he had picked up an assault rifle I had never seen before: an HK G36 5.56x45 .  His had a very short barrel - making it more like an SMG than an assault rifle. Seemed cool. There was a hiccup. I was level 12 and didn't have access to the flea market. I couldn't buy magazines for this weapon. The only mag I had was the one I found it with.  But beggars cannot be choosers, so I kitted out with it and went back to Reserve to pursue The Bunker Part 2. Right off spawn I encountered one of Gluhar's guards, he fired, I got off a quick spray, and then jumped down to one of the vehicle dugouts, breaking my leg. Healed my leg, evaded, repositioned, repacked my one sole magazine, and somehow managed to kill the guard. This in the first minutes of the raid. He had a Vityaz, but with no stock (?). I took it. I picked up the black bishop, black pawn and white pawn entrances to the bunker without truly descending into it. Then I scoote...

Tarkov wiped in June. I downloaded the update mid-July. As usual, haven't been playing it much.  This wipe I've decided to not blog every raid. Instead I'm just recording the stats into a spreadsheet.  I'll figure out later how to put that on the blog. Summary of Wipe 12.12.30 (So Far) Technically, this is my fifth wipe. Right off I decided I wasn't interested in grinding all those beginner quests again. Instead, I decided to just run around Customs and maybe Reserve and kill things and have fun.  Excepting a few short Woods raids to unlock Jaeger and the compass, that's what I did. It started out great.  I killed a couple PMCs, killed Reshala and some Zavodskys, and a whole lot of scavs.  My survival rate was floating around 50%, which is par for me. I was banking rubles, approaching 2 million. And, most importantly for me, I went 17 raids in a row without dying to an AI Scav.  Things were great. And then they weren't.  I started dying all the time, e...