Escape from Tarkov
Every raid starts with a timer, a loadout and a ruined city full of armed rivals. As a private military contractor, you search buildings for weapons and medicine and try to extract before time runs out, while other players and AI-controlled Scavs chase the same loot. Escape from Tarkov is played on Windows PC, and its detailed systems for injuries and carrying weight shape every fight along the way.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- A failed raid costs real gear - Die or miss the extraction window and the inventory you carried is gone, apart from items in the secure container and anything covered by insurance. Insured items come back only if no other player has carried them out to their own stash. Kit is bought from traders and the flea market or crafted in the hideout, which turns every loadout into a decision about how much you are willing to lose.
- Guns assembled one component at a time - The arsenal runs past a hundred firearms, and each one can be built from parts such as the barrel, stock, grip and dust cover, with every piece shifting recoil, weight and ergonomics. Damage comes from the ammunition rather than the weapon: each round type has its own damage and armor penetration values, and bullets drop over distance, ricochet and punch through cover.
- Three ways to set your own level of risk - Not every session has to put your best kit on the line.
- PMC raids: you bring your own gear into a map shared with other players and Scavs.
- Scav raids: you receive a random loadout instead of your own gear and join a raid that is already in progress, then wait out a cooldown before the next one.
- PvE Zone: AI opponents take the place of other players, raids can be solo or in a group, and the character profile is kept separate from PvP.
Story and Lore
The setting is Tarkov, the capital of the fictional Norvinsk Special Economic Zone in northwestern Russia. A political scandal and the failure of several corporations left the city in ruins, and armed locals known as Scavs now hold large parts of it.
TerraGroup, a multinational holding company, sits at the center of the collapse: it hired the Western-based security firm USEC to cover up its illegal activities, and the Russian government formed BEAR to look into them. The first heavy fighting broke out at TerraGroup's regional headquarters in the city center, where USEC operatives clashed with OMON riot police.
Version 1.0 added a story campaign built around getting out of the city, with four possible endings: Survivor, Savior, Debtor and Fallen. Late in the storyline a contact named Kerman asks for evidence against TerraGroup, and the choices around that request steer which ending you reach.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Setup happens before the raid: pick a map, a time of day, and whether to go in alone or with teammates. Inside, no in-game map marks your exact position; players find their way by landmarks, and nearly every action, from footsteps to opening containers, produces sound that other players can hear.
Health is tracked per body part, and damage has lasting consequences:
- A destroyed arm hurts aiming, reloading and searching.
- A destroyed stomach brings constant coughing and wheezing that deafens you to nearby enemies, gives away your position and drains energy and hydration faster.
- Bleeding calls for bandages and fractures for splints, and food and water have to be topped up to avoid penalties.
Inventory is a grid whose size depends on the backpack and chest rig, and total weight slows movement and drains stamina. Looting takes time: items are revealed one by one, and characters cannot move while searching a container.
Between raids, the character returns to an underground bomb-shelter hideout. Facilities built there from found or purchased materials grant bonuses such as shorter Scav cooldowns, extra experience and item crafting. Spare gear can be sold to NPC traders, whose quests raise loyalty and open higher-tier stock, or listed on the flea market, which prices goods in roubles, euros or dollars. Experience levels up the character and individual skills, and some features, the flea market among them, unlock only at certain character levels.
Locations connect to each other: transit points let players move into a neighboring map during a raid instead of extracting to the stash. The current roster:
- Ground Zero: the downtown business center, set aside for newer players up to level 20 and tuned harder for veterans above that.
- Customs: a large industrial park.
- Factory: a compact chemical plant with tight indoor workshops.
- Woods: a former wildlife reserve.
- Shoreline: a hydroelectric plant, villages and a health resort.
- Interchange: a road junction beside a huge shopping mall.
- Reserve: a secret military base.
- Lighthouse: a cargo rail station, a water treatment plant and an island with a lighthouse.
- Streets of Tarkov: dense city blocks with a hotel, a cinema and apartment complexes.
- The Lab: a TerraGroup research facility entered with a keycard.
- The Labyrinth: a theme park built by a TerraGroup contractor.
- Terminal: a vast cargo logistics hub and one of the city's last evacuation routes.
- Icebreaker: an enormous ship in the Gulf of Finland.
Characters and Factions
Player characters belong to either USEC or BEAR. Each side has its own clothing, and characters begin with more experience on weapons from their own camp: Western and NATO-pattern firearms for USEC, Russian and Soviet designs for BEAR.
Most AI opposition comes from Scavs, local armed groups carrying low-tier gear. Rogues, Cultists and better-equipped Raiders with fixed spawn points add further AI factions, and the Black Division holds Icebreaker.
Bosses carry unique gear and far more health than ordinary enemies, and many arrive with guards:
- Reshala (Customs), Shturman (Woods), Sanitar (Shoreline) and Glukhar (Reserve) each come with a squad.
- Killa on Interchange and Tagilla on Factory fight alone.
- Kaban and Kollontay rule Streets of Tarkov: Kaban fires heavy machine guns without bracing them, while Kollontay swings a police baton and brings four guards.
- Zryachiy leads the cultists of Lighthouse.
- Partisan hunts across forested maps with tripwire traps and works alone.
- The Goons, a trio made up of Knight, Big Pipe and Birdeye, roam several maps together.
- The Wedge commands the Black Division on Icebreaker.
Traders double as the game's supporting cast. Prapor is a warrant officer who oversees supply warehouses, Peacekeeper a UN supplies officer, and Therapist the former head of the main hospital's trauma department. Ragman used to direct a shopping center, Jaeger is a former hunter who still guards the Priozersk reserve, and Skier once worked at the customs terminal before building a gang. Mechanic rounds out the main roster.
Later additions include Lightkeeper, whose services can keep Cultists and Rogues from attacking you, and Ref, a 2024 addition tied to Escape from Tarkov: Arena, deals in GP coins. Fence buys whatever Scav raids bring back.
Editions
Four editions are sold, and each tier enlarges the starting stash and secure container while adding its own gear set:
- Standard Edition: the base game with a 10×30 stash and the Alpha secure container (2×2).
- Left Behind: the stash grows to 10×40 and the container stays Alpha, but the edition brings its own starting gear and skills and a 7% bonus to experience earned in raids.
- Prepare for Escape: a 10×50 stash, the larger Beta container (3×2), good initial standing with every trader and a 9% experience bonus.
- The Unheard: the top tier, with a 10×72 stash, the Gamma container (3×3), initial trader standing, a 20% experience bonus that also applies to group members, access to the PvE Zone, and a digital copy of Escape from Tarkov: Arena (Ryzhy Edition).
On Steam, the top tier is sold as The Unheard Steam Edition and leaves out the Season Pass because of Steam platform rules. Buyers of any other edition who want the PvE Zone add it as a separate expansion.
The older Edge of Darkness Limited Edition was withdrawn in January 2024, and existing owners keep it.