I would love to get into this… but it confuses me as to where to even start!
I'm new this wipe as well, played like an hour or so a few years ago, but it's clicked for me this wipe and i'm enjoying it. The new recoil and armour buff has made it so that even as a low level player with bad gear, you can beat a high level player with good gear with tactics and movement/just being better at FPS games.
I'm by no means an expert, but my advice for a fellow newbie would be:
1) The aim of the game is to go into raids, complete quests, find loot, and get out by "extracting." This is the whole game wrapped up in one sentence at its base level.
2)
https://mapgenie.io/tarkov - Almost essential to have a map up on another monitor/phone when playing. Play some offline raids and learn Ground Zero, Customs and Woods as these will be where you first quests will be.
3) Do your quests, they help you learn the game to a certain degree. Go to Trades > Tasks and then click through each trader to see them. You have to "accept" tasks from them before the tasks become active, then go back to the trader and complete the task, then go to your messages and "Receive" the rewards, bit of a long winded system, but that's Tarkov.
4) Sound is everything. Make sure you wear a headset in every raid, and if you hear footsteps then stop and listen. It could be:
- An AI scav, which sometimes have ridiculous aimbot aim and are not to be messed with, but once you get used to them they're easy enough to deal with
- A player scav. The same as above, but later in the raid, players can join as a Scav to finish up any loot/try and take down any players still around and loot their stuff.
- Another PMC. Dangerous times, could be a level 50 megachad with top tier weapons and armour, or a hacker as the game is infested with them
5) Use your scav runs! When you hit "Escape from Tarkov" on the main menu, on the left there will be a "Scav" option, click this and load into Ground Zero/Customs. You will have a loadout of usually basic weapons, have a loot around and then extract. These are essential in the early game to make some money and get some weapons/bags/rigs after you've lost everything in PMC raids.
6) Find a more experience friend to play with. The best tip of all, if you've got a friend who plays and is patient, ask them to hold your hand. It's already a touch late in the raid for you to do quests with someone who plays regularly, but if you've got a good friend they may help you out. Another option is to hop into Discords of big streamers and there may be "Sherpas" who help out new players.
Having a holding hand really is the best thing to do, as there's a million and one keybinds for different things, ways to make weapons a touch better early on, the whole ammo system is mind boggling.
But if you manage to persevere, EFT can be super rewarding, and super frustrating at the same time
Just last night me, a level 12, was in customs with a pal and we're approaching Big Red from across the river. Friend gets gunned down from inside the Big Red compound and I manage to get behind a wall and the other player starts voice chatting me chatting some smack.
I chat back a bit but stay still, turns out there's four of them. I sit tight and wait for one to push me and manage to take him down, then relocate behind the train and lay down and wait for the second, one quick burst fire and he's down as well.
Relocate down the bank towards the river and wait for the third to think that i've run off and he crawls out to try and loot his friend, miss the first few shots and he hits me in the leg, luckily somehow only giving me a fracture and no bleeds. Wait for him to push me and quick lean out and take his head off too.
Run back down the bank waiting for the fourth, when a grendade lands perfectly in my face, and the guy who killed me is called "CHINA NUMBER ONE" with 100 hours and K/D of nearly 20, so most likely a cheater. But knowing i've taken down three of his pals and that firefight was a serious rush!