What You Should Know Before Your First Raid - Escape From Tarkov Guide - IGN (2024)

Raids are the main game mode in Escape from Tarkov. This is where you’ll battle for your life, trying to loot and survive from other players. There are a lot of things that you should keep in mind before jumping into one, so this guide will help you with your first steps.

This article will explain what is a raid, and it will also tell you what you should know before joining one.

Here are the quick links for you:

• What Is a Raid?
• Practice in Offline Mode
• Having an Interactive Map Is a Must
• Your Friends Don’t Have Marks
• Your Inventory Will Be Lost if You Die
• Insurance Is a Good Friend
• What’s the Objective?
• Healing and Status Items
• You’ll Probably Die

What Is a Raid?

A Raid is basically a match of Free-for-All. This means that you’ll be alone against all the other players on the level — unless you create a squad with up to four friends, of course. Whether you are in a group or not, you’ll fight both lonely soldiers and small quads of players.

There isn’t a marked objective when playing a Raid, but looting, avoiding being killed, and reaching one of the possible extraction points before the times run out would be the essential part. Then, as you make progress, you’ll start completing quests, focusing more on shooting (or hiding), and looking for specific items, among other activities.

Depending on if you play as a Scav or a PMC, some important things will change when in a Raid. For more information about the differences between these types of characters, please check our Scav Guide.

What You Should Know Before Your First Raid

Escape from Tarkov is an intense and hardcore experience that will ask the very best of you, and it might take time just to understand what’s happening on the screen or where you need to go. It’s most likely that your first Raid will be an unforgiving and confusing situation, but some tips might make it a bit easier.

Practice in Offline Mode

After choosing your main character, the map in which you want to play, and the hour, you’ll be able to select a practice mode. This won’t match you against other players, and it’s a perfect way of jumping into a map and start learning how the game feels, plays, and the locations of that specific level. You can also choose to have bots in-game.

You can’t play practice mode in co-op unless all the squad members have purchased the Edge of Darkness edition.

Having an Interactive Map Is a Must

A normal thought to have when starting your first Raid is not having any clue where on Earth has your character respawned and where you should go. This will happen because the levels in Escape from Tarkov are big and detailed with distinct areas, and you don’t have a map or any HUD indications of where you are.

Press O twice to learn which are your extraction points.

The most effective solution to this is to visit interactive maps, like the ones made by Map Genie. Here you can hide all the markers but the ones for locations and extraction points and start learning where these spots are.

Ideally, you should have a map open on a second screen or on a mobile phone. However, if you can minimize the game quickly, you can have the map on the same screen, too. Just try to hide while you’re checking it.

Your Friends Don’t Have Marks

If you decide to play your first Raid with friends, beware of a small detail: they will look similar to other players and bots. You actually have no in-game marker indicating whether the soldier in front of you is an ally or not, so you should keep good communication with your squad via voice chat or remember what they are wearing.

This point is essential because the game has friendly fire and it can be very easy to kill a partner without realizing it. Additionally, enemies that notice you won’t give you much time to think.

Your Inventory Will Be Lost if You Die

One of the main features in Escape from Tarkov is that your character will lose all its equipment if you die in a Raid (although there are some exceptions, explained in another entry). This will be a recurrent fear every time you play, especially during your first Raids, in which you’re just learning how to play.

Something you can do to avoid losing anything from your personal stash is to play as a Scav. That way you’ll spawn with random gear and have the chance to return with some sweet loot without exposing your main character.

Insurance Is a Good Friend

Before jumping into a map, when you play as a PMC you’ll notice that you have the chance to insure your equipment with Prapor, one of the game’s Traders. This basically means that you can pay for a chance to get your gear back if you die, which can come in handy when going out with expensive weapons or items.

However, you should keep two things in mind. First, if an enemy player loots your equipment, it will be lost forever. The insurance won’t work. Then, Prapor will take hours to gather your items, and you’ll have a limited window to reclaim them or they’ll disappear.

If you’re playing with a squad and your mates don’t die, you can ask them to pick up your things (or at least some of them, depending on the space they have) and they can drop them for you in your next Raid.

Don’t Choose Night Hours

Playing your first Raid when the Moon is up is basically a death sentence. While some areas can be illuminated with artificial light, most open areas won’t, and you won’t be able to see almost anything. Advanced players use gadgets like night vision goggles to overpass this obstacle.

What’s the Objective?

As already mentioned, you can do more than one thing while participating in a Raid. However, considering that you’ll be inexperienced, it’s a good idea to just keep to basics: avoid getting killed and loot.

If you get a secure chance to eliminate a target, go for it, but just returning to base with a few nice items is more than enough for your first Raids.

Healing and Status Items

You can be flexible with this once you have the experience, but it’s recommended that you start your first Raid with healing and consumable items. Your wounds won’t regenerate, you need to manually heal them with different items depending on the type of wound.

At the same time, even if you don’t suffer any damage, your character will start to become dehydrated and lose energy as the Raid progresses. You can die if you reach zero percent and remain like that for a good amount of time.

To be prepared for all these scenarios, take some bandages, AI-2, a Car, a Splint, one bottle of water, and one Iskra.

Also, keep an eye on your bars on the bottom left part while in-game. The blue one drains while you’re aiming and shooting, while the green bar depletes while sprinting.

You’ll Probably Die

This last tip isn’t intended to be provocative. Quite the contrary. This is something that you should learn about Escape from Tarkov as soon as possible: you will probably die in all your first Raids. The game has a high difficulty not only to master its gameplay but also to start learning all its systems and how they work.

It can be frustrating on many levels because you might die by mistake or without knowing what killed you, losing all your valuable items in the process. However, you’ll also get better if you dedicate the time and patience the game requires from you.