Surviving by yourself in an extraction shooter like Escape from Tarkov is the ultimate hard mode. You have no backup, one set of eyes and ears, and everything is out to kill you. You’ll need to adjust your playstyle to stay alive and extract. Here’s how to survive as a solo player in Escape from Tarkov.
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Best Ways to Survive as a Solo in Escape from Tarkov
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: if you play solo in Escape from Tarkov, you will die a lot. And a lot more often than if you were on a team. No player, no matter how good, can avoid all the game’s hazards (real and digital) forever. However, if you play to the strengths of running solo and operate with a different mindset, survival and profit are more than possible. Here are my best tips on how.
Play Slow
Sound is a huge factor in winning gunfights and surviving in Escape from Tarkov, but as a solo, you don’t have any extra ears to alert you to threats. And because so many people run in teams of two or more, one wrong footstep can send you straight back to the lobby. So rather than booking it to a high-traffic location as soon as you spawn, slow down. Follow these few tips, and you’ll find surviving is much easier:
- Walk, don’t run, toward your objective
- Crouch and creep whenever you hear the sound of footsteps
- Disengage from any fight you aren’t confident you can win
- Sprint only when you are sure no one can hear
- Use a suppressed weapon when you have them
- Hide if you know someone is close
These, among other tactics, will help you stay alive even in highly contested zones like the USEC camp on Lighthouse, the middle of Customs, or the entire eastern side of Streets of Tarkov.
One thing you shouldn’t do, necessarily, is spawn in and immediately go prone, then camp where you are for five minutes. First and foremost, veteran players know the spawns and are liable to check the ones nearby. And they will shoot you on sight. Secondly, you won’t be leveling up, completing quests, or generally progressing if all you do is wait. You also give time for player Scavs to spawn in, and they’re like locusts: they will hunt you down in droves and take your stuff.
Lastly, if you’re having trouble completing any task, Raid at nighttime. Sure, some other players will have night vision goggles, and AI Scavs can still see you fine, but there are generally few enemy PMCs to fight, and the ones you do encounter might still not be able to see you from even a close distance. I’ve had several players look directly at me, or at least look in my direction, and go right on by.
Right-Hand Peek Only
The bullets you fire in Tarkov come out of the top of your head, but how much of your body shows when you peek depends on which side you peek around the corner from. If you peek around the right side of an object, only a small portion of your body will be vulnerable. If you peek around the left side, even with the gun aimed from your left shoulder, almost your entire left side will be visible. It’s weird, but that’s how it is.
In short, if you have to get into a fight, keep as much hard cover on your left side as possible and peek around the right side of that cover. Enemy players with a good shot will, of course, take your head clean off, but if they miss, you’ll be as protected as you can be.
Right-hand peeks are also useful against enemy AI of any difficulty, from the Rogues on Lighthouse to the Goons wherever they wander. Their aimbots will still evaporate your face as a seasoned player would, but if you’re behind solid cover like concrete, a large tree, or thick steel, you’ll still have plenty of protection.
Wear the Best Gear you Can Buy
Surviving in Tarkov is as much about the gear you use as it is the tactics you employ. Without a good set of armor and helmet, a comfortable weapon with good ammo, and even a cheaper headset, you’ll be at a massive disadvantage. Even an encounter with a single Scav at the wrong time in the wrong place without good gear will show you the “Extraction Failed” screen more often than not.
Wearing good gear iskindof like playing with a second person if only in the sense that it will always have your back, and will always be doing its level best to protect you and keep you threatening to enemies. That said, don’t be afraid to quest with minimal gear if you absolutely need to. A pistol you enjoy with good ammo, some cheaper armor (or no armor), and a cheap headset will help you keep Scavs of all stripes at bay and can even win you the occasional enemy player fight if you catch someone off guard or they’re also running lightly.
One thing I don’t recommend is going into a raid with nothing but your knife. There’s a condition in Tarkov called “Marked and cursed,” which is only active when you’ve got almost nothing equipped. The condition causes enemy AI Scavs to gravitate more toward you and move out of sync with their normal rotations, even chasing you far beyond where they normally would. To avoid being marked and cursed, equip a handgun, a chest rig, and a facemask, and you should be good to go.
Use Grenades Liberally
Grenades are incredibly powerful in Escape from Tarkov, capable of one-shotting any enemy player, no matter how expensive their gear. They have many more uses outside of killing enemies, however. The most important is making someone change position or allowing you to do the same. If you know where someone is, throwing a grenade toward their hiding spot will either kill them or make them move out of cover, giving you a chance to shoot them.
That tactic works in reverse, as well. If you know or suspect someone is holding an angle and you need more freedom to move toward them, chuck a nade in their direction. Whether they’re actually threatened or not, they’ll need to respect where the grenade lands and likely won’t peek you. Those few seconds between throwing the grenade and it exploding are plenty of time to take a more advantageous position or disengage entirely.
Like having the best possible gear, a grenade can act like a second player on your squad, alerting you to threats, neutralizing them, and providing enough cover or distraction to let you reposition or get away. Nades aren’t too expensive, either, so you should always have a few in your pockets when you go into a raid.
Using a grenade does, of course, let everyone else on the map know where you’re fighting, but if you’re looking for PvP, then that’s a bonus. You can also use pulling out the grenade as bait to force enemies to push you. An enemy player will likely hear you pull out the grenade and assume you’re going to be vulnerable while throwing it. However, putting a nade away is faster than throwing, so taking it out and then quickly putting it back in your pockets gives you that split-second advantage while the enemy’s in the running animation.
Those are my biggest tips for surviving more as a solo in Escape from Tarkov. There are lots of other smaller things you can do, from sticking to the edges of the map, avoiding fights entirely, or even waiting fifteen or so minutes as soon as the raid starts for all the more aggro players to get what they want and leave or die. Hopefully, these tips will help keep you alive if you play Tarkov alone. Happy looting!
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