Ghosts of Tabor

Ghosts of Tabor is a shooty game.

Getting Started

The overall premise of the game is a PvPvE arena where you go into an arena (a raid), and there are both AI enemies and human enemies, and loot to collect. You must survive until reaching an exfiltration zone to bring any loot back to your safehouse and make it usable next raid. If you die (or crash) you lose everything you found and everything you brought in. Sounds pretty bad but the economy is pretty loose right now so wealth and weapons aren't hard to come across so you can afford to go on a losing streak most of the time.

Main Menu

Can be accessed with left thumbpad/left thumbstick. It allows you to access the tabor market, the safehouse, the options and the tutorial.

Tutorial

This is a playground with the basic game mechanics able to be practiced.

Familiarise yourself with weapon handling. Trigger for mags, grip for everything else. Same with configuring a rig; put modules on it, then put objects in the module. Ammo loading practice is there too.

You can use the tutorial's food and healing to heal and feed yourself between raids. At least for now, it's something they'll probably patch.

Tabor Market

Where you buy stuff. There are a number of traders, and each trader has a 'trader level' that requires quest xp and buy/sell xp to level up. Low levels you can barely buy anything.

The two most important traders are Spectre (guns and attachments) and Minty (Rigs and backpacks.) Everything else is pointless to level up.

Buying:

• To buy an item, run over to the trader, and select the item you want from the menu on the screen. It will swing into the game on the panel. Scan it with the scanner at your right hip and then go to checkout to buy it.
• Hitting the start favourites that item and you can purchase it from inside the safehouse without having to come out to the market.
• You can scan and favourite pre-configured items. For example; go to minty, take the level 0 rig (the "bra") and attach two primary ammo modules to it. Scan this item, then go to checkout and favourite it. You can then buy this item pre configured which saves a lot of time for 'rat runs' (minimum gear runs).

First time shopping list:

• Pre-configured level 0 chest rig. 2 Primary modules recommended. Favourite this. (from minty)
• Adventure Backpack from minty. Favourite it, buy a few.
• 10 brass, 2 FMJ Powder (from ammo places.) (Favorite these too)
• Pre-configured SKS. Take an SKS, put in a mag. Chamber a round and then replace the magazine, then scan and favourite this. 30+1 SKS good to go pre-configured.
• Favourite the NRS (healing item) just in case. You don't need to buy any since you should start with some and they're easy to find

Advanced:

• Marek sells powder and is easier to level up if you want to get the AP powder.

Safehouse

Where most of your non-raid time will be spent, this is where you sell and store your loot, where you get ready for raids, and where you manage contact lists, squads, and actually deploy on raids.

The main room contains a desk with keycards on it, and the main raid computer near the van. Use the keycards to unlock at least the trade room and the armory. Feel free to unlock the other areas but it's all just more storage or literally nothing at the moment. Some doors don't even work.

Items only save if they are left on marked shelving/surfaces or on mannequins, or on the pre-set weapon walls, or in the lockers. Items left on the floor or not in a distinct area will vanish from existence if you leave the safehouse.

If you leave the safehouse without using the in game main menu (EG alt-f4 or use steamvr quit, or crash) all the items you are carrying will vanish permanently. To be on the safe side, stow items before quitting the game.

Trade room

• Where you sell items and receive items that you have bought. When you buy an item it is delivered in 'purchased items' and you must summon it.
• Sell an item by putting it on the conveyor belt, not leaving the room, and then deciding what to do on the computer screen. Select a vendor to sell it at that price to that vendor, or hit the return arrow in the top right to send it back to purchased items. You can put in your entire back and just click through the buttons but I have tried this with with a full bag 3 times and it has eaten the bag and contents without giving me the items 2/3 times. Useable for bags that only have a couple items but don't trust your entire raid loot to it. You actually need to do this for a few items that the conveyor doesn't pick up like CPUs and RAM.
• Rations are available on the purchased items screen, collect these as a habit during your poor years, since it's an extra bit of money. (The items are borderline unusable but can be sold for better ones).
• There's some shelving too.

Armory

• Storage. The back room has more storage. Store stuff in here. You can put guns and magazines on the wall. Helmets have a tendency to fall through shelving so try to only use the lockers and mannequins for those. If when you put down an item it is RED it is not in the marked area properly. HOWEVER: Attachments sometimes bug out and always show as red regardless, so you're basically at the mercy of 'does it look right' when they do that.
• Ammo manufacturing is also here. To make ammo:

1. Select the ammo type you want. Do this first. If you flick through AP/tracer/FMJ it'll delete the powder and brass you already put in the machine.
2. Put in 1 brass. 1 brass roughly = 1 box of ammo.
3. Pour in a little powder; Like about a second's worth of pour is enough per box usually.
4. Pull the lever.

• Loading magazines

1. Open the box of ammo and tip it into the top of the loader with trigger.
2. Put the magazine into the bottom half. You can also load boxes as if they were magazines.
3. Press load.
4. CAUTION: If you press load without something in the lower half, it will spill the entire contents on the floor.

Maps

Island

Big, lots of loot. All routes lead near research.

<map>

Spawn Locations

Prison spawns:

Near prison; player contact extremely likely.

• Beach Prison
  • North of Prison Camp
• Tranny Pit (or trench)
  • East of prison.
• Hills Prison
  • South of prison

Research Spawns

• Church
  • At the church.
• Garage
  • Fairly rare, is the dark garage underneath research.
• Radio Ridge
  • On the ridge between research and radio
• Tunnel Spawn
  • On the beach near the tunnel
• Car Storage
  • North of garage hill
• Garage Hill
  • On the hill between research and car storage/tents

DNS Spawns

• DNS itself
  • On the beach
• Lighthouse
  • On the beach northwest of lighthouse
• House
  • Right next to house

Exfil Locations

There are multiple exfil spots on island but you will always get exfils that are on the other side of the island from you.

• Boathouse Exfil
  • At the boathouse west of research
  • Used by most players
  • Scavs spawn here

• Dead Nigger Storage (DNS)
  • Down the beach

• Church Road Exfil
  • Past the church is an exfil on the road.

General exfil stretgy is to clear the area before heading to exfil. Exfil camping is rare in tabor due to it being in VR, but you never want to get killed at exfil.

<strategies>

Silo

Small, concentrated loot areas. Quick in and out, very dangerous.

<map?>

<areas of interest>

<strategies>

Items

General Item Advice

• Avoid gear fear. Take in your stuff. I recommend holding in reserve 2-3 of an item in case you have a losing streak and then take in any excess of that item.
• Due to trader levelling, 95% of what you use will be found until spectre level 3.
• Mid tier loot is easy to find.

Weapons

When it comes to weapon damage, it's bullet autism sim damage for the most part. Intermediate cartridges are all similar, higher tier rifle bullets do more damage, and pistol rounds do less damage.

Pistols:

• Glock: Useful with a suppressor to silently kill scavs, or be a 'oh shit my mag is empty' sidearm. Or if you're running very low spec gear. Headshots will kill
• Other pistols: They fire bullets but as effective combat weapons they're emergency use only.

Rifles

Scavs drop Stanag, AKM and SKS mags all the time so using a weapon compatible with these will greatly increase your longevity on raids.

• SKS:
  • Solid trader level 1 rifle. Will be your main powerhouse until automatic assault rifles + optics.
  • Uses SKS mags: Curved magazines with a 'hook'.
  • 7.62x39 Russian.
  • No attachment points
• Galil
  • 5.56 Scav lootable. Automatic, takes stanags (m4 mags)
  • attachment points up front; green optic recommended due to wider aperture.
  • Very good gun with a solid foregrip.
  • Good with foregrip and optic.
• AKM - 7.62x39 russian. Banana mag grey/black. No foregrip/front attachment points. Can take optic with AK butterfly mount rail.
  • Decent with an optic. Low rate of fire, high recoil, similar damage to other intermediate cartridiges (5.56/5.45)
• AK-74 - 5.45 russian. Orange/bakelite banana magazine. Very similar to AKM but with slightly lower recoil.
  • Decent with an optic. Slightly higher rpm and lower recoil than AKM. Intermediate cartridge damage.
• M16. 5.56, stanag mags. Cheap. Useless.
  • Doesn't take an optic or foregrip. Stuck with irons. Not worth selling, not worth bringing in. Emergency use only.
  • Only use is free stanag magazines.
• AKS-74u - AK-74 but worse. Not worth much.
• M4 - 5.56, takes optic + foregrip. Low recoil, high rate of fire. Low cost (requires level 3 spectre)
  • Very good.
• G3 - 7.62x51 (or is it 54?) NATO. High damage, high recoil. Takes optic, no foregrip.
  • Recoil way too high to be practical for 90% of engagements.
• OPSKS - SKS with attachments/optics. Pretty damn good but automatics with low recoil are better.
• G36 - High RPM, good meat grinder. Takes foregrip and optics. Main downside is it doesn't take stanags so you won't be finding free mags.
• AS Val - Built in suppressor. Almost worth it since the suppressor is 8k by itself. Bring lots of mags, you're not looting free stanags. No drums available.
• SCAR - Now affordable, takes stanags. Worth it for cool scar running. Like the M4 but slightly better and tan colored.
• Others - Most higher tier rifles are slightly better but most don't use stanags so make pretty poor daily drivers. They're fun though so if you wanna use one then go ahead they'll kill just fine. Snipers are handicapped a bit by scopes being hard to use.

SMGs

Underrated but they are handicapped by there being no cheap SMGs that take foregrips and optics. The magazines are harder to find too, and you have to bring in all your ammo without relying on resupply in the field.

• MP40 - Solid early game killer. No attachments, you basically just find one and use it same run.
• Tommy Gun - Kills hard, but is expensive.
• MP5 - Easy to find. Irons aren't the best, and to reload you need to open the bolt first. Without practice this might get you killed. However it isn't a bad smg.
• Luty - Huge damage output, massive rpm and huge recoil.
• MP7/MP9/Vector - Expensive. High damage output, low recoil, rare magazines. Absolute killers in silo and at close range. Decent at longer distances too simply due to how many bullets you can put into a target.

Shotguns

All entirely useless, not even going to write about them specifically. (The spread atm is far too wide for them to be effective past 4 metres)

Armor

Important thing to keep in mind about armor is if someone shoots you with FMJ rifle rounds, it will kill you. The armor just buys you a couple more hits - and also works great against pistol rounds. AP ammo MELTS through armor.

Armor is worth taking and using, that plate stops bullets.

• Lvl 0 - "The Bra"
  • Very Cheap, no bullet protection, takes 2 modules.
  • Looks like a forest camo sports bra.
• Lvl 1 - "Green one"
  • 5k ish, takes 3 modules. Small amount of bullet protection.
  • Looks like a forest camo chest rig.
  • Works okay at helping against scavs and their barrage of 9mm
  • Not really worth upgrading to in the field.
  • Not really worth buying either.

• lvl 2 - "Tan armor"
  • Don't know the price, Takes 3 modules. Decent bullet protection.
  • It's tan.
  • These are very common in the field, extremely common to bring a bra and upgrade to the first tan armor you see.
• lvl 3 - "Long Green"
  • Price too much. 4 modules, good bullet protection.
  • It's forest camo and goes down past the waist a little.
  • Not too rare. Good to use.
  • Common tactic is to bring in a tan armor, then upgrade to lvl 4 in the field and use it.
• lvl 4 - "Fort Armor/ Tower Armor"
  • Very expensive. 5 modules. Best bullet protection.
  • It's dark green and looks like american football armor.
  • Pretty rare, but commonly duped
  • found on scav boss/minions in silo
  • Use it if you like I guess.

Helmets

Helmets are about as useful as they are IRL: Pistol rounds and glancing rifle shots are what they protect against. They also only protect the bit of the head they cover so it's perfectly easy to get domed with a shot to the head no matter what you're wearing.

It's hard to carry more than one so it's usual that you'll go in without a helmet and then just use any level 2+ helmet you find in the field until you lose it. Higher level helmets are worth saving for big boy raids though, that extra protection might matter.

• Lvl 1 - "Pilot helmet" - Obscures vision, provides limited protection against glancing pistol rounds. No NVG slot. Sells for ~900.
• Lvl 2 - "Military helm" - Limited protection against pistol rounds, limited protection against glancing rifle rounds.
• Lvl 3 - "Military tan helm" - Same as above
• Higher level helmets:
  • Altyn : Solid Metal look, face shield. No idea how strong it is in game but RL it can stop pistol rounds. No NVG slot.
  • Blue thick one: Probably just a tiny bit better than the military ones.

Attachments/Optics

Attachments are actually extremely useful in this game, but only foregrips and optics.

To attach one, move it towards the rail, position it, and then release grip.

To remove one, move your hand close enough to the attachment to see T+G, then press trigger, then press grip to pull it off. Some are more awkward than others.

Lasers / Flashlight

Everyone in 50m will know your exact location when you use one of these. The only use for the flashlight is seeing into dark loot boxes or helping you kill scavs in dark areas. Make sure to turn these off. They sell for a decent amount so you should always take them for selling.

Players with these are usually loot pinatas. 3k bonus for the kill.

Foregrips

Foregrips reduce recoil on firearms, but require a forward rail to be useful.

General rule: More expensive the better; more recoil absorption. The most expensive ones absorb so much recoil it makes it a ridiculous proposition to use anything else if you can help it. Angled foregrips got more rare so you should always pick these up, they're worth their weight in gold. Common in keycard rooms but keycards are hyper rare so it doesn't matter any more.

Careful not to confuse the mini halo grip (looks like a paralellogram) with the higher end one that has a notch for a finger. The angle side grip is the best one so finding these is always good.

You can buy the combat foregrip, which is okay, from lvl 3 spectre.

Foregrips are extremely effective at increasing your ability to put more bullets into a target so should be used whenever possible.

Optics

There's a number of optics, most are holo-style while some are zoomed optics. The zoomed optics are pretty hard to use since they are basically just cameras. Extreme range engagements are very hard to do; motion tracked controllers don't really allow the kind of stablity you need to perform shots reliably over 100m; ever tried to do long range shooting without resting the gun on something?

• Kobra. Red T shaped sight. Overall the best sight to use. It's zeroed dead on and is easy to find. You can find 2-5 out of a successful raid so running out of them is rarely a concern. Due to the zero this is best to usewhere the irons interfere with the sight picture; such as the M4, SCAR, and higher end weapons.
• Green Optic - Green ^ shaped sight. Most important is that the zero is off, you need to shoot a bit higher than the target to hit. This optic is 'pointed' a little downwards so on guns with pointy up sights it will be partially obscured by the irons. Useful on AKs, G3s. Overall these should just be kept for emergencies where you run out of kobras.
• EOTech Holo + Zoom - EOTech Holo with a flippable zoom lens. The basic holo is very good but flipping the zoom down out of the way so you can actually use the optic properly is a pain. It's also pretty expensive, and it's uncommon to find.
• ACOG - Expensive. Probably the best zoom scope, but that's not saying much. When combined with a tilt rail and another optic this gives you good long range/short range capability.
• 4-12x scope - Looks like it fits on a sniper rifle. Adjustable zoom for different ranges of engagement. Rare, expensive, hard to use.
• Red dot - Red dot shaped optic. Is pretty small, you can fit it on a pistol with enough tilt rails. They're small and the aparture isn't as good as other optics. good to sell, but kobras are better.

Suppressors

Suppressors in tabor currently work by making the entire weapon silent past 20yd or so. There's no supersonic or subsonic consideration. Bullet impacts still make noise but overall suppressors are incredibly good. The only reason not to use a suppressor is you're too poor for it. There's no difference in suppression effect between various types; they all make it silent. They were recently nerfed a little bit as gunshot falloff got changed for the worse (gunshots atm are either 'oh it's <200yd away' or silence.

Each class of weapon has a suppressor for it; they're not caliber restricted. For example: Pistol, LMG, Rifle, SMG. They are always a good find because even the ones with little practical use still sell for a decent chunk of money.

• Rifle and SMG suppressors should basically never be sold. They're extremely valuable, mainly because they are suppressors for weapons you can actually use effectively.
• Pistol suppressors are okay for scav clearing inside buildings or in silo if you don't have a rifle or smg suppressor. Due to that long list of conditions for these to be useful, sell most of these. Keep a few just for fun.
• LMG suppressors are currently the most useless. Because there are no good LMGs in the game. They sell for a lot, and you can often sell one and almost make enough to buy a rifle suppressor.

Misc Attachments

• AK Rail Attachment - All optics are picatinny/NATO rails so to put an optic on an AK style gun (AK, vintorez, dragunov, etc, but not the galil) - you need one of these. Awkward colliders, a little bulky for what it's worth, but invaluable and should be looted as it makes your AKs usable.
• Tilt rail - Allows multiple optics 'tilted' out. Can do funny things like make a spiral of these to put optics on pistols, or use a rail on the galil to spiral an optic out. Late game you can combine with a zoom optic and red dot to get quick range options. Imagination is the limit but practically not super useful.

Typical Loadouts

With everything but rat tier; you can (and should) always bring something nicer if you have it, but the examples here are mostly to show what you can affordably lose without issue.

Most recommendations here are for Island or other general purpose maps. Silo is polarising in its gear choices; you either want to bring in top tier gear to help survive and hit the key card room, or almost nothing so you don't lose much.

Rat Tier

Absolutely bottom of the barrel; you go in with nothing and either come out with something or die horribly. Productive simply because you can die multiple times failing and the one success will pay for the backpacks you wasted. Recommended most on Silo; island is too large and fenixes will tear you apart before you get a weapon.

• Adventure Backpack

Starting/Poor Tier

Island

This is when you have a little gear, such as the starting gear and traders and you aim to bring enough to take on fenixes but to upgrade everything in the field. There's not much choice in weapons: Bring something nicer if you have it.

• Adventure Backpack
• SKS with 1 extra magazine
• Lvl 0 Armor with 1-2 primary modules.
• NRS for fenix chip damage.

You basically upgrade to almost anything else on the field. SKS is tricky to reload so practice reloading it before going out.

Why not a glock or pistol? They don't have the range needed; fenixes shoot you from 100-150m. One exception is the ruger. It is almost as quiet as a suppressed weapon and should take out a scav with a headshot. Pick one up and use it on scavs to stay silent.

Silo

• Adventure Backpack
• Some kind of cheap smg you have lying around.

Mid Tier

You've gone in a few times and looted some stuff. Maybe you have spectre level 2 for some optics too. Either way this tier is full of gear that is very common on raids and easily purchased from lvl 2 spectre.

Keep in mind that the kobra and green optics have different zeros. Check the zero on an optic you're not familiar with before trying to kill players with it using the safehouse target.

• Adventure Backpack

Weapon Choice

• Galil with foregrip + green optic. Foregrips reduce recoil and the optic helps with aim. Cheap foregrips are super common so there's no excuse not to foregrip whenever you can, the benefits are tangible. More expensive foregrips do more recoil reduction though. Takes stanags, which are reasonably common; lootable from other galils you find, m16s, m4s, etc. Scavs rarely spawn with these now so they're a little rarer but still common in weapon lockers.
• AKM with kobra and side-rail attachment. No foregrip; but ammo extremely common and in an emergency you can transfer 7.62x39 from SKS mags. Magazines cheaper than stanags.
• AK-74. Same as above but ammo less common; AKS-74u and AK-74s spawn sometimes though, but don't rely on field mags. Mags also cheaper than stanags.

Armor choice

You need to level minty to buy anything more than a lvl0 so what you will have available will depend on what you've found. Rule for any armor is upgrade in the field. Armor boxes are everywhere but tan armor is easy to find, short green is VERY easy to find. Higher level armors spawn more often in research. DNS and prison are good stops for some tan armor if you need to upgrade since they both have 2-3 armor crates.

• Lvl 0 - Upgrade in the field ASAP. To anything.
• Lvl 1 - Short green - Take em if you have em, they're not worth much to sell and will stop a 9mm.
• lvl 2 - Tan - Take them as a solid armor; they can definitely save your life from a close up burst from a rifle by eating a couple shots for you. Getting DNS exfil is a great chance grab these.

Helmet

Upgrade in the field. The head makes a good place to store a low tier helmet you find and sell that for 900 or so.

High Tier

You've either looted enough to fund this or have spectre level 3 and a bunch of money. Once you have the gear or money to run this tier of gear you should take it every island raid.

• Geartech G4 if you have some. Else, adventure backpack.

Weapons

Take a suppressor every raid. They're currently broken as shit and make your shots silent from more than 20yd away.

The lack of AKs is because they don't take foregrips.

• M4 with high level foregrip and kobra optic. Low recoil, high rpm. Fire in bursts of 4-5, or spam bullets. Used as a bullet hose, you can kill many player targets simply by hosing them with rounds. Single shot or 2-3 shot bursts for scavs. You eat up ammo REALLY fast.
  • Bring 4 magazines. You can also loot some but player encounters eat up ammo really fast.
• SCAR, high level foregrip, kobra optic. Low recoil, medium RPM. Fire in bursts of 2-3. Very accurate bursts, more damage than the M4, and about 1k more from spectre.
  • Again takes stanags.
• Any weapon that can put lots of bullets into a target. SMGs are okay as you can simply put 10 shots into a target within a second or so with a magdump, but you'll burn through ammo and will not be able to find any more.

Armor

• Tan armor. 3 primary modules.
• Short green is okay if you have some lying around that you want to use.
• Long green good too if you have some lying around.

Helmet

In this tier I recommend taking in a helmet you found from the last raid (the non-pilot ones). They aren't actually super effective at keeping you alive but since you only have one life you might as well.

Rich Tier

• Geartech G4

Weapons

• Same as High Tier but with drum mags and AP ammo. AP melts through armor and is a notable edge against other kitted players.
• G36 - Little less accurate but it takes a foregrip and has a high RPM with low recoil.
• Any weapon that takes a foregrip and an optic will be fine. The lack of drum mags for the AS Val/Vintorez makes them pretty hard though.

Armor

• Long green or tan armor.

Helmet

• The tier 2 and 3 helmets are worth taking usually.

Big Boy Raid

These raids are typically keycard runs on silo. On these you take the best stuff you have with the plan to not die. Go in a squad, so if one of you dies the others can pick up anything particularly valuable. You're not going to get wiped by an errant player but the lead player when moving around might get hosed.

Take the large backpack.

Weapon

• High RPM low recoil close quarters weapons. M4, G36 - AP ammo. You do not want to die because you hit some plate.

Armor

Best you have.

Helmet

Best you have.

Loot

Things to loot:

The locations of all the loot spawns are static, but there's a chance of getting nothing from a box or location.

• Boxes. These are obvious.
• Filing cabinets: both the 4stack and the 2stack small ones contain loads of stuff. Do not miss these. Loot from the bottom up.
• Lockers: Contain weapons usually.
• Desks/Tables/Shelving/some floors - There's loot sometimes spawning out in the open. There are only specific points though and you just kinda need to learn them or keep your eyes open.

Keycards:

You can find keycards in the map that open up special keycard rooms that have very high chances to spawn very good loot. At the moment there are purple and orange keycards. Purple keycards do nothing, they don't open anything and they don't sell for anything. Orange keycards are exceptionally rare and open the rooms. Due to the changes in keycards it is likely you will never see an orange keycard.

(There was a change; people were duping purple keycards so much the devs decided to change the keycard rooms to take orange keycards. And then didn't remove the purple keycard spawns. And then made orange keycards super rare. The irony is that the kit inside the keycard rooms is now not as rare as the keycards for the most part; although most super-high tier loot can only spawn in the keycard rooms.)

There's two keycard rooms:

• Island of Tabor: Military prison, guard tower floor 1.
• Silo: Floor 4, next to the office/store backrooms. Same level as garage, you can reach it through the red areas.

Keycards spawn in a number of locations, most common on island:. Note that they spawn sideways and are kinda hard to see.

• Island: Research. Conference room, shelf in storage under the small box, reception desks. Inside keycard room. SOMETIMES in radio's desk drawers.
• Silo: Inside keycard room.

Prison's is currently easier. Silo you can hit fast and hard but player confrontation is likely.

Stuff worth looting:

• Orange Keycards. Broken rare, treat it as a mission priority.
• Pistols: Glock and Tokarev only. Everything else is worth crap.
• Certain high value weapons: AK Alpha (AK with front rails) for example.
• Food. All food. Cat food is worth 300 though so eat that first if hungry in a raid.
• Optics and foregrips. You'll want to keep the nice foregrips usually.
• GPUs, flight recorders, PSUs, usb sticks, electronic wallets, cpus, RAM; Most misc electronic stuff is good.
• Full magazines for guns you use. Stanags, AK mags. The ammo inside is worth 2 times as much as the magazine. But to USE, not to sell.
• Drum mags. Useful to use; they're worth a little to sell but stanag drums are extremely useful.
• Higher end SMGs that fit in your bag. MP9, agram, MP7, etc. Basically only because they fit in the bag.
• Walky Talkies. There's a minty quest for 2 of these that's 4k xp. Collect two, then accept the quest and hand them over.
• Night Vision Goggles. All NVGs are worth a decent chunk of money, it's sad that they have little tactical value. The tan ones are worth quest XP though on minty.
• Flashlights, lasers. Worth a decent chunk of money and tactically useless. Lasers in real life don't leave a massive fucking laser trail telling everyone on the map where you are.
• NRS. They sell for about 1.4k and with scavs being snipers now you will want to bring 1-2 into each raid. Keep a nice pile of these and then sell the excess.
• Water. Due to new food drain speed, water bottles should be taken on sight and then drank when you need the bag space. The big blue bottles contain way more water than the small silver ones. The small silver ones contain about 1/2 your water bar. Silver ones sell for ~900, while big blue ones sell for 1.5k. Since pistols don't make up your bag space any more these are worth taking most of the time.
• Money. It is not worth much; like 100-300 kopeks, but it's tiny and stacks in the bag easily.
• Brass jars. Rare though.
• AP Powder, FMJ powder, tracer powder. It's kinda bulky but it saves you 1.2k when buying your own, and the AP powder is locked behind difficult traders. Tracer just sell. It's worth over 1k I think.
• 1 Helmet, Wear helmets and upgrade as you find them. The shitty helmet is worth 900 kopeks and you can store it on your head. Helmets are hard to loot and not all that useful.
• Mid-high tier armor. Upgrade armor when you find it. Only take extras if you can exfil safely since it will use up a hand. The extra second spent dropping the armor and grabbing your weapon is an extra second of someone shooting at you. You can't take anything out if you die, remember that. DNS exfil is great since there are two armor boxes right next to the exit.
• Big Backpack. The Geartech G4 is great. Upgrading in the field is a massive pain though since you have to transfer items. It's best if you put your old bag down, and while holding the new bag pull items from your old and put them in the new. Run somewhere out of the way to do this, and do this fast and after clearing the area.

Stuff not worth looting:

• Purple Keycards. They don't open anything and you can't even sell them. Less value than a spoon.
• Most magazines. They're too cheap now; the ammo inside them is worth more than the magazine. Empty mags are pretty worthless. Good news is feel free to not care about empty mags in a raid so much. Stanags and above are worth just enough to spend a little effort but if you're in a firefight just drop it and don't bother looking for it.
• Chargers, spark plugs, 'piles of stuff' eg capacitors, nuts and bolts, steel. The quest xp reward isn't actually worth the effort and they sell for shit. (At least right now)
• Pistols, most weapons. Only loot weapons you use, or exceptions for weapons that are on the higher end of value.
• Most ammo/AP ammo. If it's in a calibre you can use, check how many rounds are in the box. You can't sell ammo boxes so only loot it if you want to use it.
• Loose brass. Sure it saves 600 kopeks in theory but in practice there's a bug where it doesn't come with you to the safehouse.
• Spoons. They sell for 0. They let you eat faster, but in practice eating without a spoon is fast enough. (Protip: Eating increases thirst, spoons let you eat fast enough to die of dehydration)

Tactics

There are several core principles of combat that will help you kill that aren't just click head.

• Awareness. This is most important part of every engagement by far. Where are players spawning, where are players going, what are they doing, where players aren't.
• Coordination and communication. In a squad you cannot just shoot anything that moves. You must be able to share where you are and where enemies are and what noises you made so you can shoot things that aren't them.
• Speed and timing. The more time you are in an area, the more time people have to come find you. Same with looting; you're vulnerable when looting so be quick.
• Weapon Readiness. Your weapon is your life and it should be ready and in the fire mode you thought it was in at all times. Magazines should be checked, firemode should be confirmed.
• Weapon use. Know where your zero is and practice getting the sight on target, the positioning is different for each gun/optic. Practice recoil control as this varies too. You don't get much shooting practice in the field so get the basics down first. You must know how to use your weapon.
• Keeping your opponents from being able to do any of the above.

Awareness

There are many things to be doing to stay aware of where players are and where they aren't.

• Concentrate on what you don't know. Knowing you don't know something keeps you cautious, while ignoring that you don't know something gets you killed. For example: some approaches to some areas you can't see the doors. In those cases, you now know that you do not know if players are there or not. If there's also no fenixes outside that's another clue but sometimes they don't spawn outside. So you now know that you don't know.

• Spawn locations. Players will spawn in set locations and then usually head to the nearest lootable. Learn these locations as they tell you where people can come from.
  • For example: You spawn in tranny trench. You know that there are prison-spawns of hill prison and beach prison. There's also church and car storage but that's further away. You skip looting the crap nearby and immediately head to hill prison along the hill-line. People there? Kill them before they expect contact. If not, sit on the hill waiting for the beach-prison spawn to run through the prison cells or hit the guard house. Church might come along later so keep an eye from there.

• Doors. Doors are nearly impossible to close properly so they're always left open. Fenixes do not open doors. (Their ragdolls can knock a door open though...) Know which doors are 'always open' and one that are openable and visually confirm their status before moving up. Closed doors usually means no players. Keep in mind multiple entrances! Know every exit and entrance to an area.
  • Take a quick thought about the direction in which the doors have been opened. Indicates player direction.
• Loot. Loot boxes and filing cabinets and lockers all open is an obvious sign of players. Keep in mind that some players re-close stuff after they've looted it. All open is a reliable indicator, all closed should not be relied on. Also note that lots of players skip filing cabinets because they're absolutely retarded and don't know they're missing out on like 10-50k of loot every run.
  • Don't loot before clearing an area. Especially if you kill 1-2 players. The third often goes silent and they're very angry.

• Fenixes (or 'scavs' from tarkov). They must be killed for a player to run through an area. Alive scavs are usually the most positive indication that there are no players in that area.
  • They first get 'angry' at a player and run towards them and point a gun in their direction, and then start shooting at long range. Patrolling scavs are unaggroed. So if you see fenixe running around angry in the distance, they've seen a player. Most likely you, but possibly not
  • When scavs die they drop a weapon and three magazines. Their bodies also despawn after a few minutes but the weapons/magazines do not. You can use this information to judge how recently a player has been through the area.
  • Scavs also respawn after a time, it's not uncommon to see scavs walking around an area with the doors open. In this case the player is long gone, or is hiding in a corner waiting for you.
  • Scav is easier to say
  • Visually identified by black clothing. Not the helmet.

• Gunshots. There's a lot in a gunshot
  • The fact there are gunshots. Gunshots are only made by players and scavs shooting at players.
  • The fact that there weren't gunshots. If you hear scav dying/shooting noises but no gunshots, suppressors are nearby. Players using suppressors are likely much better than average.
  • How many - Player on player tends to be LOTS of gunfire, while scav on player or player on scav tends to be a lot lighter and often one sided. Player on player in research is very noisy.
  • Type of gun. Fenixes only shoot makarov, glock, luty, galil, AKM and SKS and very rarely a bizon. These are guns often used by players, but if you hear something a scav doesn't spawn with, that's 100% a player. Actually telling the difference between guns is pretty much experience, but it's fairly easy to tell between pistol calibers, the luty, and the rifles. Note that scavs can shoot the SKS as if it were full auto. Pistols sound like pistols; weaker shots. Luty is a high rpm brap. Rifles have sharper more powerful reports.
  • Rhythm of gunfire: Scavs shoot in predictable patterns while players will be more chaotic with shots.
  • How far away: Louder guns travel further; EG the 50cal can be heard across the entire map while pistols are much closer. If you hear pistol shots and it isn't a scav shooting at you, go on alert.
  • What direction: Gunshots will usually come from where scavs are. Research, tents, radio, prison, DNS, the road around car storage. Note that vertical distance is nearly impossible to determine.
• Fenix Noises: Fenixes make walking sounds, shooting sounds, and angry polish czech talking, and death sounds. When they walk they tend to patrol around an area and be less directional (IE not hitting the lootables). Their death sound is different than a player death sound. (I think, but it rarely matters)
• Player noises: Players also make walking, shooting and talking sounds. But if you hear backpack sounds, gun hitting something sounds, magazine or weapon noises they can only come from players, and these are quietish sounds so they are really close. Note that verticality isn't calculated in, so if someone is directly above you it is possible to hear their looting noises as if they were next to you (Same with scav noises).
  • "Squeaky doors" and keycard rooms also make noise when opened. At the moment the range on both is about 50m. Not a big deal on island but on silo this matters.
• Visual Identification of Players: Basically don't forget to look for players. Looking in places they often are located is a good habit but in my experience they can be pretty much anywhere and you can't win them all. Once visual contact is established with a player you are on a timer and that timer either is until they notice you or until they kill you or run away.
  • Spawn-->Exfil routes are the most common places to find players. For example, the route through to radio is the most heavily frequented. When on that hill yourself, check the floors. Start with F2 orange stairs. Players are easiest to see there, and if you see scavs you might be able to relax. When players are on f1 and ground they are less likely to be looking out windows, but those orange stairs are F1 AND F2 and there's nice big windows for them to be seen and to see. Also when in research check that hill for a few seconds when you can.
  • Spawn-->Loot areas are common routes. Players often move slowly so if you can run fast to a common route you can catch them off guard.
  • "Skylining" and hills. If you crest a hill, your player model is much more highly visible against the sky than it is against the ground and you are shootable from both sides at once. Check skylines first since they're quick to check and players sitting there will be the most dangerous.
  • Differences between fenixes and players: Scavs will be wearing black clothes. Players are tan/green.
• Dropped loot.
  • Fenixes drop a gun (commonly looted) and 3 magazines. Easy to spot and ID. Their corpses tend to last a while, but the loot they drop stays the entire raid.
  • Players drop what they were carrying, which ranges from absolutely nothing, to their backpack/armor/helmet/weapon. These items are often floating in place and are easy to see. Their corpses despawn pretty fast: If you're unsure if you killed someone or if it was a scav or player, the player corpse will despawn after like 20 seconds.

Known Jank

LAST UPDATED 30th MAY

There's a bunch of glitches that bugs that affect gameplay, and it's good to know what can be done so you can operate around it. This will attempt to be accurate up until the date set above.

Items

• Items can appear on different locations for different players. If an item has flown away by itself and you have party members they might be able to 'resync' it for you and make it appear.
• Healing: If you try and heal another player it will attach to them but will often not heal them. When sharing heals, drop them.
• Bag-position desync. Other player's arranged items will often be slightly out of sync and this will cause collision issues that will cause backpacks to spiral around and fly into the air. This is clientside. How to handle this is to let go as soon as possible, ideally getting inside first. Then have a teammate rearrange the items for you since they might be in sync on his screen. note: this is why you sometimes see your squadmate's bags spinning around wildly, it's fine on their screen. Ammo boxes are very commonly the cause of this. Helmets can do this too. Protip: Add ammo boxes to your bag on purpose to cause desyncs so that if someone kills you they can't keep your bag.
• Weapon Bagging. If a weapon is held in the hand in or near a backpack when it is released to go back onto the back, the backpack can catch your weapon and send it to another dimension. The weapon is sent so far and fast it is gone for every player and not just you. To counter, exercise good weapon/bag discipline. When looting, have your primary either stowed or put down somewhere. When checking your back, move the primary well away from the bag before letting go of the bag. This can be used offensively to vanish weapons on the map you can't carry, but it's quicker and pretty much just as effective to just take the mag and chuck it somewhere.
• Weapon stuck in object. Weapons can get stuck in things. To get them out, empty your holster space, and then holster the weapon from the object. This will teleport it out.
• Bag colliders. It's possible to get your bag colliding with your weapon: IE you try and shoulder your weapon and the stock collides with the bag and you cannot aim properly. Not sure of everything that causes it but helmets in bags causes this. When you get this, exfil ASAP; fixing it in the field is very time consuming.
• Conveyor Bag Eating. In theory you can put a bag full of items on the belt and have all the items come up. In practice, the system will eat your bag and all the items without giving you a chance to sell or return anything. It's still often worth putting in the bag if it's just a bunch of low value items you can't be bothered to individually sell, or for items you have to put in the bag to sell like ram and CPUs, but keep in mind that every time is a risk.
• Attachments on Guns: These might float in the air. Don't bother fixing them because it will bug out again when you reload the safehouse. This happens to weapons you bring into raids; reattach on spawn.

Wall Glitches

Update: 26th May patch: Wall/floor glitches should have been patched now.

There's a number of locations where players can glitch into the floor or wall. They can see and shoot you but you cannot see them, making it a one-sided death to be caught by someone doing this in those areas. I'm not entirely sure how the glitching is done but the following areas are likely affected:

Silo:

• Elevator shaft at the top near the ladder. This has a massive impact on silo as the elevator loot room is the central room people go to and will always see action, and so it is the most likely place someone will glitch into the wall. Overall assessment: Silo is completely broken. Avoid. There's an okay chance someone won't do this but overall it reduces the profitability of elevator runs enough so they're no longer worth it except if you're desperate.

Island:

• Boathouse. People can glitch into the floor. Exfil extremely dangerous. Boathouse was already risky but until this is fixed consider boathouse a no-go area.
• Armory on F1 research. Apparently there's a glitch here too. I've never seen it, however.

Duping

Update: 26th May patch: A number of duping methods have been patched, but chances are they didn't get all of them.

There's a number of ways to dupe and I'm not going to tell you how here, but it will impact what you do with items. Duped items often are unkeepable as they will be despawned during a dupe clear wave. Items are duped and then used immediately to get around this; when you find a item that is likely duped, sell it. The money stays but your wall trophy will probably despawn. The short answer is that you should just sell high level items you find on players.

Items that are often duped are high-level items:

• Weapons like 50cals, m249s, AK alphas. Super super rare stuff some of which doesn't even spawn.
• Apparel; high tier armor, big backpacks, high tier NVG.
• Keycards. Keycards on players should be used as soon as possible, they cannot be trusted.

Players that dupe are often fucking terrible at the game and are easy marks lots of the time, but if they have a 50cal and high tier armor they can still get a lucky shot off and blap you with their 50cal with laser instead of optic.

The devs can detect duping and people do it anyway.

You can hear the 50cal from across the map, so count the shots. Each magazine is ten rounds, and dupers often forget to dupe the extra mags. Lots of the time their aim will be shit and they'll be popping shots off at scavs and burn through their entire and only magazine and then leave the map once they're dry. Very funny to hear. Still, 50cals will one shot through any armor on any part of the body, worth avoiding.

Sound

There's some jank with sounds. Sounds being a main source of awareness, you need to know about sounds.

• Gun shots have a stepped falloff at the tail end. IE you can go from 'oh gunshot in the distance' to 'absolute silence' in a single step. Noticable in squads since you can be a 10ft apart and not hear gunshots that they do.
• Verticality of steps and voice is off. Walking and speaking below or above you can sound like it's right next to you sometimes. This has gotten better but keep in mind it is very difficult to tell vertical distance.

TikTok

Tabor is quest crossplay. Usually in games this is a living nightmare but for this you get to shoot children and steal their stuff. Anyway; Exploits get around via TikTok because it's all kids and zoomzooms sharing this information.

Crashes

• Safehouse crash: 26th May patch introed a crash where you can just die if you try and put anything down in your safehouse inside a 'saved' area such as a weapon wall or shelf. The conveyor's stored items is probably safe. Pretty sure this is fixed now, I've not seen a safehouse crash from this since the hotfix.
• Crashing on a raid: If someone crashes in a raid they become invincible after a short period of time and their stuff is unlootable. If a pal crashes or you crash the crashed body needs to be killed to recover their items. Usually it's best after this to grab their stuff and yeet to exfil; dangerous though since the squad is smaller and you'll usually have no hands free.