General overview of the game and the implemented skills system

Escape From Tarkov is a first person shooter. It aims at you going into raids with your character to find better gear and loot. To achieve this you can loot items from killed AI and players or find loot laying around. You then extract found gear and can shift it over to your stash.

The survivability of your character later on plays a more and more important role. BSG tries to give a more in depth feeling by adding their skill system to the game. While BSG's focus is still on realism the skill system enables you to customise your PMC further. Although you could argue that we can compare skills to IRL some of them have a role playing focus such as Charisma.

The new Skill System introduced with 0.12.1.5449

With the introduction of the new skill system BSG tried to stop players from heavy skill point gain. The main problem was that people were abusing mechanics to maximise skills in a very short period. It also tries to prevent players from power levelling. Power levelling is when you focus on training a single skill.

Since the implementation the skill gain consists of four phases. The picture below depicts the course for skill points gained throughout all three cycles. While the fourth cycle is a pause for about five minutes.

This allows us to divide the course into three phases that we break down from picture one to four below:

#1 #2 #3 #4

With the four phases identified we can complete the first graph like this:

The boost phase is only active once per raid. Once the player reached into the exhaustion phase, a pause of five minutes will bring him back to the normal phase. A visual bug prevents the player from seeing the phase reset. This means the player needs to perform the paused skill once in order for the red triangle to disappear. Although the exhaustion phase won’t be shown before you reached 50% it is already active from 90% on. In order to regain the boost phase, the player would have to start a new raid.

The percentage is the indication of how much skill gain the player will receive from 100% of the normal skill gain.

During the exhaustion phase, the percentage will decline visibly from 50% to 25% to 12% etc. This pattern goes down to 1%. Even if 0% are shown the player will still receive skill points as it really is 0.1%.

The three main phases can be identified through a blue and red triangle at the far right of the skill bar. The normal phase has no visible indication.

Once the player pauses for five minutes a current bug will still show the red triangle until the skill has been used once.

The Video on my YouTube for this can be found here .

Table of all active skills as of 0.12.4 and their most beneficial effects

Skill	Benefits when maxed out
Endurance	150% more Stamina, 500% faster Stamina Recovery
Strength	75% Sprint speed, 25% Throw distance, Only backpack weight counts
Health	Offline Regeneration (.12), Decrease chance of fractures (60%)
Metabolism	Decrease rate of forgetting phys. Skills (100%), no dehydration and exhaustion effects
Vitality	Bleeds automatically stop, decreased chance of bleeding (60%)
Stress Resistance	Berserk Mode (Speed Boost, DMG Reduction), decreased chance of pain shock (50%)
Perception	Loot proximity notification, increased hearing distance
Attention	Instant search containers, double looting exp, looting speed
Memory	Do not forget any skills
Charisma	Increased profit from selling to traders, decreased trader prices
Pistol	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
SMG	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Assault Rifle	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Shotgun	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Sniper	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
LMG	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Throwables	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Melee	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
DMR	Reduced Recoil 25%, Increased Reload Speed 20%, Increased weapon switching speed 40%
Recoil Control	Increase recoil control 45%
Covert Movement	Increase speed of crouch and prone movement, Noises you make are reduced
Search	Search two things at the same time (rig+pockets etc), increased search speed
Mag Drills	Check mags instantly when moving to your character

Endurance

Endurance is by far the most beneficial skill at max level and complemented by strength. With the high stamina recovery it allows you to run across the maps with only small downtime's.

Benefits

• Increases stamina (+150% at Elite Level)
• Decreases jump stamina drain (-50% at Elite Level)
• Increases breath holding time (+250% at Elite Level)
• Decreases breath recovery time (-500% at Elite Level)
• Elite level : +150% stamina, -500% breath recovery time

How to gain skill points

Skill points in Endurance are gained through walking when NOT overweight. This means:

Your max weight – 10% allows you to gain Endurance. Here is an example: Your Max weight is 40Kg. That means you will gain Endurance Skill Points by Walking until 36Kg. When you’re 36.1Kg you won’t receive Skill points through walking.

Using only the boost phase with 5.1 Skill points per 10 Minutes per raid will be the fastest current way to maximise Endurance. While the skill points needed from level nine on are capped at 100 the Raids needed are at about 19 and the time that has to be spent per level is at about 3.2h.

Measuring both methods, using a full Raid with pauses of 5 Minutes every 10 Minutes or exiting the raid after ten minutes, the following table shows that the boost method is the most efficient one:

40% Boost
Method	WALKING Boost to 50%
Total skill points	4650
Raids Needed	1367.6
In-Raid Hours Needed	117.4
Match time (Hours)	68.4
Total Hours Needed	185.8

40% Boost
Method	WALKING Entire Raid
Total skill points	4650
Raids Needed	465.0
In-Raid Hours Needed	372.0
Match time (Hours)	23.3
Total Hours Needed	395.3

In addition, the two tables below show the current status of skill gain per minute:

Start	Min Walking	Skill gain	Min Walking / Sprinting	Skill gain	Boost
14.7	1	0.6	1	0.7	No
14.7	2	1.2	2	1.4	No
14.7	3	1.9	3	1.9	No
14.7	4	2.5	4	2.4	No
14.7	5	2.8	5	2.7	No
14.7	6	3

Start	Min Walking	Skill gain	Min Walking / Sprinting	Skill gain	Boost
1.4	1	0.6	1	0.6	No
1.4	2	1	2	1.3	No
1.4	3	1.7	3	1.8	No
1.4	4	2.3	4	2.3	No
1.4	5	2.8	5	2.6	No

The conclusion for this is that if you would walk for longer, sprint boosts from lower times become irrelevant and even problematic because the skill gain seems to be less than by just walking.

The most recent Video on my YouTube for this can be found here .

Strength

Strength is the second most beneficial skill in Tarkov. It allows you to sprint faster, jump higher and throw farther. With the update of the weight system, the elite perk is more powerful than ever. It should not go unmentioned that during testing with different strength levels sprinting and walking from point A to point B, the measurements revealed that the sprint speed bonus seems to be only at 25%.

Benefits

• Increases carrying weight (+50% at elite level)
• Increases sprint speed (+75% at elite level)
• Increases jump height (+11% at elite level)
• Increases throw distance (+25% at elite level)
• Increases melee strike power (+30% at elite level)
• Elite level : Only backpack weight is counted

How to gain skill points

There are multiple ways to gain skill points for strength. The most inefficient way timewise but one of the cheaper ones is walking around OVERWEIGHT. Another way, the fastest but most expensive is to throw grenades.

The most efficient way to maximise your strength skill is by using your melee weapon that gives you 0.1 skill point per hit. Since this is the case, you can obviously abuse this by hitting a friend of yours continuously while he heals himself up. Because of the exhaustion system in place it is better to leave the raid after a certain amount of hits and do a restart because of the advantage the boost phase will give. You can find the graphs showing you how many hits and hours are needed in the following sections.

The picture below shows the best amount of grenades when using the 40% skill gain from the air filter in your hideout versus not using it:

From a total hours needed perspective, the graph below depicts both methods again, while highlighting the needed grenades a bit better:

This is because of the boost phase that you have, meaning the 129% to 101% skill increase, per raid. In total it will take you around 72 hours with and 90 hours without your hideout air filter boost while you throw 29 versus 33 grenades per raid. Ultimately, your hideout boost will not only save time but cost you a lot less.

While the hitting method does not cost you as much as throwing grenades and therefore wasting money, it is a bit slower. That is until your Endurance is at a certain level which decreases the time needed to recover stamina to hit again. The graph below will give you some insights to how many hours you need with a level zero account versus a level 16 Endurance account. Both accounts had no hideout boost activated:

The amount of hits per Raid are also affected by the time needed to recover stamina meaning that if you take too long it is not worth staying rather than starting a new raid.

If we compared both accounts with the boost active the graph would change but you can see that the stamina recovery from the level zero account goes up as well and leads to a higher needed time to the max level if the player would continue:

Assault Rifles & other weapon skills

The Assault Rifle skill like all other rifle and pistol skills gives you huge advantages that you do not want to miss out on. Based on your preferred loadout you want to focus on three skills. So if you like to run the MP5 more than actual assault rifles you would want to level up SMG’s instead of assault rifles. For Tasks you are asked to level up sniper rifles as well and I recommend to level up pistols for a fast way to switch between your weapons. The general idea to level them up is the same however with Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles there is a faster method.

Benefits

• Reduces weapon recoil (-25% at elite level)
• Increases reload speed (+20% at elite level)
• Increases weapon switching speed (+40% at elite level)
• Elite level : Doubles mastery gain

How to gain skill points

To gain skill points in any weapon category all you need to do as per 0.12.4 is to reload your weapon. You can also shoot and hit targets that gives you skill points namely 0.1 per hit. Every fourth reload, you will gain 0.1 skill point.

How to speed gain skill points in Sniper Rifles

In order to speed up the skill gain in sniper rifles, you can reload a Mosin with an internal magazine to gain ~0.1 skill points per reload and it will take about 46 hours. Since the reload speed increases with every new level, times may vary.

How to speed gain skill points in Assault Rifles

The same method used to speed level sniper rifles can be applied to assault rifles. You are doing the exact same thing with the SKS which counts as Assault Rifle and its internal magazine.

Below is a table depicting the current cycle for reloading an SKS with the phase cycle and amount of reloads:

Start	Reload	Skill gain	Phase
0.0	1	0.2	Boost
0.2	1	0.2	Boost
0.4	1	0.2	Boost
0.6	1	0.2	Boost
0.8	1	0.2	Boost
1.0	1	0.2	Boost
1.2	1	0.2	Normal
1.4	1	0.1	Normal
1.5	1	0.2	Normal
1.7	1	0.1	Normal
1.8	1	0.2	Normal
2.0	1	0.1	Normal
2.1	1	0.2	Normal
2.3	1	0.1	50%
2.4	1	0.1	50%
2.5	1	0.1	50%
2.6	1	0.0	50%
2.6	1	0.1	50%
2.7	1	0.1	50%
2.8	1	0.1	25%
2.9	1	0.0	25%
2.9	1	0.0	25%
2.9	1	0.1	25%
3.0	1	0.0	25%
3.0	1	0.1	25%
3.1	1	0.0	25%
3.1	1	0.0	12%
3.1	1	0.0	12%
3.1	1	0.1	12%
3.2	1	0.0	12%
3.2	1	0.0	12%
3.2	1	0.0	12%
3.2	1	0.0	12%
3.2	1	0.1	6%
3.3	1	0.0	6%
3.3	1	0.0	6%
3.3	1	0.0	6%
3.3	1	0.0	6%
3.3	1	0.0	6%
3.3	1	0.0	3%
3.3	7	0.0	1%

Weapon Mastery

The weapon mastery on level three allows you to reload your rifle or pistol while still aiming down. It is a nice gimmick but nothing more.

Summary to levelling weapons

As already mentioned, your overall goal is to gain the recoil control however the faster reload speed is very beneficial in combat situations. When running your main rifle combined with a pistol for faster running speed, the weapon switching speed on maxed out pistols and your main rifle skill is invaluable while flanking the enemy and then quickly switching over to your main gun.

Recoil Control

General Recoil Control assumptions

To understand the recoil of guns in Escape from Tarkov you need to understand that BSG is not interested in endless scrolling. Endless scrolling is an effect that comes into place when a game does not help and support the player with gun control mechanics meaning the player would have to endlessly (if a magazine would have unlimited ammo) scroll up/down and left/right to stay on target.

Throughout all FPS games out there, you will find various alterations of recoil control mechanics, from none to laser beam.

With Escape From Tarkov, Battlestate Games found a way to enjoy the gun mechanics for competitive as well as casual players.

How the game supports you and what you can do

BSG based their recoil control on a server side assistance that helps you stay centred. The bullet spread will go up and then lower and centre at a certain point above the initial aim point. This can be increased by applying different modifications to the gun you are using lowering its vertical and horizontal weapon sway.

The skill recoil control is something you might consider levelling either ongoing or focused during a single play day later on. It affects your vertical spray pattern only.

By Skills

In addition to this players can level up different skills to further decrease the horizontal and vertical weapon sway and therefore decrease the spray pattern to a minimum.

Changing spray patterns with different stances

Lastly the stance a player chooses to engage a target also plays an important role. While standing up your spray pattern will naturally increase whereas when you are prone the spray pattern is heavily reduced.

Example recoil pattern when standing.
Example recoil pattern when crouched.
Example recoil pattern when prone.

Difference in horizontal and vertical recoil

In an earlier version BSG changed the recoil on weapons and split it up into the horizontal and vertical recoil stats. The horizontal recoil is way lower than the vertical one allowing us to heavily focus on the horizontal area when trying to counteract the rifle recoil behaviour. While Assault Rifle benefits the player in both horizontal and vertical recoil the Recoil Control skill only adds a -% bonus to the horizontal spray pattern.

Horizontal recoil behaviour

While the first shot in most times is on target the horizontal recoil widens the spray pattern out. On a “human” target this behaviour is so minimal (with late modded guns and -25% horizontal recoil through the Assault Rifle skill) that it is almost unimportant and can be ignored.

Benefits

• Improves recoil control (-45% at elite level)
• Elite level : Improves recoil control (does nothing at this point)

How to gain skill points

In order to level this skill all you need to do is fire rounds out of any weapon. This is very costly due to the nature of you firing rounds into the air but can be levelled rather quickly. The time needed to level this skill is depicted however I only tested this with four different guns:

Weapon	PB	P90	M4	MDR
BP End After how many rounds	15	27	20	26
Skill Points with Boost	1.25	1.30	1.40	1.40
Total Ammo Used	169	285	221	286
Phase End	31%	31%	31%	31%
NP End after how many rounds	13	28	17	22
Skill Points during normal phase	1.05	1.00	1.00	0.90
Skill Points Normal to 31%	6.85	6.90	7.00	6.80
Total Skill Points collected	8.1	8.2	8.4	8.2
Total Skill Points	4650	4650	4650	4650
Raids needed with Boost Phase	3720	3577	3321	3321
Raids needed with Boost and Normal Phase	2021.74	2021.74	1937.50	2021.74
Raids to max needed when using Ammo until 31%	574.07	567.07	553.57	567.07
Cost per Run (current)	20.34$	570$	442$	572$

With an intermediate update, the following changes have been recorded:

PB	4550
Raids Total	1339
Bullets Total	95015

AKS74N	4550
Raids Total	1422
Bullets Total	133657

VSS	4550
Raids Total	1468
Bullets Total	177597

HK416	4550
Raids Total	1422
Bullets Total	125125

There was also an increase to level giving Recoil control now a total of 51 levels.

Spray Pattern

Zero Recoil Control

Elite Recoil Control

Stress Resistance

Stress Resistance is one of these skills you need to gain a certain level for a task (level 18). Although you can fast track to it most players naturally level it during combat situations.

Benefits

• Decreases chance of getting pain shock (-50% at elite level)
• Decreases tremor oscillation
• Elite level : Berserk mode

How to gain skill points

There are multiple methods to level Stress Resistance however it always comes down to taking pain damage. This means that if you had a blacked leg and jumped (not on painkillers) your stress resistance would go up by ~0.3. You can also get shot or hit with a melee weapon in a black limb it will help. A lot of people like to stand in fire to level it up, healing just their stomach while their entire rest of the body is blacked out.

Health

With health we’re having another skill you need to level up for a task however you actually will benefit greatly from this skill from 0.12 and onwards as it supports out of raid healing, immunity to poison and more.

Benefits

• Decreases chance of fractures (-60% at elite level)
• Increases offline regeneration
• Decreases energy consumption (-30% at elite level)
• Decreases dehydration rate (-30% at elite level)
• Elite level : Damage absorption
• Elite level : Poison immunity level

How to gain skill points

Here is the amazing news. You can level it automatically while levelling strength, endurance or vitality.

Vitality

Vitality is a great skill to have maxed however most people won’t get to that point during a normal wipe phase.

Benefits

• Decreases chance of bleeding (-60% at elite level)
• Decreases chance of dying by losing a limb (-20% at elite level)
• Increases health regeneration in battle (Unknown, no specific stats given.)
• Elite level : All bleeding stops spontaneously (Note: This means after bleeding occurs, the bleeding will stop after a few seconds)

How to gain skill points

You can level vitality by taking damage in general and through blood loss. That said, once you get a bleed you can just counter it with AI2 Meds and continuously gain skill points. Vitality can be levelled together with stress resistance.

Mag Drills

Currently this skills benefits do not exceed the amount of hours you would have to put into it in order to maximise it.

Benefits

• Increases ammo unloading speed
• Increases ammo loading speed
• Magazine loading is performed faster with every loaded round
• Increases speed of magazine check using the context menu
• Increases accuracy of magazine check through the context menu
• Elite level : Magazine checked instantly when moved to your inventory

How to gain skill points

You basically want to check your magazine, reload rounds into it or unload them. In the table below you can see the details of a full load/unload cycle with and without +15% faster reload magazines.

Mag Drills skill gain table (New vs. Old)

Mag	Stanag +-0	Stanag +10	Stanag +15	Stanag +60
Unload(s)	15	15	13	35
Load(s)	30	27	26	74
Full Cycle(s)	45	42	39	109
Boost 1st Cycle	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.7
Boost to Normal	1.1	1.1	1.1	2
Raids to lvl 10	0	0	0	0
Hours to lvl 10	0	0	0	0

Skill Level	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Skill Points needed	10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	100	100	100
Full Unload/Reload Cycle	40.54	40.79	41.03	41.28	41.54	41.79	42.05	42.32	42.58	42.85	43.13	43.41	43.69
Points per Raid	10.14	10.20	10.26	10.32	10.38	10.45	10.51	10.58	10.65	10.71	10.78	10.85	10.92
Raids needed to lvl up	0.99	1.96	2.92	3.88	4.81	5.74	6.66	7.56	8.45	9.33	9.27	9.22	9.16
Full Unload/Reload Cycle +15% Speed Mag	46.62	46.90	47.19	47.48	47.77	48.06	48.36	48.67	48.97	49.28	49.60	49.92	50.24
Points gained with +15% Speed Mag	11.66	11.73	11.80	11.87	11.94	12.02	12.09	12.17	12.24	12.32	12.40	12.48	12.56
Raids needed with +15% Speed Mag	0.86	1.71	2.54	3.37	4.19	4.99	5.79	6.58	7.35	8.12	8.06	8.01	7.96
Skill Points needed	10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	100	100	100
Left Over Points to next Level	10.00	19.86	29.67	39.41	49.09	58.71	68.26	77.74	87.16	96.52	95.80	85.02	74.17
Real Raids needed to lvl up	0.99	1.95	2.89	3.82	4.73	5.62	6.49	7.35	8.19	9.01	8.89	7.84	6.79
Skill Points needed	10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	100	100	100
Left Over Points to next Level with +15% Speed Mag	10.00	18.34	26.62	34.82	42.95	51.01	58.99	66.90	74.74	82.49	80.17	67.77	55.30
Real Raids needed to lvl up with +15% Speed Mag	0.86	1.56	2.26	2.93	3.60	4.25	4.88	5.50	6.10	6.70	6.47	5.43	4.40

Search

Searching through objects in most cases is what gets you your well-deserved loot. No matter if bodies or crates, searching also always exposes you to other players and leaves you vulnerable in the open. The skill will help you greatly to increase your speed searching through things and lets you leave faster back into a more secure position.

Benefits

• Elite level : Doubles searching speed (meaning you can search two things at a time)

How to gain skill points

Basically you can search anything and gain skill points for that. If you are new to Tarkov, you want to search every container and body regardless and therefore automatically increase this skill. There are ways to focus on maximising this skill and get it to level 51 within one day.

How to speed gain skill points in Searching

The general idea to speed level this is to search the same container continuously. In order to make this happen I recommend two friends and a dead body that can hold a backpack with items in the layout shown in the picture below:

You can either kill a Scav or have a second account that you kill in a secure location. You will put the backpack on the dead body and everybody searches through it until all three have it fully searched.

Now the first player starts rotating the items you have put into the backpack in a circle only concentrating on his/her two rows:

The second players starts in the mid row just shifting it from right to left and back whereas the third player rotates the bottom two rows. Because each of the players is moving only their items, they become greyed out for the others. If everybody now clicks on “searching” on the backpack which is available again and keeps rotating, you will continuously gain skill points in searching (and attention).

If you have a fourth player with you he can take over for another one whose fingers start to hurt (because they will). That way you can also rotate through players and always keep searching.

Difference to attention

While the skill searching benefits from looting bodies and containers, attention only gains skill from searching containers. If you do not want to speed level these skills, bear in mind that you will not level up attention by searching bodies.

Because attention has the more important elite perk, it should be the priority when levelling these skills. The below table depicts two methods, one is using the entire raid while pausing for 5 minutes after the exhaustion phase is too far advanced, the other is by leaving the raid and using the boost phase per raid:

Boost Method

Raids	620
Minutes in Raid	3720
Hours in Raid	62
Minutes out of Raid	2480
Hours out of Raid	41.3
Total hours needed	103.3
Total items to be searched	62000

Normal Method

Raids	104
Minutes in Raid	4473
Hours in Raid	74.6
Minutes out of Raid	312
Hours out of Raid	5.2
Total hours needed	79.8
Total items to be searched	66560

Covert Movement

This skill is one of the more interesting ones as it allows you to move faster and quieter while being crouched or prone at the lowest possible speed level.

Benefits

• Increases the speed of covert movement
• Sound of steps on common surfaces is quieter
• Decreases Covert Movement Sound Radius
• Noises produced by weapons and equipment are quieter
• Elite level : Covert movement becomes equally quiet on all surfaces

How to gain skill points

If you walk crouched on the lowest speed level you start getting skill points. Per minute crouch walking you will gain 0.4 skill points meaning you will make about 24 skill points per hour so from level 10 you need about 170 hours to maximise this skill.

Metabolism

Metabolism will help you consume less hydration and energy while in raid. Since one of the elite perks is currently useless, it is still valuable to get the skill to a higher level as the second elite perk removes any negative effect from dehydration or energy exhaustion. In addition, the higher you level this skill, the more hydration or energy will be recovered when consuming food.

Benefits

• Enhances food and drink positive effects
• Decreases energy consumption and dehydration rate
• Decreases rate of forgetting physical skills (not working)
• Elite level : Zero chance of dehydration and exhaustion effects
• Elite level : Physical skills are no longer forgettable (not working)

How to gain skill points

Metabolism is levelled while consuming food and water replenishing the hydration and energy bar during a raid. Metabolism could be power levelled through eating condensed milk or mayo while drinking water or anything else that would bring the hydration back up. The below table shows the time, raids and estimated rubles needed to max the skill:

Raids	Hours	Rough Cost
Boost Method	547	72	21882352 Rubles
Full Raid	80	68	20182291 Rubles