Escape From Tarkov How to Make Money
by SixOneZil
For the sake of summarizing here :
– Intel documents are NOT worth 250k. I didn’t check them on the flea before writing this and for some reason I always remembered them at 250k. Game is in maintenance so I can’t check the real price. That being said, it’s still profitable to craft USB into Intel, it’s just not x2 profitable.
– Scav case : moonshine / intel docs, some people seem to say they’ve never been profitable. I personally *did not* measure those, I eyeballed it. I’m working on so much shit that I didn’t bother. On average I think that I’m in a net positive, but it’s as believable as people saying they’re not : without proof we can’t really say for sure. That bein said, it’s certainly more profitable to run lower-tier scav runs that are *faster* when you’re online, and to run a moonshine or intel when you log off. It’s more efficient to get a lot of runs while you can re-start them every time.
– Crafting moonshine : It’s not profitable to spam it ; I was under the assumption that the average player who will read this will usually not play for 4-5 hours straight and will end up collecting yesterday’s moonshine, craft a new one, and that’s it. If that’s you’re rythm then yes, spam it. If you intend to play more than one craft worth’s of time, then you will craft moonshine faster than you can spend it, and it’s not really worth to sell it on the flea except to up your market reputation for a small loss (about 10k). So in short : craft moonshine to be able to start a moonshine run for when you log off, but you don’t *need* more than that.
Hey everybody !
I know it can be a struggle to get a stable economy in this game, especially when you die a lot. Today I’m gonna try and give a few guidelines on how to make money safely, efficiently, fast, or in any other way we can think of.
If you’re struggling to stay above the 15-20 million rouble treshold, this guide is definitely for you.
Very often I’ll hear newer players say “Damn I can’t seem to make money, I keep loosing. Every time I take gear I die instantly”. There is some truth in that. Today I’ll help you improve your survival rate, but most importantly I’ll unbalance the other side of the equation. When you complain about losing a lot of money, I will help you spend less by a significant margin, as well as earn more. You’ll also get rid of gear fera naturally.
Remember this throughout this very, very long read : It all depends on how you want to play, and how much. Some of these tips will not fit how you want to play the game, and like Nikita always says : this game is supposed to be fun before anything else.
1. Hideout
Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Moderate but very stable.
Maxing your hideout should be one of your top priorities, probably before telling your mom how much you love her every now and then. If you’re not doing either of those, the big gamer in you knows what to do.
Early wipe, save your fuel for when you’re online and playing. If you’re playing, your generator should definitely be running and all your stations should be crafting something.
Once you have Medstation 1, Workbench 1 and Lavatory 2, you really have no reason to turn your generator off when you’re playing.
Once you have the bitcoin farm, you should never turn off the generator.
Medstation :
Craft salewas and/or IFAKs permanently. They cost 8k and sell for 15k. That’s a net profit of about 25k / hour for salewas, as well as never having to buy any.
Lavatory :
Always be crafting Bleach. If you have 2 empty blue fuel, use those empty cans to craft a Magazine case.
You can then keep the magazine cases until you’ve enough for your liking and sell those for a good profit.
The bleach you will use to buy the 6B47 helmets which are better than the SSh-68 helmets. Buying from 2x bleach barter at ragman level 1 means you get the helmet for 18k (instead of 33k on the market). This helmet has better head coverage, less slow/negative effects, less weight, has a slot for a mount, has +11 ergonomics AND is cheaper than the 22k SSh-68. That being said, it has a slight noise reduction that the Ssh does not have. If you wear headphones I’d say this is negligible but debatable. I prefer to have the extra protection and ergonomics for sure, considering it’s slightly cheaper.
You can also barter for that helmet and instantly sell it back for a profit (five times) and level up ragman money requirements.
Bleach can also be traded for the Blackjack backpack at level 4, as well as the TTV rig at level 2. You should definitely do it.
Sell excess bleach on the flea market when the prices are around 10.5k or more. (around midnight Central European Time).
Workbench :
You can buy Power Cords and craft Wires forever and always make a profit. Buy in the morning and sell in the evening for better profits (CET timezone). For even more profit, you can craft gunpowders and ammo which tend to also be ridiculously pricy at night.
Buying grenades from Peacekeeper and crafting green (Eagle) gunpowder is a good way to make a lot of money and level up Peacekeeper.
Intel Center :
You main objective is to get this one to level 3 for reduced fees and better quest rewards, but also access to the bitcoin farm at level 2.
If you need FiR for quests, craft that. When you’re done craft Intel Documents at all times (buy the USB), and use it for scav case or sell for a x2 profit. ( 3×40 for USB = 120, documents sell for 250)
Bitcoin Farm :
Once you have it, spend all your money on GPU until its maxxed, then level it up even more. The BTC farm is definitely worth it. At 50GPU you need to connect every 15 hours to clic. If you can’t, keep it level 2 and connect every 24 hours to clic. Even at level 1 its worth. But its much, much faster at higher levels.
From 0 to 50 GPUs it takes about 30 days to pay for itself. GPUs should not be sold until you maxxed it.
Water Collector :
Must be running at all times. Buy the components if you don’t have them.
Booze Generator :
Must be running at all times. Buy the components if you don’t have them.
Scav Case :
Always have it running on moonshine, and use intel documents once you’re done crafting one.
Nutrition Unit :
It’s not really worth crafting sugar to put in the Booze gen, as the price for chocolate is pretty much = the price of sugar. So buy the sugar instead and craft something else. I tend to craft Hot Rods when the prices are good (morning) and then use them to barter 5.45 BS Ammo with Prapor or sell for a profit.
If you do all that, you should have about 150k an hour fairly easily. Don’t forget to check it between every raid.
2. Traders
Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Quite good.
Once your mom has received all the love she deserves and your hideout is taken care of, you should have max traders (traders are a requirement for most of the hideout anyway).
Traders level 4 will net you much better prices on most mods and open very good barter trades.
Buy as much as you can from barter trades. You can buy almost everything from it, and it’s usually at least 25% cheaper to buy the requirements and then do the barter. Ragman4 has the CPC Armored Rig which is level 5 armor, you’ll get it for about 200k instead of 250k on the flea. The Slick is also much cheaper. The Blackjack backpack is literally half priced.
You can also NOT use what you barter and just sell it back to a dealer (sometimes the same from which you bartered) for a profit as well as having 2 times the loyalty money increase (from bartering then from selling).
Another good example is buying a Recbat 14k from the market, getting an ADAR for skier, selling it to Mechanic and winning 8k just like that. You can find every single barter that nets a profit yourself and just buy-resell and you’ll probably make another 100k every reset, if you really are struggling and have the patience. I personally advise to just use the equipment for yourself unless you’re levelling traders, but I wouldn’t go as far as buying all profitable items every reset.
Every trader at every level has good barters. You can make a full decent kit at level 1 traders for about 40k roubles on barter, instead of 90 if you buy it all. (Paca for masks, helmet for bleach, ADAR for recbatt, salewa from craft, backpack, etc. all barters)
Bleach is beautiful and is coveted in the real world for its ability to cure diseases.
3. Modding
Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Very profitable.
Don’t mod out of your reach. Don’t mod Meta. If money is an issue for you, having +1 ergo won’t change your life.
For example,
See where I’m going with this?
If you have money, sure, go for the Shift. If you wanna have fun and try, sure, go for it as well. But if you’re struggling, buy 4 cobras and mod 4 guns for the price of 1% recoil which will not make you a gamer god anyway.
Also, do NOT buy mods from the flea market when you see you can buy them from traders. Look at the top of the market, if the mod is greyed out, look at the price. It means you don’t have access (yet). If the price is too inflated for you, find another mod. There are always other mods. You can make 2 AKMs that have a difference of 2% recoil and 4 Ergonomics and have a 150k price difference. It’s up to you. When money is the issue, this was the answer.
Note : Some guns are inherently much more expensive. Guns shooting 5.56 or 5.45 tend to be more expensive than 7.62. AKMs are VERY good budget guns. They’re a bit harder to handle, but you can get a fully modded AK for 150-200k, where as you will have an entry level M4 for that price. 7.62 PS ammo is also incredibly cheap while being decent. Play 7.62 if you’re struggling with money. It’s not meta, but it’s far more than enough, trust me. You’ll rarely lose fights exclusively because you had PS ammo in an AKM. Rarely.
4. Statistical loadout balance
This is fairly simple yet overlooked a LOT. To be accurate, you need data. Personally I kept it in an excel spreadsheet, if you’re hardcore you should do something similar.
A somewhat relevant spreadsheet I used a wipe ago to measure some of my stats
What you need to know about yourself for this :
- Your survival rate per map
- How much you usually extract with, on average, per map
- How much you usually go in raid with, on average, per map
These will help us measure how much you fuck up or not.
Lets make it simple.
If you have a 500k loadout and you usually extract with 100k, at 10% survival rate, that means you will spend 500k x 10 = 5.000.000 roubles over 10 raids on average, die 9 times, and earn 100k once. This very obvious example shows the loss.
Basically we’re gonna try and balance that equation so that you never lose money on average. You’ll have ups and downs obviously, but over a week or two, it’ll smooth things out for you, like math always does in a pleasant conversation with a girl.
So what can you do to improve that equation?
4.1 Improve survival rate
Seems simple enough, DIE LESS. You do not need to be good, smart, or special to die less. If you die a lot, do something different. If you die less, try more of that. Explore statistical advantages through different gameplay.
What can you do to die less practically? Here is a list of checkboxes you can tick depending on your money, skill, mood, or any other factor like the map and sheer luck:
- Fight from a bigger distance. People miss more from far (so will you, but killing less is irrelevant when you want to die less)
- Fight with better gear (supressed, better armor, better ammo, etc.). Its expensive, but it technically helps
- Don’t fight at all. Avoid fights, run away from gunshots. 99.3% of people who didn’t get shot survive a raid.
- Wait more, play slowly. If you go with the flow of players, you’ll be with the players. Avoid that “wave” and stay behind it. When you come across players trying to extract to where you spawned, hide.
- Play with friends if you have any. If not, your mom loves you and so do I. I do coaching so do a lot of other decent players, look it up.
- Whenever you die, look at what killed you. Did you take a risk ? Did you lack skill ? Were you out of position ? Were you unlucky ? Try to be as OBJECTIVE as possible even in the frustration. It’s pretty much always your fault if you died, avoid toxicity and learn something from that instead. If you took a fight with good gear and ammo and just lost, its probably skill/positioning. It’s fine. Learn the game, fight differently, and with time it’ll get better. If you were in the open, don’t go in the open. If you were sprinting in the middle of interchange and got ambushed, well. Don’t do that. Learn.
Do all that, it’ll give you a LOT of data to actually improve by just doing something different without really being faster/stronger, just smarter.
And I repeat : you can do some of it, all of it, it depends on what you like, what you’re comfortable with, and the time/investment you’re putting in the game. It’s okay to play at your own pace.
4.2 Reduce gear cost
The second part of our “profit equation” above is how much gear you take with you. Using previous tips, reduce that cost. Barters, cheaper mods, etc.
4.3 Increase extracted value
This one is not as tricky as it sounds. Basically there are two ways to extract with more money in the backpack :
- Know what/where to loot
- Have a bigger backpack.
The goal is to pay for the gear you will loose when you die while making a profit on top. That one time you extract if you have a MBSS backpack, you’ll need items worth like 50k per slot to break even. If you take a tri-zip, suddenly it’s only 30k per slot. If you take a blackjack and blackrock from good old ragman, suddenly it’s 10k per slot. So you can break even by looting crickents and DVD players almost.
See where I’m going ? Always take a tri-zip or bigger unless you’re doing something special. That way you can afford to loot shitty areas, take less risk, and survive more while having a little less value.
We’ll cover that in a minute, but there are ways to loot high value items, moderate value and low value. Those have also different risk/reward.
All of those are also map specific. In woods I’ll often go with a 6B3TM armored rig for 40k, no helmet, 20k headphones and a sniper rifle. Rest is pouched so does not count. That’s less than 100k investment. All players tend to have low value gear so I never extract with a lot either so it balances out. But on Woods, my survival rate is 20% instead of my overall 40%. So I know it’s not a map I can reliably make money on, because I measured that accurately over time. This example is very common and should make sense to you.
Same goes for interchange where I have more about 50% survival but will tend to go in with 600k worth of gear, but will also often extract with over 500k quite regularly. Different ratios, different values, different purposes.
You can measure your own data if you’re willing to do so, or you can eyeball it. Eyeballing it is much faster but very inaccurate because you will tend to include emotions in the mix when you die. You’ll remember losses ~2x more than your wins (that’s somewhat scientifically proven), and if you’re eyeballing your loadout you might think you have 600k but really you might have only 450k. I would advise to go hardcore and measure it all for price, initial loadout, losses and earnings, for each map.
5. Money runs
Now money runs are vast and numerous. All include different levels of risk and reward. It’s up to you once again to find what you’re willing to do for the time it takes, the fun it will give you and how much it will actually help you. You can always try them all for ~50 raids the sake of trying something different and see how your data is impacted. it doesn’t have to be 50 in a row if you don’t want to. As long as you keep track of it it can be over a whole wipe. You’d have your data ready for the next wipe :) Faster is better though.
5.1 Hatchling runs
Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Very Variable. Mentally exhausting.
Those are incredibly money efficient. You’re investing a gear of 0 value, so whatever you extract with is 100% win, so you cannot possibly lose money that way. Is it fun? Is it rewarding? I don’t care, to each is own. Statistcally speaking, hatchling runs are an efficient way to make money.
They do however require a little bit of knowledge, but not skill. You’ll be much more efficient at doing these kind of runs if you know where to go, what to look for, and how to get there depending on your spawn. That being said, such knoweldge is easily found ; it’s nothing complex, it just takes time to learn. Once again, depends on how much you’re willing to invest (if not roubles, time).
5.2 Scav runs
Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Low-ish
Scav runs are also incredibly efficient for the same reason as hatchlings. Except those have a cooldown. Statisticall speaking I have noticed you should always run your scavs as fast as possible on the map where you extract both the fastest and most frequently.
The explanation is simple, lets make it simpler :
The scav is a button that makes you earn free money. When you press it the button becomes unpressable for some time, when you release the button you earn money (sometimes).
That means you want to release the button as often as possible. And for that, you need to release it as fast as possible. It’s that simple. So make scavs incredibly fast. I’m talking “Run through” fast.
Unless you’re looking for FiR items or doing something specific like annoying a streamer, you should literally run straight to the extract every single time, and loot what you have that doesn’t make you go out of your way too much. Usually I suggest factory, go in, kill a random scav, loot it, get out.
Two weapons is at LEAST 50k, 100 if they have a scope. There you go. That’s 100k every 20 minutes (or less with intel center). That’s MUCH BETTER than going up to 150-200k but taking 30 minutes to extract, and taking more risk by spending more time in the map. Every second you’re in someone can shoot. Nobody can shoot you in the hideout.
The exception to that rule is Scavs with a pilgrim which you can take on your favourite loot-run map, probably interchange or reserve. There you should just fill everything you can and extract once you’re full, no matter what you have. 30 crickents and an extra gun is fine.
5.3 Stash runs
Safety Score : Very
Reward : Okay
Those are very very safe and can be done with a pistol and a backpack only. Very cheap, quite unchalleneged, for a moderate reward. Just go on a map that you like and run around and loot all stashes until you’re full, then get out. You can vary the map/route depending on the traffic of players. Interchange and shoreline are good contenders for that.
It’ll net you easy money. Not great money, but definitely safe.
5.4 Loot Runs
Safety Score : Moderate
Reward : Quite alright
Once you have better knowledge/skill you can start having a specific route in a specific map, depending on a specific spawn. So it’ll take time to learn. Usually very similar than a hatchling run except this time you bring moderate gear and go for moderate loots. For example, instead of going for fast techlight, in-and-out interchange, you can decide “alright I’ll loot 100% of Oli and the computers in the back”, it’ll take time, but it’ll make good loot. More money than stashes, definitely will see scavs to kill, and most probably some more pvp. More risk. If you win that PvP you have even more loot as well. But overall good reward.
Loot runs need to be “scheduled” and thought of after several tries, so you know how much you can take per person depending on backpack size. For example you can’t say “lets loot oli” if you have a 5-man with blackjacks, you’ll all be empty. Adapt.
5.4 PvP
Safety Score : Insane
Reward : Unreliably moderate
This one is pretty obvious. Very risky, unpredictable rewards. Usually better than loot runs when you survive. I won’t elaborate on this, because if you’re reading this far you’re probably struggling in PvP. And the rest of this guide already covers a fair bit.
6. Insurance
Safety Score : “Meh”
Reward : Very profitable.
Now this is very, very important. Always insure your gear. Always.
If you die you will get stuff back, pretty much for free. If you’re really struggling people won’t loot your “trash”, so you WILL get it back.
If you play in a group it’s very likely that people will hide your stuff too.
And most importantly : you can insurance fraud. This is the best way to balance the equation we talked about earlier. If you find a decent-ish gun, replace yours. You drop your initial investment by a significant margin, you will definitely get it back, and if you extract it’s a flat profit. Weapons don’t take inventory slot, so if you have two weapons that are not yours initially they will usually pay for your whole gear. I have quite often left my super-mega-modded HK just for an average M4 or other weapon that I can fight with, just so I can reduce my investment by 350k and up my reward by like 200k instantly. Replace your headphones all the time too, that’s an easy -30+30k, same with helmets. even if it’s a bit broken or slightly worse.
If you’re struggling with money, try to leave every raid with at least 3-4 pars of your equipment that aren’t yours initially.
But value the risk behind this. I won’t leave my slick for a Paca at the third minute of a raid just to have that extra 28k. I won’t leave my meta-modded HK for a naked mosin. But if it seems decent/doable, do it. It will pay off. Because even if you die, you still get your shit back, and gun is usually the most expensive part of the gear.
7. Final notes
It’s all about balance. Find what works *for you* and try shit out. Really, try. You’ll die, you’ll learn, you’ll adapt with data to back that up. I find it crazy that people will die and not try to learn from it. That’s how you will improve as a player.
First you gotta get smarter, then you’ll get better. And with time, skill, mechanics, gamesense, all that will improve on the side. Earning more will snowball in your favour. And if you know you’re statistically okay, you will have a much smaller gear fear and enjoy the game more.
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