Escape From Tarkov Running Labs Profitably Guide

by adamater

Labs is my favorite map, fun, fast, nice pvp, raiders everywhere. Once you catch the labs bug you don’t really care for any other maps

To start, I’d recommend you go run it offline for a bit and learn the exits and the item spawns (I will describe below)

GEAR

For a budget setup, you can run headphones (sordins/comtacs) + level 4/5 rig armor + a gun with top tier ammo. For the gun I would recommend either a vss or mp7a2. IMO something with full auto is infinitely more valuable than a single shot gun, as it gives you an ok chance to kill a geared player, vs a lucky headshot. But if you insist you can run the vepr hunter with m61. Pistols are pretty trash imo, but if you want that than use a five seven with sb193. Top tier ammo is very important, it is the difference between a 2 mil ruble run vs scratching chad’s faceshield. Scav backpack or no backpack is ok (since you have rig armor)

For mid tier, I would still use a vss/mp7a2, or a modded val over the vss. For armor: killa armor or gzhel. Take some nades. Any helmet with a face shield is good. the cheapest is the lzsh. Backpack, I would recommend you take a beta, and then put it in any larger bag you find on raiders/players for free space. The raid backpack is really bad, as it is really large and can give away your position.

High end, when you are making money and doing well, you will want to use zhuk-6a, with at least 50 durability (generally 200k) and an airframe or an exfil (also 200k).

In your container, I usually bring a survival kit (not cms, it heals less), golden star (apply at the start of the round), and a splint. as well as your sicc case of docs case

KEYS
As far as what keys you need, red keycard is very very good, and is worth the 20mil imo, you should get this if you can afford it. Generally you can get probably 200k up your ass from the room, and there is also a folder spawn inside the room (and one at the back on the shelf where green keycard spawns). If you have this you can budget run labs infinitely with a little luck

I would also recommend you get green keycard. You can find it at the back of the red room on the shelf, it spawns infrequently but you can get it probably 1/25 times so pick it up. There is a ledx spawn in the green room and often opthalmoscopes/defibrillators. As well you can often grab 150k in various meds.

LOOT

You should be knowledgeable of the folder/vpx/ledx/virtex/gpu/defib spawns. I put the locations of them on this map, take a look, maybe go watch a video to see exactly where they are. The folders are especially good, you can even run a docs case if you want to farm them specifically.

You generally only want to pickup stuff that is about 10k/slot.

GAMEPLAY

There is different strategy’s for you depending on where you spawn. Generally, if you spawn on the upper part of the map (based on the map below) You go and check the round conference table, then red room, then from there you can either spawn raiders from the parking lot or the elevator, or go to the auditorium and then the main room, albeit you will probably be late for most item spawns, but often the managers area / upper platform isn’t checked so you can look their for folders if you are running budget (high end gear I would not go to that platform)

So otherwise you can now farm raiders, which I would recommend you do at the med section elevators, the other locations are more open/dangerous. If you want to kill players, run around the map and activate all the exits to spawn raiders, as they will alert you to where the players are. labs is all about the angles, you need to sweep your sectors. Bring 3-6 nades and if you are unsure if a player is somewhere nade it. If you are in a fight and have an opportunity to chuck a nade, throw it. Never peek the same angle twice. Hipfire is king. Make sure you use an IR laser for the buff. The learning curve for labs is very steep, but eventually you will start winning.

You should watch https://www.twitch.tv/quattroace , a russian player who mainly only plays labs, and learn from him. Probably the best mechanical player in tarkov.