YMMV / Escape from Tarkov

• Abridged Arena Array
  • Factory: The smallest map in the game, it offers a decent loot table and plenty of close quarters battles for a bold and geared up PMC. No-equipment (a.k.a Hatchling) runs are commonly held here due to how quick players can pop in and out, provided you can survive the onslaught of PVP battles and the dense Scav population. For the very same reasons mentioned before, this map becomes That One Level for any other player undertaking a quest in this map.
  • Customs: A robust map that slowly grows on beginners after going on their first real loot runs. Plenty of cover, lots of different paths and a decent spread of Scavs and good loot gives players many avenues for engagements or quick escapes. With the addition of the scav boss "Reshala" and a map expansion that includes a construction site, this map saw a resurgence of veteran players flocking back to it for his loot, or to prey on those going for said loot.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Hatchlings", named for players who go for PMC runs with only a melee weapon which is almost always the Gerber Downrange Tomahawk a.k.a Hatchet (as it is one of the highest damaging melee weapons). Variants include:
    • Mosin-lings: Lightly-geared players using only the Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle in any configuration, taking advantage of the powerful 7.62x54R rifle round that can easily penetrate most high-class armors if using the right type of round. Can also be referred to as "Mosin Man". ^ExplanationA reference to a fan-made parody of Ween's Ocean Man
    • Pistol-lings: Players only carrying a cheap sidearm, either to complete a pistol-kills-related quest or just plain economical purposes.
  • "Timmys": Genuinely new players or those that play for fun and thus aren't running optimal loadouts nor are the most skillful.
  • The secure container on PMCs is universally referred to as a prison wallet or some variation of ass, and talking about placing items in your container is often referred to as some variation of sticking it up your butt.
  • "Insurance fraud" for the practice of hiding the gear one loaded in with so that they will get it back through insurance to make room for more loot, even if they survive.
  • Thanks to popular videos by Youtubers, General Sam and fairTX, the playerbase is commonly categorized to four types of playstyles and are commonly referenced as such in videos and forums:
    • CHADS: Tough, heavily-geared players who bring their best equipment into the raid with the intent to search and kill everything on the map and earn their loot. They refuse to avoid fights and will attack head-on, damn the consequences.
    • RATS: Sneaky, stealth-oriented players who go in usually with nothing but their Secure Container and their wits, rushing to prime locations to grab the most valuable loot with little regard for the penalties of dying afterwards as profit is their ultimate goal. They will avoid fights if they can help it and there is no trick too dirty for a true Rat.
    • HONEY BADGERS: A hybrid between the top two playstyles - wild ambushes against players while using highly questionable decisions and actions.
    • ROACHES: Players that wait around extract zones to ambush players, usually heavily geared players to take their loot and escape swiftly.
• Game-Breaker: The humble, yet reliable, Lucky Scav Junkbox. Sold from the Level 2 Therapist selection, the Lucky Scav Junkbox is the single largest container in the game, providing 196 spaces for loot items in the stash while only using 16. For the space of a single piece of body armor, you can store significantly more loot than you could originally, making it much easier to keep products over the course of multiple runs. This is especially true for Standard edition players, who have by far the smallest inventory and tend to have it cluttered up a lot. It's only flaw is the huge price point of 1.4 million rubles, but clever playing and some good luck can net that easily.
• Heartwarming Moments: Local VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) was a planned feature that both the devs and the playerbase were apprehensive of due to concerns of potential mic-spamming, trolling and general jerk behaviour typically expected of a playerbase. Come late 2021, VOIP was finally patched into the main game in the 0.12.12 update. While there are still the fair share of trolls, snakes and betrayers taking advantage of the feature, there was an observed steep rise in random players actually peacefully working with one another. Within the first few days of that wipe, there were already hundreds of clips and videos showcasing cooperative and wholesome interactions between complete strangers; in sharp contrast to previous wipes that saw most players coldly shooting each other on sight due to sheer Paranoia Fuel.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE" ^ExplanationAI Scav catchphrase borrowed straight from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Also probably the last thing an unprepared player would hear before suddenly receiving lead to the face.
  • "Stop Scav on Scav violence!" ^ExplanationWhile killing friendly AI Scavs as a Scav would result in them coming after the offender, this is more egregious when done against human players as it deprives the victim of a peaceful loot run while tilting the odds against the offender's chances of survival; a possible lose-lose situation for all involved. Naturally, this practice is heavily frowned upon by the Tarkov community as a whole and players have taken initiatives to reduce such incidents.
  • "Leg Meta" ^ExplanationSince helmets and body armor protect the most vital of body parts, players and even the AI Scavs have resorted to aiming for the legs, which no armor is currently capable of protecting resulting in two scenarios; either killing the target surprisingly quickly, or at the very least crippling them to make them even more vulnerable to follow-up shots.
    • (head, eyes) ^ExplanationHelmets provide mediocre protection at best to the player's upper face, so most headshot deaths are due to bullets striking this area. And given the uncanny aim of scavs, expect to get hit in this area a lot.
  • "腕っこき" ^Explanation In late October 2019, the leader of Japanese translator team was criticized and exposed for his poor translation quality and style, and adding unnecessary information and trivia that the original texts don't have. While he was eventually kicked out from the team, an informal word "腕っこき" that was often used in his translation quickly have become a meme among Japanese EFT players.
  • "The Walking Tank Loadout" ^Explanation In late January 2020, The Polygon gaming news site released an EFT article aimed at guiding new players on how to gear up before a raid. Said article clearly displays a very poor grasp of the game's armor mechanics by recommending a Kiver-M helmet without its faceshield, and a Module 3M armor, the weakest body armor as of that patch and called it a "Walking Tank" loadout. Within the hour, the community quickly called out The Polygon for the hilariously bad guide resulting in the article being removed and the author apologizing as well as acknowledging their screwup.
  • Jaeger: "Sup, PMC. I want you to [insert tough challenge with ludicrous conditions]. In return, I'll give you [insert near worthless item]." ^Explanation When Jaeger was dropped in the patch that introduced the hideout, he got massive backlash for his quests, which were deemed too hard and punishing, and not worth the rewards they provided. Reddit users quickly came up with their own quests to mock Jaeger's questline
  • "Cursed Guns" ^Explanation The extensive gun customization system allows players to do very unusual things to them, and are often compiled in montages set to "Looting the Louvre" like other "cursed images" compilations.
  • "Penis Helmet" ^Explanation A crude nickname for the SSh-68 steel helmet thanks to its, ahem, distinctive shape.
• Misaimed "Realism": Putting aside some liberties with actual bullet and armor performance for gameplay reasons, the game showers the player with dozens of different ammo types and accessories all the way down to the gas blocks, buffer tubes, and charging handles with dubious distinguishing traits, many of which are themselves in multiple parts that the player needs real-world knowledge of the weapons in question to determine how to put a completed part together - as just one example, a simple stock for the FN SCAR comes in four separate parts (the front half that attaches to the weapon, the rear half that the user places against their shoulder, the cheek rest on top, and the rubber butt pad at the back). There is also the absurdly in-depth healing system that the player is not instructed how to use, often resulting in a player having a full medkit and no idea why the game won't let them use it to heal a massive injury. The most absurd aspect, however, is that in-game currencies of rubles, euros, dollars and bitcoins are tied to their actual real-life values, meaning that when real life currencies crash (e.g. severe de-valuing of the Russian ruble during the Russo-Ukraine conflict starting in 2022), the in-game economy does too.
• Nightmare Fuel: It is guaranteed that there will be long bouts of relative peace as you are travelling/scavenging throughout the levels, save for the possible occasional firefight in the far distance; this can and will end in an instant. As such, the moment bullets suddenly fly in your direction WILL definitely Jump Scare you.
  • There is a Cult faction in-game that spawns fairly rarely on certain maps. ^note  Specifically Customs, Shoreline, Woods, and Factory at night. However, on Customs (in the dorms) and Shoreline (at the health resort), there are ritual rooms belonging to the cult. The room on Shoreline is not only unlocked from the start, but in it is a dead Scav in a bathtub wearing a pig's head like a mask, with a couple gutted pigs hanging about. Despite this and the two quests about them that you can go on, very little is known about them.
• That One Level: As a general rule, the difficulty notification for each map is inverted- the maps labeled "Insane" are usually much safer than the ones labeled "Normal".
  • Factory is easily the single toughest map in the game aside from Labs. It's an utter nightmare of a claustrophobic abandoned factory floor, filled with blind turns and cramped hallways. And it is filled with both a healthy amount of Scavs and PMCs, meaning death is frequent and swift. The loot table isn't even that great, with the best possible loot congregated in the 3rd floor office which also doubles as an extraction for Scavs, meaning everyone on the map has at least some reason to go there. Since the place is such a battle royale deathtrap, it's not uncommon for people to go in decently geared, making killing people even harder. The only reason one ventures into Factory are for quests, hatchet runs, extract camping, or Scav runs where you book it straight for the exit.
  • The Labs is potentially the most dangerous gear and money sink in the game. Just getting in requires at least one Labs Keycard, a semi-rare item that can sell for 100k rubles on the Flea Market. This leaves either finding it in-raid and successfully extracting with it, or buying an extremely expensive key that will take numerous successful raids to afford. Once you've gotten in, the entire place is a maze of intricate, interconnecting floors and passages, and almost all of the exits have at least some kind of feature designed to make using them a pain. For example, the elevator exit requires you to turn the power on, alerting everyone in the facility that you're using the elevators. In addition to that, activating exits will spawn Scav Raiders, which are scavs with better gear and reflexes, along with a boosted health pool. On top of this, Labs is easily the most dangerous PvP level in the game, because everyone going in is aware of Labs' reputation and thus brings the following: their best tier 4 and 5 pieces of gear, cohesive teams that know the stakes, along with tricked-out guns, high-penetration ammo and tons of supplies to keep them alive. And the kicker is that insurance has no effect on this map. If you die or ditch your gear in favor of better ones, you're not getting it back. To put it simply, entering Labs is a massive bet. Doing well can cause you to leave with valuable supplies and solid gear that will serve you well on other maps, but doing poorly means you just dropped 300k rubles or more down the drain.