What Is Escape from Tarkov: What You Keep and What Comes Back

Start Escape from Tarkov on the Standard edition and the space you keep when you die is a 2x2 grid: four squares. Everything else you take into a raid is at risk. Understanding the game's economy starts with knowing what actually survives a death and how much of what you lose can come back.

What you keep: the secure container and three exceptions

The secure container is the small case whose contents survive your death. Its size depends on your edition and on quests:

Not everything fits. In the current game data, ammo, magazines, grenades, body armor and ammo cases are all blocked from secure containers. You can't stash spare rounds in there to save them: if your ammo is in your rig or backpack, it goes down with you. Keys, money, meds, food, weapon mods and barter items all fit.

Three more things stay with you outside the container: your melee weapon, your armband and your compass. As long as they sit in their own slots, nobody can take them off your body.

Insurance brings gear back, but not everywhere

If nobody takes your insured gear after you die, it comes back hours later as a trader message. Anything the player who killed you picks up is gone.

According to the game data, Prapor, Therapist and Jaeger offer insurance. Prapor is the cheapest (a 0.21 rate at loyalty level 1), Therapist costs more (0.28) but returns gear faster, and Jaeger is the most expensive at 0.45. A new character only has Therapist at first, so that is where your first insurance goes.

There are three cases where insurance does nothing. Gear lost on The Lab, The Labyrinth or Icebreaker never comes back. If the timer runs out and you go MIA, the insured gear on you is lost too, which is why dropping your kit makes sense once you know you won't reach an extract. And an insured magazine comes back empty, an insured backpack without the meds inside: only the container itself is returned.

Scav runs are free, but on a timer

Your Scav is a second character that spawns with random gear. Die and you lose nothing; extract and everything on you goes to your stash. After a Scav raid, the base wait before you can play Scav again is 25 minutes. Building the Intelligence Center to level 1 in your hideout cuts that by 15%.

Every Scav raid you survive adds 0.01 to your Fence reputation, and killing Scavs lowers it. That reputation affects your Scav cooldown, the quality of the gear you spawn with and what Fence pays you. Fence buys anything, but cheaply: Ragman pays 13,131 roubles for a PACA vest, Fence pays 6,303. Dumping your Scav loot on Fence means selling it at half price.

Since 1.0, maps and traders unlock through quests

Since 1.0, a new character can't load into every map. You play a short tutorial raid on Ground Zero, and afterwards Therapist and Ragman are available. Your first talk with Ragman opens Interchange. Everything else comes in order through the Tour story chapter in your quest list:

The last column is the raid length of the map you unlock. For the extract steps, visiting the map three times also counts, so you make progress even when you die. Until Prapor opens there is no trader selling guns, so your first weapons will come from Scav runs and from the ground.