You know how the phrase is “ready, aim, fire?” Well, I have learned in my life that I am a “fire, aim, ready” person. Which is why I dove directly into the post yesterday and Day 1 of training last night. After my last meeting. Which ended at 9:30pm. And ran directly into some issues. First, lets look at results, then we can talk about what went wrong…and right.
Day #1 Results
As you can see, I started strong. I have been playing the game for a month, and I felt confident that easy AI was easy, when I had taken on both hard AI and real players before. But I still died, in part because I ran out of medical supplies and ran out of ammo. So that was my first learning – the little first aid kids I’ve been carrying into raids aren’t really enough to survive if things go sideways.
The less said about the next two matches the better. I learned that “high amount” means just that, and that gunfights in the big open room bring a lot of friends to the party. I died to 5 scavs shotgunning me at point blank range as I dodged around machinery trying to reload. It was kinda like that opening scene from Robocop, And the third one was even worse. By this point, whatever confidence I had started the night with was gone, and I was getting tired, fast.
But training is training, so I rallied for one last run and managed to do decently. I’m not sure how I got away with that many non-headshot kills though. I ran with a scavenged STM-9 the entire time because the 9mm ammo is trash at dealing with armor unless burst out in high quantities, and the STM, by the training rules, is capable of semi-auto fire only (ie, 1 trigger pull = 1 bullet).
I did all this, I should point out, having never been on the Factory map before. I hadn’t even looked at a map online. This was another part of the video, which noted that map knowledge seems to come faster if you play, take note of surroundings, and then try to line it up with a map, rather than starting with a map and hoping you can put that visual aid to your surroundings while under pressure.
So, what did I learn?
Well, I learned that some people call Tarkov a “horror survival” game rather than a “shooter survival” game because of the sound. In Factory, everything echoes, and enemies can sound like they are next door, even if you are in no immediate danger. So this is working as a kind of exposure therapy for jump scares as well – in game and probably in real life too.
Second, I learned a lot about how mobility functions as a critical aspect of fighting. Its something it took me a long time to appreciate in World of Tanks. And if you re-peek the same corner, even an Easy AI can headshot you, so don’t try that against real players.
Speaking of, my night ended on a less exciting note. Tired and spent, I took the easy way out and ran one and then another Scav raid to look for quest items. Reminder to self to save the stats for those going forward as well.
We’ll see how tomorrow goes. The one bugaboo is my potato. I can’t just log out and chill for 30m or I will have to restart the computer to clear the memory (Tarkov is a hog in that department), and the raids don’t actually take 20 minutes yet – or at least, I’m not surviving that long (that’s the practice time goal for the regimen). So I will have to make some adjustments there.
But hey, we’re off and running!
Harbinger Zero 