Don't know how to improve as a solo player

[NibbaBimbo]

I bought this game back in 2018 and played for a couple weeks on and off.

For reasons I can't remember I stopped playing, but have recently gotten back into it with 2 other players. I have around 20 hours in the game currently, most of them from 2018 and my other mates don't have much more experience than me either. We usually either play as scavs on Factory, or as PMCs on Woods and jeeeesus christ, we get f***** so much. 

I currently have a winrate of around 25% (to be fair we did a ton of naked runs on factory) but still, far from even remotely good. At the end of the day, we more often than not exit the game with about as much as we started with. 

 

But now here's the problem. I've just tried to do a couple solo raids as a PMC to get rid of gear fear and the fear of playing solo in general and to get a better feel for the game, but god damn, I got dunked on HARD. I played 4 scav runs, died every time and 2 PMC runs on woods, got sniped once and the other time I walked into a mine and got shot in the back by a PMC.

As a SOLO player I just feel overwhelmed. When im playing with my mates I have someone to watch my back and when sh** goes down, someone to support me in a fight. But playing alone, is just overwhelming. I feel like it's impossible for me to extract alone even once. If I don't die seconds after spawn, I die while looting. If I manage to loot, I get killed in a 1v1. If I somehow survive that, I get killed on the way to the extract. I don't even know where to start.

Anyone else had a similar experience as a solo player? Does it get better by just continuing to play? Im extremely frustrated right now as I lost 2 full sets of gear and every single scav inventory. 

Edited February 26, 2021 by NibbaBimbo

[Evilwayz]

I came over to Tarkov from 2 years of playing DayZ so I do have the advantage of just not caring about gear at all. You get to a point where you realize gear is meant to be used. 

With that said I also understood that there is a very sharp learning curve to Tarkov. I can tell you that my friends all play together and I found I speed up my learning curve when I played solo. The best way to improve initially is use your Scav to PvP. 

Most players in this game use their Scav as a means to loot. Don't. Use your scav to learn PvP with all kinds of weapons. Use your Scav to push fights. If you hear gunshots sprint towards them. I often times will only play Reserve. I immediately flip on the raiders, get a few grenade spawns and if I do not like my loadout I push raiders steal their loadouts and go for players.

On your PMC initially just run loot runs. You get into the map first so you are first to the loot unlike your Scav. It is a bit counter intuitive as most players loot on their Scav and PvP on their PMC. 

Once you start getting more comfortable and confident in PvP you will find you will start pushing PvP on both your Scav and PMC. Then you will find you are rushing high profit loot areas like Market rooms etc. 

Every single time you die I suggest having a recording software like Shadowplay and watching your gameplay back. Then analyze how they killed you. What do they do to kill you. Then start using those same strats that worked extremely well on you on other people. 

[Evilwayz]

Just to add onto this you just have to get into the head space where you are on your Scav...this isn't my gear, non of this matters. I legit am stupid about this frame of mind to the point that one of my recent raids I spawned on my Scav with a labs keycard, and found a DVL-10 literally on the roof of one of the dorms just sitting there fully set up with M61. I went out PvPing and ended up dying to a team of 4, but I took out 3 of them bitches lol.

You have to just have fun with the PvP. Get to the point where killing more people is more important than finding really good loot and really good loot will just fall into your lap.

[Bane5]

A lot of success comes down to knowledge of the map which can only be obtained the hard way. After playing for many dozens of hours you will start to get a feel for:

• which spots on  the map people immediately  rush full sprint to try to loot
• which angles you need to be wary of when spawning in certain locations
• where  snipers like to hide for good fields of fire
• how quickly the map becomes depleted of players
• locations of small loot places  that other players tend  to overlook in the early game
• locations of small loot places  that other players tend  to overlook in the late game
• how much gunfire you expect to hear indicating how many hatchlings/squads/extract campers there may be
• etc

There is a certain  amount of inevitable bad luck that can always happen, but you will begin to notice very strong patterns in the behavior of other players on certain maps/spawns/time left  and so forth.