Loot Guide - Escape From Tarkov Guide - IGN (2024)

Looting is an essential mechanic in Escape from Tarkov. This is the action that you’ll be doing the most, apart from shooting other players and trying to survive Raids. Items come in all shapes and forms, and you should get as much as you can — even if you won't use them.

There are a few things to consider while looting in the game, so this guide will explain how to loot and how to organize your inventory.

Below you can find some shortcuts to those topics:

• How to Loot in Escape From Tarkov
• Organizing Your Inventory

How to Loot in Escape From Tarkov

Looting is the action of picking up items from basically anywhere you can. While in a Raid, you can pick up items from the floor, from objects like tables, inspect jumpers, desks, med cases, and bags, and you can also check other players’ (or bots’) corpses. Simply aim close to them until the option appears and press F. They’ll be saved in a free space in your in-game inventory.

If you want to automatically equip something like a weapon or a helmet, hold ALT while you press F.

When looting some places like desks or other players’ dead bodies, you’ll notice that the items might appear hidden. This is because you need to press “Searching” on the top menu and your character will start identifying the items.

However, when you start playing you’ll notice that most items appear obscured, with the legend "Unknown Item". This is because you need to examine them. Then they will become part of your personal encyclopedia of known items. To examine them, you can press right-click, then select “Examine”, or just press the wheel button on your mouse. This also happens when buying from Traders.

You’ll always receive experience points for looting some objects and even bonus points for examining unidentified items.

One thing you should know when starting to learn the maps is that the spawn points for loot are always the same. Objects like med cases, bags, and clothes will always spawn in the same spot. The items inside them will always change, and they can also be empty.

Items on tables, desks, shelves, or on the floor are different because they can spawn or not. However, you should start learning their spots anyway, so you can get better at looting while playing.

How well you loot in Escape from Tarkov is important because you’ll always lose everything you have with you when you die (your stash will remain unaltered, though). Looting, especially as a Scav, will be your preferred way to gain new valuable items and re-stock your main inventory. When playing as one, you won’t have to worry about anything that moves as if you were a PMC (more about this in our Scav Guide).

Always try to gather as much loot as you can. While certain items might affect your total weight and how you move, you should always try to return with as much as possible. Not because you’ll end up using everything (you probably won’t use even half at first), but you will always need things to sell, which will allow you to start making money. That being said, try not to discard items, only when you need to make space.

Organizing Your Inventory

While the action of picking up a single object is simple enough, making sure everything fits in your inventory and your personal stash is another story. This is when Escape from Tarkov becomes a bit of Tetris, asking you to move items around and utilizing your limited space to the fullest.

When in-game, you can basically add any object to any part of your equipment or pockets as long as there’s enough space. The only thing you should keep in mind is that some rigs have two-square spaces, which means that you can add large items there. For instance, you can’t add a large magazine in your pockets, because they are single square spaces.

After completing a Raid, you’ll return to base and be asked to decide which items to send to your stash and which ones to discard. The idea, as already mentioned, is that you don’t discard anything — it’s always better to sell anything you won’t use, as money is pretty important in the game.

However, this is easier said than done, so let’s check a few tips that will help you with your stash:

• Use your backpacks’ and rigs’ spaces. You can put backpacks inside backpacks endlessly and then just leave the first one in your inventory, saving a lot of space. Also, don’t leave your rigs empty as they can be used to keep anything (but keep in mind the comment about small and large spaces a few lines above).

• Automatic order. If you check the bottom left corner of your stash, you’ll notice a small icon with two blue arrows. If you press it, the game will automatically order your inventory following some hidden criteria (like putting together the bullets first, the weapons’ mags later, then the guns, etc.). This can’t be used always and its utility is up to your preference, but it’s pretty useful during your first hours.
• You can rotate objects. Whether when ordering your character’s equipment or moving things around your stash, you can rotate them from a vertical position to a horizontal one and vice versa. This is a key feature to use and you should experiment with it as much as possible. To rotate an object, hold your left click and press R.

• Insert your accessories. Sometimes you might have several gun accessories taking up valuable slots. A way of making space is to just insert them into a compatible weapon. To check if you can do that, simply drag the accessory to the weapon of your choice.
• Fold and unfold weapons. A good amount of large weapons, like the M4A1, can be folded. This means that the weapon will become a bit smaller by changing how its grip or other parts are located, giving you some free squares.
• Upgrade your Hideout and get cases. Your Hideout is your personal base, one in which you can build certain parts and get permanent upgrades for your character (like some extra spaces for your inventory). On the other hand, cases work like big boxes that have a ton of squares for you to save things. Some of them, like the Lucky Scav Junkbox (sold by the Therapist) and the Ammunition Case (sold by the Mechanic) can be purchased, while others need to be gained doing quests.