Overcoming Solo Anxiety... - Tarkov Solo Player Guide

Do you play Tarkov solo or in a squad?

As someone who has played mostly solo a majority of wipes since 2018, my biggest advice is, accept you won't be able to loot your kills as often. If you see or hear at least two people in a squad and you kill one of them, 70% of the time, the best thing to do is to just run the hell away. Unless the squad is really good, they will become static, trying to figure out where you are and where their friends are. Use that time to run away and just keep looting other things. Cause most likely, as they're trying to find you and you're looting, you're going to find items with a value way higher than the gear of the guy you killed. Accept that looting PMC kills is a privilege of squads who can cover each other and your survival rate will get much higher while still getting the fun out of PvP. Another big tip is to ambush. Don't start a fight with a squad unless you feel that you can kill one of them for sure. After you kill that guy, you either run away or you run to a different position to shoot the next guy. There are many squads that I have fought that seem to think they're fighting another squad even though it's just me cause I keep moving and shooting at them from different positions. This can also be used to box squads in cause players who usually play in squads poop their pants when they're alone. Therefore squads in a fight will group up and stay closer together where you can box them in somewhere where you can just sit in a good spot and shoot them as they try to push, or you box them in and use the time for them to find the courage to try to find you and kill you to run away and go loot the good stuff. You also have to accept that if you run into a squad at close range as a solo player and you have no way to run away or reposition, you're dead 90% of the time. But instead of being sad about it, try to do as much damage as possible. Send one or two of them back to the lobby, chances are they won't play another raid until their friends are done with theirs so you can probably get one or two raids done before they're into their next one. Dying wastes their time much more than yours and is something to feel good about as you kill two people in a 4-man squad. They might get their gear back, but they won't get their time back. Those are probably my biggest tips for playing tarkov solo and that's the end of my TED talk.

"Don't have much time and you may only have time for 5 to 10 raids"..... yall got time for 5 raids?!?!?

accepting you will always be at a massive disadvantage was the hardest part for me to deal with. that and going from complete dead silence to the loudest gunfight in history in a matter of seconds. i'm not afraid of losing my kit, i'm afraid of the sound design haha

I think there is difference between gear fear and solo anxiety. I'm not scared of losing expensive gear. I just have super anxiety playing solo. Getting jumpscared by a bush camper solo vs with squads hits really different. Fighting 1 v many is so much adrenaline that my hand wont stop shaking for hours after.

Once I am in a raid as a solo I do really well. I find fights while solo so much easier like when I am in a group fighting a three man feels scary but when I am alone I feel so much more in control. The issue is when I am playing alone I will take like 10-20 minute breaks in between every raid because I have no one pushing me to play so I just sit there building up confidence to play.

Great tips, and one extra incredibly important piece of advice is to ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCTS. As soon as you doubt yourself in this game, it will punish you for it. If you get that feeling that you're in a bad spot, move. If you think you heard something nearby, check your corners, turn on tac device, look around, be ready to shoot, ect. If you spawn somewhere specific and feel like you're going to be pushed, you probably will be. Chances are your gut feeling is correct and any time wasted being indecisive can be punishing, especially when no one is there to save you as a solo.

I'm definitely much more evasive when I play solo. A bunch of times when I'm fighting a squad and I think I can't kill all of them, I'll just kill a few and run since more likely than not the remaining ones will go into "protect my buddy's stuff" mode and won't pursue.

I just got into solo play after running ONLY duo for my 300 hours of gameplay (300 hours is not alot for this game) and honestly the only tip i can give for solo anxiety is to have a plan. You tell yourself you're gunna do THIS obj, loot this area, and take this extract out if you spawn in THIS side of the map, and just generally don't wander from your idea. I find myself always getting killed and panicking when I wander around too much. Think about your ways out of situations, you aren't shroud, or landmark, when the alarm bells in your head are popping tf off telling you you're going to die, bug the hell out man. Pick your fights and only fights you feel like you have an advantage in. Heard an anonymous man ahead of you in a bush somewhere you don't know on your way and feel he has the better position? back up and swing around and put yourself at the advantage. This game doesn't force you to take all the fights that come, at the time they come. You have control. Every sighting, sound, creak and crack is an enemy. So many players don't have that advantage, they run in squads or duos where they have to keep spatial awareness of their teams at all times, communication gets muddy, confusion hits when someone dies, use it! The mass majority of my anxiety went away when I finally drilled it into my head that I have control, and the more you play like a lost roomba hugging and bouncing off every wall, the more you'll get killed. Another tip that helps it to talk to yourself (LMAO). But trust me, it helps, joke about what's going on, think out loud, make light of the situations. There's an infinite well of enjoyment you can get from this game, in victory and death, don't let it be cornered by the whims and wills of whenever your friends wanna play, jump on, grab a mosin, put a sock on your head and go be a goblin.

Map knowledge is the greatest asset in Tarkov

This is my third wipe, I'm a father of six kids, got wife and full time job. So my play time is only when they all go to bed before I go to bed. And I can say my first wipe I was scared, I avoided every fight and only fought if I had too. At end of that wipe I got to level 44 and had so much stuff erased at wipe that last wipe I didn't have gear fear anymore as I know it all goes away one way or another. I will say each wipe I can tell I have gotten better, I still die a lot but I also have won fights I would've never thought I could first wipe I played. I have played a couple games with other players but to be honest I enjoy playing solo way more. Just take it slow, learn maps, learn ways to make money and just die and learn from it. You will see progress I promise

As someone who's played over 2000 hours as solo, maybe another 500-100 in groups one of my favorite tricks I've learned is if you're near loot, wait and hide until not only they start looting, but their teammate starts moving and just walk behind them; often times this screws up comms where they think it was a teamkill, giving you a lot of time until your name pops up in their death screen to abuse the advantage.

Thank you so much for this Jesse! This is my second wipe and this wipe I'm playing a lot of solo. This helped me a lot!

I remember not to long ago after doing a ton of rat runs I had enough cash to do a bunch of factory runs and at first I was kinda scared but after seeing what that armor will actually do it gave me a ton of confidence

This was something i had over this weekend, no one in my group was really online Saturday, ended up only playing one raid on customs (it was a great raid, 15 scavs kills, literally left the raid with 2 bullets left, one in a spare mag and one pack bullet). Albeit i was playing very different than when im playing in my group, a lot slower and wasnt pushing all the fights around the map, just lurked around and hunted scavs for hobo quest. thank you for making a good video on helping with this apprehension that im sure many of the newer\casual players may face.

Love this guide Jesse. Been playing solo with great success for years now but it's still nice to get tips. My problem in tarkov is actually playing with groups. I'm so used to "everything in front of me dies" that if I do find a group to play with I'm the one that struggles the most.

WOW, for an actual gamer trying to learn tarkov... this information was invaluable. something you definitely learn from many of game playing and i skipped that simply watching this. Thanks Jesse

hey big dawg, just wanted to say that your game sense and mindset advice is fantastic and I'm very happy and grateful that you made this amongst several other guides this game is very intimidating but with good guidance you can have so much fun even as a level 1 trying to gun down level 40 players with sweat pooling on the ground beneath their chairs.

Goated, all of this is so true. Primarily solo almost 400 hours and it can hurt, but embracing the suck allows the HUGE come ups where you wipe a three/four man and manage to extract with 3 new kits. Also, nothing beats that adrenaline rush when you take out a member or two of an enemy squad, you hear the rest repositioning, and you take that deep breath like "Let's go". Internal music activate. Win or loss, absolute rush.

best tip video i think i have ever seen and takes the time to explain exactly what he means amazing much appreciated bro