Escape from Tarkov: How to Level Up Fast

RPG leveling is usually pretty straightforward: you quest, kill things, and level up. Well, in Escape from Tarkov, things are a bit more complicated, so here’s how to level up fast.

Tips to Level Up Fast in Escape from Tarkov

Leveling up in Escape from Tarkov is mostly straightforward. Complete Tasks (the game’s version of quests), kill AI and other players, and engage with the game’s many systems. There are a few wrinkles, however, that set Tarkov apart. Here’s everything you need to do to level up fast.

• Complete as many Tasks as you can. Tasking (or questing by any other name) is the single best way to level up quickly and consistently. The various Traders in the game all give you Tasks that, once completed, reward a flat amount of XP along with other supplies, weapons, and loot. There are hundreds of Tasks to complete. As long as you prioritize them, you’ll rarely be at a loss for experience.
• Survive every raid you can. Successfully extracting from a raid in Tarkov provides a massive 30% boost to the experience you receive at the raid’s end. That bonus applies to every action you took during the raid: exploring, searching, looting, and healing being the most common. Defeating enemies, including AI Scavs and other player PMCs is also a fantastic supplemental XP gain.
• Defeat enemies with headshots. Regular kills in Tarkov award only a few dozen XP, but a headshot rewards 100 additional points atop the base kill XP. With how important it is to win your fights quickly, you should always go for the quick headshot against any foe you face.
• Do your weekly and daily Tasks as frequently as possible. Daily and weekly Tasks are separate from map and activity-based Tasks. Dailies don’t provide a huge boost. But they’re usually easy enough to do and can be completed as you’re going for other Tasks or objectives. Weeklies are a huge boost, easily between 25,000 to 55,000 XP when you first unlock them. If you feel like you can complete your weekly comfortably, do it. You won’t regret the time you spend doing so.
• Loot everything. Looting provides XP for both searching the container while the loot is in it, as well as taking that loot out and putting it into your backpack, check rig, or pockets. Even if you don’t want or need the item in question, take it out, then put it back. You’ll still get all the XP for the action without spending valuable inventory space on an otherwise worthless item. Searching every container also allows you to find items to examine, awarding between 10 to 100 XP per examination on top of the search and loot values.

Skills to Level Up in Escape from Tarkov

There’s also an entirely separate set of skills you need to level up, including Endurance and Strength. These govern things like how far you can run and how much you can lift. Then there are skills like Charisma, which determines how much Traders will buy items for; Perception, which helps you see loot in the world; and Metabolism, which makes food and medicines more effective.

The list of soft skills is far longer than your character level, and Trader Loyalty level could ever be, but so long as you’re eating, drinking, buying, selling, carrying heavy things, shooting, looting, running lots of places, and a thousand other actions, you’ll level them up as well. In other words, there’s not nearly enough space in this guide to cover leveling each individual skill.

If you follow the five steps outlined in more detail, you should have no trouble leveling up fast in Escape from Tarkov. For the basic stuff, anyway. For more on the game, check out our guides on the best Tasks to complete first, the best Hideout upgrades, and more in our guides hub for the game.