§ 01Start Here
Your First Raid
The raid loop in detail: what to take, how deploying works, what you'll meet out there, how to find an extract, and what to do when you're back.
A raid is one trip: out of the hub, into Chernarus, and back through an extract. This page walks through one from start to finish. The Start Here page is the short version.
Before you leave the hub#
Decide what you can afford to lose. Everything on your character is at risk the moment you deploy, except what's in your secure container. Keys, keycards, cash and task items belong in there. Spare magazines don't fit — magazines are on the container's refusal list — so carry what you need loaded.
Take tasks first. Boards in the hub hand out tasks that pay reputation and roubles. A task that asks you to visit a place or kill infected in a town is free money on a trip you were making anyway. There's no practical limit on how many you can hold at once.
Gear for the job, not the worst case. The loadout is heavy by design — the stamina weight penalty is switched off across the whole server, so armour, a rig, a primary and a secondary is a normal kit, not a slow one. What kills new players is not being under-geared; it is carrying everything they own on one trip.
Deploying#
The deploy point is inside the hub. Interact with it and a map opens with every landing point on it:
- The Lab — needs a Lab access keycard, used up on entry
- Chernogorsk
- Elektrozavodsk
- Kamyshovo
- Solnechny
- Berezino
- Svetloyarsk
- Zelenogorsk
- Stary Sobor
- Severograd
- Novodmitrovsk
- Vybor
- Gorka
- Krasnostav
- Pustoshka
- Novaya Petrovka
- Lopatino
- Grishino
- Staroye
- Kamenka
- Vyshnoye
- Svergino
- Zaprudnoye
- Kamensk
- Sinystok
Before it puts you down, the server checks 200 m around the spot so you never land on top of a stranger. If you're in a group, everyone standing within 60 m of the person who deploys goes with them and lands beside them. The Lab is the one exception on the list: it needs a Lab access keycard, which is used up on entry, and the trip is covered by a short black screen so nobody can watch you arrive.
Out there#
Three kinds of thing are hunting you, and they behave differently.
- Infected are everywhere and worth reputation — 50 each for an ordinary one. Military and NBC infected in the right places are worth the same but hit harder.
- AI — scav patrols wander the villages in groups, bosses hold ground when staff spawn an event, and helicopter and BTR patrols cover set areas. All of them are worth reputation and all of them drop their kit. Events covers them.
- Other players. Groups of up to 3. A player kill pays 250 reputation, and their body drops everything they carried except what was in their container.
Worth knowing while you're moving: airdrops are announced to the whole server in advance with a rough map marker, locked rooms need a key or keycard, and the bright markers on your map are extracts.
Getting out#
Extracts are marked on the map around the clock, but their names are hidden — part of learning the map is learning which marker is which. On the ground an extract burns smoke and shows a green light. Walk in, stand still, and a countdown starts:
Taking damage does not cancel the countdown, so an extract under fire is still an extract. You cannot take a vehicle through one — get out first. Explosives can't be placed or armed near one, and any that are already there are swept.
Logging out is not an extract
Your character stays in the world for 30 s after any logout, 5 min if you've been in a fight, and it can be killed and looted the whole time. See Death, logout and combat logging.
Back at the hub#
Hand tasks in at the board that gave them. Sell what you don't need — every trader buys, at a rate that depends on the trader and on the item's condition — and put the rest in your stash. Don't drop anything on the safezone floor: the hub cleans up dropped items after 2 min, without warning and without compensation.
Then go again. The reputation ladder is the long game, and it only climbs one way.