Your First Raid

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, and a loaded spare magazine fits too.

Take tasks first. Press O for your task screen and accept from there. Tasks pay roubles, XP and standing with the trader. A task that asks you to visit a place or kill scavs 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, and you can pin three to your screen.

Gear for the job, not the worst case. Up to 45 kg you feel no weight at all, so armour, a rig, a primary and a secondary is a normal kit, not a slow one; past that, sprinting and climbing tire you a little faster. What kills new players is not being under-geared; it is carrying everything they own on one trip.

Deploying#

The way out is the Land Cruiser or the customs gate at the hub's entrance. Interact with either and the deploy screen opens, a satellite map with every landing point, the extracts in reach of each, the time and the weather:

• 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 the spot: never in water or inside something, never near an extract or a base, and never on top of a stranger. You're protected for a few seconds after you land, until you fire or move off. If you're in a group, tick WITH MY GROUP and everyone standing within 60 m of you goes with you and lands beside you. The Lab is the exception: it is entered from its own doors in the safezone with a Lab access keycard, which is used up on entry.

Out there#

Three kinds of thing are hunting you, and they behave differently.

• AI: there are no infected. Scavs turn up in the towns, farms, factories and military areas around you in groups of two to four, see and hear you, and shoot back; bosses walk their ground with their guards, squads guard crashed convoys, and a helicopter and a BTR (armoured vehicle) patrol the map. All of them are worth XP and all of them drop their kit. Events covers them.
• Wildlife. Wolves run in packs and will chase you down; bears are rare and take a lot of killing. Deer, boar, hares and foxes run from you. Any animal is worth 5 XP and a bear 50, and Jaeger buys the pelts and meat.
• Other players. Groups of up to 3. A player kill pays 262 XP, and their body drops everything they carried except what was in their container.

Worth knowing while you're moving: a group with a working radio is warned before an airdrop lands and gets a rough map marker (everyone else only hears that one landed), locked rooms need a key or keycard, and the bright markers on your map are extracts.

Getting out#

Extracts are marked on the map as green crosses around the clock, all free and always open, 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.

Back at the hub#

Hand tasks in at the trader. 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, where your money lives too.

Then go again. Your level and your loyalty with the traders are the long game, and they only climb one way.