EFT Tutorial and Guide
THE TARKOV CENTRAL
When You Die, You Lose Everything.
Or Not?
One of the most hardcore aspects of Escape from Tarkov is the fact that when your character dies, everything in their inventory stays on their body and can be looted by other players or AI.
It’s a sort of “soft permadeath,” because your PMC will retain their acquired level, completed quests, and all their skills and stats, but you’ll lose everything you took with you into the raid where you died.
I believe this mechanic originates from games like the DayZ mod for Arma 2, one of the first online games to use this feature. The difference with DayZ is that EFT’s game scenarios are not persistent, so you cannot respawn and return to your body to recover what you lost.
It's probably for this reason that in EFT, “if you die, you lose everything” but with two exceptions.
Click on the links to read the articles I prepared about them:
Note: In a recent interview, Nikita explained that the true origin of the soft permadeath and the insurance system comes from EVE Online, which he was playing during the period when he first started thinking about and envisioning Escape from Tarkov.