Night Raids in Escape From Tarkov

When you are about to go into a raid in Tarkov, you have the option of choosing which map you would like to play. When you click on a map, you’re given two times that are available to play. These times are usually opposite of one another in terms of when they are during the day. And since Tarkov uses military time to express this, for example, 15:00 may be one option which is 3 in the afternoon, and the alternate option for time will usually be 3 in the morning, meaning it will be very dark and difficult to see. Unfortunately, these off hours for Tarkov don’t get nearly as much playtime as they should. So, an argument could be made to force players to play nighttime more often than we already do.

Night raids go a lot differently than your daylight counterparts; since everything is visible, there’s zero need to bring any kind of night vision, or even a simple flashlight if the map is outdoors and you refrain from entering any building with low levels of illumination. Nighttime however, is a whole different beast. There’s no sun, and the moon only provides so much light to help you see your surroundings. So, at the bare minimum, if you want to see, a flashlight is non-negotiable during a nighttime raid. And if you can afford it and it’s available to you, a pair of nods (night vision). Honestly, anything is better than nothing. There are four different types you will have access to over the course of the game, with the most effective ones costing upwards of 200k. The primary reason people choose to go nighttime is usually for one of three reasons: There’s generally less activity in these raids so it can be nice to just wander around, loot, and casually kill scavs along the way. Second, some tasks in the game need to be done at night. So, for completionists or people who are simply bored, a wrench in the equation is go nighttime. And thirdly, some tasks are just easier to do while at night; any quest that requires you to retrieve an item from a high traffic zone on a map such as dorms, or the resort, it can be marginally easier to go nighttime, slip in, grab the item and leave without anyone ever knowing you were there in the first place.

On paper, the idea of night raids is much more interesting than you’d initially think. Having your visibility greatly reduced, the ambient noise outdoors creating a much deeper atmosphere; crickets and wind combine to really give the idea that you are not only alone, but more vulnerable than you’re probably used to. It’s a shame we aren’t forced to play night raids more often, especially in the early game. I feel as though it creates really dynamic and interesting situations where someone without a flashlight may want to seek out another player and try to get them on board with helping them because they have the equipment needed to deal with the hasher nighttime environment.

The hope is that when, maybe one day, this game does indeed go open world, we as players will need to deal with nighttime whether we want to or not. Of course, I’m not advocating for us to deal with it for an entire play session, but if, perhaps, out of ten raids someone plays in a session, if three or four of them were forced nighttime raids, it might create more interesting engagements, interactions, and opportunities for things to happen that we’re not used to. You may notice I only used one night raid as background footage, and the answer to that is I just want you to be able to see what I’m doing without me doing any color correction to aid with the brightness and visibility. Even if some of the early game tasks were adjusted so we needed to get them done during nighttime, even that would be enough to satiate the argument I’m trying to make for nighttime. Sure, they can be really annoying and obnoxious, but I think night time raids get that reputation is because we are not given reason to go other than our own volition. The game isn’t telling us to actively look out for night raids and go, except the tasks in the game that already require it. And there are not that many in the first place. And most of them are closer to the latter half of the game, rather than the former.

Nighttime raids will most likely become more and more apparent as the progress of the game continues on; we will become forced to engage with off time raids more. And when I say off times, I also mean morning and evening raids as well (although this is probably less of an issue because you can still see). We will have to be prepared to deal with these, both in terms of our actual equipment we bring into a raid, and just out overall mentality with what time of day it will be if we go into a raid. This idea and sentiment has been brought up in regards to not being able to choose what map we play when we go in as a scav, but that’s another conversation entirely.