From Woods to Factory, Ground Zero and the new Labyrinth, your choice of Escape From Tarkov map is dependent on your current in-game needs. It comes down to the rotation, and which part of the EFT world is currently most likely to provide decent PvP versus rare loot or a boss fight. With rivals like Arena and Gray Zone Warfare competing for the extraction shooter top spot, Battlestate Games, naturally, wants to keep Tarkov feeling fresh. According to the realistic shooter’s lead designer, a significant overhaul to the raid, loot, and bosses system – which has been suggested by a devoted EFT player – could soon be implemented in order to bring more attention to a greater range of maps.
The new Labyrinth raid is one of the hardest challenges in Escape From Tarkov to date, but the FPS game still boasts plenty of other ultra-tough bosses, like Glukhar and Shturman. Before you even battle them, however, you have to find them, and their variable spawn rates can make it difficult to pin them down. On the contrary, instead of trying to trigger a boss fight, you might just be looking for some decent new gear, and eager to keep a low profile. It would be helpful, perhaps, if there were a tool to help differentiate which EFT maps are most likely to produce which type of experience: if you want X, go here, and if you want Y, go there.
This is exactly what one Escape From Tarkov player, posting on the game’s forums as ‘my89user,’ proposes. “Have bosses spawn on maps 100% during a weekly rotation,” my89user says. “For example: Glukhar spawns on Reserve with a 100% chance for five days (or the entire week), then next week it’s 100% Killa on Interchange, and the following week could be Sturman, and so on.
“We can also implement ‘hot loot’ map rotations alongside this, where one map per week has a 50% increased loot pool for loose loot and key rooms. This way, each week offers something exciting: one map for players looking for PvP with guaranteed boss fights, another for players hunting rare items like VPX, Virtex, and Radio, and quieter maps for questers who want less player interaction.
“After playing over 5,000 hours, I’ve noticed that sometimes people just want to finish quests but run into too much PvP, while others are looking for PvP but keep getting empty raids,” my89user continues. “I believe this idea would help balance player engagement across all maps and give each type of player something to look forward to during the rotation.”
Tarkov’s developers may respond to forum posts with a variety of tags and badges, indicating whether the team may consider implementing players’ suggestions into the game itself. Replying to my89user, Battlestate developer ‘YOWA,’ credited as the shooter’s design lead, affirms that the suggestions about boss and raid changes are officially ‘planned’ for a future update, and could arrive sooner rather than later: “Good idea,” YOWA says. “I think we will do it after the Labyrinth.”
We’ll keep an eye on this and see when precisely the changes are coming to EFT, but they should, hopefully, make it easier to pick the right map and also give players more reasons to check out certain regions that might otherwise go neglected.
In the meantime, try some of the other best survival games, or maybe the best co-op games available on PC today.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.