Fans eagerly awaiting the Escape From Tarkov wipe have been given an unusual Christmas gift instead – NPC scavs have now been tooled up with grenade launchers, one of the game’s most powerful and terrifying weapons.
Due to Escape From Tarkov‘s looting system, this means that you are more likely to be fragged by tooled-up Scavs, but it also means that it’s more likely you will be able to grab a grenade launcher of your own from the body of a scav that you have killed. As a result, this incredibly lethal weapon is now going to be more common ahead of the wipe, which will reset the inventory and progress of all players.
The event was announced on Twitter, as with other Escape From Tarkov events.
#EscapefromTarkov pic.twitter.com/T6Yh4jaHr6
— Battlestate Games (@bstategames) December 25, 2022
With regards to the wipe, there’s still no information on exactly when that will be. Clues seemed to point to a wipe last week and some players even suggested that the wipe might come about today (December 26) due to some numbers decoded by some of the community.
Now, the best guess is that the wipe will come before the Twitch Drops campaign for the game, which will be running from December 29 to January 7. With this in mind, the smart money now seems to point towards a wipe on December 27 or 28, as otherwise, players will be getting new items only to lose them when progress is wiped a few days later.
In the meantime, all of the previous events are still running in the game too: stims currently have no negative side effects, skills are levelling faster, the flea market currently has next to no fees and melee weapons are now staggeringly powerful. Finally, player-on-player combat has been incentivised as dog tags are worth a ton of money too.
Eager fans are waiting for any real news of a wipe, but we’ll find out when BattleState Games tweets about upcoming downtime.