On low and medium the shadows have harder lines and more pixel artifacts, which we want to avoid given our other settings. What it does change however, is the quality and density of the shadow.
However, we’re not sure if this was fixed in an update at some point, but in our testing the darkness of the shadows is unchanged by lowering it. Some players have reported that setting their shadows to low makes them brighter and so it’s easier to see enemies hiding inside of them. Your shadow setting can make the difference between someone hiding in the darkness and shooting you in the back, to you popping their head off from across the field. If you’re playing with very limited hardware you can set this to medium instead, but we wouldn’t recommend going any lower. What this will help achieve is an effect where the in the background of an enemy player has a smooth and nice texture, while the jagged outline of the player model stands out clear. With this goal in mind, set your texture quality to high. We’re going to be setting up our settings with the aim of creating as much contrast between the environment and enemy silhouettes as possible.
You know what else comes in cones? Ice Cream and who doesn’t love ice cream? 23. Setting this to 75 means you’ll be able to spot enemies sooner as you’ll have a wider-cone of vision. But while it can provide a slight advantage in long range engagements, the disadvantage such a limited FOV gives in medium and close-range firefights is too great. If you’re very hard of seeing, leaving the field of view (FOV) setting to the default 50 can be tempting, as everything appears much bigger and zoomed in, so it’s easier to see enemies in the distance. While you’re at it, also use the monitors’ native aspect ratio (typically 16:9), if you have an “ultrawide” screen this is even better. In Escape from Tarkov it’s all about spotting your enemy before he pots you, and you won’t do that with zero peripheral vision. Given that we’ll use pretty low settings otherwise if you follow the rest of the points of this list, you should have no problem pushing your resolution up to 1920x1080 at the very least. However, if it’s kills you want, go ahead and put this value to as high as your rig can handle. You could go lower of course, you’d want to do this either if your rig (mostly your graphics card) isn’t strong enough to handle the game, or because you prefer the more zoomed in look. Set your resolution to the same as your maximum/native monitor resolution. Let’s get the no-brainer out of the way first. The settings window for graphical settings is easy enough to navigate, but there are no tooltips for what each setting does, that's what this list is for. If you’re getting frustrated with being shot seemingly out of nowhere, or finding it hard to hit your enemies, this list/guide is for you! But it might not be all down to player skill and experience, many professional level players have several tricks they use to make their lives on the streets of Tarkov a little easier. Escape From Tarkov Settings That Give You An EdgeĮscape from Tarkov can be a daunting and frustrating experience if you’re new to the game or first person shooters in general.