How To Increase Scav Karma In Escape From Tarkov

Escape from Tarkov is filled with many different respect and rapport levels, whether it be between Prapor, Peacekeeper, Mechanic, or any other of the traders. The respect, also known as rep, is directly affected by the completion of tasks, once completing a task for a merchant, the player will experience a reward of increased rep towards that specific trader. You can check the rep by looking in the top right of the trader screen and it will be between 0.00 and 10.00. This same respect system is used within the Flea market, the higher the rep the more items the player can sell.

Scav karma works the same way as the other respect systems amongst traders. You can complete small sidequests for Fence, raising your rep, however, there are other ways you can both increase and decrease your scav karma in-game. Your scav karma can be seen in the same location as other merchants' respect levels within Fences merchant page. Arguably, Fences karma, also known as scav karma, is the most important respect level to worry about and maintain due to the devastating effects it portrays in-game. 

Your scav karma directly affects how the scav AI treats you in-game, specifically when you are playing as a player-scav. Additionally, your scav karma affects your personal player scav, affecting the weapon, armor, spawn items, and spawn times it has. Appearing slightly confusing, all these details will be explained below for you to understand! 

What Is Scav Karma In Escape from Tarkov

Scav Karma is essentially a measurement of how "good" of a scav you are personally, whether you murder fellow player scavs, engage scav AI, or instead if you, help AI scavs and other player scavs instead of killing them. Your scav Karma is reflected within Fence's merchant page, showing you your scav rep, it can be negative or positive and measured the same as other trader respect levels. Every time you murder a fellow scav in cold blood when operating a player-scav, your scav karma is lowered and therefore affects you in ways you cannot imagine. On the contrary, if you murder a "rouge" player-scav (a player-scav who's killing other scavs for no reason) you receive positive scav karma, raising your Fence respect. 

Benefits of High Scav Karma 

An unknown benefit to having high scav karma is you can level up Fence as a trader. Many players don't know this is possible, as Fence has typically remained level one for most players, however, once reaching scav karma level 6 (6.00 respect) players will obtain scav loyalty level four, providing players with these benefits:

• 30% discount on all Fence items 
• A larger payout for all sold items to Fence
• Lower player-scav regenerative times 
• Faster player scav respawn times
• Better scav equipment - weapons, armor, medicine, rare item spawns
• A larger variety of scav extracts is available 
• Insured item purchasing - buy dead PMC uninsured weapons from Fence 

Despite not looking like much of a huge benefit, imagine your player scav spawning with between 50-100k roubles worth of loot (possibly more) every twenty minutes for every scav run. This allows players to build passive income, it's essentially free money and the player scav is an easy way to farm loot with zero risk of losing stash items! 

Low Scav Karma Effects 

On the contrary, there are devastating effects of having low scav karma. Low scav karma is bestowed upon those that are ruthless within their player-scav runs, typically running and gunning everything with a pulse despite being integrated into a friendly army of AI and players to battle enemy PMC. Every time you kill a player-scav with no justification your scav rep lowers, and slowly as it decreases it affects these factors:

• Player-scav respawn waiting time (reaching up to an hour wait per scav run)
• Spawns with worse equipment - guns, armor, medical supplies, rare loot
• AI scavs will begin automatically killing you despite not engaging them first
• Scav bosses will treat you as PMC, disregarding their typical patience for scavs

Players who don't care about their player scav will realize how important it is to maintain their scav respect once losing it. Your personal player scav acts as insurance to your PMC if you need money, weapons, armor, loot, and anything with zero risk, players gather supplies through their player scav. Now, if you have low scav respect, you spawn with awful weapons, no armor, and no medicine, and scavs will automatically engage you as if you're a PMC, when you die, you then have to wait up to an hour before replaying your terrible player scav. 

Overwhelming information - this scheme has been in place for years and it's surprising how little Escape from Tarkov fans know how this system works. After several years of playing Escape from Tarkov, this system was only discovered by myself last year!

How to Increase Scav Karma in Escape from Tarkov

Below, find the following list of activities to complete to upgrade your scav karma:

Killing PMCs - for every PMC you kill as a player scav your reputation increases. Depending on how many scavs that specific PMC has killed that raid, is how significant of a scav karma increase you will receive. If that player has killed ten scavs, expect a larger payout. 

Killing rouge player scavs - If you come across another player scav that you've seen murder other scavs, you are rightfully allowed to execute him. This will gain you scav karma and will not interfere with the current in-raid scavs opinion of you, they will not engage you and be thankful you murdered a rouge player scav. 

Successfully extracting - seems relatively easy, but extracting as a player scav will receive you an increase of scav karma, raising your reputation and benefiting you. 

Shared extracts - shared extracts are based around most Escape from Tarkov maps, having both a PMC and scav extract together. These extracts have the exact requirement of "Extract with a friendly PMC," meaning, as a player scav you have to find and make peace with a PMC, find the extract, and extract together. This exchange will typically be arranged via VOIP and players will need to act very cautiously, as PMCs will entice player scavs to let their guard down, invite them to extract, and then murder them in cold blood. However, if you manage to extract via a shared extraction point, you will receive an increase in scav reputation.

Completing scav tasks - Fence provides a series of tasks to all players within Escape from Tarkov, whereas they are not mainstream questline tasks, these tasks provide the rewards of increased scav karma. You can find these tasks by heading to the Fences merchant page, checking out his tasks, and accepting them. 

Using car extracts - these are the extracts named "V-Exit" on the extraction list for all players and scavs, asking players to bring around 5000 roubles with them to extract. If you successfully exit through a Vehicle exit, players will receive an increase in scav karma. 

If you follow these guidelines and complete the above tasks most scav runs, you'll be able to reap the mentioned rewards above. Despite not appearing particularly enticing, the player scav provides an essential role in Escape from Tarkov and it's incredibly important that all players ensure the reputation and well-being of their player scav. 

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