Playing a game of Escape From Tarkov can often feel like a roll of the dice, an exercise in pushing your luck that sometimes results in the loss of your precious equipment. You see, when you die in a raid, the items you happen to be carrying are subject to looting by other players. This is the gameplay loop of Tarkov—raid, loot, escape. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to accept that your gear is gone, though. If only there was a way to protect your inventory.
Oh wait, there is! Escape From Tarkov includes an “insurance” mechanic that can help to protect your property from permanent loss. Additionally, you can store your most important stuff in a safe container that will keep them from being lost to you forever. In this guide, we’ll run down a couple methods for keeping your gear protected.
Updated: April 4/17/2020
Escape From Tarkov Secure Containers
The best way to make sure you don’t lose any important items is to keep them inside a secure container. These are boxes that your character can carry into raids that act as additional inventory space. The difference, though, is that items stored inside will not be lost upon death. As of patch 0.12, there are five secure containers of varying sizes. Here’s what they are and how to get them:
- Secure Container Alpha
- Size: 2×2 grid.
- Source: This is the default container that your character starts with.
- Secure Container Beta
- Size: 3×2 grid.
- Source: Sold by the Peacekeeper merchant.
- Secure Container Epsilon
- Size: 4×2 grid.
- Source: Complete the quest “The Punisher” for Prapor.
- Secure Container Gamma
- Size: 3×3 grid.
- Source: Available to those who own the “Edge of Darkness” edition of Escape From Tarkov.
- Secure Container Kappa
- Size: 4×3 grid.
- Source: Complete the quest “The Fence” for The Collector.
In addition to these, future patches of the game will introduce new secure containers.
Escape From Tarkov Insurance
Secure containers are a great way to make sure you keep your favorite non-combat items, but what about weapons, armor, vests, and the like? These pieces of gear need to be equipped on your character (read: outside the safe container) in order to be usable. So what if you want to protect these things like you do the items in your safe container?
This is where insurance comes into play. Before deploying on a raid, you have the option of insuring the following inventory slots: earpiece, headwear, face cover, armband, body armor, eyewear, on sling, on back, holster, scabbard, and tactical rig. There’s a handy “insure all” button that you can click to cover them all at once. And we recommend doing this before literally every raid you embark on. Any loot that is insured will have a gold shield icon on it and you cannot insure an item that’s already covered, so don’t worry about paying extra money by accident.
There are two NPCs that will ensure your gear for you: Prapor or Therapist. Prapor is the cheaper option, but he takes longer to get your stuff back to you: about 20 to 29 real-time hours. The other (more expensive) choice is the Therapist, who will take 10 to 20 hours to return your insured gear. Prapor is typically the better choice since Therapist’s policy is significantly more expensive. Additionally, if you insure with Prapor you’ll have 72 hours to reclaim your gear, while Therapist gives you a whopping 144 hours.
If you die with insured items or if an enemy player picks up those items off your corpse and doesn’t extract, they will be returned to you after some time has passed. However, if you run out of time and are wearing insured items then you’ll lose them forever. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure you don’t have anything equipped that’s insured when the timer hits zero. Dropping them on the ground during the last 30-40 seconds is a safe way to ensure your gear returns to you. Additionally, your gear will not be returned if you either die or drop those items in The Lab.
Finally, players can commit “Insurance Fraud” by hiding their insured gear somewhere on the map. This is typically done when players find better gear out in the wild, but still want to keep the items they have. For example, if you have an insured helmet but discover a better one, hide the insured helmet somewhere so it returns after the match. Even if you don’t extract, that insured helmet will return to you in a day or two.
And that’s a quick rundown of secure containers and insurance in Escape From Tarkov. Did this guide help you out at all? Let us know in the comments section!
