The first-ever microtransaction in Escape From Tarkov is now live, with players being able to purchase access to offline co-op practice raids for around $10.
The addition was made earlier today, with an update to the Escape From Tarkov website where you need to go to purchase the microtransaction. Heading to your profile page will show a new dropdown option for “Practice Co-Op Mode” and if you do not already have it unlocked, you can click that option to be taken to the purchase menu.
For those in Europe the upgrade costs €10, which translates to about $10.75. US pricing is yet to be revealed.
Once purchased, the upgrade gives you the ability to play offline raids with other players. Every Escape From Tarkov account has always had the ability to play a normal offline raid, where no other players would spawn in but everything else would be the same as an online raid. Obviously, no loot found in these raids could be taken out and kept, but it was a good way to learn maps and experiment with new weapon builds against scavs. Buying the microtransaction will now allow you to run these raids with friends.
Anyone who purchased the Edge of Darkness edition of Tarkov, which was removed from sale earlier this year, already had the ability to run these offline raids with other players and doesn’t need to buy the microtransaction. But as that edition is no longer on sale, Battlestate Games has given players who missed out on EoD the chance to still access this useful feature.
The addition of microtransactions was announced in the 14.1 patch notes earlier this week, and while there was some initial backlash to them, that was quickly replaced with anger over some strange recoil changes and a lot of bugs that were introduced. Within 24 hours the dev team announced plans to roll back the patch, which has now happened, and there is no date for it to return. While the actual changes to the game seemed to break a lot of things, the microtransactions don’t appear to have been related and so the dev team has chosen to release the first one without the launch of a new patch.
It was also announced that you will be able to buy more stash space with real money through microtransactions, however, this is yet to launch, with the offline co-op access currently being the only microtransaction available.
