A new Escape From Tarkov patch is set to arrive tomorrow, April 29, and it should bring with it a lot of improvements, including optimizations to key maps and a ton of user-requested features and changes that should make life a lot easier when playing.
The new patch is 0.16.6.0, which was initially announced as coming in May, but appears to be launching a few days early. It will now launch tomorrow, April 29, at 8:00 AM BST / 3:00 AM EDT. The installation process for the patch will take around five hours, and during this time Escape From Tarkov will be down and not playable at all. However, as we have seen many times before, there is a chance this downtime is extended further should there be any complications with the patch deployment.
While we won’t get a chance to see the official Escape From Tarkov patch notes for update 0.16.6.0, we do know some of the things that should be arriving with it thanks to the recent Tarkov TV stream that revealed the Tarkov roadmap for the next few months. In it, a lot of key changes coming in the patch were revealed, as well as some of the changes we can expect in future patches as well.
In the new Tarkov patch the biggest changes will arrive at a technical level, rather than in the form of new content. There will be significant optimizations for the Lighthouse map, visual improvements for Customs, which continues to be amazing since the recent rework, and audio improvements on Shoreline. There are also promised fixes for missing armor impact sounds, AI behaviour improvements, and some of the usual balance changes that we often see at this point in a wipe.
The more interesting changes come in the promised improvements that have come from the Tarkov Community suggestion site. The relatively new suggestion forum has been a place for players to post their biggest gripes with Tarkov, and it seems that the devs have been taking notice. This patch should include significant quality of life improvements such as highlighting items in insurance returns that are set to expire, auto restarting failed tasks and the ability to buy all items needed for a craft at once.
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The Tarkov roadmap also states there will be an in-game event with patch 0.16.6.0, however don’t expect this to launch tomorrow, as we tend to see new events pop up a few days after the release of a patch at the earliest. Given the last event has also only just concluded, it would be a surprise to see another so quickly, unless it is referring to the promised permanent addition of the areas from the last event.
With this Escape From Tarkov patch arriving slightly earlier than expected, it seems there have already been some changes to the roadmap despite it only being shown off a few days ago. However, getting a patch sooner than expected is never a bad thing, and could mean that we get more content even sooner than planned in future.
