Escape from Tarkov’s latest patch – 0.13.5 – is now live, meaning that players can get their hands on several new weapons, as well as the ability to use kit presets. Oh, and everything has been wiped again, so there’s that.

If you’ve not been playing Escape from Tarkov for long, you might not have experienced a wipe before. Around every six months, players lose all their stats, inventories, skills and mission progress, so it’s basically like starting from scratch. The last wipe occurred on December 28, 2022, so anyone who started playing this year might feel slightly empty right now.

Anyway, wipe aside, plenty of new things have been added in the new patch for players to get excited about – there’s a lot to get into, but here are some of the most interesting changes.  

As mentioned at the top, players now have access to kit presets – you can save a line-up of gear to quickly equip easily. Everyone has up to 50 custom gear slots at their disposal – each one will display its content and weight, and they can be easily compared to other equipment sets.

The Streets of Tarkov map has been given a juicy expansion, and is now home to a new boss named Kaban, who can be found near the car repair shop. He’s a large lad, and can wield a number of heavy machine guns without resting them. With that said, he doesn’t move around much, but he has plenty of guards there to defend him, so watch out for them.

Containers are also going to be handled quite differently from now on – the number of spawn points has increased, but they’re all now completely random, rather than having designated spots.

Did someone say new weapons? Yes, it was me, right at the start of this article. Now available in the game are the SVT-40 and AVT-40 rifles, as well as the PKP and PKM light machine guns, AK-12 assault rifle, and finally, Ryzhy’s sawed-off. Both the PB and PM pistols have been updated, too.

As you’d expect, a bunch of other fixes and improvements have been rolled out, too – if you want to look at the full patch notes, you can find them here. 

If you’ve been looking for a new game to sink some time into, be sure to look at our list of the best FPS games.