Escape From Tarkov’s Patch 0.12.11 introduced the first iteration of weapon malfunctions and its been finetuned with Patch 0.12.12. If you’re wondering how malfunctions work, what causes them, and how to prevent it, we’ve got you covered. As part of our extensive Escape From Tarkov guide series, we’ll dive into all that, and more.
As a quick disclaimer: EFT is still in development, so anything we cover might change over time. We’ll do our best to keep all the information as up to date as possible though (last updated on 29th of December)! The following instructions are based on default key bindings.
Escape From Tarkov: Weapon Malfunctions
First of all, let’s define what a weapon malfunction is. As of writing, Escape From Tarkov features four types of malfunction:
- Misfire (mostly caused by weapon durability, also ammo)
- Failure to eject (mostly caused by weapon durability, also overheating and ammo)
- Failure to feed (mostly caused by magazine type, also weapon durability, overheating and ammo)
- Jammer bolt (mostly caused by overheating (hard), also weapon durability (normal))
Each of the malfunctions can be cleared differently, but you’ll always have to identify the problem first! Unless you have Elite level in the Troubleshooting skill, you have to press L to identify the weapon malfunction. After that, you’ll have one option to clear the malfunction using Shift+T, regardless of which of the malfunctions you’re unfortunately struck by.
Durability burn and overheating
So what causes a gun to malfunction exactly? Practically speaking, every time you fire, there’s an invisible roll of the dice. Basically any gun with a durability below 93% can malfunction in a number of ways, and how often that happens depends on the exact durability of a gun.
- Durability is a statistic simulating how reliable a firearm is. This stat can range from 100 to 0, with malfunctions happening more often the lower the durability of a gun is.
- Durability Burn is the impact a round has on the durability of a weapon. The higher the percentage (see images below), the faster a weapon deteriorates per round fired.
Alternatively, there’s an overheating system in Tarkov as of Patch 0.12.12. Every time you fire your weapon, it gets hotter. The game check how hot it gets and how fast it cools based on the weapon, ammunition, and which attachments the weapon has.
There are four stages of overheating, with each stage making it progressively more likely your weapon has a malfunction:
- Slight overheating – just a warm gun, nothing to worry about (except for visibility on thermal scopes, but you were already showing up as is)
- Medium overheating – the barrel glows red, the gun’s accuracy decreases and the chance of a malfunction increases. It breaks the gun faster too
- Severe overheating – a sizzling hot firearm has an inconsistent fire rate. It might even shoot without you pulling the trigger (cook-off)
- Maximum overheating – you’ve done it now, the bolt instantly jams
How to fix a malfunction
In Escape From Tarkov, there’s basically two things you need to do when your weapon malfunctions. First you have to determine the malfunction, then clear it. The clearing is automatically done by your character, regardless of the type of malfunction.
- Inspect the weapon by pressing L to identify the type of malfunction
- Resolve the malfunction by pressing Shift+T
This command normally checks the chamber, but if a malfunction occurred and you inspected your weapon, Shift+T clears it instead. Weirdly enough, clearing the chamber by pressing Left CTRL+R normally chambers a new round. But when a malfunction has happened, that doesn’t work.
Image credit: BattleState Games