Fence is an individual that acts as a middle-man between the thieves and the buyers. He is one of the dealers in Escape from Tarkov and is sort of the “black market” type of dealer whose items for sale are obtained from other players selling to him for a reduced price.
With the most recent patches, Fence has big relevancy in the gameplay of Tarkov. If you increase your reputation with Fence then you will get access to some juicy perks.
This article will tell you all about how to increase Scav Karma, and we’ll also throw in some tips for how to increase Fence reputation in Escape from Tarkov so that you can max out Fence’s loyalty level.
What is Scav Karma?
Scav Karma is a system where whatever you do as a Scav will have a direct impact (positive or negative) on your reputation with Fence. In short, it is basically your reputation with Fence. You will have access to a lot of perks and benefits when you increase your Scav Karma.
Decreasing it will also have some negative effects which might be significant for some players. You should be aware of all the effects (good and bad) before deciding if you want to grind Fence’s loyalty level or be a villain.
Ways to Increase Reputation With Fence
If you’re wondering how to increase fence rep, the fastest way is by killing other Player-Scavs that have been unfriendly towards other Scavs. This also includes other PMCs which might be easier to do.
When everyone starts to grind out the Tarkov Fence reputation, you might encounter purely friendly Player-Scavs. This is what they were hoping to accomplish when they added this feature in.
Other than that, you can help out Scav bosses by killing other PMCs in battle alongside them. This is extremely rare to see mid to late wipe so make sure to capitalize on it early.
However, the easiest way to increase your Fence reputation is by simply taking Vehicle Extracts when available as a PMC.
Once you have exhausted this option, you can run Scav runs on cooldown, and successfully extracting as a Scav already increases your Fence reputation. It may sound easier, but you are only gaining 0.01 for each extraction so it will be a long grind.
The next step you can do would be to try to get PMCs to extract with you as a Scav and vice versa. Extracting on a PMC-Scav exfil would give everyone 0.25 Fence reputation, which is insanely high. However, it is hard to trust other players to not shoot you.
You can convince them by using VoIP, but it is also easy to lie and steal some loot and get kills. For the Scav, they already get Fence reputation by killing PMCs. Successful extracts have a low chance of giving you great items from Fence as a reward, but Fence can give you anything in the game.
It heavily depends on your decision if you want to risk your gear and loot for reputation.
If you know how to play with friends as a Scav, you can try to kill each other and rotate it. You can all queue at the same time in different groups. You can follow the article linked at the start of this paragraph to find out the best ways of matching up together if you have separate squads to start boosting.
Actions that Decrease Reputation With Fence
Shooting Other Scavs
When you start killing Scavs, you will lose some Tarkov Scav reputation immediately. Every subsequent kill on a Scav will increase the amount of fence reputation lost. This can snowball very quickly and you might lose all your hard work in a single raid.
Clearly, this isn’t what you want to be doing if you’re trying to raise Scav karma.
Now, once you see another non-computer or Player-Scav shooting another random Scav, he will be marked as a “bad Scav” already. Once you are marked, you are automatically unfriendly towards any Scav and they will shoot you on sight.
Like mentioned before, you will not lose any Fence reputation in Tarkov if you decide to kill a bad or marked Scav. This would be hard to do as it takes a lot of awareness to notice if someone has already killed any Scav. It is up to you to decide how you want to play it.
Benefits of Increasing Reputation With Fence
Faster Scav Cooldowns
If you are having fun playing as a Scav, you will be able to Scav more frequently as the cooldown will get shorter and shorter after every loyalty level increase with Fence. This is also beneficial if you are going broke. The best way to get risk-free money is by doing Scavs on cooldown especially early in the wipe.
Faster Scav Cases
These are the Scav Cases in your Hideout where you send Scavs to look for loot and you pay them with barter items or Roubles in return. This is one of the most profitable things you can do outside of going to raids.
Obviously, after 1-2 months into the wipe, it will not be as profitable but can still get insane loot from it as it can spawn anything in the game. I suggest doing Moonshines once you get them and do 85K Roubles when the market has reached the endgame.
More Exfils for Your Scav Runs
If you notice early in the wipe playing as a Scav, you will see that you cannot see any extract available. This is because your reputation with Fence is abysmal and he closed all the extractions for you except the one extracting with a PMC.
As long as you are not disliked by Fence, you should have one extraction available. There are some cases where the only extraction available for you would be the ones with a PMC escorting you (Scav Lands, Scav Camp, etc.) so you should always try to keep your reputation up with Fence to avoid this from happening.
Activate VoIP and you should be able to easily persuade other players to extract with other PMCs as a Scav and increase your Fence reputation. It highly depends on how friendly the players are in your server.
Cheaper Vehicle Extracts
You will be able to pay fewer Roubles for vehicle extracts when you play as a PMC. This is not that significant as extractions are already cheap, to begin with. When money is tight especially during the early days in the wipe, you will not be able to increase your Fence reputation that fast anyway.
This also means that you have a chance at using the vehicle extract even if you forgot to bring Roubles to the raid. You can find some from safes, Scavs, tables, and jackets if you need the vehicle extract.
The best example of this would be getting Roubles inside the dorms area in Customs. It is literally beside the vehicle extract and if you forgot to bring money, you can get Roubles inside the safes and jackets inside dorms. The cheaper the extract, the easier it is to farm for Roubles.
Better Sell Prices to Fence
Better sell prices are a bit significant just because there are a lot of items that cannot be sold to Fence. The most common examples are armors that have been completely worn out and other traders like Ragman or Mechanic do not accept it anymore.
This is good for doing money-runs as a Scav. Most of your weapons have low durability and you will only have the option to sell them to Fence or the Flea Market (which might be a hard sell).
Better Scav Loadout or Kit
This is another good perk to have when you are really down on money. Just imagine spawning with an SA-58 more frequently. This will give you an even fight other PMCs in the mid-late game wipe just because you have a decent gun/ammo as well as other Scavs at your disposal.
When it comes to money, it is still hard to tell if you have decent chances of spawning rare loot with your Scav. Scavs can spawn with anything in the game and with the reduced Scav cooldowns, you will definitely have more chances of spawning rare loot through multiple raids.
Computer Scavs Will Respond to You More
If you have been playing Escape from Tarkov for a long time already, you would know that Scavs actually respond to gestures and verbal comms when directed at them. You can give them the finger and they will shoot you in the head.
However, if you give them gestures to follow you or stop, they will respond to your actions more when you have a high reputation with Fence. With a high reputation, you can even act as a mini Scav boss when you try to get all the Scavs running with you.
This adds a whole level of gameplay as a Scav because you can now round up all the computer Scavs to help you get PMCs. Most of the Player-Scavs will be working together if they care about their reputation with Fence so there will be a good chance that a PMC can get overwhelmed by Scavs.
Friendly Scav Bosses
Tagilla (Factory), Shturman (Woods), Sanitar (Shoreline), Gluhar (Reserver), and Killa (Interchange) will all be friendly towards you. This is when you can start helping Scav bosses kill other PMCs and increase your reputation with Fence faster.
Although, this would be an extremely rare occasion because you need to spawn in immediately before PMCs can get to the bosses.
Ability to Purchase Uninsured Items in the Market
This is probably the best perk you can have by increasing your loyalty to Fence. The ability to purchase uninsured items is one of the craziest additions to the game. Why? People play Labs.
When people play Labs, they go in hard. It has the best loot in the game, and you cannot insure any items here as Prapor, or any type of insurance that does not have access to Labs. The main caveat is that you need to get to max loyalty with Fence before getting this perk.
How to Reach Max Loyalty With Fence
To reach max loyalty with Fence, you need to increase your reputation to at least 6.0. Seeing as each bad Scav you kill gives you at least 0.1 reputation points with Fence, this will take a long while to get as it should be.
The problem is always encountering Scavs who are unfriendly. It will be rare to see once everyone knows about this mechanic.
Fence Reputation Missions
Fence offers daily missions for you to complete as a Scav. Most of these missions only require you to extract at a certain extraction point on a specific map. For example, Fence might offer a task where you need to extract in RUAF Roadblock twice in Customs as a Scav.
Completing these missions daily will give you an efficient boost to Fence’s reputation since you get a 0.01 reputation boost for successfully extracting as a Scav and another 0.01+ reputation boost for completing the daily mission.
You can start these missions early in the wipe, and you just have to make sure you complete the quests daily to maximize your Fence reputation gain.
These missions also provide decent experience points while giving you random rewards. The rewards can either be crazy good or just flat-out useless. Even then, we are only doing these missions for the Fence reputation.
Scav Strategy
During the start of the wipe, I try to focus on my PMC as much as possible because quests while doing PvP are the best way to level. This led me to use this Scav tactic to increase my reputation with Fence and commit as little time as possible.
Go run Factory in the daytime and check your items. If you have any decent items like high-value keys, quest keys, high-value barter items, or quest items, just go extract as fast as possible. If you have no valuable items at all, look for an AI Scav.
Find the juiciest AI Scav you can (I usually go for the ones holding SA-58s or Pilgrims) and trail them from behind. Adjust your position to where the enemy might be and use this Scav as a shield. Make a lot of noise to attract some PMCs/Bad Player-Scavs.
Wait until you have one baited, and you have a chance to kill them. This works best to distinguish hostile Player-Scavs from friendly Player-Scavs because the AI Scav will shoot them on sight once seen. Rinse and repeat every Scav cooldown.
You can also go to other maps if you want to focus more on Fence’s reputation. Interchange should be the most decent map when it comes to hunting down PMCs. Reserve is also good, but the map is too big to find PMCs, and Raiders can be dangerous.
Boss Assistance
This method is one of the rares and possibly hardest to do. It requires you to find a Scav boss and hunt down a PMC who has shot down the boss.
It gives 0.05 Fence reputation, so it is a bit decent. However, the chance of this happening is extremely slim.
Early in the wipe, bosses have a lower spawn chance to help other players finish their tasks first.
Once players get decent gear, they will surely hunt these bosses, and they will likely defeat the boss or just die trying.
It is also worth mentioning that if your Fence rep is still a bit low, the Scav boss will actually shoot you down.
PMC Vehicle Extracts
Here are all the PMC vehicle extracts
- Customs
- Interchange
- Streets of Tarkov
- Woods
- Lighthouse
All vehicle extractions are separate from each other when it comes to increasing your Fence reputation.
The first extraction gives you 0.4 Fence rep. If you count just the first extraction on each map, you get a total of 2.0 right away.
Each extraction will have diminishing returns, so it will be harder and harder to get your reputation up. In a way, there is a limit to doing this method, but it is almost mandatory to dry them all out to get at least 3.0 reputation.
This method will take a few hours to grind, so you might as well do something productive while grinding Fence reputation from vehicle extracts. I usually do semi-hatchet runs in Interchange while doing this.
This means that if you extract in Interchange 5 times, your reputation gain will keep decreasing each time until you are not getting anymore.
If you go to the bridge extract in Woods, you should still gain a decent amount of reputation points for Fence as long as you have not exhausted your reputation gain in Woods yet.
Interchange
This is just an example but here is how I tried to grind this out on Interchange. The things you should bring are the following and you can adjust them to your liking.
- Pistol (SR1MP Gyurza)
- 1 IFAK
- Golden Star Balm
- Headset (Peltor Comtac 2)
- SICC Case/Documents Case with all the keys
You can bring any pistol, as the only goal here is to headshot everyone and loot as much as possible without any fear of losing stuff.
Go to all the tech stores closest to your spawn if the power is not on. If the power is on, rush to the Ultra Medical Unit in front of Techlight (you need the key for this).
All 2 slot items will automatically be placed inside your container, and the only things you should have in there are the SICC Case and the Golden Star Balm. Since you have a pistol, this is not your ordinary hatchet run.
You are investing in a pistol every run because you want to get Scavs as well. Find any Scavs near the middle and you only want their rig and bags if they have one. You also do not have to wait 7 minutes to extract so that your items are not “found in raid”.
Getting a Scav headshot automatically gives you enough experience points to make it a successful raid instead of a “Run Through”. Loot all the tech stores for GPUs and other valuable items and go to Goshan when you are full.
You should be full literally after a minute of non-stop running from store to store. You will be taking the vehicle extract from the Power Station every time it is available.
If the vehicle extract is not available, the hole in the fence should be easy because it is just near the Power Station.
At the same time, Railway and Emercom are in equal lengths from the Power Station too. Again, the goal here is to be efficient by making money while grinding Fence’s reputation.
Streets of Tarkov
For Streets of Tarkov, it is perfect for vehicle extracting and looting. In fact, this might be the fastest way to make money after a wipe.
Since this farming strategy involves a lot of technical spawns with a sprinkle of everything else, most of the items you will be getting are quite expensive from early to mid-wipe.
The goal is always to loot the camp in the Concordia zone. Even bringing a Gssh bag (mushroom bag) will not be enough for the amount of loot inside.
The loot isn’t the best, but since they are all in one area, it is very easy to loot. Some of the items like Bolts, Corrugated Hose, Electric Drills, Toolsets, and other decent technical spawns can all add up to almost one million Roubles per run in the early wipe.
You do have to set up more, which means you will be risking more, but it is all worth it once you get used to it.
Bring the following
- CQB weapon for fighting
- A bag of your choice for looting (I suggest bringing a bag you can carry without being too overweight, where you can’t regenerate stamina while your bag is full)
- Armored Rig (so you are lighter compared to a body armor + tactical rig setup)
- Meds and painkillers
- Headset
- Helmet (if you want less weight, you can opt not to)
Run to any entrance of the camp and go for all the metal containers with loot.
Loot the garage with the toolboxes and check the shelves and counters for more technical loot spawns.
Technical supply crates are located at both ends of the camp. An additional one can be looted inside the Lexos building if you have the car dealership key.
Crawl under the Urban Medicine quest (med lab) and loot the rational crate, med case, and med bag. Loose med spawns can also spawn on the bed and counters.
Your exit should always be near the Evacuation Zone extract. Hug the right facing away from the extraction point and go to the V-Ex.
It is also worth knowing how to extract from Klimov Street, so that you have an emergency exit if the V-Ex isn’t there. Your extraction might not be near the V-Ex.
Although Klimov Street is far from the V-Ex, you can hug the cinema side all the way to Sewer River and then to Klimov Street. It is a lot safer.
For other maps
You can keep this in mind every time you are running quests in Woods. Just keep doing two things at once and at the end of the day, you will cap out on getting Fence’s reputation through vehicle extracts and you will eventually focus on grinding out marked/bad Scavs and PMCs.
Customs is easy because you can do marked room runs if you spawn close to dorms, so that would be your go-to money run.
If you do not spawn near the dorms area, each spawn point will require you to go to the other side of Customs so you can check the vehicle extract every time you cross.
What to Do Next?
I would suggest building out your hideout, so you can improve your Scav cooldown a lot better. After getting all the V-Ex reputation bonus, Scaving is the best way to increase your reputation with Fence.
If you want something riskier, but rewarding, you can actually try farming Rogues as a Scav in Lighthouse. Most Rogues have modded weapons, and a Scav extraction is insanely close to the area.
