Escape From Tarkov: How to Snipe Flea Market Items Easily?

UPDATE: Finally, Battlestate Games has removed the timers on the FLEA MARKET in their Tactical First Person Shooter, Escape From Tarkov. But, having the Windows Time for a couple of seconds ahead should, in fact, help you snipe an item. However, the prices are a lot more balanced now, and only Found-in-raid items can be sold on the FLEA marker, which makes sniping items not as important as before.

Escape From Tarkov has a FLEA MARKET, an Auction House that contains offers made by human players. The Flea Market is available to every player with level 10 or above. Because of the nature of the word Auction House, we see people undercutting each other’s offers quite often. It has become the most controversial part of the game due to the manipulative possibility, as it allows players to get very rich over a night. Therefore, sniping the Flea Market is quite a viable option for those with low cash, and we’re here to confirm that.

Before you continue reading or decide to stop, this guide includes a method that will help you enhance the countdown timer even further, so I would advise you to read it until the end.

I’ve personally seen a couple of videos teaching players how to snipe items and have at least a decent chance of getting a purchase that’s been extremely undercut of a value. Well, I am here to help you achieve that and get the leverage so you could anticipate the playing field of some other players who are doing the same.

Why am I doing this? I am not a selfish person by nature and would love to help everyone on their Tarkov journey. Whether it is upgrading the hideout, bitcoin farm, or else, the following guide may play a functional role in the character’s progress. The curiosity came from the surge to upgrade the hideout as fast as possible. Not many players by level 30 have managed to upgrade everything to the maximum, certainly not those who are playing the game as intended.

To be more precise, I want to follow up on the recent video that was published by Onepeg on Youtube, explaining how the Flea Market timers can be manipulated to achieve the needed outcome. More precisely, to avoid the latency caused by lousy Round Trip Time or PING, and gain an advantage in purchasing items directly on the Flea Market. The “Mouse and Keyboard (Left Click and Y)” method remains the same without making any macros. But if you want to elevate the playing field even further by yourself and make a macro, it’s up to you. His first video is posted below:

This video has managed to acquire lots of attention, and many known Tarkov players agreed it should’ve been presented to everyone. Players have probably tried to adopt this method and purchase items on the Flea Market. They are even doing it at this very moment. This way doesn’t have a 100% success ratio, but still, it allows players to acquire some of the FLEA MARKET listings to their inventory. From there, they could resell it for a higher price, which equals free profit.

Therefore, all the props go to Onepeg for explaining and making it easier for everyone on how to accurately snipe items on the Flea Market in EFT. Bots could be out of the question because this method truly beats them, and patch 0.12 also implemented an SSL and Diffie Hellman so that bot developers find it hard to sniff packets to gain useful information. We won’t go that technical in this issue, so we’ll stop here and continue with the sniping guide.

As we’ve stated above, we’re here to leverage the playing field even more. I am here to share my side of the story, tinkering with the first discovered method by Onepeg. I’ve tried to make a script that would advance this sniping method to a greater extent.

Flea Market Sniping Script Inbound

The thing we’re talking about it’s a Windows Powershell script made to fast-forward the time for a desired amount of milliseconds. My best purchase response time is 1800 milliseconds or 1.8 seconds. That is the response time we find the best to snipe items in our region. Again, it doesn’t work all the time but still elevates the success ratio for approximately 35% than altering the time manually. This would allow you to secure and convert the purchases into profit even faster.

The trick explains the following:

When the time advancing method is approached and performed manually, a couple of milliseconds are still being lost, leading to a delay that won’t necessarily be the same as done with the script.

Therefore, unlike this script, you won’t get the perfect result when everything’s done manually.

Just a quick disclaimer, this doesn’t break nor violates BSG’s terms of service. It is just a script that alters the time on your PC. It doesn’t inject nor interfere with the executables, and it doesn’t modify in-game files. I do not use this to earn anything outside of the game, I just have an estimated in-game Rubles threshold and do not want to go below it.

Flea Market Manipulation Timer Powershell Script

To start things off, let’s take it slowly, and see what we do in the step-by-step guidance below.

1. Open Notepad.
2. Copy and paste the three lines below inside the text document.

$Date = Get-Date
$NtpDateTime = $Date
Set-Date -Date $NtpDateTime.AddMilliSeconds(1800)

3. Name it “addseconds”, but make sure you save it as a .ps1 file extension.

Keep in mind that the script above reflects our best timing to snipe items, so you may need to alter the number inside the brackets. If the time above isn’t the sweet spot for your region, make sure you close the game before you alter it.

Speaking of a Powershell script, it has to be run as an administrator to perform the changes. It will also trigger the UAC popup, and clicking YES will fast forward the current time on the PC. But to get there, you need to deal with other mandatory steps too.

1. Create a shortcut of the saved .ps1 file. You can do that by right-clicking the file and Send To -> Desktop.
2. “Right Click -> Properties” on the Shortcut and in the Target Text Window make sure you put the following line: PowerShell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Desktop\addseconds.ps1
3. Click Apply and OK
4. For a better explanation of where exactly you need to do that check the image below:

5. Once you add the line and apply the changes, the icon will change. This means you’ve done it correctly. After this, go to “Properties -> Advanced” and tick “Run as Administrator.”

That’s all you need to do. As you may have noticed, we are using the standard time variable that allows us to play with the time in Windows 10. The value in the bracket next to AddMilliseconds enables us to assign the number of milliseconds per our will.

As a reference, 1000 milliseconds = 1 second. We can start the math from there.

A quick reminder, you do not need to switch the time update feature to OFF, but you may need to restart the game to resynchronize with the server to collect some of the bounties you’ve made.

The central part of success is yet to come. Once on the flea market, run the script, and you will notice how the countdown timers shorten for the predefined value in the script. Then, for example, go to the Labs Keycard section simply because it’s full of new offers. If you notice three or more offers that align your desired price, do not re-refresh the flea browser and attempt a purchase. When purchasing, keep your eyes on the timer of the other offers. They usually freeze for a brief moment when a purchase is attempted. Count down in your mind and see if that is the case. If yes, then do not refresh the Flea Market browser.

It is a core part of the method to understand the timings and errors. For that, check the section below:

Understanding the Flea Market Errors

A couple of tips that should help you understand the Flea Market better. Once this tweak is done and you’ve shortened the countdowns by a couple of milliseconds, you may encounter a couple of errors. Two important ones are the following:

1. Offer not available yet – You’re too early with your purchase; ahead of server’s time. The best bet would be to wait without refreshing the browser because sometimes when a purchase is attempted, the timer of the other offers either stall or go forward for a brief moment. This is caused due to the recently sent packets to the servers, which may return a more viable timer. This will give you the chance to snipe the other offers way easier.
2. Sorry, the offer has been already purchased – Refreshing the browser is somewhat mandatory at this point unless you notice a strange hiccup with the other timers.

I believe I have covered everything that needs to be covered, and hopefully, this guide will help you reach your desired goals. On the other side, I agree and believe that Battlestate Games is seeking or already working on a solution. But until a fix is deployed, we wish you a bountiful sniping period.