Battlestate Games has ushered in another effort to eradicate the Escape from Tarkov meta. This time, the team is challenging the dominance of suppressed weapons, targeting the impact such attachments have on the overall build of guns in the popular extraction shooter.
The latest Escape from Tarkov patch notes, which make up the 1.0.4.5 update, reveal deeper optimizations, including those that impact the out-of-raid experience, and more balancing across stacks of weapons.
Escape from Tarkov’s 1.0.4.5 Patch Brings Fresh Improvements
Escape from Tarkov has undergone a major change today, with Battlestate Games taking the game offline for several hours to apply the 1.0.4.5 patch. It’s the middle of the road until we hit 1.0.5, which will introduce the Icebreaker map and a new boss, amongst other things.
Today’s update is pretty huge, and it shifts the meta again.
With this change, players will find that barrels, handguards, and muzzle devices have all been reworked. Hanguards will no longer reduce recoil, but will now reduce ergo more. Similarly, suppressors and compensators will have less of an impact on recoil, but will lean more towards the ergonomic measurements of your custom builds.
The team explained:
These changes are intended to further increase the popularity of unsuppressed weapon builds. Adjustments to muzzle flash are planned for future updates.
Further, a huge array of weapons had their base recoil and ergonomics stats addressed:
- All AK, AKM, and AK-100 series weapons
- Steyr AUG A1
- Steyr AUG A3
- HK G36
- HK 416A5
- FN SCAR-L
- FN SCAR-H
- SIG MCX-SPEAR
- SIG MCX .300
- CMMG Mk47 Mutant
- Rifle Dynamics RD-704
- Aklys Defense Velociraptor
- All machine guns
- All bolt-action and marksman rifles chambered in 7.62×51, 7.62x54R, .338, and .50 BMG
In terms of wider optimizations, PvE players now have disconnect protection on their client-side matches. This ensures that, if they disconnect while in a raid, their task progress will revert to the state it was at the start of the raid, avoiding failures.
The player culling system has now been applied to more maps: Lighthouse, Shoreline, Woods, and Ground Zero. The full suite of maps will get this treatment in future iterations of Escape from Tarkov, the team promised.
Improvements have also been deployed to out-of-raid screens, with the FPS limit in menus having been increased and both the animation and audio engines being improved to reduce PC resource usage.
Here’s the full sweep of bug fixes introduced with 1.0.4.5:
- Fixed an issue where dead players and bots could appear to move visually in certain cases
- Fixed an issue where damage would not register after a weapon malfunction if the player had previously used a stationary weapon
- Fixed the cause of error 228 during trader dialogues that could block task progression
- Fixes to culling, shadows, textures, and location geometry
- Fixed an issue where armor could not be picked up if it was dropped while interacting with the modification window
- Fixed the incorrect behavior of PMC bots toward player Scavs with Fence reputation 6 or higher in the PvE Zone
- Fixed an issue preventing further progression in The Labyrinth after spawning in the room requiring a burner tool to exit
- Fixed the incorrect display of smoke grenades in the player’s hands if another player threw a smoke grenade at them
- Fixed the display of changes in the “Combat Skill Leveling Boost” field in the Hall of Fame Hideout zone when one dogtag was replaced with another of a similar level
- Fixed an issue where PostFX settings would not display when preview was enabled
- Fixed an issue where some players could get stuck in the secret saferoom on Interchange without a way to exit
- Fixed the incorrect display of stationary weapons used by bots and multiple cases where bots could float while using them
- Fixed multiple issues with the incorrect behavior of loot and gear items when dropped in a raid
- Fixed the display of the current movement noise level and stance height during raids
- Fixed the third-person animation for inspecting your own inventory.
This update is the preface to 1.0.5, which will be the largest Escape from Tarkov update since it was released fully in November 2025. Let us know what you’re most looking forward to about 1.0.5 on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Metro’s creator doesn’t think 2039 is ‘just a game’
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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