Cultists

 are a faction and a type of Bosses in Escape from Tarkov.

Location
They spawn between 22:00 and 7:00, even if the raid has already started. Keep in mind that they can wander quite far away from their initial spawn locations. 
 * Night Factory: Cultist priest with 2 warriors
 * Shoreline: Cultist priest with 3-4 warriors: Western of the river between the power station and gas station, as well as north-east of the swamp village and at the health resort. Note: It is rare, but possible that they appear in the health resort and at one of the other two locations in the same raid.

Behavior
Cultists lurk in the shadows in groups of 3-5, waiting for a player to approach. They silently approach their enemies and stab them using either normal knives or, in case of the priests, the poisoned Cultist knife. If fired upon, the Cultists will return fire using firearms and grenades. After they attack a player with their knife, they may choose to run off into the woods again and attempt to attack the player(s) from the shadows once again. Some Cultists have been seen to prone in the grass or hide in bushes while their companions engage the player(s) with weapons, then attack with their knives when it's least expected.

Cultist warriors will ignore scavs, scav guards, bosses, and scav players, but may shoot scav players on sight if aggravated. Cultist priests will attempt to run to cover whenever a scav player comes too close to their current location, and may shoot on sight if also aggravated.

As the Cultists prefer to ambush players and are extremely well hidden, they almost always have the initiative. Thus, it is important for players to quickly determine exactly where the Cultists are and attempt to regain the initiative. Cultists appear to always have suppressors and stick to cover, so players must be able to quickly spot them in the trees, especially at night. On Woods, players should be especially careful when traveling through either of the Marked Circles on the map. Additionally, Cultists have been seen to stalk players and open fire on them unprovoked, even if they must travel away from the Marked Circles. Players should be extremely cautious as the Cultists use ammo with high-penetrative power, yet rarely spawn with grenades. Cultists may spawn with a variety of armor, ranging from no protection to class 6 armor, however, they rarely, if at all, use headgear, so headshots are certainly a viable option.

If stabbed by the Cultist knife, players will be inflicted by the Unknown toxin debuff, which deals gradual damage over time and causes pain. The toxin can be cured by the xTG-12 antidote injector or Augmentin antibiotic pills otherwise, the player must extract from the raid or they will run out of medication and die.

Priest Loot
Note that the primary weapons can have numerous mod variations and those shown below are examples. Weapons= Scav Bosses can hold any key or keycard in their pockets.
 * -|Items=

Warrior Loot
Weapons=
 * -|Face cover=

Armor
{|class="wikitable sortable"

Vanity
!Icon !Name ! !Pestily plague mask ! !GP-5 gas mask ! !Respirator ! !Lower half-mask ! !Balaclava ! !Cold Fear infrared balaclava

Bosses can hold any key or keycard in their pockets. Sektants can hold any item in their backpacks.
 * }
 * -|Body armor=
 * -|Chest rigs=
 * -|Backpacks=
 * -|Items=

Gallery
 

Trivia

 * Cultist warrior names are hidden, instead appearing as "Sektant", a loose translation of "Cultist" to Russian.
 * The cultist priest's name is always Zhrets (| zhrɛts |) which, in Russian, denotes a priest that performs sacrifices and doesn't serve the Christian God.