Cultists

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

Quests

 * 12 cultist knives need to be found in raid for the quest Night Sweep

Location
Cultists appear between 22:00 and 7:00. They can be found on the following locations:

Night Factory
Cultist priest with 2 warriors: Due to the small size of the location they have to be expected everywhere.

Customs
Cultist priest with 4 warriors: In the area between warehouse 17 and the repair shop. 

Woods
Cultist priest with 4 warriors: Near their ritual places, which are located western of the sawmill as well as at the dilapidated village in the north. 

Shoreline
Cultist priest with 3 warriors:  Note: It is rare, but possible that they appear at both locations in the same raid.
 * Western of the river in the area between the power station and the gas station
 * North-east of the swamp village.

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 and 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 with the Unknown toxin debuff, which deals gradual damage over time and causes pain. The toxin can be cured by the xTG-12 or Perfotoran injectors. Otherwise, the player must extract from the raid or they will run out of medication and die.

When it's time for them to disappear, they stand up from their ambush spots and despawn. Dead Cultists remain in their locations.



Priest Loot
Note that the primary weapons can have numerous mod variations and those shown below are examples. Weapons= The Cultist priest can spawn with any key or keycard in his pockets.
 * -|Items=

Warrior Loot
Weapons=
 * -|Face cover=

Vanity
Cultist warriors can spawn with any key or keycard in their pockets.
 * -|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.