Cultists

 are a faction in Escape from Tarkov.

Location
Cultists can be found on Shoreline around the Church in the swamp, Woods around their specifically marked ritual places, and Customs around ZB-1013. They spawn at 23:00 and leave at 5:00, even if the raid has already started.

Behavior
Cultists lurk in the shadows in groups of 5-6, 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's 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.

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's knife, players will be inflicted by the Unknown toxin debuff, which deals gradual damage over time and causes pain. The toxin can be cured only by the Antidote xTG-12, 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=
 * -|Items=

Warrior Loot
Weapons=
 * -|Face cover=

Armor
{|class="wikitable sortable" !Icon !Name !Armor Class ! ! 1 {|class="wikitable sortable"
 * Light armored Shattered mask

Vanity
!Icon !Name ! !Pestily plague mask
 * }
 * -|Body armor=
 * -|Backpacks=
 * -|Chest rigs=

Trivia

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