Active Matter is Tarkov's loop with different rules underneath. You deploy with what you're wearing, loot, extract or lose it, and everything outside a small container stays in the zone when you die. The guns are the ones you know: M4A1, MP5, SPAS-12, M24, SV-98, PKM.
Then the rules diverge, and they diverge in the places that cost a Tarkov player the most: squads are three, PvE is a toggle on every raid rather than a separate profile, there is no flea market, wipes are yours to trigger, and the inventory has no grid. Here is every system you know, and what it became. Checked in the game on builds 0.4.0.148 and 0.4.0.156 (25 and 27 September 2026).
Tarkov ties the container to your edition. Active Matter sells it. The Shop's Special tab lists Small, Medium and Large safe containers at Ȼ50, Ȼ100 and Ȼ200 of Crystallised Active Matter, and a Standard Edition account starts with Ȼ300. It's the first purchase on any account, and no edition skips the step.
The description carries a rule Tarkov doesn't have: "Allows volume overflow with a single item." The container has a volume, but one item can exceed it, so a single big find fits even when it shouldn't.
Death is otherwise the death you know. Everything outside the container stays in the zone, and there's no insurance we've found. When you'd rather not risk your own kit at all, pick Rented equipment at the Loadout check instead. Save a gear set and a death becomes one click and a known number: our test Vepr kit's missing pieces came to ₳4,840.
The Refiner is where "what's this worth" gets answered. Queue what you extracted, and the Expected result panel prices it in Credits, Active Matter units and typed chronotraces before you commit. Hover any item in your stash and the tooltip shows its expected refine result, so you know before you carry it.
The currencies map like this:
Twelve access levels, named with Greek letters: α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ. Each has an Access upgrade gate and, behind it, nodes bought with Monolith Tokens: raid access, Replicator recipes, case unlocks and shop unlocks.
Shop unlocks are labelled "Unlock & Replication": one purchase puts the item in the Shop and hands you its blueprint. The good guns sit behind nodes you can't buy yet, at five to twenty times the starter prices, so "should I save for the AA-12" answers itself for the first week.
Extraction points are the green running figure on the pre-deploy map, every raid has a timer, and the last five minutes are where people die. Some raids replace the exit entirely: the Unstable Zones are Survive raids where you outlast a collapsing zone and leave through a portal when it opens.
The short version for a Tarkov player: nobody resets you but you, and the reset keeps more than you'd expect.
Tarkov's five-man is Active Matter's three, and the game is tuned for it. Auto-fill will hand you two strangers on Open raids; Isolated raids give you nobody you didn't invite. The problem on week one isn't the systems above. It's having two people online when you are who already know where the extraction is.
