Tarkov Items to Keep in 2026: The Quest and Hideout Items Worth Hoarding

Every Tarkov player has sold something for 20,000 roubles and then needed fifteen of it a week later. The fix is knowing what the game will ask you for before it asks.

Instead of guessing, we counted. This list is built from the current quest and hideout data (checked September 30, 2026): every hideout construction requirement across all stations, and every quest that asks you to hand an item over. Currency is left out, and the Collector quest is covered separately at the end.

The Short Version

• The hideout needs about 1,400 items across 116 different item types to build everything
• Only 194 of those hideout items have to be found in raid. The rest can be bought
• 84 quests ask you to hand in items, covering 145 different item types
• Around 480 of those quest hand-ins must be found in raid, and that is where selling the wrong thing really hurts

That last point is the one to remember. A hideout item you sold can usually be bought back. A found-in-raid quest item you sold has to be found again.

Hideout Items You Need the Most Of

These are the totals to build every station to its maximum level. If you loot one of these early in a wipe or a season, keep it.

• Bundle of wires: 124
• Energy-saving lamp: 113
• Metal spare parts: 99
• Bolts: 63
• CPU fan: 60 (25 must be found in raid)
• Pack of screws: 50
• Phase control relay: 46
• Corrugated hose: 42
• Power cord: 39
• Pack of nails: 30
• Shustrilo sealing foam: 28
• Light bulb: 26
• KEKTAPE duct tape: 26 (8 must be found in raid)
• Printed circuit board: 25 (15 must be found in raid)
• Power supply unit: 25 (15 must be found in raid)
• Silicone tube: 25
• Electric motor: 24 (10 must be found in raid)
• Duct tape: 23
• Screw nuts: 23
• Military power filter: 20

Wires, lamps and metal spare parts are the big three. Together they are more than 330 items, and they show up in over ten different station upgrades each. Nobody regrets keeping these.

The found-in-raid ones deserve a separate stash corner: CPU fans, circuit boards, power supply units and electric motors. Those are the hideout items you cannot simply buy your way out of.

You can see exactly which level of which station wants each item on our hideout pages.

Quest Items That Must Be Found in Raid

These are hand-ins where the quest only accepts found-in-raid items, sorted by how many you need in total.

• Secure Flash drive: 20, across three quests including Shady Business and What's on the Flash Drive?
• Bottle of Pevko Light beer: 20, all for one quest (Booze)
• Pile of meds: 20, all for Crisis
• Can of beef stew (Small): 15, for General Wares
• SJ1 TGLabs combat stimulant injector: 15, for Assessment Part 3
• Bottle of OLOLO Multivitamins: 14
• TerraGroup Labs access keycard: 12
• Bundle of wires: 11, on top of the 124 for the hideout
• Ripstop fabric, Fleece fabric and Cordura polyamide fabric: 10 each, for the Textile quests
• Military COFDM Wireless Signal Transmitter: 10
• Gas analyzer: 8
• Spark plug: 8, for Car Repair, which also wants 4 car batteries
• CPU fan: 8, on top of the hideout's 60
• Respirator: 8
• Capacitors: 7

A few expensive medical items are in the same group. Across Private Clinic, Health Care Privacy and Crisis you need 4 LEDX Skin Transilluminators, 4 Ophthalmoscopes and 3 Portable defibrillators, all found in raid. An LEDX averaged about 591,000 roubles on the PVP flea this week, so the temptation to sell the first one is real. Do not.

The Late-Game Money Sinks

Some level 50 quests do not need found-in-raid items, they just need a staggering amount of stuff. You can buy these, but knowing they are coming changes what you sell along the way.

• Profit Retention: 30 Graphics cards and 15 Physical Bitcoin
• A Life Lesson: 20 bottles of Fierce Hatchling moonshine, 20 bottles of Dan Jackiel whiskey and 12 bottles of Tarkovskaya vodka
• Get a Foothold: 30 each of eight different stimulant injectors, including SJ6, SJ9, SJ12, Propital, M.U.L.E., Meldonin, ETG-change and Obdolbos 2

At this week's PVP flea prices, 30 graphics cards alone come to more than 10 million roubles. If you plan to go that deep, a graphics card is worth more to you in the stash than on the market.

What About Kappa?

The Collector quest is its own list: 44 unique items, every one of them found in raid, mostly rare streamer items. Almost none of them are needed for anything else. The two exceptions are #FireKlean gun lube (Workbench level 3 and Weapon Rack level 3) and the BakeEzy cook book (Library level 1), which the hideout also asks for, found in raid in PVP and PVE. Either way the rule is simple. If it is on the Collector list, never sell it. Our free Kappa Tracker shows all 44 with checkboxes.

How to Actually Use This

Nobody memorizes a list like this, and you should not have to.

• Before you sell anything unusual, look it up in the Should I Keep This? tool. It checks the item against every quest, every hideout upgrade and the Collector list, and it knows what you have already finished
• Mark your completed quests in the Quest Tracker so the tool stops telling you to keep things you no longer need
• Keep found-in-raid copies separate from bought copies. Hand in bought items to the hideout and save the found-in-raid ones for quests
• When a hideout upgrade is two levels away, start collecting for it now. The cheap items are only cheap until everyone else reaches the same upgrade

One caveat on the numbers: a handful of quests accept any one of several items, and those are not counted here, so treat the quest totals as a floor. The hideout totals are exact.