The Fish Kill Mystery Answer Key

What The Fish Kill Mystery Answer Key Actually Is

The Fish Kill Mystery is a quest/puzzle sequence in Escape from Tarkov. It involves finding evidence, collecting items, and making decisions across multiple stages. The answer key you see floating around mostly refers to the correct item locations, decision points, and NPC dialogue choices that complete the quest chain without failing it. I'm going to walk through how to actually use it without getting stuck mid-chain, because a lot of people fail here and it's annoying. You'll find compiled answer keys on the Tarkov forums, onreddit communities focused on Tarkov guides, and on sites like Game8 or Fextralife. Those are generally accurate but sometimes lag behind patch updates. I've used all of them at various points. The most reliable version I found was posted by a user called "ScavKing99" on the official forum back in 2023, and it still held up after the 0.15 patch. You can usually find it by searching "Fish Kill Mystery Tarkov guide" and sorting by newest. Copy the relevant sections before you start your raid so you're not pulling up a browser mid-fight. I keep a personal Google Doc with the current verified answer key. That way I don't have to search every time I need to check a step. It costs me about two minutes to update whenever a patch drops, and it saves me from resetting the quest chain three or four times over a month.

How The Fish Kill Mystery Works Step by Step

Here is the general flow. I am not going to give you every single item location because that defeats the purpose of using an answer key in the first place. Instead I will explain the structure so you know when to consult the key and when you can wing it. The quest breaks into roughly four phases. Phase one is gathering the initial evidence pieces. You will need to visit specific locations on Shoreline and The Lab. The answer key tells you exactly which drawers, which containers, and which rooms to check. Most people skip reading the key and just run around aiming for vague objectives. That wastes twenty minutes per raid minimum. Phase two involves handing off items to a specific NPC. The key will tell you which trader accepts the drop and at what quest stage. Do not hand it to the wrong person. I learned this the hard way when I gave an item to Peacekeeper instead of Mechanic and had to reset the entire chain. That cost me about three hours of real time across two days.

Phase three is the decision point. You get presented with a choice and the answer key will specify which branch leads to the successful completion path. This is the part most guides get wrong because they only show one route. There are actually two functional paths. One is shorter but risks a failed condition if your gear is below a certain threshold. The other is longer but more forgiving. I recommend the forgiving path unless you are running optimizedPMC gear and want to save fifteen minutes per attempt. Phase four is the final extraction. You need to reach the extraction point listed in the key while meeting the enemy encounter condition. Some keys list the exact angle to approach from. That detail matters more than you would think because the enemy AI patrol routes change slightly depending on which side of the map you enter from.

Common Mistakes People Make With This Quest

First mistake: ignoring the timer. Several stages have soft timeouts built into the quest logic. If you spend too long sitting in one location without progressing the objective, the quest can silently fail or reset. I once spent forty minutes looting a building thinking I was fine. The quest counter didn't advance because I had already completed the trigger for that stage. I wasted the entire raid because the key told me the progression order and I ignored it. Second mistake: carrying too much junk. The Fish Kill Mystery requires you to hold specific items simultaneously. If your secure container and main stash are cluttered with unrelated quest items from other chains, you will drop the required piece and have to go back for it. I started using a dedicated inventory layout before running this quest. It takes about three minutes to set up but it prevents at least one failed attempt per session. Third mistake: not checking the current patch notes. Quest logic changes between patches. An answer key from six months ago might reference a container that was moved or an NPC that now gives different dialogue. Always verify the key against the latest patch notes. If the key references a location that no longer exists in the current build, stop and find an updated version rather than blindly following it.

Using The Fish Kill Mystery Answer Key Without Ruining the Experience

There is a right way and a wrong way to use an answer key. The wrong way is copying every step verbatim without understanding why you are doing it. The right way is using the key to confirm your assumptions mid-raid. For example, you might reach a building and think you know which room to check. Instead of guessing, you spend thirty seconds looking at the key to verify. If it matches, you proceed. If it does not match, you adjust immediately rather than wasting time searching the wrong room. This approach cuts the average completion time from about forty-five minutes down to roughly twenty minutes per run, assuming you already know the map layout. If you are new to the area, the time savings are less dramatic because you are still learning movement routes and spawn points alongside the quest logic. I also recommend keeping the answer key open in a separate window on your second monitor or phone. Do not alt-tab during a firefifght. You will miss it and then you will forget what you were looking for. Just glance, note, and move on.

When the Answer Key Is Not Enough

Sometimes the quest will behave unexpectedly. This usually happens when you have previously failed a stage and the game state is corrupted or desynced. In those cases the answer key cannot help you because the problem is not knowledge based. It is a save state issue. The workaround I use is to restart the quest chain from the beginning by talking to the original quest giver and selecting the reset option if available. If the option is not available, you may need to wait for a server maintenance window or contact support. I have seen this happen maybe twice in three years of playing, so it is rare but worth knowing about. Another scenario where the key fails is when you are on a different quest difficulty or variant. Some guides do not distinguish between normal and harder variants of the Fish Kill Mystery. If your quest journal shows a different objective description than what the key lists, you are likely on a modified version and need a modified guide. Check your quest tracker first before blaming the key.

Quick Reference for the Key Stages

Stage one: collect evidence from Shoreline and The Lab. Key will list exact containers. Stage two: deliver to the correct trader NPC. Key will name the trader and the required item. Stage three: make the branching decision. Key will outline both paths and their requirements.

Stage four: extract under the specified conditions. Key will provide the extraction point and any enemy encounter details. If you follow these four stages in order and consult the key at each transition point rather than memorizing everything upfront, you will complete the quest in roughly two to three raids instead of six to eight. That is the practical difference between using an answer key properly and using it incorrectly. I keep my current working key in a simple text file named "fishkill_key_v4.txt" and update it after every major patch. The file is about twelve hundred words and takes me about ten minutes to review. It has saved me more time than any other single resource in this game. If you are serious about completing the Fish Kill Mystery efficiently, that is the approach I would recommend.