Things You’ll Wish You Knew Before Playing ARC Raiders

If you want to get ahead during your time playing Arc Raiders, you need to understand the basics of the game genre and how it works.

This is an extraction shooter where you team up with three players, choose one of the various maps available, and start looting and gathering materials. After you get enough materials or the raid time is almost up, you extract and go back to the base.

But that’s just the basic idea of the game. There is more to it, from learning the map and the materials you can gather to mastering the game mechanics and more.

This is precisely why we’ve gathered some of the best tips and tricks to help you during your journey.

Note

This is part of our Arc Raiders – Guides Hub, so we suggest that you start from there if you haven’t already.

Use The Free Loadout

In the first 10 or 20 matches that you will play in the game, you will probably still explore and learn the map, know what each item does and what to do with them, learn the enemies, and so on.

So you do not want to use your good loot while you are still experimenting in the game. This is why we highly suggest that you use the Free Loadout feature on the first dozen raids that you will play in the game.

The Free Loadout is not something fancy, but it does its job by giving you a light shield, a Rattler ranged weapon, 14 open slots for your loot, and four quick-use slots for your healing items.

Note

The Free Loadout does not have a Safe Pocket.

In our experience, this is more than enough for a starter, as you can easily start a raid, loot just one or two locations or buildings, and then extract.

Your main focus on the first raids you attempt is to get familiar with the game. This means understanding the land, the layout of buildings, the enemies you will encounter, the materials, and the overall gameplay.

And most importantly, stock up on materials and blueprints in order to be prepared for tougher raids later in the game, when you can use your custom loadout. This way, when you do, you will at least have your stash filled with items.

Try Not To Solo Queue

The worst thing that you can do in this game is probably play solo, and this is because you will find yourself at such a disadvantage here – it’s not fun.

Not only will every other raider team be running in trios, making it hard to solo them in a fight, but also, if you get down for whatever reason, you will have no one from your team to revive you.

Of course, not everyone has a lot of friends or regular teammates, but you can try to use the proximity chat. This feature can be used to communicate with the random raiders that you will be with in the match.

You can still try solo that if you like the extra challenge, or if you are confident in your communication and convincing skills in making friends. However, persuading other raiders to help and revive you when you are down is unlikely to happen in this type of game, you know.

Stick To Your Teammates

Speaking of teammates, if you have friends that you can play the game, it is very important that you always, and we mean always, stick to your teammates and constantly give coms to them about what is happening around.

Arc Raiders punishes you for being careless and running aimlessly, so every step you take matters.

For example, if you get far from your team and an ARC enemy spots you, chances are you will lose a lot of health and healing resources fighting it. But you can easily avoid this if you had stayed with them.

Even better, you can use the voice chat feature. This can help coordinate your plan for the raid with your team, whether you need to find certain materials, complete a quest, or even just raid other raiders.

Tip

Keeping an eye on your surroundings and giving coms is the way this game is intended to be played, so you will have successful raids.

Move Your Camera When You’re Looting

This has got to be simple, but we cannot stress it enough: searching and looting in this game does take a while, from the animation of breaching and searching to the time it takes to reveal the loot.

In the matter of these few seconds, another raider can easily kill you, so at least keep moving your camera around and listen carefully so no one will jump on you.

Just remember, every other raider there has the same goal as you: loot and extract, and you do not want to get backstabbed while you loot.

Try To Make Friends

Arc Raiders is an extraction adventure, and in this type of game, it is very common to communicate with the enemy team through the proximity chat feature. This does create a lot of interesting scenarios.

Among these scenarios is actually teaming up with the enemy, and this can help both of you complete quests, tackle the Arc enemies together, and just cover as much of the raid as you would normally.

But how far can you trust a raider until they raid you and get your loot before you extract?

Tip

Do not forget: keep your friends close and your enemies closer!

Always Recycle Materials

During the time you are looting in Arc Raiders, you will come across tons and tons of all kinds of materials, and when you successfully extract, all of the things that you took back with you to Speranza will go to your stash.

However, your stash inventory has limited slots, and while you can upgrade using coins, you will want to be mindful of what you are keeping.

For example, a lot of the materials that you will find can be used for crafting weapons, ammo, and such things, but others can be recycled into raw materials. So if you hover over an item and it says ‘Can be recycled into’, just go ahead and safely recycle it to get the materials you need from it.

Please keep in mind that if one item has ‘Used for crafting’ alongside ‘Can be recycled into’, you need to think before you recycle.

What would benefit you more: using the material for crafting or recycling it to get the raw materials from it?

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Thank you for reading this Into Indie Games guide for Arc Raiders!