Arc Raiders came out last week and folks have been pouring into the servers–in some cases overwhelming them. And as players immerse themselves in the PvPvE extraction shooter, it’s developing a reputation as a well-made game that poses a number of interesting and unpredictable challenges as you fight to stay alive, hoard piles of resources, and craft your way to loadout supremacy.
There’s no way around it: Arc Raiders expects a serious investment of your time and a willingness to suffer some pretty humiliating and often random losses that will set you back in your efforts to accumulate good weaponry and gear.
Having spent about 50 hours in the game myself, I’ve found it to be one of the best online shooters I’ve ever played, and I’ve also learned a thing or two about surviving out there amidst hostile robots and sinister players looking to get the better of me. My runs have mostly been solo, but much of what I’ve learned still applies to rolling out with a group.
So here are 14 of the best tips I can give to those getting started in Arc Raiders.
You can trade Free Loadout Augments for Looting Augments
This tip is a two-parter: First, don’t sleep on the Free Loadout. When choosing to go out on a run, you can either build a loadout from the gear you’ve collected and crafted, or choose the Free loadout which always includes one main weapon, ammo for it, some bandages, a shield recharger, and any number of other utility items or grenades. It’s a handy way to get back out there without risking your good stuff.
These items are free, so the only thing you really lose on a failed run with these is your time (and maybe a fragment of your sanity). But if you do manage to extract with them, hey, that’s free gear you didn’t have to craft (and you can always break it down for parts).
But perhaps the most important thing about the Free Loadout Augment is you can trade a Free Augment for a Looting Mk. 1 Augment from Lance in the Traders tab.
This has become my default approach to any run that ended in failure: Go back out with a Free Loadout, return home with it and trade it for a Loot one and either go out and get more loot or recycle the Looting augment I just purchased if I already have enough or have better Augments to use.
Free Loadouts are an efficient way to keep the crafting supplies flowing.
You can roll after a fall to cancel out fall damage
For a relatively realistic game, Arc Raiders is generous with how long you can sprint and how far you can fall before you take damage. But missing a jump or taking a fall can hurt and isn’t ideal when you’re fleeing a pursuit from an enemy player or Arc. Turns out, hitting dodge right when your feet touch the ground will let you roll to cancel out the damage from falling.
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The timing is tricky but there is a skill in the Mobility tree that can make this easier. Also, it seems like some heights are too far to recover from–so don’t expect to leap off the tower in Spaceport and roll your way out of damage. You can, as of now anyway, manage to use an exploit to grab onto a ledge to cancel out such a fall–and falls from far lesser heights.
Rubber parts are pretty important
In my 50 hours of playing Arc Raiders (mostly on solo runs), one particular crafting part has remained perpetually low in stock: Rubber Parts.
I suspect part of this is due to just how often Rubber Parts are used. For example, to upgrade, build, and repair many guns and gun parts, you’ll either need both Metal and Rubber Parts or you’ll need to craft Mechanical Components, which requires Metal and Rubber.
Rubber Parts can be salvaged or recycled from a number of different sources (Scrappy will also give you some after every run). But you can also find them in Mechanical, Industrial, or Technological loot sources. You can spot ideal locations with the matching icon (a gear for Mechanical, building for Industrial, and circuit board for Technological) by looking at the map both before you go out for a run and while you’re on the map.
I heartily recommend going on several runs to stock up on Rubber Parts.
The Practice Range is essential
While you’ll play through the briefest of tutorials when you first start Arc Raiders, in my experience, it’s not enough to get a feel for the movement of your character and the behavior of its various guns, especially as you mod them with various attachments.
Going out on a run with a weapon you’ve never used before isn’t wise and will likely get you killed. Enter the practice range, which lets you go into a small map (with a few secrets of its own tucked away) to practice your parkour skills and try out different guns. You can literally swap out various gun attachments in real time to get a sense of what they do. For example, I’ve learned that I greatly prefer the Muzzle Break attachment over the Compensator by trying it out in the safety of the Practice Range.
There are also two achievements you can earn by going to the practice range and using four different guns, so there’s that.
For mouse and keyboard users: Rebind your dodge roll
Rolling out of the way of incoming fire from players or Arc is essential to surviving in Arc Raiders and, in my experience, the default binding of Left Alt for rolling isn’t ideal. This is a function that you need to be able to access quickly under pressure while maintaining your hold on WASD.
I’ve chosen to break out my keyboard that has a split spacebar for backspace and forward space side-by-side for this reason. I mapped dodge to backspace and set left space as jump and I’m digging it so far.
But if you have a normal keyboard, I recommend mapping sprint to caps lock (toggle, if you wish), and freeing up your shift key to roll. Mapping your dodge roll to a mouse button is also a good move. Whatever mapping you decide on, though, just make sure you can accentuate WASD while rolling without too many weird, cramp-prone finger movements. Thank me after you’ve survived getting swarmed by Hornets.
Also, Embark Studios, why are there not double or triple bindings in this game? Come on!
The birds will give you away (as well as other noisy things)
Arc Raiders has phenomenal sound design–easily some of the best I’ve ever heard in a video game. But it’s not just an audio treat. You likely already know that running around, rummaging through stuff, and cracking open various caches is loud (you can invest in skills to make your activities quieter though). On top of that, various buildings are outfitted with security cameras and metal detectors that set off alarms. Watch out for these while also keeping your ears open for other people tripping them.
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But also beware of the birds.
Arc Raiders’ design director Virgil Watkins mentioned these feathered loudmouths in our discussion about the fairness of various hiding places in the maps, and it’s clear they can easily give you away even while you’re slowly walking through forests and other natural habitats. But like all the other sound traps, you can use this to your advantage. Listen and look for flocks of birds taking spontaneous flight near you. It usually means someone is nearby.
You can ask people to follow you
There are two emote wheels in Arc Raiders; one lets you ping a variety of locations with information such as “I heard something here,” “avoid that,” or, a very useful one, “group up over there.” By default, these emotes are only heard by your squad, but you can toggle on the fly to make it heard to all Raiders.
The “group up” emote seems to have a secret second mode. If you look down at the ground and select it, your character will say “Follow me” or “Group up on me.” This is very useful if you want to take the lead with some randos, or even those in your party.
Recycling is tricky
Arc Raiders lets you break down various items in two ways: Salvaging and Recycling. Salvaging is done while you’re out in the field, while Recycling is done in your inventory when you’re out of a game. Recycling will always net you more resources than Salvaging, so unless you need to Salvage to get a specific item or you need to clear up space in your bag while out in the field, try to wait until you extract before you start breaking things down.
However, the language used for some objects is a little vague. Take Toasters, for instance. You’ll find these objects scattered around the world and you can break them down into Plastic Parts and Wires if you recycle them. The description reads “Can be recycled into crafting materials.” That might make you think that the only thing a Toaster is good for is being immediately recycled.
But hold your horses. Many objects with descriptions that read “Can be recycled into crafting materials” can also be used in upgrading your various workshops. Toasters, for example, are needed to upgrade your Refiner.
I recommend tracking resources for your workshop upgrades. Once you construct a new workshop, tab over to “Level Up” and click on the tracking button. This will label any instance of the items required with an eye symbol so you’ll know it’s needed and, thus, you’ll be less likely to accidentally break it down.
Full bag? GTFO
At most, you’ll be given about 30 minutes to do your thing on a map. Sometimes you’ll spawn with less time than that. And I’ve learned in my 50 hours that time needlessly spent in the game can be seriously costly. I’ve had full bags of loot, only to get intrigued by a specific location that ends up leading to a Clusterfuck™ that gets me murdered, seeing me lose all the stuff I’d found.
Even the most basic of parts, such as Metal Parts and those Rubber Parts I told you about, are essential to keep in stock. So while you might have a bag full of stuff that doesn’t feel valuable, it all adds up to something you’re looking to craft or sell for credits. But you can’t do any of that if you died and lost it all.
A full bag, regardless of how much time is left, means it’s time to leave–and extracting can be a whole quest full of dangers and surprises in and of itself. A good loadout is built on a path made up of small victories.
Planning a route is essential
I realized this essential tactic pretty late in my time with Arc Raiders. At one point I dropped into a map with an inconvenient loadout and was about to extract, but I realized that this was actually a great opportunity to scope out the path to an objective I had a quest for.
So I took the opportunity to do some reconnaissance, observing the various paths I could take if I was better equipped, and what threats were likely to happen. And wouldn’t you know it, I came across one of the death-delivering Sentinel turrets along the way. I was pretty glad in that moment to not be carrying a ton of things I’d rather not lose to an unexpected threat.
Enemy AI is rather spontaneous in this game. They don’t show up in the same place on every run and their behavior (which in some instances was developed using machine learning) is very unpredictable and disturbingly smart.
So if you’ve got an important quest or have a key to a particularly good loot spot, spend a run just examining potential routes and escape plans. Grab a Free Loadout to do this so an unpredictable death isn’t as costly.
Dam Battlegrounds is spicy
This next tip might evolve over time, but in my experience, Dam Battlegrounds, which is the first map you gain access to, is more prone to bouts of PvP. I suspect part of this is because the map is home to the newest folks coming into the game and just getting their bearings and experiencing the flow of its PvPvE action.
Other maps unlock after you’ve made enough progress doing things on Dam Battlegrounds, and that’s where a lot of folks are out trying to loot for good shit or are just questing after investing some time into the game, and thus their loadout; they’re probably less likely to risk that progress.
So just have your radar up for shenanigans every time you head out to Dam Battlegrounds. People are antsy over there.
People are nicer than you think
This tip can result in your death. Hate to say it, but in a PvPvE game, unless someone is in your party, they can pose a potential risk to you. But! I’m finding that folks in Arc Raiders are a bit nicer than I experienced during the Server Slam, especially on maps other than Dam Battlegrounds.
When going into a building, while I don’t do it every time, when I suspect someone’s around, I will usually use the emote wheel to shout out a “Hello” followed by a “Don’t Shoot!” I have been surprised just how often randos will reply with a “Don’t Shoot,” often followed by a holstering of their weapon.
This kind of dynamic is part of the unique, prisoner’s-dilemma social game at work in Arc Raiders. Holstering a gun seems to have become a universal way to signal you’re not going to shoot someone, so return the gesture if you see someone putting their gun away.
Or betray them. I dunno. Be a bad person. You’ll get what’s coming to you eventually if you turn evil.
Go nuts with gadgets
Maybe the inner-Siege fanatic in me is at work here, but once I realized I can craft items to seal doors, erect barricades, and set up traps, oh, how I realized what a devastating saboteur I can be in this game.
I’ve sealed up entire rooms while I loot, hunkered down in some buildings to hunt Arc through windows, usually while running solo, covering my ass with traps and gadgets. Some gadgets are harmless, like the Noisemaker. Others range from nonlethal, like the Jolt Mine, to lethal, like the Explosive Mine.
At the time of this writing, with Arc Raiders less than a week old, I haven’t seen many people use gadgets to booby-trap areas. I’ve also surprised many a wandering Raider with a well-placed trap or two. Folks are less likely to sneak up on you if you’ve established a perimeter of fun toys for them to encounter.
Snitches can be your best friend (especially while running solo)
Snitches are often a pain, as they’ll summon Arc to your location if they spot you. But they can be your pain to inflict on others. Lately I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping my eyes peeled for one, even if they’re at a great distance. Typically, shooting at one will draw them over to you.
This is a great way to lose pursuant enemy Raiders. Call over a Snitch by getting its attention and it will either summon Wasps or Hornets, which will target you as well as your unfriendly Raider enemies, or just prove a helpful distraction by giving your foes another problem besides you. This can help you make a clean getaway or prove a helpful distraction that lets you fall back and help Arc kill your enemies.
As Arc Raiders matures, I’m sure I’ll find more helpful things to share. For now, however, these tips should help you break down what is arguably a very complex and hardcore game. Mastery over its various systems and unpredictable gameplay is well worth the experience and the struggles of failure.
