Here are several tips to help you survive raids with all your precious loot. By S.E. Doster on October 22, 2025 at 10:32AM PDT Arc Raiders is a PvPvE third-person extraction shooter set in an apocalyptic future. In this game, you strap on the boots of a scavenger who must collect valuable resources and gear from dangerous territory overrun with deadly robots and human threats. Like most extraction shooters, this game requires considerable risk to reap the best rewards. Our guide will provide you with some helpful tips for looting and staying alive in Arc Raiders. Matches in Arc Raiders are called Raids, and they last for 30 minutes each. You can play solo or in a party of up to three players. You'll need to loot up and safely extract with your gear before the match ends in order to keep your stuff. If you’re eliminated or fail to extract, you'll lose everything on you--well, mostly everything, but we'll explain more on that below. While these are great tips for all players, they are especially useful if you're planning on playing Arc Raiders solo. Every little sound you make is dangerous in Arc Raiders. Footsteps, looting containers, opening doors. Every action you take creates audio cues that can be used against you. Likewise, listening carefully can help you use the same audio cues against others. Crouch to make less movement noise, move cover-to-cover, and use light shields when possible for faster movement. Popping a smoke grenade can also be a great stealth tactic for looting, healing, or escaping a fight. Some missions require you to fight Arc robot enemy types, but it's best to avoid them if you don't need to engage. You should choose gunfights wisely, as firing your weapon can alert nearby enemies to your location. Check your surroundings and approach extraction points with caution. Sometimes players can be waiting to ambush others at the extraction points. Activating the lift at an extraction point also creates a lot of noise, so make sure you stay alert for potential enemies to arrive. You'll want to go topside with a clear goal in mind. Raids have a maximum timer of 30 minutes. If you need a specific item for a quest or an upgrade, make sure you check your map locations right away, so you know exactly where you need to go. Each main POI will tell you what types of loot are available there. Example: If you need a mechanical part, hover over the POIs to see which specifies mechanical loot. Also, watch the timer and give yourself enough time to get to an extraction point. Each extraction point has its own timer to indicate how long the point will be active. Don't wait too long and end up at one of the last points active, as other teams might be fighting you for that same extraction. What happens if you lose all your gear? Don't worry, Arc Raiders never leaves you completely empty-handed. You always have the option to start a match with a free loadout. This won't be a very good offering of gear, but you'll have a random weapon and some equipment to use for each match. Using the free loadout is great when you're just getting started and don't want to risk much. It's also good for regaining and building up your inventory after some tough losses. As mentioned above, you want to plan out your objective before you start the raid. This also helps to make sure you bring the right weapon types for the job. Heavy weapons with bullet penetration are best for robots, while guns with light or medium ammo types are all you'll need for human threats. You'll probably want to conserve the heavy ammo and weapons unless you know you're going topside to fight big robots. Weapons break in Arc Raiders. You'll want to be mindful of the durability of all your weapons. Highlight a weapon in your inventory to get its details and see what condition the item is in. You don't want to go into a fight with a gun that's on the verge of giving out on you. Make sure to make repairs when needed. Consider your playstyle when picking a shield for your loadout. Shields are categorized as either heavy, medium, or light. Heavy and medium shields mitigate more damage but slow you down, while light shields mitigate less but are lighter, and you can move faster. It's also worth mentioning that shields work differently from many other games. A shield doesn't completely block you from taking damage and instead only reduces how much damage you take. Each shield's description will detail the percentage of damage it will reduce, but it's important to remember that a shield won't save you in a fight if you're low on health. Always keep healing items available in case you take damage. At the start, you'll load into raids with 30 inventory spaces and one safe pocket slot, but you can get more space by equipping various bag types. Safe pocket slots are for your most important items. These are the only loot items you keep if you die. This is a good place to store high-value loot or quest items that you want to make sure you don't lose. Your inventory will fill up really fast when looting, especially in the beginning, before you get a bag with extra space. This doesn't mean you should avoid or discard items you find. Try to hide and safely check your inventory while in the match to see if you're holding items that can be salvaged and into basic materials such as fabric and metal parts. These materials are highly stackable, and they can be salvaged mid-match to free up space. Additionally, any required quest items you find are marked with a white diamond icon in the top left corner. This should help you better identify them, because these are items you'll want to hold on to. When jumping or falling from heights, press the crouch button right before falling to perform a roll and protect yourself from fall damage. This won't work from really tall heights, but you can save yourself from reasonable heights. Keep an eye out for small red lights. They can be subtle, but you'll often notice a red light on a car or inside a doorway. These are alarms, and getting close will trigger a noisy sound that gives away your position. You can melee the light to destroy the alarm. There is an orange explosion and an audio cue when you break a player's shield. The killfeed will indicate with text to let you know you've knocked that player. A knocked player sends up a flare. This can be seen by anyone in the area, so you don't want to linger too long, but listen for any approaching squadmates before finishing any kills and looting bodies. If they have teammates, they might be close. Knocked players also have a fair amount of health. Don't waste your ammo on them. Use your melee weapon to finish the kill. Also, flares can be tricky. Don't assume you're going towards a flare to third-party a fight or loot potential bodies. Players can manually call flares if they have one to equip, and that can be a sly way to lure you into a trap. Arc Raiders can feel tough in the beginning, especially if you are new to extraction shooters. There are ways to level up your character and experience while you are back home in your underground base inside Speranza. Make sure to utilize the workbench and other features to craft new items, recycle unwanted loot, and make upgrades to your gear. Scrappy is your rooster companion. Yes, a rooster. He'll gather small quantities of essential materials for you. Make sure to visit Scrappy after every raid, as he'll collect items for you during each match. He can also be trained to be more efficient at scavenging materials. You'll earn experience from your raids, and leveling up earns you skill points to invest in a skill tree. This skill tree is divided into three sections: Conditions, Mobility, and Survival. Ultimately, how you choose your skill points will depend on your playstyle and if your focus is on looting, fighting, or movement-based skills. However, you can pull skills from all three tiers, which will give you a pretty well-rounded character. Skills good for solo players include: Latest in ARC Raiders Arc Raiders Dev Says Marathon's Reception Provided Some Clarity Arc Raiders Server Test Put Up Some Huge Numbers On Steam Arc Raiders Server Slam Is Live, Letting You Try Ex-Battlefield Dev's New Game For Free