New to Arc Raiders? Most beginners die broke in their first few raids because they play it like a normal shooter, not an extraction shooter where survival only counts if you make it out with your loot.
The core loop is simple: drop topside, loot and complete quests while avoiding or fighting threats, then extract before time runs out.
This arc raiders beginner guide covers loadouts, movement, combat basics, and the extraction timing that actually keeps new Raiders alive.
What Is Arc Raiders? The Core Loop
Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter where you drop from your underground home, Speranza, onto the dangerous surface known as Topside.
Your goal each raid is to loot resources, complete quests, and extract safely before a timer forces you out.
Two threats stand between you and that goal: ARC robots, which are hostile but predictable, and other Raiders, who are unpredictable but often avoidable if you play carefully.
Gear Up Before You Drop
Free Loadout vs. Custom Loadout
Your first decision in the loadout screen sets the tone for the entire raid. The Free Loadout gives you a basic weapon, a light shield, some bandages, and a backpack at no cost.
You will not get a Safe Pocket, but you do get 14 inventory slots to fill and bring home. It is the lowest-risk way to learn a map, finish early quests, or farm crafting materials without touching your own gear.
A Custom Loadout uses weapons, shields, and backpacks you have crafted or bought, and it comes with a Safe Pocket for securing valuable items even if you die. The tradeoff is real: lose a raid on a Custom Loadout, and you lose everything you brought in except what made it into your Safe Pocket.
| Free Loadout | Custom Loadout | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | None | Your own crafted or purchased gear |
| Risk if you die | None | Lose everything except Safe Pocket items |
| Safe Pocket | Not available | Available |
| Best for | Early raids, learning maps, low-risk farming | Once you have gear worth using and a Safe Pocket habit |
If you extract successfully on a Free Loadout, you also receive a Free Loadout Augment, which you can trade at the Clinic for a basic green Augment. That is a way to make progress without spending coins at all.
Shield vs. Health: The Distinction That Gets Beginners Killed
Your shield is not extra health. It is damage reduction, which means when you take a hit, your shield and your health both drop at the same time, just at different rates depending on shield type.
A full shield does not protect you from being knocked down if your underlying health is already low.
This matters most in the healing sequence during a fight. The rule that actually holds up: if your health is below half, use a bandage first, since a broken shield with full health keeps you in the fight far better than a full shield with almost no health.
Once your health is back above half, switch to topping off your shield, since it gives you more value per second spent healing at that point. Healing shield first while your health is critically low is the mistake that gets new Raiders killed, since the next hit will still go through to your health no matter how full your shield looks.
Backpack and Augment Basics
Your backpack, or Augment, determines how much you can carry and what armor weight you can equip. A Looting Augment trades combat armor capacity for more inventory space, while a Combat Augment does the opposite. You cannot swap your Augment mid-raid, so decide before you drop whether this run is about hauling loot or holding your ground.
Controls and Movement That Actually Matter
A handful of inputs separate Raiders who survive their first ten raids from those who don’t, and most guides mention them in passing rather than putting them in one place.
| Action | What It Does | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Holster weapon | Sheaths your weapon and pickaxe | Faster movement and quieter footsteps when you are not in a fight |
| Shoulder swap | Switches which shoulder your camera favors | Lets you peek around corners without exposing your full body |
| Slide / crouch on landing | Reduces fall damage | Turns risky jumps into safe shortcuts instead of free damage |
Holstering before you sprint across open ground is the single habit that does the most to keep you alive and unheard. Save drawing your weapon for when you are actually looting or expecting a fight.
Sound Is the Real Enemy
Everything makes noise in Arc Raiders, and that cuts both ways. Footsteps, gunfire, breaching doors, and recharging shields all carry across the map, which means you can hear threats coming and they can hear you too.
Breaching containers and doors is especially loud, so do it when you are confident no one is close enough to notice.
The flip side is using sound to your advantage. If you hear a fight break out nearby, that is information: someone is distracted, and an extraction point or loot cache might be momentarily unguarded.
Move quietly, listen constantly, and treat silence as a resource you are spending every time you sprint or shoot.
Fighting ARC Robots: Know What You’re Shooting
ARC machines are dangerous, but every type has a pattern once you learn it. Early on, you will run into small, easy threats.
The further you push into high-value areas, the more likely you are to run into something much bigger.
| ARC Type | Weak Point | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Tick | No specific weak point needed | Fragile enough to kill with a single melee hit |
| Wasp | All four thrusters exposed; destroying two causes a crash | Manageable with almost any weapon once you target the thrusters instead of the body |
| Hornet | Front thrusters armored, rear thrusters exposed | Flank or wait for it to turn, then hit the unarmored rear thrusters |
| Snitch | Underside plating | Kill it fast before it finishes calling in reinforcements |
| Firefly | Yellow fuel tank on its underside | Hard to hit, but the most reliable way to take it down. Get inside a building rather than trying to outrun it |
| Comet | Inner machinery, exposed after it takes fire; side armor plating | Aggro it from a distance first, then switch to a high fire-rate weapon over heavy hitters |
| Rocketeer | Thrusters, especially when it lines up its lock-on lasers | Get to substantial cover before it locks on. Its missiles still splash damage nearby cover |
| Leaper | Legs, then its face once a leg is destroyed | Use Blaze Grenades if you have them, then finish with heavy ammo once it stops moving normally |
| Bastion | Yellow leg joints and the rear yellow canister | Stay out of its frontal arc, rotate to the side or rear, and target the joints to force a stun |
Snitches deserve special attention as a new Raider. They don’t attack directly, but if you let one finish its scan, it can pull in a squad of Wasps or a Hornet to back it up. Treat any Snitch as a priority target the moment you spot it.
Firefly and Comet are more recent additions and hit much harder than a Wasp or Hornet. A Firefly will hunt you into cover rather than backing off, so running is not a safe option once it locks onto you.
The safest play is to get inside a building rather than relying on open-ground cover. A Comet is a rolling, heavily armored bomb that wants to get close to your squad before detonating, so if you’re playing with others, spread out the moment one appears.
Leaper and Bastion are a different category entirely. Both are large, durable, and capable of ending a fight before you’ve done meaningful damage if you engage carelessly.
As a beginner, treat any Leaper or Bastion as optional. If it isn’t blocking a quest objective or an extraction point, the better move is usually to avoid it rather than commit to a fight you’re not yet equipped for.
For anything bigger than a Wasp or Hornet that you don’t immediately recognize, the safer move is to break line of sight and assess before committing. Most early deaths to ARC come from fighting something the player didn’t understand yet, not from bad aim.
Mistakes That Get New Raiders Killed
A few habits account for most early deaths, and they’re easy to fix once you know to watch for them.
Hoarding loot instead of using it. Saving a good weapon “for later” just means it sits unused while you struggle with worse gear in the meantime. Use what you find.
Ignoring extraction timers. Exits close mid-raid, and the loot in your inventory doesn’t matter if you don’t make it out. Check timers often, not just when you’re ready to leave.
Fighting every encounter. Not every Raider or ARC machine you see is worth engaging. If a fight doesn’t help you finish a quest or isn’t blocking your path, walking away costs you nothing.
Standing in the open. Always fight from cover, and reload or recharge your shield behind something solid. Open ground is where most fights are lost in the first few seconds.
Forgetting to heal between fights. Don’t push into your next encounter at half health because someone else will finish what the last fight started.
Skipping the skill tree for too long. New Raiders often hoard skill points without spending them, waiting for a “perfect” build. Spend points as you earn them on whichever branch matches how you’re playing right now.
A full tree reset is possible later but comes at a steep coin cost, so an unspent point sitting idle helps you in zero fights either way.
The Extraction Timing Rule Nobody Explains Clearly
Every map has multiple extraction points, like elevators, metro stations, and airshafts, and each one runs on its own independent countdown shown right on your map. They don’t all close at once.
As individual points shut down over the course of the raid, fewer exits remain available, which pushes everyone still topside toward the same handful of locations. Separately, the overall raid clock keeps running in the background, and if it hits zero while you’re still topside, the map wipes regardless of what any single extraction timer says.
The simplest way to avoid getting caught by this is to plan your route around whichever extraction point is closing soonest, and aim to arrive with several minutes of buffer rather than rushing in right as the timer expires.
If you’re looting near an extraction point with two minutes left, that’s a sign you should already be moving toward it, not finishing one more sweep of a building.
This buffer matters for a second reason beyond the timer itself: the closer an extraction point gets to closing, the more other Raiders converge on it too. Arriving early means less competition and less chance of getting caught in a last-second firefight at the door.
Solo or Squad? Choosing Your First Few Raids
Matchmaking pairs you against players in a similar group size, which means your squad choice changes the difficulty of every encounter you run into. Queue solo, and you’ll generally face other solo Raiders, who tend to be less coordinated and easier to avoid or outmaneuver.
Queue with two friends, and you’ll face other three-player squads, which is a much more demanding fight even if your individual skill hasn’t changed.
If you’re brand new, running solo for your first several raids lets you focus on learning the map, the controls, and the enemy types without the added complexity of squad coordination. Once you’ve got the basics down, squad play opens up faster fights, easier revives, and more loot capacity per raid.
The tradeoff works both ways too: a squad can carry you through a fight you’d lose solo, but it also means you’re relying on teammates to revive you if you go down, rather than crawling to an extraction point on your own.
Your First 3 Raids: A Step-by-Step Plan
Most guides scatter their advice across a long list of disconnected tips. Here’s how to actually sequence your first few raids so each one builds on the last.
Raid 1: Learn the map, risk nothing. Take a Free Loadout into whatever map your matchmaking offers. Don’t chase fights or rare loot. Your only goals are learning the layout, locating extraction points, and getting comfortable with holstering, shoulder swapping, and basic movement.
Raid 2: Start completing quests. Visit traders in Speranza before you drop to pick up early quests, then run another Free Loadout raid focused on finishing one or two of them. Pick up anything you find along the way. You’re building toward your first Custom Loadout, not trying to win every fight.
Raid 3: Move to your first Custom Loadout. Once you have crafted or bought a basic weapon and shield, switch off the Free Loadout. Keep your most valuable items in your Safe Pocket before you drop, play conservatively, and apply the extraction timing rule from earlier rather than pushing your luck on a map you’re now more familiar with.
Key Takeaways
- Use the Free Loadout for your first several raids to learn the game without risking your own gear.
- Your shield is damage reduction, not extra health. If your health is below half, heal health first, then top off shield.
- Holster your weapon when moving, draw it when looting, and use shoulder swap to peek corners safely.
- Sound carries both ways. Manage your own noise and listen for threats and opportunities.
- Target ARC weak points: thrusters on Wasps and Hornets, underside plating on Snitches.
- Plan your extraction route around whichever point is closing soonest, and arrive with a buffer.
- Solo queues are easier for beginners since matchmaking pairs you against other solo players.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best loadout for beginners in Arc Raiders?
The Free Loadout is the best starting point. It gives you a basic weapon, light shield, bandages, and a backpack at zero cost, so you can learn the map and combat without risking gear you paid for.
Switch to a Custom Loadout once you have crafted or bought your own weapon and shield.
Should I play solo or with a squad as a new player?
Solo is generally easier for learning the game. Matchmaking pairs solo players against other solo players, who tend to be less coordinated than full squads.
If you queue with two friends, you will face other three-player squads, which is a much steeper fight while you are still learning the basics.
How does the shield work in Arc Raiders?
Your shield is a layer of damage reduction, not extra health. When you take a hit, both your shield and your health drop at the same time, just at different rates. A full shield does not make you immune to being knocked down if your health is already low.
What happens if I die during a raid?
You first enter a downed state where you crawl and cannot fight back, but ARC machines will ignore you. If a teammate revives you or you reach an extraction point in time, you keep your gear.
If you fully die, you lose everything you brought into the raid except items in your Safe Pocket.
How long do extraction points stay open?
Each extraction point on a map runs on its own countdown timer, and they close at different times throughout the raid. Once every extraction point on the map has closed, the raid ends and anyone still topside is wiped out.
What’s the safest map for a first raid?
Stick to whichever map your matchmaking offers as a starting option and run it with a Free Loadout first.
The specific map matters less than your approach: move slowly, avoid fights you do not need, and prioritize learning extraction point locations over chasing loot.
Do I lose my gear if I get downed?
Being downed alone does not cost you anything. You only lose your loadout and loot if you fully die before a teammate revives you or you reach an extraction point while crawling.
How do I know which ARC enemies to avoid?
As a beginner, avoid any Leaper, Bastion, or Rocketeer you encounter alone. These are large, durable, and capable of ending a fight fast if you’re not prepared.
Wasps and Hornets are manageable with basic weapons once you target their thrusters, and Fireflies and Comets are best handled from cover or from inside a building rather than out in the open. If you are unsure what you are facing, retreating to cover and assessing before engaging is always the safer call.
What should I prioritize looting early on?
In your first several raids, pick up almost everything since you are still learning what is valuable.
Once you understand the crafting system, shift to prioritizing ammo, quest items, and crafting materials over rare gear you cannot yet use.
How many skill points can I earn?
The level cap is 75, and you earn one skill point per level plus a bonus point at the start, for a maximum of 76. Expeditions can also grant additional bonus points.
Since the skill tree contains more nodes than you can fill, you will need to commit to a build rather than spreading points thin.
Can I play Arc Raiders solo the whole game?
Yes. Arc Raiders supports solo play throughout, and matchmaking adjusts so solo Raiders generally face other solo Raiders rather than full squads.
Squad play offers advantages in firefights and revives, but it is not required to progress.
