ARC Raiders Beginner Guide: Your First Raids, Loadouts and Extraction

How a raid works

Every raid follows the same loop. Learn it once, and every map makes sense.

1. Pick a map and a loadout in Speranza. New players start on Dam Battlegrounds, and the Free Loadout costs nothing.
2. Drop Topside and loot. Search containers, wreckage and buildings for materials, trinkets and blueprints.
3. Fight ARC machines or slip past them. Wasps and Hornets patrol set routes, so cover and quiet movement often work better than a fight.
4. Watch the clock. A round lasts 30 minutes at most, and exits shut down one by one as it runs out.
5. Call an exit and get out. An elevator takes about 45 seconds to arrive, so call it early and from cover.
6. Sell and craft back in Speranza. Sell almost everything you bring home, buy stash space, and craft better gear for the next raid.

If you die, you lose everything you carried except what sits in your Safe Pocket. You still keep the experience points from the round.

Embark’s matchmaking reads your playstyle on a scale, and you are more likely to meet raiders with a similar history. There are no PvE only servers in the normal game: Embark tested a PvE toggle from October 13 to 20, 2026, and the test ended.

Free Loadout or your own kit

Every time you pick a map, you choose a Free Loadout or a custom one. This choice decides what you risk.

	Free Loadout	Custom loadout	No loadout at all
Backpack slots	14	16 to 24, set by the augment	10
Safe Pocket	None	1 to 3 slots	1 slot
Max weight	35.0	40 to 80	Not listed
Shield	Light only	Depends on augment	None
What you risk	Nothing you own	Everything you brought	Only what you find

The free kit is random, but it always gives you a weapon (a Kettle, Stitcher, Rattler or Ferro), a light shield, ammo for that gun, two bandages, a shield recharger, plus grenades or gadgets. There is no cooldown, so you can run it as often as you like.

Two catches matter. First, the free kit has no Safe Pocket, so a key or a blueprint you find will not survive death. Second, when you pick it, your custom loadout goes back to your stash, and if the stash is full you cannot deploy with it. Some map conditions switch the free option off. Night Raid and Close Scrutiny have done so since Live Update 1.33.0 in June 2026.

Build your own kit once you can afford to lose it. The starting choice is the Looting or Combat augment. Looting gives slightly more weight and two extra backpack slots, but limits you to a light shield. Combat takes a medium shield but slows you down. A good first gun is the Ferro: heavy ammo that pierces ARC armor, one shot at a time, with a slow reload. After a successful extraction with the free kit, the kit is yours. Trade its augment to Lance for a cheap Looting, Combat or Tactical augment with a Safe Pocket.

Maps and when they unlock

Your first rounds are on Dam Battlegrounds whether you like it or not. The rest unlock by rounds played.

Map	Unlocks after	Round length
Dam Battlegrounds	No requirement	30 minutes
Practice Range	4 rounds	2 hours
Buried City	8 rounds	30 minutes
Spaceport	12 rounds	30 minutes (40 during Hidden Bunker)
The Blue Gate	18 rounds	30 minutes (40 during Locked Gate)
Riven Tides	20 rounds	30 minutes
Stella Montis	24 rounds	30 minutes
Pendola Pass	25 rounds	30 minutes

Use the Practice Range as soon as it opens. Ammo and durability you spend there do not carry over, so it is the one place to try a gun or gadget from your stash for free. Anything you pick up there is removed when you leave.

Pendola Pass is the newest map. It arrived with Frozen Trail on October 8, 2026, and it holds the fallen Emperor and the Frigate. Save it for later: the fights are harder, and the best loot sits deep inside.

How extraction works

There are four kinds of extraction point: cargo elevators, metro stations, airshafts and Raider Hatches. A public exit shows at the top of your screen once you are within about 400 metres. As the round goes on, exits shut one by one, and the map shows how long each has left.

An elevator takes about 45 seconds to arrive after you call it, and the noise pulls in ARC and raiders alike. Call it from cover and spend the wait watching the approaches. If the light above the button is off, that lift has already shut down.

Raider Hatches are the quiet option. They stay locked until you use a Raider Hatch Key, stay open for about 10 to 15 seconds, take one raider at a time, and never shut down, which makes them the late round escape. Shani sells two keys a day, and you can also craft a key at the Utility Station once it reaches level 2.

Two rules save runs. A downed raider can still use an extraction terminal, and an exit does not shut down if you interact with its terminal right before it closes. You will not always spawn at the start of a round either: sometimes you will have as little as 15 minutes to get home.

If your health hits a critical level you collapse and can only crawl, for about a minute. ARC stop attacking a downed raider. Another raider might. Shields reduce damage rather than acting as a second health bar, so heal with bandages first: you can die with a full shield.

What to do with your loot in Speranza

Sell almost everything early. Your stash starts at 64 slots, each upgrade adds 24, and the first one costs 5,000 coins. Trinkets sell well and exist for nothing else. Do not waste slots on things the Workshop makes cheaply, like bandages, light shields, shield rechargers, basic weapons and ammo.

Always grab ARC Alloy and ARC Powercells: they only come from downed ARC. Keep seeds too, because Celeste takes them as currency. Blueprints are the big prize. You can only learn them in Speranza, so put a blueprint in your Safe Pocket the moment you find one.

Trader	What they sell
Celeste	Basic and Topside materials, paid for in seeds
Shani	Binoculars, cameras, light sticks and other social items, plus Raider Hatch Keys
Tian Wen	Ammo, basic weapons (the Ferro, Kettle and Stitcher among them), weapon mods
Lance	Augments, shields, bandages, shield rechargers, defibrillators
Apollo	Grenades, mines, ziplines and other gadgets
Nomadic Envoys	Extra stash space, cosmetics, resources, blueprints

Every trader except Celeste takes coins. Traders sell gear and hand out quests. They do not craft: every recipe lives in your Workshop. A common early order is Scrappy, then Gunsmith, then Medical Lab, then Refiner.

Skills, Trials and the Reward Pass

The skill tree splits into three paths: Survival, Mobility and Conditioning. Each level gives you one skill point, 76 in total from leveling, and you can spend across all three. A full reset costs 2,000 coins per point spent, so plan a little. Open Survival first: its first node, In-round Crafting, lets you make bandages and shield rechargers Topside.

Trials are five weekly challenges. Each one scores a single kind of action. Points count when you extract, and only your best run per challenge counts, so a death costs you that run, not your week. Each challenge pays a random item or blueprint at 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 points. Trials unlock at Raider level 15. Season 6, called Frozen Trials, runs from October 8, 2026 to January 12, 2027, and the grand prize is the Maestro Outfit.

The Reward Pass is the current progression system. The Frozen Trail Pass has 60 levels across a Free and a Premium track. Cred is gone: it was removed in Frozen Trail and replaced by Reward Points, which count toward whichever pass you have active. Expeditions, the old reset loop, are paused until early 2027.

Soul’s Offering is a separate player project from Live Update 2.3.0. Our ARC Raiders Soul’s Offering guide covers it step by step, so this guide stays on the beginner loop.

Five mistakes to avoid

1. Staying too long. Call your exit with time to spare. The loot is worth nothing if you die with it.
2. Bringing gear you cannot replace. Run the free kit until you know the map and your exit by sight.
3. Leaving your Safe Pocket empty. A blueprint or a key belongs in the pocket the moment you find it.
4. Filling your stash with cheap craftables. Sell trinkets, buy stash space, and keep only what the Workshop cannot make cheaply.
5. Fighting every ARC you meet. Wasps and Hornets patrol set routes. Crouch, break line of sight, and save your ammo for the fights that matter.

ARC Raiders beginner questions

Is ARC Raiders free to play?

No. It costs $39.99 on Steam in the US, or $59.99 for the Deluxe Edition, before any sale. Embark ran a free play weekend from October 8 to 12, 2026, and it has ended.

Does the Free Loadout have a Safe Pocket?

No. The Free Loadout gives 14 backpack slots, 4 quick use slots, 2 weapon slots and a light shield, and it removes the Safe Pocket. Going in with no loadout at all keeps one Safe Pocket slot.

Can you play ARC Raiders solo?

Yes. You can go solo or in groups of up to three, and Embark says matchmaking favors equal squad sizes where it can. For your first few games, go solo and be friendly: most players ignore new raiders, and a few will drop items or revive you.