Best Tips For Surviving In The Rust Belt In Arc Raiders

So, you've jumped into the world of Arc Raiders where your gameplay revolves around constantly going to the topside for raids and bringing in loot, which not only helps you earn money, but also get better gear for your subsequent runs. However, during these raids, you'll constantly be attacked by both players and robots.

As you go around different maps in the game, you'll constantly encounter different types of Arc machines that are designed to eliminate you on sight. Some of the best gear you can find is usually guarded by these machines, but if you keep a few of these tips in mind, you can also be a competitive raider.

Other Players Can Hear Everything

One of the most important things you should remember while going to a raid in the topside, especially as a solo player, is that enemies and Arc robots can hear nearly every sound you make. In other similar games, you might reload your gun or emote to your friend thinking no one else can see it, but that's not the case here. Here are the main examples of things that other players can hear you do:

• Reload your weapon
• Do any emote
• Ping something on your screen or the map (the enemies can hear the radio voice you make during this)
• Sprinting or walking
• Breaching an object or searching it

Hence, if you're looking for loot in a certain area where you think there might be a player around, all your movement and voices should be intentional. Similarly, you can also pay attention to the surrounding audio and easily tell if a player is nearby. A random audio that pops up beside you? Don't discard that as random audio, it's probably a player.

Find A Goal Before Going Topside

While it can be quite relaxing to raid the topside with a free loadout where you don't have any worry of losing your items, it's not the best method if you want to progress further in the game. Free loadout has very little protection, and your gun is also randomized, which can lead to you getting a sniper that can only shoot once before each reload. Moreover, it's always better to go to the topside with a goal.

In general, there are two types of goals that you have for a raid:

• Taking a quest from one of the raiders and going to the respective map to get it done, which can reward you some useful items.
• Tracking the items you need to craft or upgrade an item or station in your workshop to level up the tier of gear in your loadout.

Generally, it's recommended to have both these goals tracked at the same time so that you can at least focus on one depending on where you spawn in the map once you enter a raid.

Don't Recycle Everything

Once you get used to the raids and start extracting often in Arc Raiders, your stash in the base will start filling up and you'll likely have to start removing some items that aren't that useful. However, while doing this, you might end up removing the items that you'll need for an important upgrade in the future since the game isn't very clear with its descriptions sometimes.

For a few items, the game might say that they're recyclable and can be recycled to get crafting materials, but that item itself can be a crafting material, like the Power Cable shown above. It's important to look at all your current upgrades and then decide what you want to recycle or sell.

Find The Gear That Suits You

As soon as you get into the game, you won't be surprised by seeing that combat is one of the core aspects of the game that you can't avoid. Sure, you might have a few runs where you don't find any Arcs or players blocking your path, but these will be few and far between. In most other runs, you'll likely either be sneaking up on a player making a lot of noise, or getting snuck up on yourself.

To deal with these situations, finding the right gear for you is one of the most important decisions. For example, out of the starter guns, you'd want to go for the one with constant fire and less damage if you like a lot of mobility, but a sniper will be your best option if you like being careful and taking the enemies by surprise. Similarly, your augment will defer based on your playstyle as well.

Of course, if you ever get a shotgun, that's the best weapon to deal a massive blow after sneaking up on the enemy.

Don't Waste Your Skill Points

Whenever you finish a raid in Arc Raiders or get eliminated at the topside, you'll come back to the hideout and get EXP based on your performance. You get some of the highest EXP just by scavenging and spending more time up above, and these can help you level up quite fast.

With each level up, you get a skill point that you can use in a massive skill tree. However, before you do that, it's important to remember that there's no way to reset this tree, and every point you spend in it is permanent. It's important to decide on a rough path that you want to take and get the feel for the game before you spend any skill points here.

As you reach higher levels, it'll take you longer to level up further, which makes these skill points more rare as you go.

Know Where To Find The Loot You Seek

Much like setting an objective before starting a run, it's also important to get the general idea of where you can find each type of loot. This is quite easy to do once you get the hang of the symbols that you see on the desired loot type. When you hover over any loot, you can see some symbols at the bottom like Mechanical, Medical, or Electrical. These symbols can also be seen in different areas of the map.

You have the highest chances of getting your desired loot type in their preferred area. For example, if you're looking for Mechanical Components for your Gunsmith upgrade, you'd want to go to the Mechanical areas with yellow or red borders, though you'll also have high chances of facing other players here.

Look For Arc's Weakspots

In your early raids of the topside, the best way to survive is to avoid all Arc enemies since they can be particularly daunting to defeat. However, as you progress through the quests and learn the game, you'll need to start defeating these machines since they're sometimes required for quests, while at other times, their components can be used for different upgrades.

The best way to defeat an Arc machine is by finding its weak spot. For example, for all the flying drone-like machines, you can easily defeat them by targeting their thrusters and forcing them to fall on the ground. If you try to hit an Arc in a random place, you'll have to spare a lot more ammo with an increased chance of getting hit by it.

Pay Attention To Your Environment

The final and another one of the most important tips before you start raiding the topside in Arc Raiders is to pay attention to your environment. As you're randomly running through an area, there are a lot of things that can help you identify a player's position. For example, if you see the drones having a yellow or red light when they're not looking at you, they must've seen another player nearby.

Similarly, if you see a random flare go up in the sky near you, it usually means that a player has been eliminated at that position on the ground. Though if this flare is white, it means that a player has called in a supply drop. Moreover, you can also notice some black smoke in different areas, which leads you to broken Arc machines that can give you a ton of loot.

Other players can use similar things to locate you, so if you get attacked by Arc machines, expect a player to be running to eliminate you as well.

It's also important to pay attention to the timer at the top of your screen, not only to extract in time, but also to identify if you spawned in an existing match. When you first spawn, if the timer is below 29 minutes, it means that you've likely spawned in an ongoing match and players might already be looting different buildings or camping inside them.