ARC Raiders is one of the biggest multiplayer hits of the year, which means thousands of people are flocking to it. That said, it can be a little obtuse with some of its mechanics, opting to throw players into the heat of a match instead of spending too much time over-explaining things. If you need some advice on what to do to start making it back to Speranza with heaps of great loot, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here are 12 essential Arc Raiders tips.

Your Goal Is To Survive, Not Win

One of the biggest problems I faced when first starting Arc Raiders was my mentality. I was treating it like a battle royale, prioritizing combat above all else. Arc Raiders, however, has different goals for the player. The expectation is not to “win” but rather to survive. Yes, you’ll certainly face plenty of combat encounters, but the mentality players should adopt, especially newcomers to the extraction shooter genre, is “extraction above all else.”

Shootouts can yield great loot if you’re on the winning side, but they’re incredibly risky and you’re rarely guaranteed a win, even when you have solid weapons. Despite the fact that Arc Raiders takes after a lot of other shooters with many of its combat mechanics, it is concretely about extraction. If you’re new to the genre, it’s important to make that mental shift away from the likes of other popular shooters.

Complete Quests in the Early Hours

While Arc Raiders has a tutorial to complete at the start, many of its systems and mechanics go unmentioned in the tutorial. That said, the early vendor quests that you can access by talking with individual vendors and tabbing over to their quest menu do a great job at introducing more of the minute details and systems Arc Raiders is all about, while also letting you earn rewards that will be useful as you get rolling.

Additionally, quests can help you identify where to find specific resources and introduce you to some of the ARC enemy types patrolling the wasteland, which can help drastically increase your game knowledge in the early hours.

Turn on the ‘Night Mode’ Audio Setting

ARC Raiders is a game all about noise. As you play, you should be paying close attention to the noise you’re making while looting, shooting, and breaching, but you should also be paying close attention to the noises around you. Wearing headphones while you play is an easy recommendation since they’ll help you identify which direction sounds are coming from, but if you’re not wearing headphones, then it’s a good idea to turn on the “Night Mode” setting in the audio options menu.

Night Mode essentially compresses all the audio so that nothing is too loud or too quiet. It’s a great mode for anyone who wants to hear quieter sounds much more clearly. For example, enemy footsteps, distant gunfire, and incoming ARC noises will all be boosted to give you a better understanding of the soundscape and an overall advantage when playing without headphones. Take note that Night Mode also increases the volume of your footsteps and breaching sounds, which can make them sound noticeably louder, but that’s the give and take that comes with playing without a headset.

I’d suggest experimenting with the setting to properly tune the volume to your preferences by playing a few rounds with it off and on and making a decision from there. It’s not going to be the perfect set up for everyone, but I found that it makes a difference for me when I can’t be bothered to grab a headset.

Remember to Switch Sides When Aiming

Being aware of your surroundings can often be the difference between successfully extracting and dying a premature death in Arc Raiders. Luckily, you have a lot of flexibility with the camera by allowing you to easily switch which side of your shoulder you’re looking over. By clicking the right thumbstick (or X on PC), you can change your camera perspective depending on the situation.

If you’re creeping down a hallway, it’s always best to stick to one side, so position the camera to the side that gives you the most amount of visibility. Similarly, if you’re trying to see what’s on the other side of a door, you can swing the camera around on both sides of it to get a better idea of what’s inside and if it’s safe to enter while keeping your body behind cover.

Be Thoughtful With Your Skill Points

As you level up in Arc Raiders, you’ll be given skill points to improve your character. While a lot of games shower the player with tons of points and let them respec if they don’t like the way their build is going, Arc Raiders does not give you an option to respec without starting a new character. This means you’ll need to think carefully about which skills you want to unlock to best suit your build.

Luckily, there aren’t an endless number of skills to be had so it makes getting a comprehensive understanding of the skill tree simple, but each character has a max level of 75, which means that you can only acquire 75 nodes. Think carefully before you start putting points in one direction of the tree, you won’t be able to get that point back unless you start fresh.

Get the In-Round Crafting Skill

Speaking of skills, one of the most useful skills in Arc Raiders is the In-Round Crafting skill in the Survival branch of the tree. It’s pretty early on in the tree, so it doesn’t take a lot of points to acquire if you aren’t planning on speccing into the Survival branch, but it’s essential for increasing your survivability mid-match.

The skill lets you craft a small handful of items using materials in your backpack while you’re out looting. It’s really helpful because it means if you’ve lost your shield in a firefight but realize that you have all the necessary materials to make a shield recharge kit – or at the very least know where you might be able to find those resources – you’re not completely out of luck. It also lets you consolidate space by combining items you would just use to craft after the match anyway.

Trade Free Loadout Augments for Other Augments

Free Loadouts are a reliable tool to lean on if you’re worried about losing high-quality gear in your stash before taking on a risky run. Free Loadouts let you go topside in search of loot with a random assortment of gear that, if you extract, you get to keep. In addition to the free gear, extracting successfully using a Free Loadout also gives you a Free Loadout Augment that can be traded at the Clinic with Lance for one of the three uncommon loadout augments : combat, looting, or tactical.

If you’re having trouble getting down Arc Raiders’ mechanics, Free Loadouts are a great way to build up some skill while risking very little. Plus, trading the augment in for a real, useful augment is a great way to set you in the right direction if you’re having difficulty building momentum.

Use the Ping to Identify Enemies

Like many online shooters, Arc Raiders gives players a contextual ping that lets you mark items, structures, and enemies. While the ping is useful for communication, the thing I use it for most often is identifying what kind of ARC I’m dealing with. Because so many of the ARCs look similar, it can be difficult to tell at a glance if the flying machine making a beeline toward you is a relatively weak Wasp, a beefier Hornet, or a flying killing machine Rocketeer.

Additionally, many of the ARCs have names that tell you something about their abilities, so if you’ve never encountered a Leaper before, but you ping it and hear that it’s called a “Leaper,” you should have a decent idea of what it’s capable of.

The ping is a good tool to use to decide if you’re going to stealth your way around an enemy, hold your ground and shoot through them, or pack your stuff up double time and book it in the opposite direction. You can also change your settings to let your pings appear to everyone, not just yourself and party members.

Shoot ARC In Their Weak Points

If you decide to engage with an ARC in a firefight, it’s important to know that you don’t want to unload your precious ammo into one of them without a plan. The body of an ARC is usually well-fortified, so if you aren’t precise with your shots, you might end up wasting all your ammo without even taking down a basic Wasp.

Instead of firing off blindly, target the weak spots to deal major damage. Usually, weak spots are pretty easy to see, even if you’ve never encountered a specific ARC before. For example, you’ll want to shoot the propellers on any and all flying ARCs, the exposed underbelly of Turrets and Sentinels, and any and all joints of walking ARCs. If you want a more specific breakdown of which ARCs to target where, you can find a full list of their weaknesses in the Codex.

If you’re planning on attempting to take down some ARCs, make sure to keep in mind your weapon’s ARC Armor Penetration rating, which tells you how much damage your gun will do against the hull of an ARC. Obviously, to take down bigger enemies like the Bastion or Bombardier, you’ll want to have a gun with a higher rating.

Dismantle Guns for Parts

Finding a gun while exploring the world is a pretty big get, but you won’t always have the room in your bag to grab every one of them, especially if you end up killing a well-equipped squad in a shootout. That said, even if you aren’t able to grab all the guns, you can dismantle them in a fallen player’s bag into their base components. This is a great, guaranteed way to get gun parts, which are a necessary crafting material needed to build and upgrade other, better guns. Plus, you’ll be able to pick up various amounts of other, less valuable components. To dismantle a weapon, you don’t even need to put it in your bag; you can simply select the gun and break it down from the selection sub-menu.

Don’t Neglect Scrappy

There are a lot of different things to check up on between missions in Arc Raiders, however, you’ll want to make sure that you check in with Scrappy the chicken as often as you can in the Workshop. Scrappy passively collects basic loot for you while you’re out looking for bigger, rarer supplies, so you don’t want to neglect him anytime he pops up with a yellow notification on the Workshop tab.

On top of collecting supplies from Scrappy, you can also train the little guy to get better gear by collecting specific things that he wants. Scrappy functions similarly to workbenches and the like, so you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled while topside for whatever he wants.

Don’t Forget About Prox Chat

One of the interesting selling points for Arc Raiders is that combat between players is entirely optional. It’s up to you if you want to run headfirst into the action, guns blazing, or communicate with other players and settle things peacefully. Plenty of trust is required if you want to end an interaction peacefully, but we’ve found relatively decent success in hopping on prox chat and asking players that we aren’t looking for a fight. It feels like 60 percent of the time, they’ll let you go without any trouble.

Of course, that other 40 percent ends in bloodshed, but if you’re in a pinch and don’t have the resources to fight your way through a group of other raiders, remember that talking things out is always an option. You can also use the “Don’t Shoot” emote while walking into an area that you think might be occupied. Be cautious, but don’t lose all hope for the good of humanity – everyone in Arc Raiders is in the same boat, so it’s not uncommon to find a kind-hearted group who’s willing to cut you a break if you ask for it.