July 28, 2026

How To Start Playing Arc Raidersa pirate in speronza

This is my how-to-enjoy-Arc-Raiders post - specifically for my pirate friends from Sea of Thieves. I've thousands of hours in SOT and only - at the time of me writing this - 27 hours top-side in Arc Raiders. I'm finding that I'm having a lot of fun and it totally reminds me of my first year or two in SoT where I solo slooped and kept to myself and loved every minute of it.

This is a guide: From Scrub to No-Longer-a-Scrub.

Go from nothing in your inventory to a Decent Loadout™ within 3 or 4 trips topside.

It's ok to die. It's gonna happen. Just like SoT, you're gonna get sunk. Dust yourself off, grab a free kit, go raid again.

Beginner To Do List:

• do the tutorial (or skip it)
• immediately do Shani's first two or three quests until you start unlocking other trader quests and leveling up
• unlock all your workbenches
• upgrade Scrappy and workbenches
• make money & have, buy, or craft decent equipment

Have an Objective

When going topside have either a quest or tracked materials for an upgrade/crafting. Our plan is to have an almost empty inventory, get top side, get to our target, loot everything, get to an extraction point. 10 minute adventure. in and out. Think of gold per minute. GPM. That works here too... Goop Per Minute

Our goal: Money. We want and need money to do things. To get money: you go topside, fill your pockets, extract, and then sell. Repeat.

Loot Value/Rarity

• Common (Grey)
• Uncommon (Green)
• Rare (Blue)
• Epic (Pink/Purple)
• Legendary (Gold)

Basically, unless you need something, prioritize the gold, then pink, then blue... The rarer the thing, the more likely it will sell for more money. Money lets you buy gear that you can't craft yet. GPM. Have full pockets before you extract.

Track Resources or Objectives

click the track resources button then when looting or selling, you can see if you need to hold onto that thing. It puts a little circle in the corner like this:

Alternately, If you're doing a quest, use the interactive map and look up your quest to have an idea where you're going. You can drop a pin in the ingame map to drop a marker.

Loadouts & Kits: Free to MK.1 to MK.2

Start with a free-kit. 75% of the time your gun will be garbage, but... who cares? The plan is to get some stuff and get out asap. when you return, you can visit the Clinic Trader, Lance, and swap your free free kit out for a regular MK.1 kit. I like to get a Looting MK.1. More space and a safe pocket.

After a few runs, you'll have enough money to buy one of the MK2 kits (again, I like a Loot Mk2)

This is what I currently consider a decent pve loadout. This is probably after 4 runs topside while starting with the free kit. Traded the free kit for the Looting Mk.1. Bring this stuff with me topside:

• Anvil II - Purchased Anvil I that I upgraded once.
• Rattler II - Weapon from free kit, upgraded once.
• Ammo for both
• 4 bandages
• 2 shield rechargers
• 4 seeker grenades - 2 found, 2 purchased
• 1 defib - in case I want to be nice.

Weapons

As you play, you'll find weapons and be given random guns when you use a free kit that you will keep after you extract. You can also find raider weapon caches hidden around on the map (you can hear them.) But...

Basically, you want to get an Anvil. After a couple of runs topside, you should enough cash to buy one from Tian Wen, the Weapon Trader, for $15,000 - you can do this every 24 hours. The Anvil's heavy rounds go through arc plating and help you easily put down most of common arcs that you'll run into.

The next big gun I've found helpful is the Hullcracker. It'll drop smaller arcs in one shot and can help take down some of the medium sized ones. Also can also be purchased for $30k, once a day, from Tian.

And while you shouldn't sleep on any of the throwables, Seeker grenades are nice for quick arc removal. Throw them in the air and, like their name suggests, they'll seek the nearest arc and zoom right towards them and detonate. Grenade trader sells a half a dozen a day for $1900.

Arcs: Fight or Flight

Fight the small ones. This is the list of arcs you can kill easily with an Anvil, and not quite as easily with weaker weapons:

• Tick
• Pop
• Hornet
• Turret
• Snitch
• Wasp
• Fireball
• Firefly
• Spotter

Run from the larger ones. At this point, you should avoid anything not listed above.

Good Loot Routes and Locations

You can do pure loot runs to just get goop. I feel comfortable on Dam, Buried City, and Spaceport. I'm paranoid at Blue Gate. I avoid the other maps for now. I've had good luck with these spots, as posted by Millzaa on youtube.

Here are the starting points as images:

Dam

Buried City

Blue Gate

Aggression-Based Matchmaking (ABMM)

The way this works is: Shoot people, get tagged as aggressive and get paired with PVP people. Don't shoot people (or only return fire,) get tagged as passive and get paired with PvE people.

Be a rat; get paired with rats.

Mind your own busines; get paired with Carebears.

If you don't shoot first but RETURN fire after getting hit, you will not be flagged as aggressive. Self defence doesn't mess with your ABMM

That's basically it. Everything you need to know to get going in Arc Raiders and only die a little bit.

I think I'm at the point where I want to try to take down some of the larger arcs. Perhaps with a friend or two. if you wanna talk about this or even perhaps go topside together, come chat on our discord, The Gentlemen of Fortune.

Thanks for reading. See ya topside!