U4GM ARC Raiders Tips from a 700h Vet

[DarkTide]

I have put a silly amount of hours into ARC Raiders since it launched, and if you are just dropping Topside now you are probably feeling the same pain I did at the start, when every raid felt like a brick wall and every extract went wrong right at the end because I was slow, loud, and looting like a hoarder while dreaming about when I could finally afford proper gear without waiting weeks, which is when I started looking into options like Arc Raiders coins buy instead of just suffering through bad runs over and over.

Learning To Stop Looting Like A Trash Goblin
New players pick up everything, then wonder why they run out of breath in one gunfight and get melted by the first Bastion that spots them.The backpack limit is not just a number; once you push past a certain weight, sprint speed drops, stamina comes back slower, and your shield recharge feels stuck in mud.You do not notice it in a quiet corner of the map, but the moment you try to rotate between POIs or run from an orbital barrage, it hits you hard.The trick is to treat your bag like a tiny shop window rather than a skip: grab light trinkets with that little diamond icon, things like Rubber Ducks or those weird old Game Cartridges, because they barely weigh anything and sell for far more than most bulky junk at Scrappy, while ARC Parts such as Motion Cores or Circuitry should stay locked in your stash no matter how broke you feel, since late game crafting eats those up and you really do not want to remember that one time you sold a Motion Core for pennies just to buy a helmet you replaced two days later.

Sound, Aggro, And Why You Keep Getting Third Partied
Once you get the hang of loot value, the next wall is combat, and it is not just about who clicks heads faster.Audio is a bigger deal than the guns in a lot of fights; you sprint across a metal catwalk and you may as well fire a flare into the sky.You quickly learn to mix walking and crouch walking, especially near likely choke points like stairwells and roof ladders, so you are the one hearing footsteps instead of feeding someone else a free kill.There is also that hidden aggression thing going on, and you feel it when you string together a few high kill raids in a row and suddenly every lobby feels sweatier, players pre aiming angles you thought nobody checked and teams rotating on you the second you fire a loud weapon.If you want to keep your sanity, it helps to mix in a few calmer scavenger runs where you focus on materials and safe extracts, just to lower the heat and rebuild your stash without playing every match like it is a tournament.

Grinding, Shortcuts, And Managing Your Time
The worst part for a lot of people is not dying in fights, it is the grind that comes after.You can spend a couple of weeks chasing one blueprint that never seems to drop, or farming duplicates you barely care about just to open up more stash rows.It starts to feel like a second job, especially if you are only able to play a few hours a week and every bad raid sets you back again.That is where some players decide their time is worth more than the slow climb, and they look for shortcuts outside the game, picking up items, blueprints, or currency from places that let them skip the early slog and jump into high risk, high reward raids with gear that actually supports their playstyle rather than whatever scraps they have managed to scrape together.

Routes, Exfils, And Playing The Long Game
What really changes the game is when you stop thinking only about the next fight and start planning the whole raid like a route.You get used to which exfils are usually hot, which rooftops attract campers, and how storms or global events shake players loose from certain spots.Gadgets that let you ping an exfil from range become part of your basic kit, not a cute extra, because one quick check can save you from walking straight into a team that has been waiting there for ten minutes.Sometimes the smartest move is to take a wide flank, leave a bit of loot behind, or delay extraction by thirty seconds to let another squad leave first, and that mindset carries over into how you handle your account as well, whether you are grinding every upgrade yourself or mixing in some help from sites like u4gm so you can spend more of your limited gaming time actually playing tense raids instead of watching progress bars crawl along.