Big tips for your first few trips to the surface in ARC Raiders

ARC Raiders is the latest extraction shooter to hit the market, and it's absolutely taking off on Steam. It's also quite punishing in the early hours, and you can lose a lot of valuable resources and time trying to figure the game out.

Well, we've played it for about 12 hours or so, and are here to help with some critical tips for starting out.

Treat the ARC with more respect than enemy players

ARC – that's the in-universe name for all the robits – are pretty brutal in ARC Raiders. Basic flying drones like Hornets and Wasps can really mess your day up if you're in the middle of another firefight. But the medium bots – like the Rocketeer or the Bastion or the Bombardier – will demolish you if you aren't actively ready to take them on.

Don't get me wrong here, players can definitely be dangerous (particularly in team play, as players in groups tend to shoot first and ask questions later), but they can also be allies. And also, it's a lot easier to take down an entire squad of players than one Rocketeer.

Be extremely precious with your meds

Much like the real world, medical supplies are really not as prevalent as they should be in ARC Raiders. But unlike the real world (hopefully, for your sake), you need bandages and shield chargers constantly in ARC Raiders, as the time to kill is pretty damn quick.

All of that is to say, you really need to put an emphasis on bringing meds out when you can during the early days. And you should try and grab ARC Powercells and Fabric anytime you can, as those are the items you'll need to craft more meds between runs.

But if you're really down bad for meds ...

Use those free loadouts early and often

Free loadouts suck, because the actual amount of loot you can carry while using them is terrible, and you get a random weapon. That weapon can be the Ferro, which is amazing. Or the Rattler, which is giga booty ass.

But you do drop with some free meds and ammo, and that free gun will sell for a bit of cash if you can get out with it. Even better, you hold onto your free loadout augment if you extract with it, and can trade it in the Clinic for a green augment of your choosing. This is a really great way to either start your day or recover from some bad losses.

Loot everything for more XP

You get a bunch of XP for looting stuff in ARC Raiders, which makes sense for a game that's basically a survival/crafting game disguised as an extraction shooter. But the weird thing about ARC Raiders' loot XP is that you get some every time you open a container you haven't looked in yet.

What's weird about that is that you can effectively farm XP by opening up containers your friends have already opened, even if you know nothing is inside. So if you find a big room with a bunch of crates in it, open every single box just to get the XP, even if your backpack is full and you know it doesn't have anything you're missing.

Start cock training ASAP

Advice we can all live by, am I right?

Anyway, everyone has a chicken in ARC Raiders. Their name is Scrappy, and they're pretty cool. They'll collect some common materials for you while you do other stuff, like drop into maps and play the game.

You can level Scrappy up by finding a dog collar, which is a relatively rare early item. But you should absolutely, positively put that dog collar in your safe pocket (also colloquially known as "butt hole") so you can get that upgrade to Scrappy ASAP.

So, just to sum this one up, if you find a dog collar, stick it in your butt hole so you can level up your cock as fast as possible. [Jeff note: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS GAME!?]

God, I'm sorry.

Start by upgrading your stash

In ARC Raiders, you want to collect a ton of resources and weapons and items and etc, etc, etc. To do that, you need a big-ass stash, or you're going to run out of room very quickly.

The good news here is that you can expand your stash with cold, hard cash. That's all you need. It starts relatively cheap and then escalates, but if you sell any valuables you find, guns you don't like, or items you have too many stacks of, you'll hit the numbers you need in no time.

Just make sure you spend that money on upgrading your stash and not on buying green and blue items in the shops. Stash first, shops later.