7 hours ago
Arc Raiders features a player-driven item economy centered on Raider Coins, crafting materials, blueprints, and trinkets, where extraction risks shape value without direct player trading. Progression hinges on balancing loot acquisition, recycling, crafting, and selling, with community tools like cheat sheets guiding optimal decisions.
Core Currency: Raider Coins
Raider Coins serve as the universal currency for trader purchases, workbench upgrades, skill resets, and consumables, earned primarily by selling trinkets (diamond icon items like Rubber Duck at 1,000 CR or Lance’s Mixtape at 10,000 CR). Players farm coins via safe Night Raid loops: loot security lockers with Breach perks, sell excess for 75-450 CR per stack, funding kits without high PvP exposure. Mid-game, duplicates of learned blueprints fetch 5,000 CR each, creating a feedback loop where raiding unlocks recipes and sells extras to accelerate hideout expansions.
Resources and Materials
Six basic materials—Metal Parts (75 CR, stack 50), Electronic Parts (450 CR), and rarer Electromagnetic Propulsion (980 CR)—form crafting foundations, looted from map-specific nodes like Dam Battlegrounds for modules or Buried City pharmacies for medical components. Advanced items like Industrial Batteries (A-tier, 1,000-5,000 CR) spawn in server rooms, while epic ARC Parts demand military zones. Recycling converts junk into these via right-click, freeing stash slots (280 total) and enabling field crafts that turn "dead weight" into meta mods, multipliers boosted by dog companion Scrappy's passive digs.
Crafting System Dynamics
Blueprints, consumed to unlock permanent recipes at Speranza benches, drive self-sufficiency: Anvil I requires Mechanical Components + Oil, scalable to epics like Jupiter railgun via Refiner unlocks. Crafting trumps looting mid-game by replacing gear faster than RNG drops, converting vendor-bought basics into custom loadouts without Trader dependency. Economy tightens here—early hoarding clogs inventory, but recycling excess basics (post-Scrappy training) funds station levels, shifting players from loot-dependent to production-focused.
Vendor and Trader Mechanics
Traders like Celeste enable bartering: trade Assorted Seeds (effective 75 CR value) for Metal Parts, then sell for profit, bypassing salvage needs. Vendors stock keys, silencers (uncraftable early), and meta consumables, but prices scale with hideout upgrades, creating sinks that prevent coin hoarding. Quests compound rewards, chaining coin gains with progression items for efficient runs.
Player Trading Landscape
No in-game auction house exists—devs prototyped one but scrapped it as "risky" due to RMT/cheat influx, favoring squad drops and blueprint coordination via Discord/Reddit hubs. Community "Relics" emerge as informal currency for info trades (routes, metas), while real-money sites peddle blueprints illicitly. Future plans tease cautious trading reintroduction with anti-cheat, potentially stabilizing duplicates and rares.
Sell, Recycle, or Keep?
Cheat sheets dictate tiers: S-tier (Lance’s Mixtape, Syringe) always extract/sell; A-tier (Fried Motherboards) keep for crafts; recycle commons exceeding recipes. Early game: sell trinkets, recycle for quests. Mid: craft primaries, sell duplicates. Late: hoard rares for Expeditions, leveraging perks like Broad Shoulders for capacity. Stash management rules—sell low-value to fund kits, avoiding "scared" play from deaths wiping progress.
Economy Risks and Strategies
Extraction permadeath risks amplify value: high-CR trinkets justify safe solos, while blueprint hunts demand squads for scaled spawns. Patches nerf exploits (e.g., Kettle spam), forcing meta shifts toward accuracy kits, inflating demand for precision mods. Community rotations—coin farms, recycling runs, quest raids—prevent burnout, with wipes floated to curb inflation sans markets. From player view, this crafts personal investment: loot mystery fosters mastery over market shortcuts.
Core Currency: Raider Coins
Raider Coins serve as the universal currency for trader purchases, workbench upgrades, skill resets, and consumables, earned primarily by selling trinkets (diamond icon items like Rubber Duck at 1,000 CR or Lance’s Mixtape at 10,000 CR). Players farm coins via safe Night Raid loops: loot security lockers with Breach perks, sell excess for 75-450 CR per stack, funding kits without high PvP exposure. Mid-game, duplicates of learned blueprints fetch 5,000 CR each, creating a feedback loop where raiding unlocks recipes and sells extras to accelerate hideout expansions.
Resources and Materials
Six basic materials—Metal Parts (75 CR, stack 50), Electronic Parts (450 CR), and rarer Electromagnetic Propulsion (980 CR)—form crafting foundations, looted from map-specific nodes like Dam Battlegrounds for modules or Buried City pharmacies for medical components. Advanced items like Industrial Batteries (A-tier, 1,000-5,000 CR) spawn in server rooms, while epic ARC Parts demand military zones. Recycling converts junk into these via right-click, freeing stash slots (280 total) and enabling field crafts that turn "dead weight" into meta mods, multipliers boosted by dog companion Scrappy's passive digs.
Crafting System Dynamics
Blueprints, consumed to unlock permanent recipes at Speranza benches, drive self-sufficiency: Anvil I requires Mechanical Components + Oil, scalable to epics like Jupiter railgun via Refiner unlocks. Crafting trumps looting mid-game by replacing gear faster than RNG drops, converting vendor-bought basics into custom loadouts without Trader dependency. Economy tightens here—early hoarding clogs inventory, but recycling excess basics (post-Scrappy training) funds station levels, shifting players from loot-dependent to production-focused.
Vendor and Trader Mechanics
Traders like Celeste enable bartering: trade Assorted Seeds (effective 75 CR value) for Metal Parts, then sell for profit, bypassing salvage needs. Vendors stock keys, silencers (uncraftable early), and meta consumables, but prices scale with hideout upgrades, creating sinks that prevent coin hoarding. Quests compound rewards, chaining coin gains with progression items for efficient runs.
Player Trading Landscape
No in-game auction house exists—devs prototyped one but scrapped it as "risky" due to RMT/cheat influx, favoring squad drops and blueprint coordination via Discord/Reddit hubs. Community "Relics" emerge as informal currency for info trades (routes, metas), while real-money sites peddle blueprints illicitly. Future plans tease cautious trading reintroduction with anti-cheat, potentially stabilizing duplicates and rares.
Sell, Recycle, or Keep?
Cheat sheets dictate tiers: S-tier (Lance’s Mixtape, Syringe) always extract/sell; A-tier (Fried Motherboards) keep for crafts; recycle commons exceeding recipes. Early game: sell trinkets, recycle for quests. Mid: craft primaries, sell duplicates. Late: hoard rares for Expeditions, leveraging perks like Broad Shoulders for capacity. Stash management rules—sell low-value to fund kits, avoiding "scared" play from deaths wiping progress.
Economy Risks and Strategies
Extraction permadeath risks amplify value: high-CR trinkets justify safe solos, while blueprint hunts demand squads for scaled spawns. Patches nerf exploits (e.g., Kettle spam), forcing meta shifts toward accuracy kits, inflating demand for precision mods. Community rotations—coin farms, recycling runs, quest raids—prevent burnout, with wipes floated to curb inflation sans markets. From player view, this crafts personal investment: loot mystery fosters mastery over market shortcuts.