The best Arc Raiders skills and build

Unsurprisingly, Arc Raiders is hard, and your odds of success are never all that great. It is an extraction shooter, after all, so losing your loot is all part of the routine. Luckily, you can increase your chances of survival using the best skills.

Unlike most extraction shooters, Arc Raiders actually has a full progression system with a skill tree that can soften the blow of a genre often obsessed with loot as the main form of progression—loot that you'll inevitably lose sooner or later. Below, I'll go over all the best perks in the skill trees that you should unlock.

Best Arc Raiders skill tree build

There's a total of 45 unique skills in Arc Raiders, most with five upgrade levels, split between three distinct trees: Conditioning, Mobility, and Survival. In general, I'd recommend focusing on any skills that improve stamina efficiency, as it's required for sprinting and evading, and stamina is incredibly limiting early on. Looting and weight efficiency are also very valuable.

As you'd expect, this means you'll want to invest in the early Mobility skills first, then build max out Survival and finish with a few points in Conditioning, especially as you need to spend points within a tree to unlock perks further in.

Here's what an optimal, max-level skill tree build looks like, organised into the order I recommend you should unlock them:

Best Arc Raiders skills

These are the best skills in Arc Raiders, broken down by skill tree, starting at the bottom and working up to the higher tiers:

Mobility

• Marathon Runner: Moving around costs less stamina.
• Youthful Lungs: Increases your max stamina.
• Carry the Momentum: After a sprint dodge roll, sprinting does not consume stamina for a short time. Has a cooldown between uses. (Requires 15 points spent in Mobility)
• Effortless Roll: Dodge rolls cost less stamina.

These perks go a long way in making your stamina meter go further, from straight-up increasing it to making vital actions consume less energy. You'll find that you're able to move around the large maps much quicker, which comes in handy whether you're rushing to beat players to key loot locations or running for your life.

Conditioning

• Used to the Weight: Wearing a shield doesn't slow you down as much.
• Downed but Determined: When you're downed, it takes longer before you collapse.
• Unburdened Roll: If your shield breaks, your first dodge roll within a few seconds does not cost stamina. (15 points spent in Conditioning)
• Loaded Arms: Your equipped weapon has less impact on your encumbrance.

Most of the Conditioning skills are there to save you when you're already at death's door, making them quite situational but nonetheless handy. My favourite skills in this tree are Used to the Weight and Loaded Arms, which make your shield and weapon less restrictive on your loadout. Unfortunately, Loaded Arms is quite late in the Conditioning tree, so I'd prioritise Mobility perks before pushing to unlock it.

Survival

• Looter's Instincts: When searching a container, loot is revealed faster.
• Broad Shoulders: Increases the maximum weight you can carry.
• Looter's Luck: When looting, there's a chance to reveal twice as many items at once.
• Security Breach: Lets you breach Security Lockers. (Requires 36 points spent in Survival)
• In-Round Crafting: Unlocks the ability to field-craft items while topside.
• Traveling Tinkerer: Unlocks additional items to field craft.

The Survival tree primarily focuses on looting and crafting, adding a great deal of utility to your build. One of the coolest is In-Round Crafting, enabling you to craft items while on a run, which you can later upgrade with Traveling Tinkerer. It's great if you need some healing items, but all you have are scrap materials.

Security Breach is another great upgrade, letting you crack open Security Lockers that you might've seen while scavenging topside. You can't unlock them without this skill, and what's not to love about bonus high-quality loot?

However, it's this tree's most simple skills that I love the most: Looter's Instincts, Looter's Luck, and Broad Shoulders. The first two let you loot significantly faster so you can avoid getting jumped by players or ARC and move onto the next area, while Board Shoulders turns you into a pack mule.

Busting Arc Raiders skill myths

Unfortunately, lots of Arc Raiders' skills don't work quite how you'd expect, or simply don't have much impact. So, here are some common misconceptions that might change what you invest your precious points in:

• Slip and Slide suffers from diminishing returns, so I recommend only investing a point or two.
• Sturdy Ankles makes very little impact, but it can be useful if you're always jumping from heights.
• Calming Stroll is only active while using the slow walking feature, not jogging, which is the standard movement speed.
• Effortless Roll gives you an extra dodge roll once you've invested three points, though you'll continue to benefit from more efficient stamina consumption with points four and five.
• In-Round Crafting lets you craft things like basic bandages, shield recharges, adrenaline shots, and basic grenades. Traveling Tinkerer unlocks important items like Raider Hatch Keys and better grenades.
• As its description explains, Good as New's increased stamina regeneration while under a healing effect is only active when you're benefiting from a healing item like a bandage, which is generally only a few seconds.
• Each level of Broad Shoulders increases your carrying capacity by 2kg for a total of 10kg when upgraded, which is very useful.
• Looter's Luck has roughly a 1-in-4 chance to reveal twice as many items at once.
• Three Deep Breaths doesn't actually increase your stamina regeneration after an ability drains it; it instead decreases the time before you can perform that action again.
• Proficient Pryer reduces breaching time by around three seconds when fully upgraded.
• Fight or Flight only triggers when being attacked by other players, not Arc, but its stamina regeneration is surprisingly very strong.
• A Little Extra, which generates 'resources' while breaching an object, basically gives you simple materials like metal when breaching doors or Arc Alloy when breaching Arcs, so it's not very useful.

Arc Raiders best weapons: Just don't lose them
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