ARC Raiders Best Starting Weapons and Loadouts

Losing gear stings in ARC Raiders. You drop in, scavenge for half an hour, then someone with a Renegade deletes you at the extraction point and it all goes with you. The fix early on isn't a better gun, it's a cheaper kit. If your whole loadout costs about as much as a stack of light ammo, dying is basically free, and you can take fights, learn the maps, and actually get good.

So here's how to build that kit. Everything below uses real numbers from the ARC Raiders wiki, plus the beginner picks the community keeps repeating, and the reasoning behind them. Run the Free Loadout for your first bunch of raids, then move up to a cheap crafted setup built around a Kettle or a Stitcher once you've got some coin saved.

Top Early-Game Weapon Picks and Why

Your first real decision is ammo type, and it matters more than the gun itself. Light ammo guns are the beginner recommendation for a simple reason: light ammo is everywhere, it stacks to 100, and you can craft 25 rounds from 3 Metal Parts and 2 Chemicals at a Workbench. Medium and heavy ammo both cost the same materials but give you fewer rounds per craft (20 and 10 respectively), so they eat your resources faster.

The Kettle, your all-rounder

The Kettle is a semi-automatic assault rifle on light ammo, and it's probably the safest first primary in the game. Wiki stats: 8.5 damage per shot, a 20-round mag, 450 RPM, a 2.5x headshot multiplier, and a range rating of 42.8. It weighs 7.0. The flavor text says it best, quick and accurate, but with low bullet velocity and a slow reload.

That 2.5x headshot multiplier is the sleeper stat. Body shots feel weak, but if you click heads, the Kettle punches way above its price tier. It's also dirt cheap to build: 6 Metal Parts and 8 Rubber Parts gets you a Kettle I at the Gunsmith, and recycling one gives back 3 Metal and 2 Rubber, so a lost Kettle costs you almost nothing net.

The catch is armor. Its ARC armor penetration is rated Very Weak, so machine-heavy areas will make you feel like you're throwing pebbles. More on that in a second.

The Stitcher, for close-range panic

The Stitcher is a fully-automatic SMG, also on light ammo. Wiki stats: 6.5 damage, 20-round mag, 680 RPM, 1.75x headshot multiplier, and it only weighs 5.0, which makes it one of the most agile guns you can carry. Crafting one takes 8 Metal Parts and 4 Rubber Parts.

Inside buildings and around extraction points, the Stitcher shreds. It sprays fast enough that shaky aim still connects. It got trimmed in patch 1.17 (damage down from 7, headshot multiplier down from 2.5, and it blooms about 50% faster per shot), so it's not the monster it was at launch, but for the price it's still the go-to close-quarters option. Control the trigger in bursts and it behaves.

Kettle plus Stitcher is the cleanest beginner pairing there is, because both run on light ammo. One ammo type in the bag, both ranges covered, both guns replaceable for pocket change.

The Rattler, if you want full-auto at range

The Rattler is a fully-automatic assault rifle on medium ammo. Wiki stats: 9 damage, 2.0x headshot multiplier, 500 RPM, range 56.2, weight 6.0, and Moderate ARC armor penetration. That penetration rating is the reason to care: medium ammo actually gets through machine plating, while light ammo mostly doesn't.

Two quirks. The base mag is only 12 rounds (it grows to 16, 20, then 24 as you upgrade tiers), and it reloads two bullets at a time, which feels odd until you get used to aborting reloads. It's also pricier to craft than the other two, at 16 Metal Parts and 12 Rubber Parts, and sells for 1,750 versus the Kettle's 840. Still cheap in the grand scheme, just not as cheap.

The Ferro, the bot-killer

The Ferro is a break-action battle rifle on heavy ammo, and it's kind of the beginner sniper. Wiki stats: 40 damage per shot, a single round in the chamber, Strong ARC armor penetration, range 53.1, a 2.5x headshot multiplier, and weight 8.0. Crafting one costs just 5 Metal Parts and 2 Rubber Parts, and it sells for only 475, which tells you how disposable the game considers it.

That Strong penetration rating is the whole point. Light ammo guns tickle armored ARC units; a Ferro round actually goes through. One body shot on a raiders with a Light Shield only does 24 HP damage after mitigation, but a headshot at 2.5x will ruin someone's raid real fast. The downside is brutal: one round, then a lengthy reload between every single shot. Miss twice up close and you're probably dead.

Pair it with something fast. Ferro for the opening shot or for machines, Stitcher or Kettle for everything after.

What about the fancy stuff?

The Anvil hand cannon (40 damage, heavy ammo, Strong penetration, 6-shot mag) and the Il Toro shotgun (63 damage per shell up close, 5-8 shell mag) are both excellent, but they sell for 5,000 and need a blueprint or Tian Wen's 15,000 trader price. That's not starter gear. File them away as upgrades for when your economy can handle heavy ammo or shotgun shells on the regular. The Hairpin silenced pistol is neat for quiet bot kills, but 20 damage a shot and a slow fire rate make it a situational toy, not a primary.

Balancing Damage, Ammo Economy, and Weight

This is where new players quietly lose money. It's not the big deaths, it's the slow bleed of feeding the wrong guns.

One ammo type beats two

Every stack of ammo in your bag has weight and takes a slot. Running a Kettle and a Stitcher means one stack of light ammo covers both guns. Running a Rattler and a Ferro means you're hauling medium and heavy, plus the heavy stack only goes to 60 (it was 40 before patch 1.26), and you only get 10 heavy rounds per craft of 3 Metal and 2 Chemicals. That's ten Ferro shots. You can burn through that in one bad fight with a Honeybee swarm.

Ammo also comes free if you know where it drops. Light ammo drops from ARC Turrets and Wasps, medium from Bastions and Hornets, heavy from Sentinels. So your ammo type kind of picks itself based on what you like to farm.

Match penetration to what you're fighting

Light ammo is rated as struggling against ARC armor. Medium is much better, heavy penetrates well, and the Kettle and Stitcher specifically sit at Very Weak. In practice that means: if your raids are mostly about looting and avoiding machines, light ammo is fine and cheap. If you're questing in bot-dense zones or farming ARC for materials, bring at least one weapon with Moderate or Strong penetration, even if it's just a Ferro secondary.

Weight is a real stat

Every augment has a max loadout weight. The Free Loadout Augment gives you 35.0, and that's tight. A Kettle alone is 7.0, a Light Shield is 5.0, and ammo, meds and grenades nibble away the rest. Past your limit you're overloaded, and overloaded raiders move and handle like they're wading through mud. Community testing points to gradual slowdowns as you get heavier, with a nasty penalty once you're overweight, so there's no magic number to sit under, just don't fill the bar.

The cheap fix is upgrading your augment. Trade one Free Loadout Augment to the trader Lance and you get a Combat Mk. 1 (45 weight, 16 slots, Light and Medium shields) or a Looting Mk. 1 (50 weight, 18 slots, Light shield only). That single trade is the best early progression move in the game, and you'll pull Free Loadout Augments constantly from free runs.

A worked example

Say you craft this kit from scratch: Kettle I (6 Metal, 8 Rubber), Stitcher I (8 Metal, 4 Rubber), 50 light ammo (6 Metal, 4 Chemicals), a Light Shield from your stash, a couple Bandages and one Light Impact Grenade. Total's maybe 20 Metal, 12 Rubber, and some Chemicals. Die with it and you've lost roughly what one decent drawer of loot repays. That's the bar. If a kit would hurt to lose, you're not ready to run it.

Best Gadgets and Throwables for New Raiders

Quick Use slots are limited, especially on free kits, so what you pack actually matters. Here's the short list.

Light Impact Grenade

The bread and butter. Wiki stats: 30 damage, 2.5m radius, detonates on impact. It crafts from 2 Plastic Parts and 3 Chemicals, which is about as cheap as explosives get, and Apollo sells them for 810 if you'd rather buy. Thirty damage won't one-shot a raider, but it'll finish a wounded one, pop a cluster of small bots, or make someone behind cover move. Carry one or two, no more, because you'll rarely throw more than that in a raid.

Seeker Grenade

This one's close to mandatory once you have the blueprint. Wiki stats: 50 damage, 20m homing range. You throw it, it turns into a little missile, locks onto the nearest ARC, and chases it down. The wiki specifically calls out that it destroys small flying machines like Wasps, Hornets, Fireflies and Snitches with ease. If you've ever been shredded by a Hornet while trying to loot, you know why this exists. Apollo sells them (1,920, limit 6 a day), and the blueprint tends to show up in containers on Stella Montis, though any drawer, locker or crate can roll it.

Smoke Grenade

Not glamorous, but smoke is the "oh no" button. It blocks line of sight from both ARC and other raiders, which makes it perfect for three moments: getting out of a losing fight, grabbing a downed teammate, and crossing open ground at an extraction that's being watched. You can also toss it on a knocked friendly and revive behind it. When you're still learning, one smoke will save more raids than one extra grenade ever will.

Lure Grenade

A sleeper pick for quiet players. It sticks to a surface and makes noise that pulls nearby ARC machines and draws their fire. Want the area around a loot room cleared without shooting? Lure grenade into the parking lot, loot in peace. It's a PvE tool mostly, and it's very good at its one job.

Meds: Bandage and Shield Recharger

Bandages heal 2 HP per second over 10 seconds with a 1.5 second use time. Sterilized Bandages are the upgrade at 5 HP per second, same timing. The Shield Recharger restores 40 shield charge at 4 per second, which is exactly a full Light Shield refill. Bring one of each to start. ARC Powercells (dropped by every ARC kill, 2 charge per second) can top your shield too, but they're also a crafting material and quest item, so think before you burn them.

Skip the exotic stuff for now. The Wolfpack and Trigger 'Nade are wonderful, but they're expensive crafts for kit you should expect to lose. A Light Impact, a Seeker once you unlock it, a smoke, and meds will handle 90% of what the early game throws at you.

Armor and Backpack Choices for Survivability

Quick correction to the usual shooter vocabulary: there's no armor vest slot in ARC Raiders. Your protection is a Shield, and your carry capacity comes from your Augment. Get those two picks right and survivability mostly follows.

Shields, ranked for beginners

Wiki numbers for all three:

| Shield | Charge | Mitigation | Move Penalty | Weight | |---|---|---|---|---| | Light | 40 | 40% | none | 5.0 | | Medium | 70 | 42.5% | 5% | 7.0 | | Heavy | 80 | 52.5% | 15% | 9.0 |

Run the Light Shield for now, and not just because it's free in every kit. The mitigation jump to Medium is tiny, 40% to 42.5%, while the movement hit and the weight are real. For a new player, being able to sprint, dodge and reposition is worth more than 2.5 percentage points of damage reduction. Medium and Heavy also require a better augment to wear at all, and Heavy's 15% slowdown is a genuine trap if you're still learning to disengage.

One mechanic worth knowing: mitigation doesn't fade as the shield drains. With even 1 charge left, incoming damage is still reduced by the full percentage. And a shield at 100% durability survives five full charge depletions before it breaks. So a "dead" Light Shield still ate a bunch of damage for you on the way out.

The one big Heavy Shield argument: when you graduate to it later, 52.5% mitigation plus the Used to the Weight skill (which softens the movement penalty) is a real tank build. Later. Not week one.

Augments, which are your actual "backpack"

The augment decides your weight limit, inventory slots, quick-use slots, and which shields you can wear. It can't be swapped mid-raid, so pick before you queue. The early ladder looks like this:

| Augment | Weight | Shields | Slots | Quick Use | |---|---|---|---|---| | Free Loadout | 35 | Light | 14 | 4 | | Tactical Mk. 1 | 40 | Light, Medium | 15 | 5 | | Combat Mk. 1 | 45 | Light, Medium | 16 | 4 | | Looting Mk. 1 | 50 | Light | 18 | 4 |

The Free Loadout Augment also has no Safe Pocket. Trade spares to Lance for any Mk. 1. Looting Mk. 1 is the usual beginner pick: most slots and weight, and since you're running a Light Shield anyway, losing Medium compatibility costs you nothing. Combat Mk. 1 is the pick if you're fighting more than looting and want Medium Shield access.

The Safe Pocket rule

Custom loadouts get a Safe Pocket, the one item that comes home even if you die. The rule is simple: the moment you loot anything valuable, a blueprint, a rare material, a good gun, it goes straight into the Safe Pocket. Not at the end of the raid. Now. The classic new-player disaster is finding a great blueprint, leaving it in the bag, and getting third-partied two minutes later. Don't be that person.

Loadout Adjustments for Solo vs Squad Raids

Same guns, very different rules. Solo queue is quieter and sneakier; squad play is louder, tankier, and all about not all dying at once.

Going solo

• Quieter kit helps. A Hairpin or just holding your fire keeps you off the map. Sound travels, and gunfire is a dinner bell.
• Favor escape tools over damage tools. Smoke grenade goes way up in value, because nobody's coming to trade for you. Snap Hook (a grapple gadget for scaling structures) is great for leaving fights that are going badly.
• One ammo type, lean pack. Solo, you're the only one shooting, and every gram of weight is your problem alone. Kettle plus Stitcher, one ammo stack, Light Shield, meds.
• Pick your fights, which mostly means don't. A solo raider who avoids PvP extracts more than one who takes every scan. Players can't read your gear until they've downed you, but plain-looking kit draws less attention than pink rarity anyway.
• Small flying bots are your natural predator, since you have no one to watch the sky while you loot. Seeker Grenades, basically.

Running in a squad

• Split your ammo types. If one of you runs light (Stitcher/Kettle) and another runs medium or heavy (Rattler/Ferro), the team can loot ammo drops for each other and someone always has the right penetration for machines.
• One person should carry a Heavy Shield and be willing to walk in front. 15% slower, 52.5% mitigation, and they eat the opening exchange while the light guns flank. That's the actual point of Heavy Shields.
• Pack a Defibrillator. It revives downed raiders, restores 50 health on use, and takes 1.5 seconds. Squads with a defib turn wipes into trades. It's the single highest-value squad item in the game.
• Smoke covers revives. You can throw it on a downed teammate and pick them up behind it, so the smoke you brought "just in case" is now load-bearing.
• Don't stack up. Squads that clump in doorways get farmed by one grenade or one Bastion. Spread out a few meters so any single explosion is a bad trade instead of a squad wipe.
• Know your role before contact. If two of you are on light SMGs and one's on a Ferro, the Ferro takes the first long shot and the SMGs collapse in. Deciding this while bullets fly never works.

Where to actually run all this

Start on Dam Battlegrounds. It's the starter map, the loot is balanced, and you'll run into everything from fresh free kits to cracked squads, which is good practice. Maps unlock by total raids played, not extractions, so just keep queueing. Whatever map you're on, pour early coin into stash space in Speranza before you pour it into guns. Bigger stash means more materials banked, which means cheaper crafting, and cheap crafting is what lets you shrug off deaths instead of tilting.

Last concrete tip, and it's the one veterans repeat constantly: nothing you carry topside is really yours. Build kits you can afford to lose ten times, Safe Pocket your best find the second you pick it up, and treat every fancy gun as rented.