ARC Raiders Money Making Guide: Fastest Ways to Earn Scrip

Coins are the whole economy in ARC Raiders. You use them for weapons, ammo, attachments, and trader stock, and the only way to get them in bulk is hauling loot out of raids and selling it in Speranza. Quick naming note before anything else: the game itself calls this currency Coins, and some players just say scrip or credits. Same money, same strategies. If you've been running raids and somehow staying broke, the problem is almost never bad aim. It's usually what you put in your bag, and what you do with it after you extract.

Best Loot Types to Sell for Scrip

Not all loot is equal, and the difference is bigger than most people expect. Your bag has a weight cap, so every kilogram competes with every other kilogram. A 10 kg reactor and a 0.2 kg cassette can sell for roughly the same Coins, and only one of them lets you carry forty more things on top of it.

Trinkets and valuables come first

The best sellers in the game are the light "Misc" items with a diamond symbol on them. They have no crafting use, no quest use, no workshop use. They exist to be sold, plain and simple.

The standouts:

| Item | Sell Value | Weight | Notes | |------|-----------|--------|-------| | Snap Hook | 14,000 Coins | unknown | Highest flat sell price in the game | | Lance's Mixtape (5th Edition) | 10,000 Coins | 0.2 kg | Stacks to 3, best value per kilo | | "Leviathan's Crown" Ship Model | 10,000 Coins | light | Top-tier trinket | | Powered Descender | 10,000 Coins | light | Top-tier trinket | | Breathtaking Snow Globe | 7,000 Coins | 0.2 kg | Excellent density | | Familiar Duck | 7,000 Coins each | 0.3 kg | Stacks to 15, so a full stack is 105,000 Coins | | Music Box / Red Coral Jewelry / Playing Cards | 5,000 Coins | light | Common high-value tier | | Silver Teaspoon Set | 3,000 Coins | 0.3 kg | Great filler | | Fine Wristwatch / Statuette / Vase | 3,000 Coins | light | Filler tier |

The Familiar Duck deserves its own mention. Seven thousand Coins a pop, and it stacks. Find a pile of them and one bag slot can hold six figures worth of money. People who ignore the "junk" tab are walking past the most reliable income in the game.

ARC parts sell big when you have the room

Reactors are the headline items here. A Queen Reactor sells for 11,000 Coins and a Matriarch Reactor goes for around 13,000. The catch is weight. Reactors are heavy, roughly 10 kg, so they're terrible value per kilo. Grab them when your bag is empty and you're close to an exit. Drop them when you're overloaded and still deep in the map.

Duplicate blueprints are free money

If you pull a blueprint you already own, sell it. Duplicates vendor for a flat 5,000 Coins no matter the rarity, and there's no reason to keep a second copy of something you can already craft. This is one of the most consistent payouts in the game, and a lot of players let them pile up in the stash for weeks.

Sell versus recycle

Selling and recycling both happen from your stash screen in Speranza. There's no vendor counter to walk up to for your loot. Open the stash, pick the item, choose Sell or Recycle.

The rule is simple. Anything with a diamond symbol gets sold, always. For big ARC parts, selling usually beats recycling too, and the numbers prove it: a Queen Reactor sells for 11,000 Coins but recycles into only about 10,500 Coins worth of components. That's a real penalty just to press the recycle button. Recycle only when you actively need those components for a craft or a workbench upgrade. Broken and damaged items are the exception. Junk like Damaged Heat Sinks, Alarm Clocks, and Spectrometers recycle into components worth more than their tiny sell price, so break those down instead.

High-Value Raid Routes and Loot Zones

Where you drop matters almost as much as what you grab. Each map has spots that print money and spots that waste your timer. Here's the short version, map by map, easiest to hardest.

Dam Battlegrounds: the money classroom

Start here if you're still learning. The layouts are simple and the extracts are easy to reach. The Control Tower is the best single money run on the map, packed with tech, security, and commercial loot in one building, and a good run there can pull 50,000+ Coins. The Research and Administration building is the quieter fallback when the tower is contested. Swing by the Floodgates on your way out. There are two Security Breach lockers within about 100 meters of the tower, and that quick detour pays for itself. A full circuit runs 8 to 12 minutes depending on traffic.

Buried City: vertical and stacked with rooms

The Space Travel building is the star. Six floors of tech loot, and floor 6 has a breach door anyone can open, so you don't need a key to start. If you find a JKV Employee Access Card, save it for floor 4, where the weapon mods live. The Hospital is your spot for medical materials and quest items, and the Hospital Key room inside is worth the key slot. The Galleria is a sleeper. It's quiet, it spawns herb-gathering items, and there's a weapon case on the roof that people constantly walk past. Town Hall, if you ever land a Town Hall Key, opens one of the best loot suites on the map.

Spaceport: big loot, big fights

The most markers of any map and the highest concentration of top-tier gear. It also draws the strongest players. Container Storage is the crown jewel, four floors of stacked crates, but expect PvP. The Container Storage Key unlocks the upper floors where the real money sits. If you'd rather not brawl, the Departure Building is the smart play. Lots of containers, way quieter, because everyone sprints to Container Storage at the start. Control Tower 6 is the third stop. The climb is annoying but the top floor holds some of the best loot on the map.

Blue Gate: bring keys or don't bother

Most of the good stuff here is locked. The Traffic Tunnel is the key holder's goldmine. A Patrol Car Key opens the armored vehicles scattered through it, each one stuffed with weapons. The Confiscation Room in the underground Security Wing has excellent loot and near-guaranteed company, so only push it if you're confident in a fight. The cellar west of Ruined Homestead is the sneaky pick. It's underground, easy to miss, and spawns weapons and blueprints without much foot traffic.

Stella Montis: endgame money, endgame danger

This is where the good stuff lives, and where the good players live too. The Cultural Archives Key room is the whole reason people run this map, with regular high-value drops inside. Medical Research in the north is the less contested alternative and still pays well. The Security Checkpoint at the lobby bridge is rich with guns and mods, but it's the first room everyone hits walking in, so move fast through it. Don't come here under-leveled or under-geared. The loot is the best in the game, and so is the competition.

Night raids pay more

If you get the option between day and night on a map, take the night version when you're comfortable. Night raids run tougher enemies but better loot. That multiplier on top of a good route is where the serious Coins per hour live. Pair it with the Looting Mk.1 augment if you have it, since extra bag slots mean more trinkets walking out the door with you.

Vendor Prices and When to Hold Items

Selling everything the second you land back in Speranza feels productive. It's also how you stay broke. Some items are worth more held than sold, and knowing the difference is worth thousands of Coins a week.

What to sell immediately

Diamond-symbol trinkets, duplicate blueprints, spare reactors and heavy ARC parts you won't craft with, and any weapon or gear drop you'll genuinely never use. None of it gets better with age. Sort your stash to the Misc tab after each run and clear the whole diamond pile in one pass. It takes thirty seconds and it's the closest thing this game has to a paycheck.

What to hold

Quest turn-in items top the list. Some commissions need specific handover items, and two of the flat-currency quests are the clearest examples. A Dead End, a Blue Gate quest, pays 2,000 Coins but needs a Dusty Film Reel turned in. The Root Of The Matter on Buried City pays 1,000 Coins and wants an Experimental Seed Sample. Sell those items by accident and you've bought the privilege of finding them twice.

Also hold workshop upgrade materials. Motors, Cooling Coils, Industrial Batteries, Lab Reagents, and similar crafting inputs feed your workbench upgrades, and those unlocks are worth more long-term than the small Coins you'd get selling the mats. Same logic for keys. A Hospital Key, a JKV card, or a Raider Hatch Key isn't loot, it's a ticket to loot. Use it first, sell it never, since hatch keys even extract you instantly with no alarm.

Recyclable junk that beats its own price tag

Broken items flip the usual math. A Damaged Heat Sink sells for almost nothing but recycles into components worth real Coins. Same deal with Alarm Clocks and Spectrometers. If an item is damaged or clearly junk-tier, check what it breaks down into before you sell it. Nine times out of ten the components win.

Don't hoard gear you're afraid to use

This one's a mindset thing more than a math thing. Gear sitting in your stash has a hidden cost. Coins and gear only make money when they're out in the world generating more loot. A 15,000 Coin rifle you never bring on a raid is just 15,000 Coins you don't have. Use your good kit on the routes above, and it pays for itself.

Trading Quests and Merchant Reputation Payouts

Speranza has five traders: Apollo, Celeste, Tian Wen, Shani, and Lance. Each runs their own quest board and shop, and their commissions are the second-biggest income source after raw looting. Not the biggest by Coins, but the most reliable, because quest rewards don't depend on finding a lucky duck.

How commissions work

Pick up a quest from a trader, complete the objective during a run, and extract alive with whatever handover items it needs. Dying mid-run can cost you the progress, so when you're carrying quest items, getting out beats taking a fair fight.

Here's the blunt part most guides skip: almost no quests pay actual Coins. Out of the whole board, only a couple of commissions hand over flat currency. The Root Of The Matter pays 1,000 Coins plus a backpack charm. A Dead End pays 2,000 Coins, the biggest flat payout in the game. The rest of the quests pay in weapons, attachments, shields, healing, crafting components, and cosmetics. That's not a ripoff, it just means quest income shows up as gear you didn't have to buy. A free Rattler III with 80 medium ammo rounds is a couple thousand Coins you didn't spend.

Which trader to work first

Shani is the on-ramp. Her board is the biggest and her early quests are the tutorial by another name. Picking Up The Pieces just wants three containers grabbed at any point of interest, and it pays a starter rifle plus ammo. Apollo's early quests teach the basics too and hand out gear for finishing them. Tian Wen's board is where attachments and weapon blueprints come from, Celeste's is the component pipeline, and Lance's pays healing and shields. Work one trader's chain at a time instead of bouncing between boards. Finishing a chain unlocks more of that trader's inventory and higher-tier commissions.

Reputation is the real payout

Every completed commission builds your standing with that trader, and that standing is permanent progression. Levels and gear can reset through expedition mechanics, but trader reputation sticks with your account. Higher reputation unlocks better shop inventory, new crafting blueprints, higher-tier contracts, and gear you flat out can't buy any other way. So when a quest hands you a pile of Duct Tape instead of Coins, remember the unlock sitting behind it. That's the compounding part of the economy.

A practical habit: before every raid, grab every available quest you can hold. Many objectives stack in the same run. Three containers grabbed, an ARC kill, and a specific material picked up can all clear in one trip, which triples your effective payout for the same twenty minutes.

Common Scrip-Wasting Mistakes to Avoid

Most players lose money the same handful of ways. All of them are cheap to fix once you know to look.

Selling everything the moment you extract. The stash dump feels great, then a quest asks for an item you sold ten minutes ago. Hold turn-in items, workshop mats, and keys. Sell the rest. The Misc tab takes seconds to clear, so there's no reason to rush the decisions that matter.

Looting by sticker price instead of weight. A Queen Reactor at 11,000 Coins sounds way better than a 10,000 Coin mixtape. Factor in the 10 kg versus 0.2 kg and the mixtape is worth about forty-five times more per kilo. When the bag gets heavy, drop the dense-by-weight stuff first, not the trinkets.

Recycling things that should be sold. Recycling a Queen Reactor costs you about 500 Coins versus selling it. That's a silent tax players pay every week because mashing recycle feels tidy. Recycle broken junk and things you need components from. Sell the big intact parts.

Bruting into fights while carrying a full bag. A loaded backpack is the most expensive thing you own, and it's on your back. The player who extracts with 30,000 Coins of trinkets beat the player who won a firefight and died to a third party. When you're heavy, avoid the fair fights. Take the quiet extract even if it's the long walk.

Buying gear you'll never risk. Trader stock is tempting, especially once reputation unlocks the good weapons. But a kit you're too scared to run has a value of exactly zero. Buy what you'll use, use what you buy.

Ignoring quests entirely. This is the biggest one long-term. Raw looting pays today. Commissions pay today in gear and later in reputation, unlocks, and shop tiers you can't reach any other way. Players who skip the boards permanently cap their own economy.

Skipping the roof, the cellar, the second floor. The weapon case on the Galleria roof. The cellar by Ruined Homestead. Floor 6 of Space Travel. The money in this game hides one level above or below where everyone's looking. Check the spots other raiders skip and you'll walk out heavier than them more often than not.

Run the routes, hold the right items, clear the diamond pile every session, and keep the quest board spinning. Do that and the Coins stack up faster than any single lucky reactor ever pays.