ARC Raiders Skill Tree Progression Guide (Levels 1-75)

Rather than opting for passive abilities that upgrade on their own or short-term perks for each raider in games like Escape From Tarkov and Hunt Showdown, respectively, ARC Raiders takes a unique approach by offering a long-term customizable skill tree. With ARC Raiders' progression system only offering 75 skill points out of its total of 135 available, there is a lot more room for error that can cause plenty of headaches later on.

Thankfully, aside from a few outliers, there are very few skill choices in ARC Raiders that don't have some benefits depending on your gameplay style, which you can plan ahead with Metaforges' Skill Tree Builder. Whether you're looking for a reliable build or to focus on actually playing the game instead of worrying over skills, the following paths are more than enough to give you an edge in the deadly world of ARC Raiders.

Best Early Game Skills For ARC Raiders

Best Skills From Levels 1–20

The very first skill you'll want to invest in right outside the gate for ARC Raiders comes from the In-Round Crafting ability on the Survival path. While you'll only be able to get this skill after investing two points in Agile Croucher and Revitalizing Squat, this level 3 ability is one you'll wish you had unlocked sooner if you've been missing out on its benefits until now.

Allowing you to craft basic tools and medical supplies like Shield Rechargers, Bandages, and Grenades, In-Round Crafting will drastically increase your survivability over longer ARC Raiders rounds, while allowing you to save both inventory space and credits from not overstocking on supplies before a raid.

After rushing to upgrade your crafting capabilities, you should then start investing in some of the basic abilities from the Mobility tree, most notably Marathon Runner and Useful Lungs, which reduce stamina depletion and increase your total stamina, respectively.

With how much running between cover and away from enemy ARC or players you'll be doing throughout ARC Raiders, Stamina is by far your greatest tool when it comes to improving your early-game quality-of-life in ARC Raiders.

To reach Carry The Momentum and its limited stamina negation after dodge rolling, you'll need to spend three more skill points anywhere else in the mobility tree. I'd recommend dumping them into Slip And Slide, as ARC Raiders' sliding mechanic is a great way to quickly get out of a dangerous encounter.

Once you've gathered some great stamina or movement abilities from the Mobility tree, I would recommend dumping your two remaining skill points before level 20 into Looter's Instincts, as it will give you a head start towards the other Survival skills you'll be investing in for the next chapter of your skill progression in ARC Raiders.

Best Mid-Game Skills In ARC Raiders

Best Skills From Levels 20–45

While some of the decision-making on which ratio of skill points to invest in within the Survival tree is ultimately up to personal preference, there are a few that stand above the rest on your path to obtaining its highly coveted Security Breach ability. This is unlocked after investing a total of 36 skill points into Survival.

Since you'll need to invest 12 more skill points into survival for its next major upgrade, I would recommend finishing Looter's Instincts to help farm resources more safely. Afterwards, you can go back to dumping more points into both Revitalizing Squat and Silent Scavenger to increase your stealth capabilities even further.

Now that you have enough to jump into the next major upgrades, you'll want to go with either Suffer In Silence to increase your sneaking abilities while critically damaged, or Good As New to increase stamina regeneration while under a healing effect. After choosing one, you'll want to jump straight into Traveling Tinkerer, before selecting the other upgrade you previously skipped.

Traveling Tinkerer is a direct upgrade from the previous crafting skill, allows you to craft an even greater variety of gadgets on the go than before. This can give you a significant edge in combat, even when bringing in a cheap budget loadout into a raid.

After acquiring this ability, you'll then want to max out Broad Shoulders to increase your total carrying capacity, before investing once more in One Raider's Scraps and Agile Croucher before level 45.

Best End-Game Skills In ARC Raiders

Best Skills From Levels 45–75

Once you've started reaching the end game of ARC Raiders' progression system, you'll need to spread 6 more points across the Survival tree until you finally unlock Security Breach, which allows you to breach Security Lockers on any map.

Offering an absurd amount of high-value materials, blueprints, and even weaponry, Security Breaches are easily the most powerful tool to have in ARC Raiders when it comes to looting, especially with how few players would be willing to make such a hefty investment in the first place.

Despite being the last skill tree to focus on, Conditioning is still a powerful asset, with the following path being your best bet for the next 16 levels you'll get to spend before finishing off your skill tree by jumping back to fill out some others you previously invested in.

• Used To The Weight (Wearing a shield doesn't slow you down as much)
• Gentle Pressure (You make less noise when breaching)
• Proficient Pryer (Breaching doors and containers takes less time)
• Unburdened Roll (Your first dodge after your shield breaks doesn't cost stamina)

Drastically increasing your survivability from ARC and other raiders alike, you'll want to immediately use your next few skill points to acquire A Little Extra and Loading Arms. With bonus resources for breaching for loot and reducing the weight of your firearms, both Conditioning skills are excellent quality-of-life features to have, even this late into the game.

While Survival's Effortless Roll and Calming Stroll sound great on paper, the effects of each skill are drastically less impressive in-game and aren't worth your time due to their negligible effects or annoying activation requirements.

Lastly, you can go back to Survival and spend a few more points on mobility to unlock Crawl Before You Walk, as it will increase your crawling speed to get closer to teammates during tense firefights or even have better luck extracting on your own while knocked down.

Every Skill You Shouldn't Miss In ARC Raiders

Excellent Additions For Just About Any Playstyle

If you're just looking for some skill recommendations as opposed to a full level-by-level guide to follow, there are a few skills from each of the three branches that you'll want to pick up if you have a chance, regardless of which order you choose to invest or if you even bother touching the other branches much at all.

Starting with the Conditioning tree, which offers more passive but still helpful skills like breaching faster or reducing your carrying weight. Being an excellent way to keep you alive while boosting your looting efficiency by a noticeable margin, the following skills get even more powerful when combined with similar ones from the Survival tree.

• Used To The Weight — Worn shields don't slow you down as much
• Proficient Pryer — Breaching doors and containers takes less time
• Unburdened Roll — Your first dodge after your shield breaks doesn't use stamina
• Survivor's Stamina — Stamina regeneration increases while critically injured
• A Little Extra — Breaching an object generates resources
• Loaded Arms — Your equipped weapon doesn't weigh as much

Jumping into the much more popular Mobility skill tree that offers plenty of stamina-related abilities to help you get around quicker and for longer, which has more than a few skills worth investing in. While the following skills are an easy recommendation, I would definitely watch comparison videos before deciding how much you want to spend on alternative ones or options like effortless roll, as their actual effects aren't the most transparent.

• Nible Climber — You can climb and vault more quickly
• Marathon Runner — Moving around costs less stamina
• Youthful Lungs — Increases your max stamina
• Carry the Momentum — Sprinting doesn't cost stamina for some time after sprint dodge-rolling (has a cooldown)
• Effortless Roll — Dodge rolls cost less stamina
• Crawl Before You Walk — Crawl faster while in the downed state
• Vigorous Vaulter — Vaulting isn't slowed down while exhausted

Last but not least, the Survival tree is easily one of the best go-tos if you're looking for both looting and combat efficiency in one, with several skills giving you even more options for crafting goods and massively increasing your farming potential thanks to its increased carrying capacity, item rates, and Security Breach skills.

• Agile Croucher — Increases your movement speed while crouching
• Looter's Instincts — Loot is revealed faster when searching containers
• In-Round Crafting — Can craft certain items like bandages while in-raid
• Traveling Tinkerer — Unlocks additional items to craft in-raid
• Broad Shoulders — Increases your maximum carrying weight
• Looter's Luck — Chance to reveal two items instead of one when looting
• Security Breach — Allows you to breach the Security Lockers on each map

Given that skills can be highly dependent on your personal playstyle, there's still plenty of room for creativity when choosing which ones you want to prioritize on your road to level 75, but any of these skills will be more than worth their investment for just about any build you end up choosing later down the road.

How To Reset Your Skill Tree In ARC Raiders

There Are More Than A Few Ways To Save A Poorly Managed Skill Tree

Added in ARC Raiders' Cold Snap 1.7 update, you're able to reset your entire skill tree from the skill menu itself, which will refund every point you've spent to choose them all over again from scratch, all in exchange for a hefty cost of 152,000 coins.

While it's far from cheap, there are more than a few excellent places to farm for loot in ARC Raiders to rack up a significant amount of in-game currency to reset your skills at will.

Although ARC Raiders currently lacks a traditional prestige system to advance your raider's skill tree, there is a built-in progression wiping system that provides a similar functionality. Unlocked after level 20, ARC Raiders will have a rotating Expedition every 8 weeks that requires you to collect a long list of resources before the final wiping stage begins.

Being an entirely optional system that improves on its competitors' formulas, you'll lose all raider progress, stash items, blueprints, and quest progression, but keep all meta content like cosmetics and map unlocks in addition to any bonus rewards and seasonal buffs that carry over with your new character.

The seasonally stacked buffs like repair efficiency, XP boosts, and Scrappy material increases will be reset back to their default values if you miss an expedition window for the following season.

While there isn't as much incentive for casual players, ARC Raiders' expedition system does allow you to have a second go at fixing or experimenting with your skill tree using a new raider, with the provided buffs helping you drastically speed up the process and catch up to its non-wiping players.