ARC Raiders PVE Skill Tree Guide

The ARC Raiders PVE skill tree rewards patience, methodical looting, and an almost pathological hatred of wasted stamina. This guide covers the full 86-point skill build for ARC Raiders PVE players, sequenced from early game to your final horrifying efficiency machine. Every point placement is deliberate. Every skip is intentional. Your feelings about that are noted and disregarded.

Most skill tree guides you will find are built for ARC Raiders PvP players who want to dodge rolls and murder you in the extraction zone. This is not that. This is a guide for someone who has looked at the arc circuitry market, sighed deeply, and decided to optimize their loot per raid to an uncomfortable degree.

There are 86 points to spend after completing both expeditions. You will not have 86 points early. That is fine. This guide tells you what to unlock first, so you do not spend your early points on something stupid like sliding faster into a wall.

Top Priority The single most important skill in this entire ARC Raiders skill tree guide is Security Breach. Everything before it is just paying the toll. Everything after it is polish. Do not let anyone convince you otherwise.

What To Unlock First

You have just started. You have almost no skill points. You have two options and both of them are bad in their own special way.

1. Option A: Speedrun Security Breach: At the start of a new expedition, if you are the type of person who enjoys suffering under a deadline, you can blast through the path to Security Breach as fast as mechanically possible. Good luck. You will need it.
2. Option B: Go Mobility first: For the rest of us, start in the Mobility tree. Three specific skills. That is all. Do not get creative.

Mobility Tree: The Tolerable Skills

The ARC Raiders mobility skills you actually want are straightforward. The ones you do not want are also straightforward. The game just does not bother to tell you which is which.

• Nimble Climber: One point only. You need it to unlock the path. Do not go further than one point initially. Treat it like a doormat.
• Youthful Lungs: Max this out immediately. Increased maximum stamina. You will be fighting for stamina every single raid. This is not optional.
• Marathon Runner: Max this out immediately after. Moving costs less stamina. Together with Youthful Lungs, these two skills carry the entire ARC Raiders stamina build.

Skip These Do not touch the other side of the Mobility tree. The extended slide skill will physically betray you. You will have spent years building muscle memory and then you will slide directly out of cover into the face of a Matriarch. The fall damage reduction is negligible. Leave it.

Then: Immediately Go To Survival Tree

Do not wait. Do not linger in Mobility trying to get every skill. Get 14 points into Mobility and pivot hard to the ARC Raiders survival tree. The reason: survival has the path to Security Breach, and Security Breach has the loot, and the loot is the entire point of this exercise.

• Looter's Instinct: When opening a container, loot is revealed faster. Max this out. It sounds small. It compounds.
• Crouched Movement: Increased movement speed while crouching. In the author's opinion: pretty useless. Take it anyway because you need the path unlocked.

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Below is the complete breakdown. Priority levels are assigned with the grim efficiency of someone who has lost gear to an arc courier one too many times.

If you follow these steps in this sequence, you will spend your points correctly. If you deviate, you will survive. But you will know, deep down, that you were suboptimal. That knowledge is its own punishment.

Early Mobility

1 point Nimble Climber. Max Youthful Lungs. Max Marathon Runner. Stop at 14 points total in Mobility. Do not continue downward.

Survival Entry

Max Looter's Instinct. Get Crouched Movement (path requirement only). Get 15 points total in Survival to unlock the next tier.

The Path To Security Breach

Traveling Tinkerer, Raider Scraps, Broad Shoulders, Looter's Luck. Stack points until you hit 33 in Survival. Then unlock Security Breach immediately.

Conditioning Opens

Now enter the Conditioning tree. Max Used to the Weight. Max Proficient Prior. Navigate to Loaded Arms and max that. These are the load-bearing skills of this tree.

Turtle Crawl + Survivor

Max Turtle Crawl. Take Survivor Stamina and A Little Extra as path fillers. Then grab Downed But Determined if you enjoy living slightly longer.

Final Points

Back to Mobility for Effortless Roll, Carry the Momentum, and Vigorous Vaulter. Nimble Climber to max if points remain. The last few points go wherever they fit.

Note On Security Breach State Security Breach has survived nerfs. Spawns are now randomized but more numerous on average. You will still see special containers regularly. Epic weapons appear. Wolf packs appear. Raider-style blueprints: anvil, ventor, oper: appear rarely, but they appear. The skill remains the best single unlock in the ARC Raiders best skills for PVE.

Do Not Touch

These are the skills this guide actively avoids. If you want to spend points here, this guide cannot stop you. It can only watch, silently, with deep disappointment.

• Extended Slide (Mobility): Muscle memory destruction on a skill card. Your years of knowing exactly how far you will slide: gone. Replaced with a longer, worse slide that deposits you in front of enemies.
• Fall Damage Reduction (Mobility): Described by the source as "very negligible." That is the word "negligible" used in its most devastating form. Skip it.
• Stamina Regen While Crouched (Survival): The difference is reportedly very, very small. You are only unlocking this for path access. Do not emotionally invest in it.
• Hearing Protection (Conditioning): Your hearing is less affected by nearby explosions. If you are standing near enough explosions to need this skill, the skill is not your primary problem.
• Effortless Swing / Sky Clearing Swing (Conditioning): More PvP-oriented skills. This is a PVE guide. The melee enthusiasts are handled in a different document that this guide has never read and does not endorse.
• Deep Thrifts (Survival): After an ability drains stamina, you recover faster. Untested even by the source. Spend the point here only when you have genuinely run out of better options.
• Heroic Leap (Mobility): Not particularly cared about. You can unlock the next skill without maximizing this. Do so.