ARC Raiders Best PVE Weapons Tier List

ARC Raiders drops you topside against machines that do not care about your feelings, your loadout budget, or your aim. Choosing the wrong weapon in a PVE context doesn't just waste your time: it costs you ammo, durability, and probably the whole extraction. This guide ranks every weapon strictly on how well it kills Arc, not how good it looks while failing to do so.

Two things matter above everything else: Arc armor penetration and damage-per-ammo-slot. A weapon that empties your inventory before the Matriarch hits 50% health is not a weapon: it's a liability with a trigger. The ARC Raiders PVE tier list below is built on those two axes, nothing else.

The Rule If it doesn't have meaningful Arc armor penetration, you're tickling robots. If it eats ammo faster than it kills, you're going broke doing it. Pick accordingly.

Full Tier Overview

The strongest per-shot weapon in the game. Projectiles pierce Arc armor entirely: the shot hits the Bastion's core through its plating. Charge up behind cover, peek for one second, shoot, disappear. Even a Bastion's minigun can't touch you in that window. 222 shots before it breaks. Ammo farms easily on Stella. No attachments required. Run Jupiter plus Anvil and you have handled every Arc in the game. The only correct end-game PVE loadout.

Weapon crafting uses Metal Parts, Oil, and Components at your Crafting Station. Blueprints drop in high-risk zones, locked containers, or from powerful enemies. The Renegade, Bettina, and Jupiter all require blueprints: farming them is part of the progression. There is no shortcut that doesn't involve going topside and suffering.

Ammo Economics: Why Your Loadout is Bleeding You Dry

Every inventory slot used for ammo is a slot not used for loot. The game punishes ammo hogs financially. This is not an accident: it is design. Ammo efficiency in ARC Raiders is the second skill ceiling after aim, and most players ignore it entirely until they've lost three extractions wondering where their medium ammo went.

• Light ammo: 100 per inventory slot. Sounds great. The weapons using it mostly don't have Arc penetration. Math still loses.
• Medium ammo: 80 per slot. Renegade maximizes this class: 30+ damage per shot across 80 rounds per slot is the highest raw damage output per inventory space in the game.
• Heavy ammo: 60 per slot after recent buff. Pharaoh and Anvil both use this. Still worth it: high penetration justifies the cost per slot.
• Energy ammo: Aphelon uses 2 per shot, 10 per clip = 5 shots per reload. This is not a misprint. It is exactly as bad as it sounds.
• Launcher ammo: Low count per slot. Hullcracker earns this because one round does the work of five medium rounds on Arc armor.

The Renegade Rule The Renegade produces more total damage per inventory slot than almost any other weapon in the game. If you're running medium ammo, run the Renegade. If you're not running the Renegade, justify why.

D Tier: The Weapons You're Using Because You Died

The Stitcher fires fast, has no Arc armor penetration, and empties its magazine before the Arc even blinks. The Bobcat does the same thing with slightly different aesthetics. The Kanto adds the insult of using medium ammo at 80 per slot while burning through it at SMG speed. These weapons are not PVE tools: they are looting companions for routes where you plan to see zero Arc. If Arc shows up, you are in trouble.

The Aphelon is the most embarrassing case. It is a legendary weapon that costs two energy ammo per shot from a ten-round clip: five shots before you reload. The Aphelon ammo consumption problem is so severe that carrying it means carrying stacks of energy ammo instead of loot, for a weapon that routinely gets outperformed by mid-tier alternatives. If they buff energy ammo cost, revisit. Until then, leave it.