ARC Raiders Search Raider Caches Trial Guide

Every week, Trials in ARC Raiders give you five objectives and a leaderboard that will remind you where you rank among every other Raider who also thought they had a plan. Searching Raider Caches is among the more forgiving of those objectives, provided you understand the Hurricane event Raider Cache locations in ARC Raiders, use your ears like a functional human being, and do not stand next to a Vaporizer trying to figure out where its feelings are. This guide covers all of it. Loadout, routes, maps, enemies, matchmaking, and the fastest way to three-star this trial without risking gear you actually care about.

Quick Summary: To maximize score in the ARC Raiders Search Raider Caches trial, load into Dam Battlegrounds or Buried City during a Hurricane event, listen for the ticking, open every cache you find, extract before something ruins your run. That is the guide. Everything below is for Raiders who insist on doing it wrong first.

Scoring Overview

The scoring system for this trial does not reward creativity or bravery. It rewards opening boxes. Each Raider Cache you search contributes toward your trial score, and doing so during a Hurricane major map condition doubles those points. That is not a rumor or a community myth. It is how the game works, and the game is waiting for you to use the information. To fast 3-star Raider Cache rewards in ARC Raiders, you need 4,000 points total. During Hurricane, that means opening roughly three to four caches and walking to extraction at a pace that suggests you have been here before.

A note on the Uncovered Caches condition since someone will ask: it looks attractive because it spawns more caches on the map. It is not attractive once you understand that after fifteen to twenty minutes the caches ignite and destroy themselves, and if another Raider opens one before you, it goes silent with zero indication it existed. The Hurricane event, by contrast, lets you search caches other players already opened and still collect full points. This single mechanic explains everything about which condition to use. Use Hurricane. Stop entertaining other options.

Yes, and if you have any attachment to the gear in your stash, you should. The ARC Raiders Search Raider Caches trial does not require you to win a gunfight, survive an ambush, or prove anything to anyone. It requires you to walk around a map and interact with boxes. A free loadout covers that objective without placing anything valuable at risk. Your only real loss is the absence of Adrenaline Shots, which means covering ground takes slightly longer. That is the entire downside. Acceptable.

Best Loadout for ARC Raiders Search Raider Caches

If you prefer to bring actual gear, the best loadout for ARC Raiders Search Raider Caches prioritizes mobility, light healing, and enough firepower to clear small ARC enemies without burning through your ammo supply before extraction. The Anvil IV is the recommended primary weapon due to its fire rate, which makes it efficient against the standard ARC enemies you will inevitably aggro while moving between cache clusters. An Anvil I works but does the job slower, which you will notice at the worst possible time.

Dam Battlegrounds is the standard recommendation for this trial and is the Dam Battlegrounds Raider Cache route that ARC Raiders communities consistently use. It has high cache spawn density, a manageable ARC presence for a player focused on looting rather than combat, and extraction options that allow you to end the run without crossing half the map on foot while bleeding out. Buried City is the secondary option, though community feedback suggests the cache density there can feel unreliable in practice despite what the spawn markers indicate. Blue Gate has the highest concentration of First Wave Caches during Hurricane, but the map layout is broader and less forgiving for solo routes.

Stella Montis does not have Raider Caches. If you attempt this trial on Stella Montis, this guide accepts no responsibility for what happens to your week.

Audio tip: Raider Caches emit a low mechanical whirr followed by a higher ticking sound. In Hurricane conditions, wind affects your audio directionally. Orienting away from the wind gives a small but genuine listening advantage. You will eventually find yourself running backwards through open areas to improve your hearing angle. This is normal behavior for this game.

ARC Raiders Oldtown: Arc Enemies & the Triple Dip Strategy

The ARC Raiders Oldtown area within Buried City is one of the more efficient cache farming zones when the Hurricane event is active. The ARC Raiders Oldtown Arc enemies damage strategy here is straightforward: do not fight things you do not need to fight. The ARC presence in Oldtown is real, and the ARC Raiders Oldtown Arc enemies damage strategy that gets Raiders killed is stopping to engage every patrol instead of using cover and movement to slip between cache clusters. You are not here to destroy ARC. You are here to maximize score in ARC Raiders by opening boxes. Those are different objectives. Respect the difference.

The "triple dip" refers to the practice of hitting three cache cluster zones within a single Oldtown sweep before extracting. The cluster spawns in this area are close enough together that a well-paced route catches all three without excessive backtracking. Only one cache typically spawns per cluster, so the objective is to move between all three zones, confirm each cache, open it, and extract. Trying to squeeze a fourth cluster into the route is where most Raiders overstay and either meet a full squad or lose the extraction timer entirely.

Dam Battlegrounds Raider Cache Route in ARC Raiders

There is no single perfect route because cache spawns randomize each raid. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What does exist are reliable cluster zones with high spawn probability, and the Dam Battlegrounds Raider Cache route in ARC Raiders is built around those zones rather than a fixed path. Spawn on the southern side of the map, and plan a loop that covers the highest-density clusters before heading to the Sunroof Hatch extraction. The hatch-side cache spawn means you can collect one final cache on the way out, which is either satisfying or irrelevant depending on how the run went.

Under the bridge: go under it. A cache spawns there. It sounds obvious. Evidently it is not where people check. The Raider Outpost is a quick confirmation stop on the way through. Testing Annex near the electrical tower has a reliable spawn that rewards Raiders who do not skip it. The Water Towers cluster is worth the slight detour due to multiple spawn points. The random side camps that nobody visits also have caches because the map does not care about your route preferences.

For party play, split the map into sections and search independently. Solo Raiders should expect 20,000 to 25,000 score on a good Hurricane run. A well-coordinated trio can potentially double that by covering all zones without redundancy.

The ARC Raiders Surveyor and Assessor spawning guide note relevant to cache runs is brief but worth knowing. Surveyors are the large spherical ARC units that roll around the map, stop periodically to fire a blue beacon into the sky, and sprint away at full speed the moment they detect you. They are armored, fast, and fragile once that armor breaks. If you encounter a Surveyor during a cache run, the ARC Raiders Surveyor and Assessor spawning guide recommendation is to stun it with a Showstopper or Hornet Driver while the core is exposed during its beacon phase, then finish it with explosives before it escapes. It drops ARC Motion Cores and Surveyor Vaults, which makes it worth the interruption to your route.

Assessors are an entirely different problem. They land during Close Scrutiny operations, are surrounded by Vaporizers, and are not part of your cache trial route. The Assessor spawning pattern follows the red beam indicators in the sky. If you see red beams and you are not geared for a fight, the correct response is to complete your cache route and extract. The Assessor will be there next time. Your loadout's contents will not be, if you make the wrong choice.

ARC Raiders Friendly Lobbies and Aggression Matchmaking

ARC Raiders friendly lobbies using aggression matchmaking are a legitimate tool for this trial and the ARC Raiders friendly lobbies aggression matchmaking system is worth understanding if you run the Search Raider Caches trial regularly. Lowering your aggression setting in matchmaking increases the likelihood of entering lobbies populated by Raiders who are also there to complete objectives rather than hunt players. The result is a raid where the primary danger is ARC enemies rather than a fully-kitted squad that decided your cache was their cache.

This is not a guarantee. It is a statistical reduction in the probability of a bad time. Use it. The risk of spending a raid in PvP when you are trying to open boxes for a weekly trial is entirely avoidable, and declining to avoid it is a choice you are making on purpose.

Fast 3-Star Raider Cache Rewards in ARC Raiders

To fast 3-star Raider Cache rewards in ARC Raiders this week, the process is as follows. Wait for a Hurricane event, load into Dam Battlegrounds, open four caches, extract. That is 4,000 points, which meets the three-star threshold and earns you a random Epic item or blueprint from the challenge reward pool. The full process from lobby to extraction should take under fifteen minutes if the route goes smoothly and no one with opinions about your survival crosses your path.

For Raiders who want to push score beyond the three-star threshold for leaderboard placement, the approach is the same but repeated across multiple extractions. Only your personal best run is counted toward your trial score, so additional runs only matter if they beat your current high score. Structure accordingly.

Reward tiers: 1,000 points = Uncommon item / blueprint. 2,500 points = Rare item / blueprint. 4,000 points = Epic item / blueprint. Each tier is claimed once per week, automatically on extraction.