ARC Raiders Best Skills

Skill systems in many games can be either too complex or too simplistic. Luckily, ARC Raiders has a transparent skill tree. The skills you get are easy to understand, as there are no complex conditions involved. Where it gets difficult, though, is in the abundance of them. The idea of making your own build without knowing anything about the game might seem numbing. In addition, the fact that we can’t just respec quickly makes choosing more difficult. Worry not, as in this guide, we’ll go over all the top skills to unlock in ARC Raiders. We will cover useful skills to unlock, what mistakes to avoid, and some good early-game skills.

If you want to worry less about what skills to level up, you can get our ARC Raiders Leveling services. Invest in it and upgrade every skill you want.

Read our other ARC Raiders guides:

• Best Loot
• Leveling Guide
• Crafting Guide

ARC Raiders Skill Tree Explained

This game has three major trees to put your points into. When picking a skill, prioritize ones that will influence your gameplay momentarily. To help you with that, we will provide a list of highly useful skills worth investing in. So far, the level cap is unknown. Data mining has shown that there is an estimated 75-point cap. However, it’s impossible to say if it’s true as of now. Nevertheless, we will have the ARC Raiders skill tree explained here. The branches are:

• Conditioning: A skill tree that is less important in the beginning. While it influences your HP and stamina, some of the bonuses will be useful later in the game.
• Mobility: Everything that lowers the stamina for running, jumping, and climbing. It has useful perks that help you get out of sticky situations.
• Survival: A very important skill tree, as it contains powerful skills for looting. For instance, the ability to craft items in the raid or the ability to discover more items at once.

It’s hard to ruin your build in ARC Raiders, though there are some skills that are pretty pointless. At worst, you’ll just slow down your progression. If you have already unlocked some skills not shown in our list, don’t worry. This is a marathon (no pun intended), not a sprint. Let’s move on to the early skill progression.

ARC Raiders Best Beginner Skills

In this part of the guide, we will provide an example progression. Based on our testing, these are the best beginner skills in ARC Raiders to maximize your efficiency. Don’t be afraid to stray from the path, as these are more recommendations than a strict guideline. We’ll focus mainly on Mobility and Survival trees, as they’re most important in the beginning stages.

• Step 1: Spend 1 point on Nimble Climber to get access to two early stamina skills. They are a Marathon Runner and Youthful Lungs. Spend 1 point on Marathon Runner and then put in 5 points into Youthful Lungs. Marathon Runner lowers the stamina consumption, and Youthful Lungs increases your max stamina. From here, we move on to the Survival tree. 
• Step 2: Spend 1 point on Agile Croucher and the same on Revitalizing Squat. Agile Croucher raises your speed while crouching, and Revitalizing Squat increases stamina regen while crouched. We do this to unlock In-Round Crafting. One of the most important skills, as it unlocks the ability to craft items while in a raid.
• Step 3: Return to the Mobility tree to max out Marathon Runner. This will allow us to take two Major perks. Spend 1 point for Slip and Slide and then on Sturdy Ankles. Slip and Slide makes you slide further and faster, while Sturdy Ankles lets you take less fall damage. You'll have to spend 2 more points on any skill you deem fit in the Mobility tree. 
• Step 4: After that, you can finally unlock Major perks. You should take Calming Stroll first, which lets you recover stamina while walking as if you were standing still. Then, you'll unlock Carry the Momentum. It's a very useful skill to avoid unnecessary fights. After a Sprint Dodge Roll, sprinting does not consume stamina. Bear in mind that it has a cooldown between uses, so you won't be able to spam it.
• Step 5: Now that you've invested significantly in the Mobility tree, we can return to the Survival tree. You'll max out the Looter's Instincts perk, which lets you reveal the loot faster while searching the containers. Then you invest 1 point in Silent Scavenger, which lowers the noise made while looting. Put 3 points in Agile Croucher and Revitalizing Squat to unlock Major perks. Pick your next skill based on what you need in the moment. It should either be Suffer in Silence or Good as New. Good as New makes you regenerate stamina faster while under the healing effect. Suffer in Silence reduces the noise you make when critically wounded.
• Step 6: We continue moving up in the Survival tree. We'll max out Broad Shoulders, as it increases the maximum weight limit. Then you should max out Stubborn Mule skill. It makes your stamina regeneration less affected by being overloaded with loot. Our next goal is to unlock Traveling Tinkerer. It unlocks more items to craft while in a raid. Following that, we max out Looter's Luck. It gives an insane buff to your looting. While looting, there's a chance to reveal twice as many items. That means that you can see more items at once while looting other Raiders or containers.
• Step 7: Here, we're getting close to the Pinnacle passive. We will just need 3 points. We recommend that you put at least 1 point in Survival perks that you haven't unlocked yet. The two Pinnacle passives are the Minesweeper and the Security Breach. First lets you defuse mines and explosives when close by. Don't take it; it is very rare that you'll end up in a situation where you'll need to do that. The second one is much more powerful. It lets you breach Security Lockers, which contain some of the rarest loot in the entire game.

And with that, your initial progression is over. You can now either pursue other Pinnacle passives or distribute your points evenly along three skill trees. Some potential unlocks are Vault Spring, Vaults on Vaults on Vaults. Vault Spring lets you jump at the end of the vault. The second one lets you vault without using stamina. Neither of these really makes it worth investing 36 points in the Mobility tree. If you do that, you'd skip the Conditioning tree altogether.

In Conditioning, the Pinnacle passives are Flyswatter and Back on Your Feet. First Pinnacle lets you kill Wasps and Turrets in a single melee. This is pretty useless, as Wasps rarely get into melee distance. Turrets, on the other hand, can be safely shot from a distance. Getting closer to them would actually mean more risk for you. The second Pinnacle is actually great. It increases your survivability so much more. When you're critically hurt, your health starts to regenerate up until some point. Then again, it requires you to play around it, as getting hurt the second time while restoring your health will stop your regeneration.

This concludes our beginner skills part of the guide. Now we’re going to move on to giving you advice on the best skill points and upgrades in ARC Raiders. We will tell you about useful skills if you want to create your own build in the future.

Best Conditioning Skills

Conditioning skills, as mentioned before, focus mainly on preserving your HP and Stamina. They do not directly buff them, but instead serve as a sort of reactive protection from damage. A couple of examples are skills that restore your HP once you get critically wounded or increase your stamina restoration upon being hit. Here’s a table of the best Conditioning skills in ARC Raiders: