As with any looter shooter, you are going to need a ton of in-game coins to get ahead in Arc Raiders. Fortunately, the gameplay design has a robust internal economy, with many opportunities to loot resources and reap windfall profits from their sale.
This guide is all about farming lots of money quickly and efficiently in Arc Raiders, even in the early game.
Prologue Tutorial
You have probably already played the tutorial, in which case this tip is best suited for your next character. Early on in the mission you come to a locked door that you will be tasked with breaching. As soon as you crack open the door, you will be ambushed and gunned down in a cutscene, with all of the loot you picked up until that point stripped from your corpse. Since RNG looting still applies in the prologue, you may have looted some really useful or valuable items for the early game, all of which you will promptly lose.
You can completely negate this scenario simply by dropping the entirety of your inventory at your feet, even the Safe Pocket, right before breaching the door. Once you are standing back up again after the cutscene, all of your stuff will be right there for the recovering, giving you a nice headstart in the early game when you finally arrive at Speranza and dispose of your loot.
Kill every ARC and loot absolutely everything thoroughly in the starting area, as every bit counts in the beginning.
Scrappy The Rooster
This endearing gameplay mechanic is a trainable chicken in the Workshop that automatically forages for all kinds of useful stuff which you can claim later at regular intervals. You will need to acquire the Dog Collar, a rare-tier item that you may have been lucky enough to find and retain in the prologue itself, in order to train and begin leveling up Scrappy. If you were not so lucky, you can always try tracking it in Residential zones, where you should pay close attention to drawers and shelves.
Loadouts
As a game with both inventory slot management and encumbrance to consider, you must harness the best gear possible for loot runs in order to make the most of your expeditions. While you can leverage your own gear on these runs, it bears the risk of losing both your precious loot and your hard-earned build in the early game. This is where the Free Loadout function will serve you well enough, supplying you with an RNG loadout of the absolute basics along with the Free Loadout Augment, which offers slightly more backpack space and carry capacity, 35kg to be specific. With 14 inventory slots, and 4 quick use slots, this loadout’s only downside is the absence of any Safe Pocket. The Augment is also locked in place until you survive the run, when you can then use it to trade up for something better.
As soon as possible, you will want to take that now unlocked Free Loadout Augment and upgrade to a Looting Mk. 1 by visiting Lance at the Clinic. These have many more backpack slots, almost 50% greater carry capacity, and a Safe Pocket.
Eventually you will use a Blueprint to craft the Looting Mk. 2 Augment which is an even better farming enabler with a Max Loadout Weight of 60kg, 22 backpack slots, 4 quick use slots, 3 slots dedicated solely for those valuable Trinkets, and not just one, but two Safe Pockets for the ultimate insurance against losses. The bonus passive may also come in handy.
Note that all three of these Augments are intended for scavenging and so are less than combat oriented. Their paltry Light Shield Compatibility will put you in a tough spot if you get bogged down in extended gunfights, so come prepared for that eventuality with Shield Rechargers and Adrenaline Shots to make good your escape.
The Looting Mk. 3 Augment will be much farther down the line, but will address the trade-off between carry capacity and survivability.
Consider repeating the Free Loadout Augment run at least two more times in order to collect the Mk. 1 variant of each of the three classes: Combat, Looting, and Tactical for no additional cost in Coins.
Celeste And Bartering Assorted Seeds
When trading with Celeste, you will note that you can barter a single unit of Assorted Seeds for each of the five common-tier Basic Materials. Not only does this spare you the necessity of either Salvaging or Recycling sellable items in order to obtain Materials, items that you may also need on your path of progression, but it also effectively gives your Assorted Seeds a Coin value: you can then sell those bartered Materials themselves for cold, hard cash. Metal Parts at a value of 75 Coins each is the obvious choice here.
Be sure to explore the rest of Celeste’s inventory in order to exploit whether a given item is worth bartering for with Assorted Seeds, bearing in mind that each is effectively worth 75 Coins, i.e. the selling price of one unit of Metal Parts.
Trinkets
The trading of Trinkets is your best avenue for amassing large amounts of Coins. Even with a great deal of backpack slots at your disposal, you may find yourself having to prioritize which ones to bring back home with you. Not only should eligible items be of high individual value, but being stackable and plentiful also matters. One common-tier Trinket worth 1000 Coins of which you may find many multiples while only occupying a single backpack slot as a stack, is worth more than another rare-tier Trinket worth 4000 Coins but of which you may only ever find a single one.
Some Trinkets are consumable and you may be obliged to do so in a pinch. While not recommended, consider doing so if you can kill two birds with one stone: gain the benefit of its consumption and clear a slot for a more valuable stack of Trinkets.
Be sure to leverage your Safe Pocket for your most valuable item, whether singular or a stack.
Loot Prioritization
When you have too much loot from Topside to bring back home to Speranza, rather than just dropping items outright, take the time to at least Salvage them for the bare minimum of stackable Materials. While significantly less value than selling the items themselves for Coins, or even Recycling them properly for their maximum Material drops, something is better than nothing. This strategy will keep you out in the field longer, as you strive to fill every backpack slot with the maximum bang for your buck.
Best Loot Locations
As a matter of perspective, there are two ways to look at the ‘best’ loot location. One is low risk and avoids confrontation with other Raiders. Simply stay on the edges of the map, preferring to explore any structures there for loot, far and away from the high-traffic routes criss-crossing the more centrally located loot zones. The outer extraction points will also be less frequented by random players, giving you free reign to exfiltrate in peace. The Spaceport is ideal for this relaxed approach as it also affords you more time to explore Topside.
You can easily anticipate where the most Raider foot traffic will be based on the color of the looting zones: the vast majority of other players are going to be milling and battling in and around those locations.
The other method is high risk, and requires you to select maps like Buried City or The Blue Gate with ongoing special conditions like Night Raids or Launch Tower Loot for maximum loot potential. These are punishing runs and you should be well prepared to lose it all to either ARC or other Raiders.
A nice balance can be had with the Husk Graveyard event on Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, or Spaceport where something has caused ARC machines to go down on their own in great amounts, leaving husks scattered around the Topside. This affords you easy access to plenty of easy pickings, however you may be picked off yourself by other Raiders with the same idea.
Saving Coins
Limiting wasteful expenditure is also something to consider. For example, avoid outright purchasing Shield Rechargers, when it is easy enough to farm ARC drones for their ARC Powercell drops that can then be used to recharge your Shield directly in the field itself, or to craft Rechargers back at the Workshop instead.
Survive a run with a Free Loadout Augment, and then trade it with Lance at the Clinic for a Mk. 1 variant of the specialist Augments in the Combat, Looting, or Tactical classes, thus saving yourself the 1920 Coins that they would each cost normally.
Rather than Recycling sellable items in order to acquire various Resources and Materials, farm for the relatively easily gathered Assorted Seeds that you can then barter with Celeste.
That is everything there is to know about farming Coins quicking in Arc Raiders.
Great guide! Earning coins quickly is essential in looter shooters, and it sounds like you’ve provided some helpful strategies. Looking forward to trying them out in Arc Raiders!