Arc Raiders: Best skills to invest in

The most recent Arc Raiders playtest gave us all a good chance to test out the best skills ahead of the incoming launch. This extraction shooter is brutal, and your Raider’s build is instrumental in defining your capabilities in both offence and defence.

Little perks like passive stamina regen, increased melee damage, and crafting enhancements make a world of difference, especially when your life is on the line. We’ve created a list of the best skills in Arc Raiders, no matter your playstyle.

There are roughly 45 skills in Arc Raiders across three skill trees. They’re going to give you advantages in your movement speed, how you attack, how you respond to damage, and more. These upgrades give you meaningful perks beyond gear, which rewards different approaches and playstyles. 

Your skill allocations transfer across games, meaning you won’t have to waste time at the start of each match figuring out what your strategy will be. Once you’ve allocated points, the effects persist across each future raid until you decide to respec. Importantly, you cannot reassign your points while in a raid, so it’s important to be confident in your selection before you start.

There are three main categories of Arc Raiders skills: Conditions, Mobility, and Survival. They’re each separated quite distinctly on the skill tree, allowing players to invest in different playstyles accordingly. However, we’ve found that a balanced mix between the three is the ideal strategy for maximising your chances of survival.

Our three best skills for Conditioning focus on stamina management, absolutely essential in mitigating many of the late-game nuisances that players have to endure. If you’ve played much of Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you’ll remember Giant Dad builds. That’s what we’re going for in Arc Raiders.

Because the Arc Raiders maps are so manoeuvrable and dynamic, you’re going to want to ensure that you can do that without constantly searching through your inventory for items to discard, while also attacking without throwing away stamina.

Like with Conditioning, our favourite skills for Mobility that we used in the Arc Raiders beta also focus on mitigating stamina loss. This means skills like Nimble Climber and Vaults on Vaults are going to be prerequisites for most builds, as they give your Raider a much more dynamic movement range. To add to that, we’ve also included Slip and Slide, which gives you a really fluid movement range.

For Survival allocations, you’re going to want to consider how effectively and efficiently you can loot items. This is usually a vulnerable process as your defence is limited, so cutting down on loot times is a solid way to stay on your toes. As with the theme, we’re also investing points into even more stamina – the most important attribute of them all… 

There’s nothing particularly complicated about unlocking the different skills in Arc Raiders. They’re mostly unlocked one after the other, with skill investments in the early roots of the tree going towards later unlocks.

Some will require multiple prior allocations, such as Vaults on Vaults, which requires two other skills before it can be unlocked.

With the Arc Raiders release date just around the corner, this guide should put you in a strong position when the game is fully released. Throughout my time in the playtest, I found that focusing on stamina management was the strongest strategy, as offensive and defensive traits could be developed through gear and loot.

There are also a few skills we haven’t included in our list that are worth considering, including Looter’s Luck, which may double your loot, and Back on Your Feet, which gives you health regeneration when critically hurt. These can be worked into your builds quite easily.