Arc Raiders is the kind of game for which establishing strict metas is going to prove difficult. Your objective is to get out alive and with good loot; abstaining from violence is as valid a “strategy” as indulging in it. Is your death-machine build “better” than my stealthy saboteur who can easily outrun you and hide, getting away with all the stuff I collected, thereby “winning”? Arc Raiders’ gameplay has more going on, more varied “win conditions” than just who can kill who faster in a straight shootout.
But some weapons do have genuine advantages over others. A strict showdown would reveal whose weapon and build options gave them the clear advantage. But we’re hardly running in perpetual circles shooting at each other all the time in Arc Raiders, nor are we all expected to kill one another until the last person declared standing is the winner. So one’s arsenal can serve many purposes, with a lot of room for stylistic preferences.
The variety of weapons available in Arc Raiders lets you plan and build several different shooter archetypes, so let’s get into how these guns work.
What kinds of guns are in this game?
Arc Raiders breaks its weapons down into eight broad categories: Assault Rifles, Battle Rifles, Submachine Guns, Shotguns, Pistols, Light Machineguns, Sniper Rifles, and “Special.”
The guns in these categories also vary in terms of which of the five ammo types they use (Light, Medium, Heavy, Energy, and Launcher), as well as their firing mode, damage, firing rate, and range.
Firing modes in particular are important as they determine the pace at which you can fire. Semi-auto fires with every pull of the trigger, full-auto constantly fires, and the three-round burst is rather self explanatory. Various other guns feature “actions,” meaning your character will have to operate the gun in some way after each shot (this is often distinct from reloading), so your shots will be slow, but usually quite powerful. Perhaps the most common example across a variety of different games is the bolt-action firing mode, which sees your character operating a bolt after each shot (simulating the operation of real-life bolt-action rifles).
Why is all of this important? Well, if you want to run and gun, something like a Ferro, which is a heavy break-action rifle and requires you to load each round, won’t be as suitable as something like a Stitcher, which is a fully automatic submachine gun. But that Stitcher won’t help you nail a high-powered shot from a great distance; that’s the Ferro’s speciality.
For each of these broad gun types, there are different rarities too, with rarer items being more powerful: gray is for common guns, green for uncommon, blue for rare, purple for epic, yellow for legendary.
And with the exception of legendary guns, all guns can be leveled up three times to a max of level four. Various elements of a firearm improve as you level them up. Some will see increased magazine size and increased durability, others will see increased durability and fire-rate, and so on. I’m finding this Arc Raiders wiki to be an excellent resource for the raw numbers.
So let’s sort these guns into some use cases, of which you’ll find there’s some overlap.
The best guns for close-quarters combat
Shotguns on average promise wild amounts of high damage with exceedingly poor range. Great for times when you’re nervous someone might jump out from a corner mere feet away from you. For those, you get two options:
- Il Toro: Uncommon shotgun, pump-action (pretty awesome when leveled up and kitted out well)
- Vulcano: Epic shotgun, semi-automatic (the one time I had a chance to use this, I gut jumped and barely fired a shot off before it was long gone)
Following that, submachine guns will fare well given their high firing rate comes at the cost of range, but you also don’t need to worry about having pinpoint accuracy.
- Stitcher: Common submachine gun, fully automatic (pretty awesome when fully leveled up and kitted out with good mods)
- Bobcat: Epic submachine gun, fully automatic
Finally, assault rifles aren’t terrible in some cases, provided they’re fully automatic (for my playstyle, anyway—if you can accurately place semi-automatic shots while experiencing the panic of a close-quarters gun fight, more power to you). Fully automatic assault rifles include:
- Rattler: Common assault rifle (frustrating to use at low levels, in my opinion)
- Tempest: Epic assault rifle
- Bettina: Epic assault rifle
The best guns for medium-range combat
These are the situations in which your enemy isn’t so far off you need a scope to see ‘em, but they’re still far enough away to render something like a shotgun pretty pointless. If you can control the recoil well and shoot in controlled bursts, the Rattler, Tempest, and Bettina are good options here too. Otherwise, the following semi-automatic weapons and the lone three-round burst rifle will serve you well:
- Kettle: Common assault rifle, semi-automatic (I do not get along with this weapon, FWIW)
- Arpeggio: Common assault rifle, three-round burst (it’s like the FAMAS from Metal Gear Solid and the battle rifle from Halo 2 had a baby)
The best guns for long-range combat
While the assault rifles above can certainly prove useful in some limited long-range situations, you have far better options for delivering high-damage, precision shots from a distance if your marksmanship is up to snuff.
- Ferro: Common battle rifle, break-action (using this is the best part of losing all the way to subsisting on Common guns)
- Renegade: Rare battle rifle, lever-action (like a faster though slightly weaker Ferro)
- Osprey: Rare sniper rifle, bolt-action (for when you want to be her)
- Jupiter: Legendary sniper rifle, bolt-action
Note that the only gun with a scope at all in this game is the Osprey sniper rifle. Even the legendary Jupiter sniper rifle just has the screen zoom in a bit when ADS-ing instead of shifting to a scoped view.
What about those pistols?
Pistols and handguns are funny things in many shooters. On one hand, they are perhaps most functional as sidearms–perfect for those “oh, shit” moments when you don’t have enough time to reload your main weapon, and so fall back to something a little speedier though less powerful. On the other, they’re often too cool to just be guns you fall back on.
If you’re after the theater of being that person with the quick trigger finger on a pistol, start with the Burletta for training wheels and graduate to the Venator.
These are your four pistol options:
- Hairpin: Common, slide-action (permanently silenced)
- Burletta: Uncommon, semi-automatic (definitely the most side-armed of sidearms)
- Anvil: Uncommon, single-action (Arc Raiders’ hand cannon)
- Venator: Rare, semi-automatic
And the toys
Everything above will cover your bases. But if you want to pack a ton of heat to take down the game’s biggest threats or show other players you’re not messing around, here are your options:
- Torrente: Rare light machine gun, fully automatic (the bullets literally go brrrrrrr)
- Equalizer: Legendary beam rifle, fully automatic
- Hullcracker: Epic armaments launcher, pump-action
And there ya have it, roughly five different broad shooter archetypes spread out amongst Arc Raiders’ existing arsenal. Naturally, the higher tier of rarity, the better the gun is at the thing it does. Though you still might find, for example, that while the Ferro and Renegade occupy very similar territory, they have some clear differences that might still make the Ferro more appealing for some (namely the higher damage per shot).
Also, all of these guns at level four are the best versions of themselves. As for modifications, muzzle attachments, rear stock options, and so forth, those are a subject for another day since they can help guide any one of these guns down a more specialized path.