ARC Raiders- Put This In Your Safe Pocket

Everyone loves loot, so Arc Raiders having a ton of it around is great, right? Not entirely. Loot is lovely when you get shove it all inside your backpack, but when your backpack is much too small for the amount of loot available, the choice paralysis kicks in.

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So if you're spending so much time wondering what to swap for the new loot you found that you have a hard time even enjoying those rarer drops in Arc Raiders, put this in your safe pocket!

What Is A Safe Pocket, Anyways?

Image Via Embark Studios. Screenshot Captured By Blast.

Extraction shooters are ruthless games by nature, but not ruthless enough to make you lose absolutely everything if you fall to your demise in the middle of a raid. Arc Raiders follows this example by giving you a Safe Pocket, an inventory slot where you can put a single item (or a stack of the same item) which will remain with you even if you die.

Unlike in games like Escape From Tarkov, these items do not lose their quest status when you die with them, so if you're hunting for any items for quests, they take priority over everything else and should be the ones going in your Safe Pocket (which you might see mentioned online as "your bum").

Keep in mind that if you go on a run with a Free Loadout in Arc Raiders, you will not have a Safe Pocket. That is just the game's way of punishing you for not having to invest any resources into that one raid.

Put This In Your Safe Pocket

We want to highlight the most important items in Arc Raiders' early game, including ones which the game itself might mislead you on.

Common items might sometimes take priority over rarer ones. This is especially the case for two specific items:

• Arc Powercell- A common resource dropped by all Arc enemies, this is mandatory for crafting Shield Rechargers, the item which will give you your full shield back. Going out on a raid without at least one of these (ideally 3, which is the maximum stack size), is a death sentence.
• Fabric- The second mandatory Quick use item in Arc Raiders is the Bandage, and you need Fabric to craft them. This common item is found in most locations. You need 5 Fabric to craft a single Bandage, and you can carry a stack of 5 Bandages in a single slot, so you'll often be spending 25 Fabric per run if you want to make sure you can reliably heal yourself.

Image Via Embark Studios. Screenshot Captured By Blast.

One of the best quality of life features you'll find in Arc Raiders is that most items are recyclable. Recycling an item will often give you a higher number of a lower tier material that makes sense for that item (Arc Thermo Lining turns into Fabric, while Arc Performance Steel becomes Metal Parts).

So even if you haven't found an item before, you can safely guess which material it gives when recycled. This means that if you have to choose between Fabric, a common item, or Arc Thermo Lining, a rare one, you should bring the latter because even if you just use it for Fabric, it will give you a lot more of it for the same slot space.

Don't Trust Descriptions

At the time of writing this article, Arc Raiders is lying to you through its item descriptions. You'll notice that items are labeled with icons based on their use cases: Crafting Materials, Weapons, Weapon Mods, Shields, etc. Crafting materials often have detailed descriptions because they can be used for other things, too.

Here are two examples:

Image Via Embark Studios. Screenshot Captured By Blast.

• Hornet Driver- Can be recycled into ARC Alloy. Can be thrown and will briefly stun nearby targets.
• Arc Motion Core- Used to craft components. Can be recycled into ARC Alloy.

What if I told you that the description in one of these items is lying? Arc Raiders tells you when an item is used as a crafting component, but it does not warn you when it can be used for upgrading your Workshop. The Hornet Driver can indeed be recycled into ARC Alloy and thrown as a stun grenade, but it also can be used to upgrade your Gear Bench to level 2.

Image Via Embark Studios. Screenshot Captured By Blast.

With this in mind, our advice is to make all your Workshop stations ASAP, and then use the tracking feature to keep in mind all items that you need for upgrading all stations to level 2. If you want a handy second monitor tool, here you go:

• Gunsmith- 3x Rusted Tools, 5x Mechanical Components, 8x Wasp Drivers.
• Utility Station- 2x Damaged Heat Sink, 5x Electrical Components, 6x Snitch Scanner.
• Gear Bench- 3x Power Cable, 5x Electrical Components, 5x Hornet Driver.
• Refiner- 3x Toaster, 5x Arc Motion Core, 8x Fireball Burner.
• Explosives Station- Synthesized Fuel, Crude Explosives, Pop Trigger.
• Medical Lab- 2x Cracked Bioscanner, 5x Durable Cloth, 8x Tick Pod.

While you could be saving items for even later level ups, you will likely be running out of Stash space already, so focus on these first level ups before you go any further.

Image Via Embark Studios. Screenshot Captured By Blast.

Besides the Workshop-focused items, keep all Duct Tape you find. This uncommon item is only found in Commercial and Residential areas and it is the hardest one to find that is required for weapon mods. You'll need it to craft the level 1 Grips and Stock, and these will fit into almost all early game weapons.

So next time you play Arc Raiders, put this in your safe pocket. Good luck topside!

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