The best skills in ARC Raiders are quite known by now, and aren't likely to change anytime soon. Ever since the game came out in late October, the only real patch that impacted skill-balancing was the Security Breach nerf.
With that in mind, here are the best skills in ARC Raiders, which you can now change to since Embark added the option to respect for a price.
Best Skills In ARC Raiders
Unfortunately, most skills in ARC Raiders are underwhelming. Luckily, that makes our job of listing the good ones out easier. Whether you are a PVP or PVE-focused player, these points will always be useful.
Here are the best skills in ARC Raiders:
- Youthful Lungs- "Increases Your Max Stamina". This one does not need a deep explanation. More stamina means longer sprints and more dodge rolls, which in turn translate to faster movement throughout the map and more safety in combat.
- In-round Crafting- "Unlock the ability to field-craft items while topside". This single will level-up your Free Loadout runs by a country-mile. Picking this allows you to craft Shield Rechargers and Bandages while in raid, which is all you need.
- Proficient Pryer- "Breaching doors and containers takes less time". In ARC Raiders, time really is money. Quicker breaching animations means more loot per minute and less time spent being vulnerable to other players while making a ton of noise.
- Looter's Instinct- "When searching a container, loot is revealed faster". On the same "time is money" note, investing 5 points into Looter's Instinct will save you multiple minutes per raid if you're going on loot runs.
- Unburdened Roll- "If your shield breaks, your first Dodge Roll within a few seconds does not cost stamina". This is one of the best defensive skills in ARC Raiders and can prove useful both in PVE and PVP fights. You essentially get a free extra roll when you run out of your shield, which is likely when you'll need it most.
With this in mind, you'll want to prioritize getting these skills as early as possible in your progression. You can get it by level 39 if you follow this example:

You can go in whatever order you prefer, but I would recommend hitting max stamina first, then fetching the Unburdened Roll on the Conditioning Tree, and finishing off with In-Round Crafting over on the Survival side.
Max Level Skill Trees- 75 to 80 Skill Points
Depending on if you went on the Expedition and how many skill points you got off of it, your max level character in ARC Raiders will have between 75 and 80 Skill Points at the time of writing.
Here is what your skill tree should look like if you are capped at 75 Skill Points and you don't particularly engage in PVP:

If you managed to grab those extra 5 skill points by farming the 5 million before the Expedition window closed, you'll invest those into getting Vigorous Vaulting and putting what's left into Three Deep Breaths.

In case you're a player who wants to PVP often instead of focusing on taking down the ARCs, you're likely better off following the Skill Tree posted by Reddit user tony_f*ck on the ARC Raiders subreddit, which has essentially been crowdsourced with quite a few edits.
Whichever tree you end up following, you'll be set up with the best skills in ARC Raiders, and ready to tackle any challenge that comes your way, be it human or robot.
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