I already regret playing ARC Raiders Solo

ARC Raiders it wasn't a game I had on my radar for most of 2025 and only really caught my attention in the last month. I haven't played an extraction shooter before ARC Raidersmostly because none of my friends played the genre, so when I heard that the game was very solo player friendly, I was suddenly intrigued. While I love ARC Raiders and I think it's the perfect introduction to the extraction shooter genre for a beginner like myself, I'm starting to regret playing it solo for one main reason.

The threat of losing all the loot you've found during a match makes high-risk, high-reward extraction shooters such as ARC Raiders refreshing. And the community interactions I experienced as a solo player were a mixture of friendly exchanges and tense combat encounters, leaving me feeling like I was getting a well-rounded experience. However, I still think I'd rather play the game with a team of friends, at least initially, as playing solo adds to the isolated feeling of entering the Rust Belt and leaves me incredibly vulnerable without teammates watching my back.

Playing ARC Raiders without a squad made me jump at shadows

The best ARC Raiders tips and tricks for beginners

Without any previous experience with an extraction shooter, I played my first few matches ARC Raiders very carefully. My only real goal was to find some loot, maybe complete the initial quests and extract to get back to the safety of Speranza without getting killed. To that end, every encounter I had—both with other Raiders and ARCs—had a horror game intensity to it, more so than the types of shooters I was used to.

Because I haven't played in the past ARC Raiders Playtests like the pre-release server slam, I didn't really know how often I would encounter enemy players or how easy it would be for enemy ARCs to spot me. While meta on launch day for ARC Raiders After seeing players using fairly basic weapons like the Rattler and Ferro, it took me a while to understand the time to kill for specific weapons and how quickly I would be able to run away and heal. Not having a team to support me meant I was on my own trying to learn these aspects of the game, which meant the game could be particularly intense in ways I wasn't prepared for.

How to loot and complete Harvester Puzzle ARC Raiders

The sound design of ARC Raiders increased my paranoia

By far the most fear inducing part ARC Raiders is a sound design that makes you feel like your every action is alerting the entire area to your position. For most of my first few matches, I was forever crouched for fear that my footsteps were too loud. I can imagine that with you the team will have some kind of safety in terms of noise level as you can keep your teammates on your toes while you disrupt and search ARC Raiders hiding place. Without a team behind me, I often felt like I was going crazy, frightened by the odd rattle or even the sound of my own footsteps.

The advantage of playing solo is that I can sit in complete silence and listen to other players more easily than if I had a team talking to me.

Solo ARC Raiders was the scariest game I played on Halloween

Like I'm sure many others, I spent my Halloween playing games while handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. This Halloween I enjoyed playing some:

Silent Hill f
Look outside
No, I'm not human
ARC Raiders

Of course, ARC Raiders it's more secluded here, but I was too addicted to the game not to play it a little in between the spooky selection for the evening. It's not a horror game in the traditional sense, but it's trying to survive ARC Raiders it was still the scariest experience I had that night.

Playing with the lights off and walking through the dark basements of buildings on the Buried City map only to have the constant feeling of being followed and wondering if I could really hear footsteps or just imagine it was more tense than any feeling I've felt from a horror game in a long time. At one point I almost had a panic attack when a tick unexpectedly jumped on my character's head and I had to quickly respond to a button prompt to shake it off. If I was playing with a team I could at least chat with my buddies to keep my sanity, but as a solo experience it was terrifying to say the least.