Loot value and backpack weight

Raiderism editorial2026-10-03

Your inventory in ARC Raiders is a weight budget. Every kilogram you carry out of a raid is a kilogram you spent surviving for, so the question that matters at every container is not "is this valuable?" but "is this the most valuable thing per kilo I could be carrying instead?"

Read the ledger, not the rarity

Rarity color is a poor proxy for hauling priority. The loot value tiers table ranks priced items by value ÷ weight. A few patterns stand out:

• Trinkets dominate. Curios like the Breathtaking Snow Globe sell for thousands while weighing a few hundred grams. If it looks like it belongs on a shelf, it belongs in your pack.
• Refined materials out-earn raw ones. Components such as Advanced Electrical Components concentrate value into a single kilogram; loose scrap does not.
• Heavy weapons are for using, not selling. A ranked rifle can be worth a lot of coin — and cost you fourteen kilos of everything else.

ARC parts are a second economy

Downed machines drop recyclable components — ARC Alloy, ARC Circuitry, drivers, cores, and the like. Their sell price undersells them: workshop tiers and crafting recipes consume them constantly, so check the needed items list before you vendor a single one. A part your workshop wants is worth more than its coin line.

The two-question triage

At a full pack, run every pickup through this:

1. Does a quest or workshop tier need it? Check its catalogue page — the companion links every item to the quests, recipes, and upgrades that consume it. If yes, it rides.
2. Does it beat your worst passenger on coin per kilo? If not, it stays on the floor.

That's the whole discipline. The ledger does the arithmetic; you just have to stop picking up toasters out of sentiment — unless the Scrappy needs one, in which case: toaster.