▤ Field manualARC Raiders starter quests: from Picking Up The Pieces
Every quest in the game hangs off a single dependency graph, and it starts with Shani's Picking Up The Pieces: reach a loot area, open three containers, come home. From there the graph fans out across all of Speranza's traders — the quest ledger shows the chains grouped by who issues them, numbered by their depth in the graph.
Why the early quests matter
Early quests aren't busywork — they gate the systems the rest of the game runs on:
- Workshop unlocks. Several chains hand you station access and the materials to use it. Keep the workshop planner open as you clear them and mark tiers as you build.
- Blueprints. Some of the best craftables are quest rewards — the dataset records, for instance, a healing-spray blueprint from Celeste's chain and a launcher blueprint deep in Tian Wen's. The blueprint tracker keeps the checklist.
- Trader access. Quests are how you meet everyone worth trading with.
Pre-farm the gather objectives
A large share of early quests are collect objectives, and most of what they want drops from machines you'll fight anyway. Before you vendor anything, check the quest ledger — rows flagged items needed — or just use the needed items list, which sums every open quest's requirements into one haul list.
Recurring asks worth stockpiling early, per the dataset:
| Part | Dropped by | | --- | --- | | Wasp Driver | Wasps | | Hornet Driver | Hornets | | Snitch Scanner | Snitches | | Comet Igniter | Comets |
Branch order
The graph interleaves traders rather than finishing one before the next, and a few quests need two chains done before they open. When a quest page shows a requires line, that's the real gate — follow it backwards and you have your route. Chain depth in the ledger is a good default order; the graph never makes you regret clearing shallow quests first.
Quest data covers the starter graph (chain depth ≤ 7) as of dataset 1.36.1 — deeper chains land in a future data pass.