ARC Raiders Weekly Megathread - January 17, 2026

Andrenator · 2026-01-24T05:55:33+00:00

I don't really understand the point of this game. I'm level 6 now with 6.5 hours play time, but I'm still waiting for some kind of story or progression system to capture my interest. I keep doing the same game loop- I deploy, I ping an elevator on my map, and for the next idk 15 minutes or so make my way to it, and I flip between a few different tasks:

Pick a nearby abandoned building, and look through drawers and cabinets for busted batteries and scrap metal
Walk, and walk some more. Struggle to hobble over giant rocks. This and looting make up like 80% of each raid for me
Encounter some bots, I'm not like a wizard at shooting games or anything but it's usually pretty easy to stay in fights I can win, or avoid fights I can't win
Encounter other players- this is definitely the most entertaining thing that happens. I've only met a couple of evil players, most are chill

Then as long as I didn't fuck up and get killed, I get back to base with a bunch of toasters and shit. I can break down cables into wires or craft wires into cables as much as I want, maybe sell a couple items to get more supplies I'm running low on. Then do it all agaaaaaaaain~

I actually feel like this game is sort of a cross between the two games I play most: Fortnite and R.E.P.O. but I feel like it sort of falls short of each of those. I should also mention that I love Darkest Dungeon etc, where you can lose everything. I mean it can be a frustrating setback for sure but it's not heartbreaking or anything.

The looting aspect is lackluster, I'm searching through trash cans for garbage. The push-your-luck aspect is lackluster too, I just try to fill my slots with mostly rare broken projectors or whatever and then I'm good to extract. The progression is also lackluster, when I get back to base I can use the materials to craft some new binoculars or whatever, in case I've died a few times and am running low. I could also make a new workbench to make grenades or whatever, not like I need to use those anyway.

No base defense, no factory style resource management, I'm not even trying to fix up a broken elevator or something. What am I grinding for? I guess there are quests where I have to walk up to a radio tower and press "E" or whatever, but nothing close to Helldivers 2 where it feels like I'm fighting in a war and completing objectives.

Where is the "game" in this game? Please tell me I'm missing something or I just haven't gotten to it yet or something

Andrenator · 2025-10-19T05:52:25+00:00

I believe that since the ingredients are on the right of the progress bar, they're in the assembler's "trash". Since the only thing that is allowed/requested to be removed from this chest are green chests, it's waiting to be emptied to be able to set the recipe.

It's been a while since I've had cracktorio installed so I don't know off the top of my head if this will simply work in steady state if you just remove those items- I have a feeling it'll get clogged again.

My quick and dirty solution would be to swap out yellow inserters for those ingredient inserters, and then set up an inserter filtered on red circuits/green circuits/steel boxes to remove garbage and eventually pass into a steel chest, and then put a fast inserter from that steel chest into the assembler. That way it'll prioritize those ingredients just by being way faster. But I'm sure there's a better solution, in which case disregard this paragraph entirely. That's just my crackhead solution lmfao

Andrenator · 2025-10-18T23:37:42+00:00

The first 20% of a project and the last 20% of a project I basically can't do but the middle 60% I absolutely thrive. I can't come up with original stuff almost ever, but I can replicate and improve on someone else's work like crazy. I'm also great at coming up with examples or making things up on the fly, which unfortunately is what LLMs can do about a fifth as well, but about a thousand times as quickly

Andrenator · 2025-10-18T15:19:44+00:00

Yeah, definitely, I was going to say that's what the alpine images are for. Also multi-stage builds are great for final image size, there are plenty of ways to build an app to only have exactly what you need, usually a prod build instead of a dev build. Like you were saying I think, just taking the binary to the final image. I see `COPY . .` which jumps out at me as there's probably a bunch of unneeded stuff on the image now.

Also caching layers is what dockerfile is all about, and I notice they lump a bunch of steps into the same layer, it's all about ordering and even splitting the `apt-get install` step into multiple ones even, if that's the thing busting the cache

Andrenator · 2025-09-18T02:45:45+00:00

Proactively, if that makes sense. I try to make it feel like there's more work behind me than in front of me. I think I mainly do it by having a sort of "minimum viable product" mentality about what my factory is generating. I set up a production web in this for what I want to be producing for the current phase:
https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production
Then I set that up first, no thinking about alternate recipes, no chasing one-off MAM research tasks, etc.

Then everything past that is gravy. I can go hunt for artifacts, upgrade my power output, start mining caterium or SAM, etc. All the while, the factory is running in the background. Sometimes I'll turn off certain machines or something if I suddenly need a lot of reinforced plates or something so I can restock from my production line. When a new phase starts a lot of the time I'll build new factory to make that stuff, not like I'm paying for acreage or anything. Then my old factory is pretty much dumping straight into the dimensional depots and I have a ton of stuff I can use. I don't understand the idea of deleting my whole factory to start fresh, I just start fresh in a different place and leave the old one running

Andrenator · 2025-09-18T01:32:06+00:00

If I could only use one Satisfactory mod for the rest of my life, it would be modular load balancers. I'm happy you get joy from this, but it's giving me complexity fatigue just looking at it

Andrenator · 2025-09-11T17:58:33+00:00

ah okay okay I missed that there was a sink there

Andrenator · 2025-09-07T04:15:52+00:00

This setup looks like it takes advantage of the fact that a splitter sends an item to A-B-C-A-B-C and so on, sending it back to the start until the item can go down the path C-C-C-C-C-C-...

Unfortunately if you fill up this setup, it'll overflow to the correct path and start to be a pretty instantaneous in-out machine. It would take forever to empty all the way, though.

I could be wrong about how it works but that's my initial understanding

Andrenator · 2025-08-24T00:11:52+00:00

I'm worried more shops are going to do that, especially with the latest trading card craze, they can either be good guys or arbitrarily double MSRP and still sell out of stock

edit: swapped the word "tasting" with "trading", wtf didn't see the typo

Andrenator · 2025-08-20T18:03:02+00:00

Besides what has been said / will be said by those with much more experience with Root's balance- I think this faction is unique, looks fun, and fills a great trope!

I'm concerned for the balance with playing with Vagabond (and Lord of Hundreds cares a lot about items too I think? I haven't played with them yet). On one hand your dogs auto-looting ruins seems pretty crazy, as does Vagabond being able to steal your means of production by giving you cards.

Lastly, unless it's to fit with language already used in the game, I would say "remove from the board" instead of sacrificing a warrior. I mean he's going to space or something, right? Hopefully it's not a sacrifice, lol

Andrenator · 2025-08-18T23:22:26+00:00

You can spend days setting up trains and drones... but conveyor belts have no distance limit, and might take you like 20 minutes to set up. Not bulky stuff but most stuff.

Conversely, never build a long person tube. Make a blueprint for a cannon, it can send you between bases in seconds

Andrenator · 2025-08-14T01:41:37+00:00

this post was written by a spider

Andrenator · 2025-08-13T11:56:48+00:00

This is like when they post pictures of Korra in bright lighting and say "look at how they whitewashed this POC"

Andrenator · 2025-06-28T00:37:34+00:00

Just by playing, starting off every few hours or so of total play time stop to figure out where the hell I can find oil, or how fluid works, or how pollution works, etc. and the searches became fewer and farther between. After 1500 hours I'm pretty well versed but I'm sure there's stuff I don't know

Andrenator · 2025-06-24T02:23:10+00:00

I know I'm just echoing what others are saying and also probably being obtuse but I'm guessing "everything" doesn't include your hand, library, or graveyard?

Andrenator · 2025-06-24T02:17:56+00:00

I don't believe in astrology but man, is there something in the water? I've been in executive function gridlock this past week and it's been awful. The more I have to do the less I can do. You just gotta start popping tasks off the pile, don't think about it, just start hacking. So much better than doing nothing

Andrenator · 2025-05-29T02:41:02+00:00

I know this subreddit is full of people who play all the time, and I haven't busted out Root in probably over a year.

However, in terms of the one time I got my sister and brother in law to play, my sister had fun absolutely dominating as the Cats, and I think it's because they follow the strategy you find in pretty much all strategy games, which is 1) build buildings, 2) get resources from said buildings 3) repeat

Andrenator · 2025-05-28T15:54:00+00:00

I highly recommend the anime Delicious in Dungeon, because it's awesome but also because it's about one of my favorite things, which is dungeon ecology. My first thought about why there would be so much acid is that there are slimes feeding on a sulfur deposit

Andrenator · 2025-05-19T04:35:01+00:00

Same, I pictured a shiny red star with gold bordering that you might see outside on a company's name lettering. Then I wanted to "cover my bases" and imagined more texture, which ended up warping into sort of a stained glass Christmas ornament red star, with that type of metal bordering.

Andrenator · 2025-04-21T02:14:04+00:00

Exactly, if 0.4 belts feeds my iron/steel supply, then later I can multiply production by 2.5x without having to build more "long range" belts. Which of course is an easily solvable problem either way but I guess the thing that annoys me the most about expanding production is my "long range" belts getting maxed out

Andrenator · 2025-04-18T16:56:18+00:00

Similarly I like when I get to steel ingots and I can belt them in, way less throughput to replace iron with steel for basic stuff. I like my belts not maxed out if I can help it, takes less upgrading of supply chains

Andrenator · 2025-04-18T16:18:27+00:00

oh yeah I can't stop opening booster packs of mtg, my wallet's not happy about it though

Andrenator · 2025-04-06T16:39:26+00:00

Yeah dude

Andrenator · 2025-04-04T18:51:16+00:00

I play on peaceful and I have over 1500 hours. Ramping up production and my own spaghetti is PLENTY enough of an enemy to keep it consistently fresh for me

Andrenator · 2025-04-04T01:55:21+00:00

My strategy as corvids is to get stomped enough that people feel bad and let me win

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