I did not go into Arc Raiders planning to play like a rat. After a few bad runs, I had lost some of my good gear and just wanted to blow off some steam in the game’s unofficial PvP arena “Stella Montis”. In the best-case scenario, the goal was to go in guns blazing, borrowing some fine piece of equipment from fellow raiders, and booking it to the extract. The worst-case scenario, where I would lose everything, didn’t bother me since I was running a free loadout.
Stella Montis has a reputation. It is built for tight and tense corridors that encourage player engagement. But another reason for its infamy is how it exposes one of the players’ biggest frustrations with this game, which is the free leadout problem. Free loadout players arrive with a basic gun, ammo, shield, and health, which is not much on paper, but enough to become dangerous when they have nothing meaningful to lose.
And that’s exactly the logic my random teammate proposed we lean into. The plan was not to chase fights, but to “fourth” party whoever wins at the end. Patience was key—and thus, the waiting game began.
Here’s what went down
After we heard some gunfights in the distance, we closed in on the action. For minutes, we sat around while other teams did the hard work. They fought each other, made noise, burned resources, killed Arc enemies, looted bodies, and slowly concentrated all the good stuff into fewer backpacks. When the chaos thinned out, and one team looked like it had survived the mess, we moved in with our weak free loadout weapons and sent them packing to Speranza. Was it cowardly and ugly? Yes. But it worked too damn well.
By the end of the run, I had walked away with four weapon blueprints, including the Aphelion, one of the game’s legendary weapons. For a run where I had risked virtually nothing, the value of what I extracted with was absurd.
Stella Montis turns patience into a weapon
Extraction shooters are built around the principle of risk and reward. The better gear you bring, the better odds you have at surviving and acquiring better loot. Though you still run the risk of losing everything you brought in a run. So, avoiding fights means holding onto your equipment for longer, while pushing into teams can lead to rewards that might be worth it. The tension comes from knowing that every decision has a cost.
Ratting, on the other hand, throws this equation out the window. On Stella Montis, the map already does half the work for you. Players are naturally drawn to high-value loot areas, which become battlegrounds immediately. After the multiple teams collide with one another, a patient squad does not have to be mechanically better than everyone else. It only has to be quiet. My team and I did not give the enemies a fighting chance. We let the lobby beat itself up, and then took advantage of the aftermath—all while running free kits.
Free loadouts are needed, but the reward balance feels off
I don’t think free loadouts are a bad idea. They serve a very specific purpose. Extraction games can become miserable when players run out of resources. Giving out a free kit lets people join the fun again. It lets newer players learn maps, while keeping struggling players active and lowering the fear of queuing up after a few bad raids. Yet, it has become an issue now. Rather than being a fallback option, it has become one of the smarter ways to play.
If you’ve been active or have been around the Arc Raiders community, you can see many complaints against free loadouts. Regardless of how great a gear you’re carrying, a free kit player can still kill you if they get the jump on you. This does play into the “high risk, high reward” formula of games in this genre, but it doesn’t seem to apply to free loadouts in the same way. Embark balances this by making free kit players join lobbies later on, get reduced backpack space, and also lose Safe Pockets entirely. These are big trade-offs, but it still doesn’t feel enough.
The basic kit may be weak, but it gives players enough to fight while letting them play with far more aggression because none of their real inventory is on the line, especially on maps like Stella Montis. This matches my own experience, where a level 1 Stitcher got me some of the best loot I’ve seen in a while. And I can’t deny that ratting in the corner, and waiting for the perfect time to third party, was what got me the lobby’s best rewards.
When that works, the game starts nudging people toward the least interesting version of itself. Why bring a proper gun into a PvP-heavy map when I can let someone else do it, then ambush them with throwaway gear?
What the community has to say about this
One common idea is giving free loadout players later spawns, letting players with custom loadouts get priority for fresh raids. And as per the Flashpoint update, players who actually risk their own equipment are more likely to join fresh servers, while free loadout raiders join later on.
Other community suggestions include stricter limits on free kits, lower reward potential for players entering with no risk, or better matchmaking separation. All of these are easier said than done. Making free loadouts too weak can crush struggling players. Make them too generous, then the meta gets stale. The real focus should be on incentivizing bringing custom gear.
My Stella Montis run was hilarious in the moment. Walking out with multiple blueprints, after playing like a sewer creature, was the kind of story that makes extraction games memorable. But nothing made the balance problem more obvious than the rat strat. Arc Raiders is at its best when risk and reward are arguing with each other in your head. When the safest strategy becomes the most profitable, the tension gets diluted, and the risk and reward feel unfair.