ARC Raiders Leveling: The 76 Points and Where XP Comes From

The points are finite

The tree is built around roughly 76 points from levelling, with more available through the expedition loop. You cannot fill every branch, and a full respec costs 2,000 coins per skill point — which is the most expensive mistake in the game short of losing a crafted kit. So read the prerequisites before you click. A point spent on a branch you abandon is not recoverable at a price any new player can pay, and the tree’s three branches are genuinely different bets rather than flavours of the same bonus.

The three branches

Conditioning covers stamina, health regeneration, and survivability. It is the beginner branch because stamina is the one stat that helps in every situation — running, crossing open ground, breaking contact. Mobility covers climbing, vaulting, and dodging efficiency. It pays off on maps with verticality, and it is the branch that rewards players who already avoid fights. Survival covers stealth, looting speed, and carry weight. It is the branch for players whose raids are about getting out with a full bag rather than winning exchanges. The pattern: conditioning is the safest first investment, and the other two are specialisations you choose once you know what actually kills you. The skill tree page covers the branch logic in more detail.

Where XP actually comes from

Rounds played. Every raid pays XP for existing in it, which is why the cheap free-loadout run is not wasted time. Extraction pays more than dying, but dying still pays. Quests. Picking up quests from the traders before queueing is free XP and free direction, and quest items are marked on the surface with a diamond icon so you are not searching blind. Trials. Unlocked at level 15, these are scored weekly challenges split into divisions — the closest thing the game has to a repeatable competitive benchmark, and a steady XP source that does not depend on surviving. Projects. Unlocked at level 20: permanent multi-stage objective chains, which is the long-tail progression that keeps paying after the one-off quests run dry. Each unlock changes what a raid is worth, so the useful habit is to check what opened every few levels rather than grinding the same loop.

The unlock timeline

Level 15 opens Trials. Level 20 opens Projects. Level 25 opens Ermal, extra stash space, and the Expedition Vault. Level 40 opens Solo versus Squads, which pays extra XP for going in alone. That last one is a genuine option, not a punishment — the solo versus squad split exists precisely because solo players were being matched into squad lobbies.

Playstyle matchmaking is not a level

Worth knowing before you optimise XP: matchmaking runs on a continuous playstyle scale built from your behaviour, and the game states that loadout cost, looting knocked-out players, and any single kill do not move it. Solo, duo, and trio are tracked separately. Levelling fast does not put you in harder lobbies; playing aggressively does.