First Raid Checklist: Gear, Armor, Ammo, Extract

Your first Hazard Operations raid ends badly for predictable reasons: no healing, no exit plan, and ammo that cannot penetrate the armor you are shooting at. Run this checklist before every early raid until the order becomes automatic.

Pre-raid checklist

• Weapon within budget. Bring a gun you can afford to lose. The budget loadout framework explains how to split funds between gun, armor, and gear.
• Armor and helmet equipped. Body armor and a helmet are separate slots — check both, and remember that armor tier decides how much punishment you survive, not whether you are unkillable.
• Ammo chosen on purpose. Penetration tier matters more than raw damage against armored players; the ammo types guide explains the trade-off between penetration, damage, and price. Bring a spare magazine.
• Healing items. Carry at least two or three healing items and know the keybind before the raid starts.
• Secure case loaded. Items in your secure case survive death, which makes it the most valuable storage you own. Fill it with your highest value-per-slot items — keys and rare loot — not junk.
• Insurance decision made. Insurance can return gear lost when another player extracts with it, but payout rules change between seasons — read the current terms in-game before you commit currency.
• Map choice deliberate. Start on Zero Dam, the beginner-friendly map with concentrated loot. The maps overview ranks all seven extraction maps by difficulty.
• Extraction plan set. Pick your primary extraction point and a backup before you drop, then follow one known loot line like the Zero Dam routes instead of freelancing.

The first five minutes of the raid

Spend them quietly:

1. Confirm your landing area and the nearest extraction direction.
2. Loot one or two containers, not the whole building.
3. Listen before you move — footsteps tell you which rooms are contested.
4. Leave with whatever you have rather than chasing one more room.

What “ready” feels like

A prepared raid is boring for the first two minutes: you know where you are going, your healing is bound, and you are not deciding anything under fire. New players die in the moment they improvise. Improvise less by checking the boxes, then use the training ground to rehearse the gunplay that no checklist can teach — the daily drills take ten minutes and cover recoil, movement, utility, and operator abilities.

If anything fails to launch or log in before your first raid, the troubleshooting pages for error codes and login failures exist for exactly this moment.