Arc Raiders update 1.3 has arrived with unsurprising nerfs to the infamous Venator handgun, tuning for some explosive weapons that were making short work of high-level Arc, and a smattering of bug fixes that have seemingly left a popular exploit to enter locked rooms largely intact (barring the Dam Control Tower). A few other things remain unchanged: assembling a loadout is still fiddly, and the community can't decide if the stash is too small or just right.
In the aftermath of update 1.3, which has dramatically shaken up strategies to kill powerful Arc, smoldering chatter around the state of the stash has been rekindled. Arc Raiders is balanced around a cycle of acquiring, spending, and inevitably losing resources. Giving players functionally infinite inventory or stash space would break that cycle, remove tension from the economy, enable ridiculous loadouts, and/or saddle players with a burdensome impulse to collect a zillion of everything. But there's a big gap between functionally infinite and the tiny space we have right now, and in that gap you'll find some spirited debate.
Saved, one-click loadouts would certainly be an improvement over the multi-layered process of making bags, shields, guns, mods, ammo, healing items, throwables, keys, and any niche utility items, all from their own distinct menus and shops. I can't be the only one who'll occasionally throw on a free loadout purely because I don't have the patience to craft a proper kit right this second.
Crafting could and should be streamlined; I don't really see many people pushing back on that. But a statement like, "We need more stash space, or at least higher stack limits on items"? Them's some fightin' words down here in Speranza.
"Even if I craft items to take on future raids the value of the crafted stack is usually lower than the value of the crafting items stacks so I actually lose more stash spaces trying to prepare items to take," reckons delightfully named user Downtownklownfrown, in a response to that post about inventory management. A separate comment, beating out the 1.3 feedback post it's responding to, agrees that "increasing stack sizes will go a long way."
A classic example is bandages. Turning 50 fabric into 10 bandages will actually add item stacks to your vault because the bandage stack cap is only five. You could instead convert fabric into durable cloth used for stronger bandages that save slots, but you'll also need stacks of herbs for those, so you don't really net much space either. This is where I see a real argument for some higher stack caps: enabling players to better condense raw materials by distilling them down to higher-tier items. Chemicals and ammo, for instance, are notorious stash hogs because there's no good way to store either one, but you always need ammo.
But here's Durakus with the sensible counter: "I cannot pile up twenty or thirty or forty Wolfpacks because it takes up space. Thus it limits what I can bring." And I do think some people can misread all limitations as design flaws; a lot of this stuff is intentional and does work. Sometimes you have to eat your vegetables.
Personally, I'm with GorgeWashington, another bold Reddit replyer, on this one: "I just wish I had a better way to manage my inventory. Let me make categories. Let me commit resources to a particular production queue or project." And here comes the argument that adding stash space
Again, I don't think anyone is going to argue against ways to sort the chaos of the stash. The longer Arc Raiders is out, and the more folks have to engage with their inventory at higher Raider levels, the more common sentiments like this will probably become. I'm hoping developer Embark Studios can tackle stash usability before it gets too frustrating.
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