ARC Raiders has five vendors, two currency tracks, and no single screen that explains how they connect. The game assumes you'll work it out. Some players do quickly. A lot don't, and they spend their first 15 hours buying mid-tier weapons outright while never leveling the relationships that would have made everything cheaper.
This ARC Raiders currency guide covers how credits work, how vendor relationship XP works, and which spending order actually builds your progression fastest.
Key Takeaways
- Credits come from selling extracted materials to matching vendors — Celeste for raw materials, Tian Wen for weapons
- Vendor relationship XP is more valuable than the credit itself — it compounds into better stock tiers
- Five vendors in Speranza, each with a separate relationship track
- Safe Pocket expansion (Survival skill tree) is the highest-value early credit investment
- Craft the Ferro battle rifle rather than buying it — the material cost is significantly lower across multiple runs
- Standard loadouts cost zero credits — use them until you understand the map you're running
Overview
ARC Raiders released October 30, 2025 at $39.99. This guide covers the progression and currency systems as they exist in the current build (April 2026).
What this guide covers: how credits are earned, how vendor relationship XP works, the five-vendor Speranza economy, and the spending priority order for the first 30 hours.
Prerequisites: basic familiarity with the extraction loop. If you're still figuring out how raids work fundamentally, start with the ARC Raiders beginner guide first. The currency system only makes sense once the extraction loop clicks.
Time investment: vendor relationships take 15–25 hours to reach the meaningful unlock tiers for the vendors that matter most.
Step-by-Step: Building Progression
Step 1 — Understand the Two Tracks
ARC Raiders has two progression tracks that feel separate but connect through vendor interactions:
Credits: The primary currency. Earned by selling materials and weapons to vendors, completing quests, and scrapping gear. Used to buy gear, ammunition, deployables, and crafting supplies. Credits are per-run fungible — lose a run, lose your carried gear, but credits in Speranza stay.
Vendor Relationship XP: A secondary track, per vendor, that unlocks stock tiers. Relationship XP comes from buying AND selling with a specific vendor. The higher the relationship, the better the items that vendor offers. Relationship XP persists across all runs — it never resets.
Players who treat vendors as shops rather than relationship tracks spend more credits overall. The early investment in relationship XP reduces effective item costs permanently.
Step 2 — Know the Five Vendors
Celeste — raw materials, farming supplies, and basic crafting components. The correct vendor for selling Common and Uncommon materials you extracted. Relationship XP with Celeste unlocks better raw material stock and farming tool upgrades.
Tian Wen — weapons and weapon parts. Sell intact weapons here for the best return. Tian Wen's relationship track unlocks new weapon recipes and higher-tier weapon stock. This is the most important vendor relationship for combat-focused progression.
Apollo — gadgets and deployables (sensors, grenades, trip wires, and tools). Relationship XP opens better deployable options. Less urgent than Tian Wen or Lance early, but the Smoke Grenade and Motion Sensor are two of the strongest utility items in the mid-game and both require Apollo relationship investment.
Lance — augments and medical supplies. Lance unlocks advanced augments through relationship progression. The augments available at higher Lance tiers meaningfully change raid survivability and are worth the investment. Medical supply stock also improves — relevant if you're running any content where healing is the limiting factor.
Shani — Hatch Keys and reconnaissance tools. Shani doesn't have a traditional stock to unlock. Her relationship track improves Hatch Key availability and adds a few reconnaissance items. She's less critical to level early than the others.
Step 3 — Set Your Selling Discipline
Match material type to vendor for every sale:
- Raw ore, plants, farming supplies → Celeste
- Weapons, weapon parts, barrels, stocks → Tian Wen
- Sensors, grenades, electronics → Apollo
- Medkits, augment components → Lance
Selling to the wrong vendor gives the same credit value (roughly) but builds zero relationship XP with the correct vendor. This is the most common mistake in the first 20 hours — players dump everything on Celeste because she's first in the hub layout.
Step 4 — Prioritize Vendor Investment Order
First: Tian Wen to level 2. Unlocks the Ferro battle rifle recipe — the strongest consistent craftable weapon in the game. The recipe requires 2 rubber parts and 5 metal parts, both Common tier materials. Running the Ferro for the cost of Common materials rather than buying weapons outright saves hundreds of credits per session.
Second: Lance to level 2. Unlocks augments that affect survival mechanics — Detection Radius Reduction in particular, which synergizes with the armor noise system. The ARC Raiders armor guide covers this interaction in detail, but the short version is: Lance level 2 augments change your engagement geometry more than a weapon upgrade does.
Third: Safe Pocket expansion via Survival skill tree. Not technically a vendor relationship — this is the skill tree. But it uses the same progression resources (credits fund the vendor steps that produce the crafting materials that unlock skill tree nodes). The Safe Pocket keeps quest items and rare blueprints on death. Expand it before spending on any pure combat upgrade.
Fourth: Apollo to level 2 for the Motion Sensor and Smoke Grenade. These are the two highest-utility deployables for squad play. The Motion Sensor reveals enemy positions through walls at close range — more useful than almost any weapon upgrade in information-limited situations.
Fifth: Celeste to level 2 and Tian Wen to level 3. Celeste level 2 opens better raw material stock. Tian Wen level 3 unlocks weapon upgrade recipes you'll want for the mid-game. Shani's relationship can wait until everything else is leveled.
Step 5 — Crafting vs. Buying
The general rule: craft anything you'll use more than three times, buy anything you need once.
Craft: The Ferro battle rifle (2 rubber parts, 5 metal parts). Any augment with a recipe you have materials for. Medical supplies when you have the parts rather than the credits.
Buy: One-time situational weapons for a specific run goal. Hatch Keys from Shani (these are single-use; buying makes more sense than the recipe complexity of crafting them). Any loadout item where you're testing whether you actually want to commit to crafting it.
The Ferro is worth emphasizing. Players who buy a weapon outright at 400–600 credits per run, four times per session, are spending 1,600–2,400 credits on something that could cost 40 credits worth of Common materials with the recipe unlocked. The cost difference across 20 runs is several thousand credits — enough to fully level two vendor relationships.
Step 6 — Don't Over-Invest in Loadout Gear Early
Standard loadouts are borrowed — they cost zero credits. A Standard loadout player running a Ferro-crafted weapon is functionally competitive with anyone in the first 30 hours. The mistake is investing heavily in crafted personal loadouts before understanding which maps you actually run well.
Save personal loadout investment for maps where you know the patrol routes, the loot room locations, and the extraction timing. For the ARC Raiders extractions guide covering extraction point types and timing — knowing that before you invest a crafted loadout matters.
Tips
Tip 1 — Run Your Safe Pocket Full Every Extraction
Every raid ends one of two ways: you extract with loot, or you die without it. The Safe Pocket guarantees a minimum return regardless. Quest items go in first, always. After quest items: exotic blueprints, rare materials, and — when running crafted gear — one high-value weapon component.
A Safe Pocket that's never empty means every run has a floor. Even a failed raid produces something.
Tip 2 — Sell Damaged Weapons at Tian Wen for Components
Damaged weapons return more in component parts than in credits when sold in standard condition. At Tian Wen, choose the scrap option rather than sell for damaged weapons — the component parts go back into crafting, which is more efficient than credits for weapons you'll recreate anyway.
Intact weapons above your current equipped tier: sell for credits and relationship XP. The hierarchy is important — don't scrap weapons you haven't replaced yet.
Tip 3 — Hatch Keys Have a Time Window
Raider Hatch Keys from Shani open a silent extraction point — no alarm radius, no broadcast to other players. The window is 15 seconds. Use them when you have a full inventory and a clean line to the hatch location. Don't use them in the middle of an active engagement.
They're disabled during electromagnetic storm conditions. If the storm is active, fall back to a cargo elevator or airshaft rather than burning a Hatch Key that won't work.
Tip 4 — Don't Save Credits Indefinitely
Some players hoard credits to "afford better gear later." This is backwards. Credits sitting unspent in Speranza are not generating vendor relationship XP. Spend them on relationship-building items — even low-tier purchases with the right vendor build the track. The vendor relationship unlocks are what make future gear cheaper; the credits themselves are the payment, not the prize.
Tip 5 — Track Vendor Stock Rotations
Vendor stock in ARC Raiders updates between sessions. Items available one session may not be available the next. When you see a Rare blueprint or augment you want, buy it immediately rather than waiting — it may not be there when you come back. This is especially true of Shani's Hatch Key supply, which has a limited per-session count.
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1 — Selling everything to one vendor
It's faster to dump all loot at one vendor, but the relationship XP loss over 20 hours is substantial. Sort your post-run loot into the correct vendor category before selling. It takes 90 extra seconds per session and saves hours of regrinding later.
Mistake 2 — Buying weapons instead of crafting the Ferro
Buying a decent weapon costs 400–600 credits per run. Crafting the Ferro costs Common materials worth about 40 credits. Players who haven't unlocked the Ferro recipe are spending 10x more per run on the same function. Tian Wen level 2 is the single most valuable early unlock in the game.
Mistake 3 — Ignoring the Survival skill tree
Credits spent on gear are temporary — the gear gets used and consumed. Credits (indirectly) spent on Survival skill tree nodes, including Safe Pocket expansion, are permanent. They change every run thereafter. Players who skip the Survival tree and invest everything in one-time gear purchases stall out around the 30-hour mark when they realize their run efficiency hasn't improved despite high credit spending.
Mistake 4 — Running crafted loadouts before understanding the map
A crafted loadout disappears when you die. Dying in a map you don't know is how most early credits evaporate. Run Standard loadouts in any new map until you understand the patrol patterns and extraction geometry. The ARC Raiders maps guide has the per-map breakdown.
Mistake 5 — Using Hatch Keys on White zone runs
Hatch Keys are valuable. White zone loot doesn't justify them. Save Raider Hatch Keys for runs where you've hit Orange or Red zone containers and have a full inventory you can't afford to lose. Using a Key to skip the alarm on a low-value run is a poor credit investment.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you earn credits in ARC Raiders? Sell extracted materials to matching vendors after successful runs, complete quests, and scrap gear you don't need.
What is vendor relationship XP in ARC Raiders? A per-vendor track that unlocks better stock tiers through buying and selling with that vendor. More valuable than the credit return from any individual sale.
Should I buy gear or craft it in ARC Raiders? Craft gear you'll use repeatedly — especially the Ferro battle rifle. Buy gear for one-off situations or when you need something immediately.
What vendors are in ARC Raiders Speranza? Celeste (raw materials), Tian Wen (weapons), Apollo (gadgets), Lance (augments and medical), and Shani (Hatch Keys).
What is the Safe Pocket? A protected inventory slot that keeps contents on death. Expand it through the Survival skill tree — it's among the highest-value progression investments in the early game.
How do I get better weapons without spending heavily on credits? Unlock Tian Wen level 2 for the Ferro recipe. Craft the Ferro from Common materials. Run it consistently. Reinvest credits into vendor relationships instead of weapon purchases.
