ARC Raiders field logs

Came back from Buried City today. Extracted with a full pack. Good loot. The kind of run others would celebrate.

I can't stop thinking about the silence.

There was a raider—didn't know their name—pinned under rubble near the old subway entrance. Still alive. Calling for help. The ARC patrol was circling. Timer was running out.

I had a choice. Stay and help, probably die. Or run.

I ran.

Made extraction with 43 seconds left. Good haul. Traded it all to Tian Wen for parts. Upgraded my gear. Professional. Efficient.

But I can still hear them calling. In the dark. Under the stone.

I should feel nothing. Survival is survival. But I feel everything. And I hate that I do.

Another day. Another run. Another reminder that I'm still breathing when so many aren't.

The Dam was quiet today. Too quiet. Found a cache near the old control room. Red arrows. Ticking sound. You know the drill.

My hands were shaking when I opened it.

Not from fear. From the thought that this—this rusted metal box rigged to explode—might be the last thing someone left behind. A raider who set this up, hoping someone would find it. Hoping their work meant something.

I got the loot. Made extraction. Survival.

But I keep thinking about all the caches I've opened. All the raiders who aren't here anymore. All the things they touched, now just... items in my pack.

I'm supposed to be grateful I'm alive. And I am.

But gratitude feels heavy when you carry the weight of everyone who didn't make it.

There was a wall in the underground today. Scratched into it, dozens of names. Raider tags. Some I recognized from shared runs. Others were just letters and numbers—callsigns of people I never met.

Someone had added a new one overnight. Fresh scratches in the concrete. Still dusty.

I stood there for a while, reading every single one.

We don't talk about the ones who stop showing up. There's no announcement, no memorial. One day they're running alongside you, covering your flank, splitting loot. The next day their callsign is cold and their gear is sitting in a cache that nobody claims.

I thought about adding my own name to the wall. Not because I'm gone, but because I wanted proof that I was here. That someone would look at those letters and know—at least for a moment—that I existed in this place.

I didn't write it. I don't know why. Maybe I'm afraid that once my name is on that wall, it becomes a memorial instead of a statement.

The Outskirts were empty after that. Just wind and silence and the distant hum of ARC patrols scanning the horizon. I made extraction with almost nothing in my pack. It didn't matter. The run wasn't about loot today.

Every raider knows the sound. The heavy metallic groan of a door that hasn't been opened in years. That moment of tension where you don't know if what's behind it is salvation or the end of your run.

Industrial Zone is full of them. Warehouses stacked three levels deep, each floor connected by rusted staircases and service corridors that echo with every step you take. The kind of place where sound travels faster than you do.

I opened seven doors today. Each one felt like a gamble.

Behind door three, I found a supply room untouched since before the fall. Medical supplies, energy cells, two weapon modifications I'd been searching for. The kind of haul that makes a raider's week.

Behind door five, I found something else entirely. A makeshift living space. Blankets arranged on the floor. Empty containers stacked neatly in a corner. A child's drawing taped to the wall—stick figures under a sun, standing on green grass. The kind of image that doesn't exist topside anymore.

I took nothing from that room. I closed the door carefully, the way you close a door when you're trying not to wake someone.

Nobody was there. But it felt wrong to disturb it. Like the memory of whoever lived there deserved to stay intact.

Made extraction with a full pack from the supply room. Good run by any measurable standard. But I keep thinking about door five. About who put that drawing there. About whether they made it somewhere safe.

Survival is about resources. But humanity is about knowing when to leave things alone.

First run topside. Everything they told us in the underground was wrong.

They said it would be quiet. It wasn't. The air itself hums up there—a constant low-frequency vibration that gets inside your chest and stays. The ARC machines move in patterns that look random but aren't. They're searching. Always searching.

I wasn't ready. Nobody is ready.

The starting zone is supposed to be safe. Relatively. A staging area where new raiders learn the basics before pushing deeper into contested territory. But the word "safe" means something different when you're topside. It means "not actively being hunted." It doesn't mean "not in danger."

I found my first cache within twenty minutes. Basic supplies—nothing valuable by veteran standards. But for me, holding those items felt like proof of concept. Proof that this life could work. That going topside, risking everything, and coming back with something was actually possible.

Made extraction without incident. Clean run. No contact with hostiles. The veterans would call it boring. I call it the most terrifying experience of my life.

I sat in the underground for an hour after. Just breathing. Feeling my heartbeat slow down from something that wasn't quite panic but wasn't quite calm either.

This is what I signed up for. Documenting what it's like to be new here. To be afraid. To keep going anyway. Not because I'm brave—I'm not. Because standing still underground feels worse than moving forward topside.

Day one of many. The logs start here.