Arc Raider's most dangerous place isn't what you think

Arc Raiders is not an easy game. Even if you go from above equipped in your best gear, you can easily fall victim to a jumper jumping on you out of nowhere or a “rat” waiting at the exit point to loot your corpse. It takes real skill to survive in the Rust Belt, especially since it's not just Arcs and other raiders that can kill you.

Multiplayer shooters have hot zones where the fighting and deaths usually take place. Narrow lanes or loot-heavy zones are the usual culprits, and the same goes for Arc Raiders as well. However, design lead Virgil Watkins has revealed that many raiders have died in a certain location, and it's not because they were killed by an enemy.

Watch out for the spaceport launch tower

Two raiders in a standoff with an Arc Queen in the background in Arc Raiders.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Watkins revealed that the developers have a way to see where the most deaths have taken place in the game. When asked about collecting data, he said a heat map on the back gives developers an idea of where most of the action is taking place. However, it's not where you'd think.

“The amount of people falling from the launch tower in the Spaceport,” Watkins said. “You can see the ring of spots around it with all these unfortunate people, and those who get knocked off the zip lines one way or another as they go up and down.” You may have seen some of these clips of players falling to their deaths in hilarious ways.

a highly detailed silhouette of a masked arc raider character against an orange background.

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The team is “working hard on limitations and workarounds to fix the issue.”

Speaking of data, Watkins said that analyzing the data requires a little more care, because otherwise it would just be a sea of red on the heat map. “You have to be a little more specific. But it definitely turns up some interesting spots where you don't necessarily anticipate battles happening, but then you realize it's a result of this activity playing out there, and the spawn points tend to collapse at this moment, and that's why it turns into a hot spot.”

He added that there are specific control zones where the heat map reveals a higher concentration of deaths. These are mostly ambush zones, where players lie in wait for some poor, unaware raider to appear.