How to Find People to Play ARC Raiders With in 2026
ARC Raiders is a PvPvE extraction shooter where you descend to a surface crawling with hostile ARC machines, scavenge for gear, and try to extract before another squad — or a machine patrol — takes it all off your body. A coordinated trio that watches each other’s angles, calls patrols, and extracts together beats a group of randoms almost every time. The problem is that random fill rarely gives you that: some runs you draw raiders who share loot, cover the extraction, and stick the revive, and some you get a teammate who loots solo, pushes a fight you didn’t need, and disconnects the moment their gear’s on the line. If you want the good version every raid, you need a real squad. Here’s how to find one in 2026.
Why a real squad beats running with randoms
In ARC Raiders, the tension comes from gear you can lose — every fight is a question of is this loot worth the risk? A coordinated squad answers that question the same way: who’s carrying the valuable haul, who plays overwatch on the extraction, who tracks the ARC patrol that’s about to wander into your fight. Random groups can stumble into good teamwork, but a trio that’s run together knows when to take a fight and when to ghost it and extract clean — and actually leaves the map with the loot instead of feeding it to a third party.
A standing squad also means you’re ready the moment a new map, season, or event drops, instead of soloing the surface and hoping the two strangers next to you don’t get you killed.
Match on what actually makes a squad click
Before you lock in teammates, get on the same page about a few things — these are what separate a clean extraction from a wipe:
- Risk tolerance. The whole game is the gamble between more loot and a safe extraction. A squad that agrees on how greedy to play — push the contested zone or quietly extract — avoids the blowups where one person fights and two people wanted to leave.
- Roles on a raid. Sort out who carries the haul, who plays overwatch, and who watches flanks and patrols — before you drop, not mid-firefight.
- Region and ping. Extraction shooters punish latency hard when a fight breaks out. Group near your region so nobody’s eating a delay the moment it matters.
- Comms. ARC Raiders lives on callouts — enemy squad spotted, patrol incoming, who’s reviving, when to break contact and run for extraction. Agree on running voice up front, because quiet squads get picked apart.
- Schedule and goals. A crew grinding the same progression on the same nights stays a crew. Line up whether you’re here for chill scavenging or high-stakes contested runs.
Where to look in 2026
In-game fill, official Discords, and subreddits are the usual spots, but they all share the same gap: there’s no good way to find recurring teammates who match your playstyle, your risk tolerance, and your schedule. An “LFG, need a third for raids” post is buried in minutes and you’re back to random fill next session.
That’s the gap PaxJax fills. Instead of re-rolling strangers every night, you can:
- Filter players by game and region to find people actually playing ARC Raiders near you.
- Jump into ARC Raiders game chat to link up with raiders who are online and looking right now.
- Send an Invite to Play directly, so forming up is one tap.
- Save a standing group with a Looking-for-Team profile, so your trio reassembles fast for the next descent instead of starting from scratch.
Turn one good raid into a recurring squad
The trick to never dropping with bad fill again is simple: when a raid does go great, don’t let those people vanish. Add them, note who made the clutch revive or pulled the squad out before a patrol wiped you, and pull the same crew back together next session. A few good runs with the same two and you’ve got a trio that calls patrols, covers extraction, and leaves the map with full bags — because they’re playing it together.
A couple of green flags worth keeping: raiders who share the loot and revive you instead of grabbing your bag, who call a patrol or an enemy squad instead of staying silent, and who break contact and extract with the team instead of forcing a fight that loses everyone’s gear. Aim helps, but teammates who play with the squad are the ones worth saving.
ARC Raiders is a completely different game with a squad that knows what it’s doing. Agree on the risk, keep the good raiders you find, and put your group somewhere built for it — then get back to the surface and extract with the loot.
Ready to find your squad? Find ARC Raiders players & squads on PaxJax →