MORGAN PARK, STAFF WRITER
Last week: Beat Halo: CE, Halo 2, and almost Halo 3. November is Halo month.
OK, I’ll admit it: Arc Raiders can get a little boring when you’re a pacifist. Casually waving hello to solo raiders as they loot the locker you were hoping to have to yourself is not as novel or fun the hundredth time it happens, especially after you’ve gotten so good enough at eluding Arc patrols that even they’re only rarely a threat. Last week, I went on three raids in a row without firing a shot.
To treat my boredom without blackening my soul, I decided to try something else: Inspired by a Reddit clip of a self-proclaimed “rescue raider,” I began deploying on solo raids with a full stack of defibrillators. The goal? Run toward downed raider flares, find the patient, and revive them.
Park Ambulance Dispatch (PAD) is here to help.
The first hurdle to becoming an effective Arc Raiders paramedic was cardio. I’d run and run and run straight toward every flare, but most players I responded to had died by the time I got there. Not too surprising: Solo players tend to give up as soon as they’re downed, assuming that even if a friendly face passes by, they won’t be holding a defib that’s only good for reviving others. After that first night, I’d saved a whopping two people.
Good, but not good enough. So I switched up the gameplan:
- Hang around the center of the map so I’m as close as possible to flares
- Play mostly on Buried City and Stella Montis, the two smallest maps
- Invest in the Mobility skill tree to improve my stamina, climb speed, and therefore my response time
- Announce myself as a friendly medic as soon as the patient is within earshot
Above: The only time I’ve gotten the coveted “My hero!” chant from a grateful patient.
I raced across the rooftops, landed risky jumps, and deployed ziplines to fly across maps like Spider-Man with a backpack full of drugs. That’s when I started finding some real success. I’d revive at least one raider per run, sometimes two or three, and sometimes I’d have to save the same person twice.
At the risk of sounding like I’m fishing for good samaritan praise, what I’m actually saying is that this is way more thrilling than peacefully looting the Rust Belt or turning every match into a warzone. Honestly, I’ve never had as much fun in Arc Raiders. The pressure of reaching people in time to save them completely recontextualized the game. Routes I’d taken hundreds of times became race courses, and the Arc were a scarier presence because I didn’t have time to just hide in a bush until they passed. I could still complete quests and loot stuff for my base upgrades, but I also had a main quest that superseded everything.
What I didn’t expect were all the gifts. Most patients just said thank you, often in a confused “Is he really just gonna let me go?” sorta way, but occasionally they’d just start dropping valuables. I’m sitting on a pile of rare parts from Arc I’ve never even fought—Bastion Cores, Leaper Pulse Units, Bombardier Cells—plus loads of random trinkets.
Most of which I plan to sell because, um, it turns out being a paramedic is an expensive hobby.
Defibrillators are not a standard recipe of the medicine bench, and I’ve yet to find the blueprint to craft them myself, so I’ve just been buying loads of them from the Clinic at 3,000 coins a pop. In fact, I just ran the numbers for the first time and, at 9,000 coins for a full stack of three, I’ve been going through approximately 50k worth of defibs per night. That’s by way of sometimes using all defibs in one run, other times having leftovers, and sometimes getting murdered myself.
Yea so, I’ve danced around it so far, but there are also plenty of reasons why the paramedic playstyle is a terrible idea. For one, I’m dying way more than I used to, and you can probably imagine how. A good half of raider flares I’ve responded to were folks downed by another player. I’ve lost full packs of medical supplies because I sprinted straight at a flare yelling “I’m a medic, don’t give up!” and immediately got shot in the face by my patient’s killer.
Eventually, this too called for an updated plan:
- Get good at detecting danger
- Investigate crime scenes
- Fight, if necessary
- Prioritize the revive
This really comes down to mitigating risk, but accepting a regular state of peril. The one big tip I can give here is to not just take note of distant gunshots, but listen to them. Before the flare popped, what did I hear? Were there rockets, bombs, or machineguns typical of Arc, or did it sound like two Ferros trading shots from opposite rooftops? I’d take my best guess and let that calibrate how much caution I should use, which has worked well enough so far.
Now I mosey up to some flares quietly, assessing the crime scene before I initiate voice chat. If I’m quick enough, I can catch the killer before they finish the job. If I’m too late, well, I can at least dispense justice with some PvP that won’t weigh on my conscience.
The most interesting cases unfold when I arrive late enough that I can’t quite tell what just happened: One player is dead, another is looting them, but were they the aggressor? The only way to find out without risking my hide, I decided, is to light ’em up until they’re down and then question them. If I believe their story, they get a defib. If my lie detector goes off, their raid is over.
I know that I’ve probably revived a few murders by accident along the way, but letting some folks live eases the conscience and produces its own unique social interactions. Just the other day, I downed a guy who’d just killed someone in the Buried City hospital. I asked if he killed the guy upstairs, he insisted it was self defense. I asked why he didn’t respond to my “Don’t shoot” calls, he said he didn’t hear me. He had basic guns, the default outfit, and could’ve just been a brand new player, so I decided to take the chance and used my last defib.
He seemed legitimately shocked, thanked me a bunch, and slowly backed away. Later that night, I got a friend request. Perhaps it’s time for the Park Ambulance Dispatch to grow?