Arc Raiders’ bloodiest battles happen over fruit

Arc Raiders has built a well-deserved reputation for a friendlier, more cooperative community, unlike other extraction shooters. However, the loudest, messiest gunfights don’t happen in high-tier loot zones; they occur in gardens, orchards, and dank areas over fruit.

It’s a strange spectacle in a game where players will politely wave each other through metro tunnels but shoot on sight the moment someone hovers next to a tree. The trees are fertilised with blood, and it’s absolutely worth it when you find out why.

Lemons, apricots, olives, and mushrooms are all essential to upgrade Scrappy. Scrappy is your loyal rooster who scavenges basic materials for you while you’re topside. So even though you were sent home early, there’s always something waiting for you.

Upgrading the hungry chicken requires a basketful of these fruits, and unfortunately, there are only a few predictable POIs where they grow. What’s worse is that these areas aren’t overflowing with the items, taking you several extractions to have enough to boost Scrappy to the next tier. Playing Arc Raiders multiplayer with a full squad will take even longer.

Scrappy is the most important upgrade to your home base that you commit to early on. Because of that, every raider is going to funnel into these outskirts. Since there aren’t enough fruits to go around, there’s definitely enough bullets and grenades for one raider to take it all back.

Marano Park is located dead centre in the Buried City map. The park has a great spawn rate, allowing players to gather enough lemons and apricots to upgrade Scrappy in two or three extractions.

However, this place is a notorious graveyard for several reasons. For one thing, it’s overlooked by hot zone buildings in all directions. There’s the library to the north, the research building to the east, and the town hall to the south, each with multiple floors and vantage points.

The second is that there’s a guaranteed spawn for a Bombadier or Bastion right in the middle of the park, accompanied by flying arcs that are constantly patrolling the area. Searching for lemon trees means that you’ll have to deal with unfavourable crossfire from ARCs and envious raiders.

Lastly, the park also contains two possible metro entrances used to extract from the map. Even when you think the lemons are safe, you’ll have to contend with possible campers and other raiders rushing to extract.

The second PvP hotspot is in Olive Grove in the southern portion of Blue Gate. This unassuming POI is far away from high loot zones and contains fewer ARC threats compared to the rest of the map. Yet, this only makes it more dangerous, as it serves as the only reliable area to gather olives to upgrade Scrappy.

This relatively peaceful area becomes a paradise for farming distracted players. Raiders can line up pot shots and easily follow through because of the wide sightlines with little to no cover. 

And once the first shot rings out, it snowballs fast. Third parties roll in from every direction and turn the distress call into a cascade of fireworks. In Arc Raiders, no one is leaving the grove alive.

Yes, for every type of player in Arc Raiders, upgrading all the way is the best investment you can make for long-term progression. Scrappy is essentially a background worker for your raider: while you’re topside, he trickles in the basic materials that quietly power everything else you craft. 

These basic materials are needed in everything from crafting ammo and consumables to refining into more complex parts for gun upgrades and higher-tier items. That passive income doesn’t feel flashy in the moment, but over a handful of sessions, it translates into fewer chore runs for the foundational materials. 

That means less time scavenging and recycling junk, more time finding rare loot, and fewer material bottlenecks to get you rolling. Additionally, Scrappy also hoards Assorted Seeds, which is the currency you’ll use to trade with Celeste for valuable crafting materials.

If you play regularly and want steady crafting momentum without being held hostage by basic mats, maxing Scrappy is a smart long-term investment. If you’re more casual or sprinting for more PvP power right now, taking the time to fully upgrade Scrappy is still worth it since you’ll always have materials for better guns and equipment.

Fully upgrading Scrappy isn’t complicated, but it does require commitment, multiple extractions, and preparedness to go up against other raiders if they decide to shoot first and ask questions later. It’s best to know beforehand where to find these materials so you can start target farming these items to spoil your chicken.

The Dog Collar, Cat Bed, and Very Comfortable Pillows are all found in locations tagged as residential areas. They don’t have set spawns, and you’ll have to rummage through apartments and houses until you find one. For these runs, it’s best to enter with a Custom loadout and not the free one, since you’ll need your safe pocket to guarantee the item.

In the first map, Dam Battlegrounds, you can try your luck searching through Ruby Residence and Pale Apartments in the northwest corner of the map. As a bonus, the forest to the south is rich in mushrooms, and the cacti to the right have Prickly Pears.

Once you’re comfortable moving into riskier areas, the long cluster of houses from Grandioso Apartments to Santa Maria houses will surely have enough Cat Beds and Comfortable Pillows for your whole squad. Be extra careful when making noise in these areas, as it’s easy to sneak up on unsuspecting raiders using the interconnected rooftops.

At Blue Gate, head over to the northern village for a wide spread of houses, then check out Raider’s Refuge next to it. Or, you can multitask and participate in the bloodbath in Olive Grove, before dipping to the south in Ruined Homestead, followed by the Abandoned Housing Project in the East.

If you’re averse to PvP and would rather gather all these fruits more efficiently, wait for the Lush Bloom event. It’s one of the dynamic events in Arc Raiders, which makes all fruits and plants thrive because of the weather.

Once you’ve loaded into any map with this event, run around the outskirts and search for unmarked raider camps. Search thoroughly, and you’ll find baskets filled with a healthy stack of the different plants and fruits in Arc Raiders. This event is especially useful for gathering mushrooms, which are a pain to find normally. 

Arc Raiders’ greatest achievement as a video game is its emergent interaction with the community, and how every interaction plays out differently. By making these fruits rare, players are now forced to welcome risk for the sake of progression.

Fully upgrading Scrappy is more than worth the trouble, not just for the materials he brings home but for the stories created along the way. With even a simple fruit run devolving into a last stand, Arc Raiders turns the simple act of gathering resources into unscripted chaos.