ARC Raiders leans hard into looting, then makes you live with the consequences. Every toaster, rusted gear, and extra assault rifle you pull out of Topside ends up fighting for space in a finite stash back in Speranza. Hit the cap, and the game quietly stops being about extraction and starts being about cleaning a closet.
ARC Raiders stash size and upgrade path
Your stash in Speranza starts small and grows through coin upgrades. The structure is fixed:
| Stash level | Total slots | Upgrade cost (coins) | Cumulative cost (coins) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 64 | – | – |
| 2 | 88 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| 3 | 112 | 10,000 | 15,000 |
| 4 | 136 | 15,000 | 30,000 |
| 5 | 160 | 25,000 | 55,000 |
| 6 | 184 | 40,000 | 95,000 |
| 7 | 208 | 60,000 | 155,000 |
| 8 | 232 | 90,000 | 245,000 |
| 9 | 256 | 130,000 | 375,000 |
| 10 (max) | 280 | 200,000 | 575,000 |
The hard cap in the launch version is 280 stash slots. Once you reach level 10, the “Expand” option simply disappears; there is no higher tier to buy.
Upgrades happen inside Speranza, in the Stash screen:
- Open your inventory at the base.
- Switch to the Stash tab.
- Use the small Expand button near the top of the stash grid.
- Confirm the coin spent to move to the next level.
Each upgrade adds 24 slots, but the costs spike dramatically toward the end. The last jump, from 256 to 280, costs 200,000 coins on its own. Across all ten levels, you sink 575,000 coins into the stash space.
Prestige and temporary stash boosts
Beyond the hard 280-slot cap, Expeditions (the prestige system) can grant extra stash space tied to a given Expedition cycle. You contribute materials to a long-running Expedition Project; finishing it within a specific departure window can increase your stash capacity for the next cycle.
The trade-off is blunt:
- Finalizing a Project in the Expedition window wipes your character: level, skill points, inventory, stash, and resources reset.
- The stash bonus is attached to that next Expedition run and disappears when the window ends.
- If you’re close to the normal cap when the temporary bonus expires, you can log in “over cap” and be forced to sell or dismantle items until you’re back under 280.
Expeditions are meant as long-term account shaping rather than a permanent fix for hoarders. If your only goal is more room for gear, it’s a harsh way to get a marginal, temporary increase.
Backpack capacity during raids
Stash size governs how much you can own. Backpack size governs how much you can pull out of a single run. Those are separate systems.
Backpack capacity is largely driven by Looting Augments slotted into your character:
| Augment | Extra backpack slots | Other effects | How to get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Looting MK. 1 | +8 | +1 Safe Pocket | Craftable early at the Workbench; purchasable from Lance for 1,920 coins |
| Looting MK. 2 | +12 | +3 Augmented Trinket slots, +2 Safe Pockets | Craftable after finding the MK. 2 blueprint; purchasable from Lance for 6,000 coins |
With these equipped, you dramatically raise the number of items you can extract per raid, but you don’t touch the 280-slot stash ceiling. Any extra loot still has to fit back in Speranza when you return.
How stash limits shape ARC Raiders’ economy
The numbers are tight by design. Loot in ARC Raiders is dense: guns and shields each take a single slot, but crafting materials often stack in tiny quantities, and some quest- or upgrade-critical items barely stack at all. At 280 slots, running a deep collection of weapons, ammo, and armor alongside a broad library of materials is impossible. You’re forced to specialize.
That tension underpins most of the game’s progression:
- Coins from selling “excess” loot are needed for stash upgrades, workbench levels, and gear purchases.
- Workshop upgrades and Expedition Projects demand rare materials that compete for the same slots as meta loadouts.
- Scrappy, your rooster courier, dumps freebies into your stash after each raid, turning passive income into real storage pressure.
On paper, 280 looks generous compared with a simple backpack. In practice, it’s smaller than it sounds once you’re juggling duplicates, consumables, and upgrade fodder. That friction is what pushes players away from hoarding and toward actually fielding their best gear.
Practical stash management once you hit 280 slots
With no way to buy past 280, the only real tools left are triage, compression, and better habits.
Use the merge stacks button
Back in Speranza, the inventory UI includes a small control that automatically consolidates fragmented stacks across your stash. It’s easy to miss, and it quietly solves a surprisingly large problem.
Hit the merge command, and the game scans for:
- Ammo stacks that could be combined (for example, multiple partial stacks of Light Ammo).
- Bandages, medkits, and similar consumables you’ve half-used and re-stashed.
- Crafting materials that got split between trips.
This doesn’t change stack caps; it just removes waste. If you routinely return, restock, and dump leftovers, the space you claw back can be the difference between salvaging a new gun and leaving it on the ground.
Refine raw materials into higher-tier components
The Workshop’s refinery is effectively a compression tool. Many base materials can be transformed into advanced components that stack in smaller numbers and are directly useful for endgame crafting and repairs.
A typical pattern looks like this:
- Arc Alloy → Arc Circuitry
Six Arc Alloy convert into one Arc Circuitry, and each Arc Circuitry stack can hold several units. That converts multiple stacks of a common drop into a couple of stacks of a rarer, more versatile resource used in power rods and shield repairs. - Crude Explosives + Oil → Explosive Compounds
Turning low-tier explosive inputs into compounds cuts down the number of different stacks and feeds straight into grenade and mine crafting. - Durable Cloth, Electrical Components, and other greens → mod and gear parts
Consolidating these early-tier items lets you keep the equivalent value in fewer slots.
Refining everything, all the time, is a mistake; basic scrap and low-tier items still appear in a lot of recipes and bench upgrades. The point is to target obvious excesses—like dozens of stacks of Arc Alloy—rather than hoarding all of it in its least dense form.
Lean on Expeditions and Projects for storage relief
One system quietly doubles as a safety valve: Expedition Projects. These long-term goals ask for massive quantities of materials and accept contributions directly from your stash.
The impact is twofold:
- Committing items to a Project removes them from your stash immediately, freeing slots.
- You’re pouring resources into permanent or long-cycle account bonuses instead of sitting on them “for later.”
Early Projects are heavy on metals and basic parts; higher tiers start demanding green and blue materials, upgrade components, and rare drops like Sentinel Firing Cores. Handing those over is painful, but they represent some of the most space-hungry items in the game.
Stop hoarding gear you never field
The most brutal but effective fix is philosophical: stop treating extracted loot as a museum collection.
- Limit weapon duplicates. Outside of genuinely rare finds or highly tuned builds, two copies of a gun per archetype is usually enough—one in your current kit, one as backup. Ten Bobcats or fifteen Venators eat slots you need for materials.
- Trim consumable overstock. Shield Rechargers, grenades, and ammo packs are easy to craft or buy. Carry what you use and keep a small buffer; turn the rest into coins.
- Use high-tier gear instead of saving it forever. A legendary rifle sitting in your stash for days because you’re “waiting for the right raid” is dead weight. The game is built around the idea that you will sometimes lose good items.
Players who embrace this tend to hit the cap later and feel less punished when they do. Those who insist on full backup kits for every possible mood inevitably spend half their session arguing with the stash UI.
Know which “junk” is secretly important
Part of what makes the stash cap sting is how opaque item roles can be. Many things are labeled as recyclable, then turn out to be required for bench upgrades, Scrappy, or later Projects.
A few broad trends make stash decisions a little safer:
- Workshop and bench upgrades lean on things like toasters, motors, industrial batteries, rusted gears, cracked bioscanners, and other “household” salvage. If you haven’t fully leveled your workstations, keeping at least a few of each of these is wise.
- Medical upgrades are notorious for needing rare items such as rusted shut medical kits and laboratory reagents that don’t drop often. Treat the first copies as off-limits until your Medical Lab is at the tier you want.
- Scrappy training consumes fruit (lemons, apricots, olives), cat beds, pillows, and similar oddities. Once Scrappy is maxed, you can start being more aggressive about selling or turning those items into coins.
- Sentinel Firing Cores come from specific turret-like Arc enemies and are required for some high-end crafting and Projects. They stack, but you won’t see many; give them priority over another generic green SMG.
The pattern: materials that are slow to replace or clearly tied to progression systems deserve stash real estate. Generic weapons and common scrap do not.
The stash cap in ARC Raiders is not a technical limitation; it’s a design line the game keeps pushing you up against. At 280 slots, you can’t own every variant of every gun, keep every quest trinket, and sit on thousands of materials “just in case.” You either sell, recycle, refine, or spend them—on upgrades, on Projects, or on the next raid that goes bad.
Lean into that. Max the stash once, then treat 280 not as a collection goal but as a budget you constantly re-allocate. The game feels different when you stop fighting the ceiling and start deciding what actually deserves to live under it.
