As with all extraction shooters, your main goal in Arc Raiders is to find better and better equipment…which you'll eventually lose. That's just the circle of life topside, and when that happens, you're back to basics using humble guns like the Rattler and Kettle, which don't hit particularly hard. But what if I told you it doesn't have to be that way? That, for a small price, you could upgrade guns instead of simply relying on pure hope, luck, and a good bit of scavenging for higher rarity alternatives?
Well, you can. Only after spending hours with Arc Raiders did I figure out that you can actually upgrade every single weapon you find or craft to a higher tier, finally explaining why guns have a Roman numeral next to their name.
That terrible common Rattler I can become a slightly less terrible common Rattler II or even higher if you've got the necessary resources. I'll say, the Rattler, a go-to basic gun because it's cheap as chips, becomes much more usable when it's got a larger magazine, and that's exactly what upgrading this gun will do.
While you won't have access to this right away, since you need to build the Gunsmith 1 workshop station, which requires 20 Metal Parts and 30 Rubber Parts, it's pretty easy to get early on. I recommend you chase this upgrade ASAP so you can give your guns some extra oomph, especially as you're less likely to have access to any high-rarity blue or purple weapons at this point, too.
Once you've built the Gunsmith and you've got a weapon you want to upgrade back at base, simply select it in your inventory (right click on PC) and pick 'upgrade' or go to the workshop and open the gunsmith menu.
The first few upgrades are pretty cheap for most guns and aren't so reliant on luck like scrounging for attachments can be, though that's another handy way to improve your guns. Upgrades typically require a bundle of Mechanical Components (scaling with the weapon tier/rarity), which you can find in Mechanical areas like Water Treatment Control or Primary Facility on the Dam Battlegrounds map. You can also craft them using Metal Parts and Rubber Parts.
Selfish powerplays aside, the more we all upgrade our weapons, the happier our killers will be when they take us down and loot us for scraps. It's just passing the positivity, as the saying goes. I'm sure it'll eventually circle back around, right?
