Extraction shooter Arc Raiders sells you the fantasy of being either a lone wanderer or part of a ragtag crew, rummaging through the wreckage of a fallen civilization to rebuild something better. Along the way, you can expect brutal gunfights with deadly machines and traitorous fellow raiders. It makes for a great adrenaline rush as you exchange fire with man and machine.
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But recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with a player who’s found a different role to play in Arc Raiders’ post-apocalyptic Italy: that of a fruit salesman.
Reddit user GrumbleGrits recently shared a video of this experience, putting down firearms in exchange for fruit and other harmless goods. Check it out here:
This moment speaks to what I love about the extraction shooter genre and how it breaks open the expected routine of what we do in these kinds of games. The simple premise of getting in, grabbing loot, and getting out leaves a wide open space in between for unexpected emergent outcomes and creative playstyles, and that includes subversive ways of interacting with others. In a game where you can just as easily not shoot other players as you can otherwise murder them, why not consider peace? Why not find a new way to ascend the game’s meta?
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That’s what GrumbleGrits and others have done. We recently chatted a bit over DM on Reddit about his experience as a post-apocalyptic fruit farmer setting up shop in an abandoned newsstand.
Though he was quick to point out that there are others in Arc Raiders setting up trade shops (and many people coordinate on Reddit and elsewhere to arrange a trade for various hide-to-find pieces of loot) and insisted that he doesn’t want to receive any special credit for his efforts, setting up a fruit stand in the game certainly requires work.
“I always try to have different stock each time,” he told me. “Sometimes I bring as many harvestable plants as I can, typically focusing on the materials needed to train Scrappy.” He’ll even trade non-edible goods as well, such as the many forms of loot that exist for no other reason than to sell to the in-game NPCs.
But fruits and plants, which are needed to level up the player’s pet rooster that dispenses materials after every match, are important and, critically, often hard to come by. Arc Raiders’ typically unexpected and excessive violence can make holding on to these materials all the way to extraction hard enough as it is. That violence is something GrumbleGrits has to contend with when trading his goods.
“It’s not all sunshine and rainbows,” he said, “getting to the chosen location for my storefront, clearing out Arc, and surviving any aggressive raiders along the way can be really difficult and occasionally results in tragedy. Once I reach the spot and get situated, I usually don’t have much issue with being attacked by other raiders.”
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It’s a very different kind of fantasy than many are used to when it comes to Arc Raiders: venturing out not to just find what you can and keep it for yourself, but doing so with the intention to trade it with others, and putting in the work to establish a safe trading zone.
It’s not the only way GrumbleGrits plays, of course. “Between working a real-world job and engaging with all the various other systems of Arc Raiders, and collecting items to trade away in the first place, it can be difficult to find time to goof off and set up these little shops,” he said. While trading fruit makes for a unique way to interact with others and use the game’s loot system, GrumbleGrits isn’t throwing down his weapons permanently any time soon. Just recently, he shared some footage of his first Queen kill. But who knows, maybe the loot he’ll earn from this battle might show up on a store shelf soon.
Of course, the experience is not without its theatrics. “I once had a couple of guys duel to the death with their melee weapons for a stack of mushrooms,” he said, recounting one of the more unique situations. “It was a violent and quick battle,” he said, “a testament to how sought-after mushrooms can be. They’re difficult to find if you don’t know where to look.”
Thankfully, GrumbleGrits and other players not only know where to look for hard-to-find loot, but they’re also willing to share the wealth.
