Complete Beginner's Guide

This guide is for completely new players. If you're a beginner and finished the tutorial it can still be pretty confusing and overwhelming at first. It can take 5-10 hours to have a basic understanding, and even after 70+ hours you’ll still be finding new things to learn.

Basic Summary

The basic gameplay loop in Arena Breakout is that you take some gear into the match, kill enemies and bots, find loot around the map, then try to leave the map before time runs out. You get to keep the items you found, use them later or sell them for money, then go in and do it all over again. And if you die, you lose all of your items.

Realism and Mechanics

Arena Breakout is very realistic, so you will need to manage things like weight, hunger, thirst, stamina, and health. If you have too much weight in your backpack, your character will run out of stamina too quickly, or if you’re extremely overweight he can only slowly walk. If he is hungry, you will get tired faster while sprinting. It can sound overwhelming at first, but if you remember it’s just like in the real world it makes more sense. If you think of your character just like a real person it becomes much easier to understand.

The realism also applies to gun mechanics. In other games you just have a bunch of ammo and reloading is simple and easy. But in Arena Breakout, you have to bring a certain amount of mags with you, and if you reload the empty mag goes back into your rig or backpack, and later on you will need to manually refill that mag with bullets. If that mag only had 6 bullets left in it, and swap it back into your gun, it will still only have 6 bullets so be careful! And this takes a little bit of time, just like in real life! Also, if you have no space in your bag or rig, you will drop the mag on the ground.

In other games I would shoot a few bullets and always reload. I would really recommend NOT doing that in Arena Breakout because you will not want a bunch of mags at half ammo if you get into a big fight. Always use the Check Mag button to get a sense of how many bullets are left in your mag.

Rigs vs Backpacks

Your character can store items in their rig or backpack, and there is a key difference between both of them. Backpacks typically have more storage than a rig, however items in your rig can be used quickly when playing. You can throw a frag if it is in your rig, but not if it’s in your backpack., just like in real life. If you want to reload but the mag is in your backpack, you will need to open your bag first.

Tips for the UI

Most of the actions you do in your inventory have a button in the bottom left to confirm what you are doing. If you want to swap a mag, put bullets into a mag, put a scope on a gun, swap weapons, etc you must confirm it by pressing the bottom left action.

Also something I wish I knew sooner, was that simply  holding down an item can inspect it much faster. There are hundreds of different items and attachments which you will constantly be checking the prices for when looting. Using this trick makes the looting process so much faster.

Looting

Besides combat, the most important part of Arena Breakout is looting. There are many containers around the maps from gym bags, to jackets, drawers, and even safes. Items all have their own values and weight. Purple items are decent, gold are even more valuable, and the orange/red items are the most expensive in the game. Searching containers can take several seconds, and depending on the loot inside could even take over 20 seconds. Make sure you are safe before looting because searching a container takes up your entire screen. It is not as easy to escape enemy shots when you are deep inside a gym bag searching for items. Pro tip: after searching a container you have about 1 second to run and reposition yourself before the menu pops up. You can use this as an opportunity to get around a corner or hide somewhere safer while you perform the search.

Covert Ops

There are two core ways to play Arena Breakout, and everything we have explained so far was about Tactical Ops. Tactical Ops is the regular gameplay where you take your main character into a match with your selected gear and try to extract. The other mode is called Covert Ops. In Covert Ops you actually play as a scav or “bot” and you are given a free low level loadout. You will load into a match 10-15 minutes after all of the real players enter, and you can find scraps of loot from bodies or buildings. While you are playing as a bot the actual bots in the match won’t shoot you because they think you are one of them! If you attack a bot though, then they will attack you back so don’t blow your cover. However, there could be other players doing covert ops as imposter bots so always watch your back. This mode is a fun way to warm up, practice, or try to get some gear if you are broke. After every Covert Ops run there is a 15 minute cooldown before you can enter again. However, once per day you can share the game to get a free refresh. Pro tip, you just have to simply tap share to get the refresh; you don’t have to actually share the game.

Loadouts and Healing Items

This section explains your character’s physical health, and your loadout because they are both closely linked. Knowing  what kind of negative things can happen to your character will help you understand what meds you need and why. 

Overall, there are infinite combinations of gear to create, and you can do almost anything you want to fit your budget and playstyle. However, there are some basic things you should always bring with you. A helmet, vest, rig, backpack, and headset are the 5 key gear categories. Headsets are somewhat optional, however they help enhance the audio which is a huge part of Arena Breakout.

For weapons, Arena Breakout has a great variety of Assault Rifles, shotguns, DMRs, Bolt Action sniper rifles, pistols, and more.

Most of that gear is simple and obvious, but the more confusing part of your loadout is what medicine and utility to bring. Your character can suffer not only damage, but broken limbs and bleeding. Your limbs will gradually turn orange and red as they get more damaged. This is treated with medkits. If your limbs are bleeding, they will continually lose health until you use a bandage to stop the bleeding. Some of the more advanced medkits will restore your health and treat bleeding at the same time. If a limb is black it is broken. This requires a surgical kit to fix. The numbers under each medkit and surgery kit indicate how much they can be used before they are gone. For example, a MilKit treats 120 health before depleting, and a Standard Surgery Kit can repair 4 broken limbs before depleting.

If you have a broken leg your character’s movement is significantly reduced and he can only limp around. Use painkillers to be able to move more quickly with broken limbs. More expensive painkillers can be used more times before depleting. It can be a good idea to use painkillers first before pushing enemies or a building. This guarantees if you get injured you’ll be able to still quickly move to cover. Enemies like to shoot your legs to stop you from moving, therefore making you easier to kill.

HUGE PRO TIP WARNING: Check your meds before going into each raid. Sometimes the game will give you used meds from your stash that have low durability instead of fresh ones. If you leave a raid with a surgical kit that only has ¼ remaining uses, then select a surgery kit for your next raid, it might give you that kit. You don’t want to be wounded in a fight and realize you brought a bunch of bad meds with you. It’s best to usually sell your used meds and buy fresh ones for each raid.

Additional items you want to bring are stimulants, food, water, and energy drinks. There are a variety of stimulants, or “stims”, that give you temporary buffs. If your character is getting weighed down from too much loot, a blue stim can temporarily give you extra strength for running. If you want more stamina to run longer, a red stim can increase your stamina and stamina recovery temporarily. Food and water can help mitigate hunger and thirst, and some drinks, like juice and energy drinks, can even replenish both. Hunger and thirst is not typically a huge problem in Arena Breakout, but it can definitely become a factor in those longer 30+ minute raids. Most players don’t bother with food items in their loadouts, but it’s still important to know what they do because you never know when that random box of cornflakes you find on a desk will come in clutch. The most common consumables are Taurine and E-Drinks because they replenish stamina so you can keep sprinting, and conveniently they replenish hunger and thirst at the same time. 

Dying in Arena Breakout

Let’s be honest, dying sucks. But it might not be as bad as you think. If you play with teammates they can grab your gear and save it for you if they survive. Any of your items they extract with will be returned to you via in-game mail. Alternatively, if your teammate dies you can grab their stuff and bring it out for them, too. Items marked with this orange symbol belong to your teammates, so you will not be able to keep them if you extract with them in your bag.

Missions and Bundles

The last important thing you should know as a beginner is to complete missions for your contacts, but also daily and weekly missions. I have found that daily and weekly missions are actually way easier, and more rewarding than most contact missions. For example, my team and I had to kill 15 enemies, including bots, and I got 30,000 EXP. Bundle coupons are huge too, and can provide you with an entire kit if you need new supplies. Arena Breakout is very generous for broke players, and if you look through the missions and events there always seems to be something you can collect and earn if you are struggling. Even completing the free rewards in the season pass can get you some great items. However, if you collect free items from bundles or events they are marked as “Operation Supplies” and have this cardboard box icon. This means you cannot sell them on the market for Koen. First, you need to take that item into a match and successfully extract with it, then the item will be cleared and can now be sold.

Conclusion

As a new player in Arena Breakout it can be extremely overwhelming to learn everything, and unfortunately a lot of players quit after getting frustrated early on. Hopefully this video has helped make it a little bit easier to learn the game, but we have still only scratched the surface of what there is to learn. Stay tuned for more in-depth tips and tricks videos for inventory management, combat, looting, and more. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and thanks for watching!