Patch 1.7 did something weird to ARC Raiders for me. The mood in Speranza feels different now, runs feel faster, and if you are not messing around with the Vulcano IV you are missing a huge part of the current meta, especially if you like pushing close fights for loot or ARC Raiders Coins cheap upgrades.

Why Vulcano Beats The Old Favourites

I used to swap between Il Toro and whatever assault rifle dropped with decent rolls, just for that satisfying pump and reset. After a while in Dam Battlegrounds and Buried City though, Vulcano IV just pushed everything else out of my loadout. The base Vulcano feels fine, quick enough handling and okay damage, but it does not scare anyone who knows what they are doing. Once you sink the mats into Tier IV, it flips. The fire rate bump plus the reload speed means you are spitting shells so fast that most players do not even track what hit them.

How The Numbers Play Out In Fights

The 30 percent fire rate boost sounds decent on paper, but in matches it feels like you are holding a tiny belt-fed cannon. You burn a mag in under a second, which normally would be a waste, but with a Shotgun Choke III tightening the spread and a Vertical Grip keeping the recoil in line, most of those pellets land. In Dam's tight corridors you just swing a corner, pre-aim chest level, and let it rip. I have pushed trios sitting on zipline angles, cracked the shield up front, and dropped the second guy before the third even hit full ADS. You still need to respect armor: Hornets and chunky mechs are not melting in one trigger pull, and low armor pen means you have to prep targets first, but against light Raiders the time to kill feels almost unfair.

Mixing PvP And PvE Without Swapping Builds

In PvE the shotgun keeps the same personality. Grunts, wasps, and anything that tries to rush a choke point just fall over if you manage your spacing. Soloing bigger enemies is where the gun shows its limits, as the pellets do not bite through plating the way you would like. That is why most people I see running it pair it with something like a Renegade or another solid mid-range option. You clear trash with Vulcano, then swap to chip armor on elites or work objectives from a safer angle. Over my last few sessions I have had more clean extracts running that simple two-gun setup than any of the complicated min-max builds I tried before.

Skipping The Grind And Staying Ahead Of Nerfs

The awkward part is getting the blueprints and the heavy parts in the first place. Some nights you farm half a dozen raids, only to lose it all on one bad rotate or a third party at extraction, and that gets old fast. A lot of players I run into are straight up honest about it now: they grab a couple of blueprint bundles and key components from sites like u4gm so they can stop living in low-tier runs and actually play the build they want instead of the one they can afford at the moment.