Buried City is the best map in ARC Raiders for solo players. This underground ancient city, buried beneath an arid wasteland, features narrow streets, winding alleyways, and empty plazas that create a maze-like environment where map knowledge trumps firepower. In a game where squads typically dominate, Buried City's tight layout gives solo Raiders the tools to outmaneuver, evade, and profit without ever firing a shot. Rated for levels 10 to 20, it offers a perfect progression step between beginner maps and the more dangerous mid-tier zones. This guide covers every major area, the best solo loot routes, key locations, and build strategies that exploit the map's unique geometry.
In this guide
Map Layout and Key Areas
Buried City is structured as a network of underground streets and chambers carved from ancient ruins. Unlike the open sightlines of Blue Gate or the industrial corridors of Dam Battlegrounds, this map rewards players who know every alley, shortcut, and vertical escape route. The streets are narrow enough that you can hear footsteps clearly, giving attentive solo players an early-warning system against approaching threats.
The Hospital is located in the eastern section and is the primary medical loot hotspot. It spawns healing items, medical components, and occasionally rare materials. The Library sits to the northwest and contains a mix of crafting materials and electronics. Plaza Rosa is the central hub of the map — a large open plaza surrounded by buildings, and by far the most dangerous area due to converging player routes and ARC patrol density.
Town Hall occupies the southern portion and features a mix of general loot with several containers that spawn Mechanical Components and weapon parts. It sees moderate traffic and serves as a waypoint between extraction points. The vertical dimension of Buried City is critical to understand — many buildings have climbable facades and accessible rooftops that let you bypass street-level threats entirely.
- Hospital — Eastern section, medical loot and rare material spawns
- Library — Northwest, electronics and crafting materials
- Plaza Rosa — Central hub, high loot but extremely dangerous for solos
- Town Hall — Southern section, general loot, moderate traffic
Keys and Locked Rooms
Buried City has four locked rooms that require specific keys. The Buried City Hospital Key opens a restricted wing in the Hospital that contains concentrated medical loot and a guaranteed rare material spawn. This is the most valuable key for solo players because the Hospital is already on the safer side of the map, making the key run low-risk and high-reward.
The Buried City JKV Employee Access Card unlocks a corporate facility with electronic components and Refiner materials. The Buried City Residential Master Key opens a cluster of locked residential units near the map's perimeter, offering scattered but consistently valuable loot across multiple small rooms. The Buried City Town Hall Key accesses the administrative vault in Town Hall with weapon parts and crafting materials.
As a solo player, prioritize the Hospital Key and the Residential Master Key. Both rooms are located in areas with manageable foot traffic and multiple escape routes if another player shows up. The Town Hall Key room is riskier because Town Hall sits between popular rotation paths, increasing the chance of encountering squads passing through.
The Buried City Hospital Key is the single best key for solo players in the game. The Hospital wing loot is valuable, the area is relatively quiet, and you have three different escape routes from the building. Use it the moment you find it.
Best Solo Routes
The safest high-value solo route starts at the map's eastern outskirts and pushes into the Hospital. Clear the Hospital's accessible areas, use the Hospital Key if you have it, then exit through the back alleys heading south toward the nearest extraction point. This route avoids Plaza Rosa entirely and typically encounters only scattered Wasp and Hornet patrols. Average completion time is 8 to 12 minutes with a reliable material haul.
The higher-risk alternative starts at the Library in the northwest, hugs the map edge moving south, skirts the western perimeter of Plaza Rosa without entering it, and continues to Town Hall before extracting from the southern exit. This route covers more ground and hits more loot containers, but the Plaza Rosa adjacency means you might hear — or attract — players fighting in the central hub.
For maximum stealth, use the vertical routes. Many of Buried City's buildings connect via rooftops and elevated walkways that most players ignore because they're not obvious from street level. Learning these paths takes practice but rewards you with routes that are nearly invisible to other Raiders. You can cross from the Hospital to the Library via rooftops without ever touching a main street.
Solo Build Recommendations
The Silent Extract build is designed for players who want to avoid all combat and focus purely on looting efficiently. Bring a suppressed Bobcat or Venator for emergency self-defense, lightweight armor that maximizes movement speed, stamina boosters, and smoke grenades. The goal is never to fire a shot — move fast, loot smart, and extract before anyone knows you're there. This build thrives on Buried City's maze-like layout because you can always find a corner to break line of sight.
The Budget Rat build is the ultimate risk-management approach for solo players. Bring the cheapest functional weapon you own (a Tier I Renegade works fine), no shield, minimal healing, and maximize inventory space for loot. The logic is simple: if you die, you lose almost nothing. If you extract, you profit enormously because you weren't paying for expensive gear. Over many raids, the Budget Rat build generates more net income than expensive loadouts because the survival rate on Buried City is high enough to make the math work.
Both builds prioritize avoidance over engagement. Solo players on Buried City should never seek PvP — the odds are against you, and the loot you're protecting is worth more than anything a dead player drops. Hear footsteps? Go the other direction. See a squad looting a building? Find a different building. Your advantage is knowledge and mobility, not firepower.
The Budget Rat build averages higher profit per hour than expensive loadouts on Buried City because the map's escape routes keep your survival rate above 70%. Run cheap, run often, extract with materials, and let the Refiner do the rest.
Resources and Loot Profile
Buried City spawns a specific set of natural resources throughout its underground environment: agave, apricot, candleberries, great mullein, lemon, moss, and prickly pear. Lemon spawns are notably more common here than on most other maps, making Buried City the best farming location if you need lemons for Utility Station recipes.
Container loot skews toward crafting materials and mid-tier components rather than raw weapon drops. You'll find more Metal Parts, Rubber Parts, Wires, and Mechanical Components here than finished weapons or high-tier gear. This makes Buried City an excellent Refiner-feeding map — run a few Buried City raids, dump your haul into the Refiner, and process it into the materials your Workshop actually needs.
The locked rooms are the exception to the mid-tier loot rule. Hospital and Town Hall locked areas can spawn Advanced Components, rare crafting ingredients, and occasionally weapon blueprints. This is why keys are so valuable on this map — they're your access point to loot that otherwise only appears on higher-threat maps like Dam Battlegrounds or The Spaceport.
Conclusion
Buried City rewards patience, map knowledge, and discipline over raw combat skill. As a solo player, this is your bread-and-butter map — the layout gives you every tool you need to avoid fights, hit valuable loot spots, and extract consistently. Learn the vertical routes, run the Hospital-first path until it's muscle memory, and keep your loadouts cheap until you're ready to invest in higher-threat zones. Solo Raiding isn't easy in ARC Raiders, but on Buried City, it's absolutely viable and genuinely profitable.