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In the sprawling world of Arc Raiders, one item stands above the rest for players seeking to explore every corner of the game’s most mysterious location: the Buried City, where the Residential Master Key is used. This essential collectible unlocks access to previously inaccessible apartments, hidden rooms, and secret pathways throughout the Buried City’s residential district, offering players a gateway to rare loot, environmental storytelling, and critical progression items needed to advance through the main campaign. The Buried City itself serves as one of Arc Raiders’ most atmospheric locations—a sunken urban landscape buried beneath centuries of sand and debris, where the remnants of a once-thriving civilization now house dangerous enemies, environmental puzzles, and cryptic lore fragments that piece together the game’s overarching narrative. Players who obtain the Residential Master Key gain unprecedented freedom to explore apartment complexes, residential towers, and abandoned housing units that would otherwise remain locked, revealing side quests, character backstories, and valuable resources including crafting materials, weapon upgrades, and currency caches. The key represents more than just a gameplay convenience; it embodies the exploration-focused design philosophy that makes Arc Raiders a standout title in the action-adventure genre, rewarding curious players who venture off the beaten path with meaningful discoveries that enhance both gameplay mechanics and narrative depth.
How To Obtain The Residential Master Key
Finding the Residential Master Key requires completing a multi-stage questline that begins in the Buried City’s central plaza. Players must first speak with Magistrate Kellen, an NPC who tasks you with investigating disappearances in the residential sector. This quest chain involves combat encounters with corrupted security drones, environmental puzzle-solving within the district’s power grid, and a challenging boss fight against the Warden Construct—a malfunctioning security robot that guards the administrative building where the master key is stored.
Locations Unlocked By The Master Key
The Residential Master Key opens seventeen distinct apartment buildings scattered throughout the Buried City’s three residential zones. Each location contains unique environmental storytelling through readable documents, audio logs, and visual clues that reveal how the city’s inhabitants lived before catastrophe struck. Notable unlockable locations include the Skyview Apartments with their rooftop garden puzzle, the Ironside Complex housing a secret weapons cache, and the Memorial Heights building containing crucial lore about the Arc Raiders organization’s origins.
Rewards And Benefits
Beyond simple exploration, using the master key yields substantial gameplay advantages. Players can discover six legendary weapon blueprints exclusive to residential areas, collect components for the advanced hazard suit upgrade, and access fast-travel points that significantly reduce backtracking time. Additionally, completionists hunting for the game’s platinum trophy or 100% achievement will find that the master key unlocks ten missable collectibles and three hidden achievements tied specifically to residential exploration.
Combat Encounters In Residential Areas
Unlocked apartments aren’t simply treasure troves—they’re often inhabited by dangerous enemies including feral scavengers, rogue AI constructs, and environmental hazards like unstable flooring and toxic gas leaks. Several apartments contain mini-boss encounters that drop rare crafting materials, making these optional combat challenges worthwhile for players focused on character progression and equipment optimization.
Strategic Importance For Speedrunners
The Arc Raiders speedrunning community has identified the Residential Master Key as a critical route optimization tool. While obtaining the key adds approximately twelve minutes to any% speedrun attempts, it enables sequence-breaking techniques that save upward of eighteen minutes in later segments by providing alternate pathways through the Buried City’s verticality and bypassing lengthy enemy gauntlets in the standard progression route.
Lore Significance
The master key itself carries narrative weight within Arc Raiders’ story. Its existence suggests the Buried City maintained strict security protocols before its collapse, and documents found in unlocked apartments reveal a society grappling with class division, resource scarcity, and the early warning signs of the cataclysm that would eventually bury their civilization beneath the sands.
