Several months after release, ARC Raiders players have concrete insight into which perks actually matter.
With builds becoming more refined and the skill tree better understood, the community has started scrutinizing perks that sound essential but may not actually deliver.
One of the most debated examples is Calming Stroll, a perk that promises stamina regeneration while walking at the same rate as standing still.
Based on its description alone, it looks like a valuable quality-of-life improvement for map traversal and stamina control. In practice, however, player testing tells a very different story.
Why Players Started Running the Numbers on Calming Stroll
The controversy took shape when a player replaced intuition with repeatable practice-range tests to evaluate Calming Stroll.
Rather than asking whether the perk “felt” useful, they measured how stamina drains, how quickly it regenerates, and how far a player actually travels during a full stamina cycle.
The test confirmed that Calming Stroll works only in actual walk mode, since ARC Raiders does not count post-sprint movement as walking.
Many players assume they are “walking” when stamina runs out, but in reality, they are jogging, which does not trigger the perk at all unless the dedicated walk input is used.
Does Faster Stamina Regen Actually Mean Faster Travel?
Once adjusted for that variable, the numbers revealed that walking’s stamina regen advantage disappears because its speed is too slow to matter over distance.
Over the full duration of stamina recovery, a jogging player consistently covers far more ground than a walking player using Calming Stroll.
Even though the walking player reaches full stamina sooner, they do so while barely moving, allowing the jogging player to pull far ahead.
When both players start sprinting again, the walker may briefly gain ground, but the jogger has already recovered stamina and resumes sprinting.
Ironically, the outcome flips expectations, leaving Calming Stroll users marginally behind and lower on stamina by the end.
Is Calming Stroll Actually Bad for Map Rotation?
This led to a blunt conclusion that sparked debate across the community that Calming Stroll is objectively worse than default movement when speed is the goal.
No matter how the sprint-regen-sprint loop is repeated, jogging wins the distance-over-time comparison. The perk falls short as a traversal option, making it a weak choice for players expecting faster movement or quicker extractions.
Why Do Some Players Still Defend the Perk?
However, labeling the perk as “useless” quickly sparked pushback, as many players argued the test only shows Calming Stroll underperforms during long-distance travel, not that it has no value at all.
Many players reframed the perk as serving combat and positional advantages instead of movement speed.
In close-quarters firefights or cover-heavy areas, players usually want to stay mobile without attracting attention.
Jogging is noisy, sprinting is risky, and standing still is unsafe, whereas walking with stamina regeneration allows players to reposition quietly, preserve stamina, and react instantly when combat begins.
The assessment became less clear once updates allowed Calming Stroll to function during ADS, giving it situational value when players carefully peek corners or fine-tune their aim.
Players are split, with some claiming the update improved the perk, and others saying it still fails to trigger consistently unless the walk input is manually held on PC.
Controller players, by contrast, seem to benefit more naturally due to how analog movement interacts with walking thresholds. There are also niche scenarios where Calming Stroll retains practical value.
When carrying heavy objects or field items that force the player into walk speed, the perk can provide passive stamina recovery that would otherwise be unavailable.
For stealth-focused builds or solo runs, audio control often matters more than speed, and keeping stamina while moving silently can be the line between a clean escape and being fully drained.
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