If your aim feels off in ARC Raiders, the problem might not be your skills, it could be your crosshair. The default crosshair settings aren’t optimized for competitive play, and many players struggle with accuracy because their reticle works against them rather than helping them land shots.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to configure the best crosshair settings used by top streamers and competitive players, and explain why these settings give you a tactical advantage.
How to Change Your Crosshair in ARC Raiders
Changing your crosshair in ARC Raiders is straightforward. Follow these steps:
- Open your Settings menu
- Navigate to the Accessibility tab
- Scroll down to the Crosshair section
- Enable Override Crosshair Shape
- Customize your crosshair using the available options
From here, you’ll have access to multiple crosshair shapes, along with settings for thickness, outlines, opacity, and colors. Take time to experiment with these settings until you find what works best for your playstyle.
Best Crosshair Settings for arc raiders
After testing various configurations and analyzing what top streamers use, we’ve identified the optimal crosshair setup for ARC Raiders. Here are the recommended settings:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Move Crosshair when line of fire is blocked | On |
| Smooth move when line of fire is blocked | Off |
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Override Crosshair Shape | Circle |
| Center Dot | Off |
| Crosshair Length | 20 |
| Crosshair Thickness | 1 |
| Crosshair Outline Thickness | 0 |
| Crosshair Opacity | 85 |
| Crosshair Red | 0 |
| Crosshair Green | 255 |
| Crosshair Blue | 40 |
| Crosshair Outline Red | 0 |
| Crosshair Outline Green | 255 |
| Crosshair Outline Blue | 40 |
Available Crosshair Shape Options
ARC Raiders offers extensive crosshair customization options that go far beyond what most shooters provide. Understanding each shape option will help you make an informed decision about which crosshair best suits your aiming style.
| Crosshair Shape | Description |
|---|---|
| Circle | A circular reticle that provides unobstructed center view and dynamically tightens when aiming down sights, giving real-time accuracy feedback |
| Cross | Traditional crosshair with perpendicular lines extending from the center – familiar to most FPS players, but can obstruct target visibility. |
| T-Cross | Modified cross design with the top line removed, offering better upward visibility while maintaining horizontal and bottom reference points |
| Rounded Diamond | Diamond-shaped reticle with rounded edges, providing angular reference points while maintaining softer visual aesthetics |
| Angled Radial Lines | Multiple lines extending at angles from the center, offering precise directional indicators for tracking moving targets |
Each shape has its strengths, but the circle crosshair stands out for one critical mechanical advantage: it dynamically responds to your accuracy state. When you aim down sights (ADS), the circle progressively tightens, providing instant visual confirmation of your weapon’s accuracy improvement. This real-time feedback loop allows you to time your shots perfectly, knowing exactly when your weapon has reached maximum accuracy.
Understanding Each Setting
Each crosshair setting plays a specific role in optimizing your visibility and accuracy. Here’s what each parameter does and why we’ve chosen these specific values:
Override Crosshair Shape – Circle
As detailed above, the circle provides dynamic visual feedback when you ADS, tightening to show your accuracy state in real-time. This mechanical advantage makes it the preferred choice for competitive play.
Center Dot – Off
Disabling the center dot keeps your view completely unobstructed. The circle itself provides sufficient targeting reference without adding additional visual elements that might block enemy heads or small targets at distance.
Crosshair Length – 20
This determines the circle’s radius. A value of 20 provides the optimal balance: large enough to clearly see the crosshair and understand spread dynamics, yet small enough to maintain precision for headshots and long-range engagements.
Crosshair Thickness – 1
A thin crosshair line minimizes visual obstruction while remaining visible in all lighting conditions. Thicker lines can obscure targets, while thinner settings might become hard to track during intense firefights. A value of 1 hits the sweet spot.
Crosshair Outline Thickness – 0
The outline creates contrast between the crosshair and any background, ensuring visibility regardless of environmental colors. Setting this to 0 matches the crosshair thickness for visual consistency while providing enough contrast separation.
Crosshair Opacity – 85
This setting controls the transparency of your crosshair. An opacity of 85 ensures the crosshair is prominent and easy to track, while still allowing slight transparency to see through it if an enemy moves directly behind the reticle. Full opacity (100) can feel too solid, while lower values reduce visibility.
Color Settings (RGB: 0, 255, 40 / Green)
Setting red to 0, green to 255, and blue to 40 produces slightly neon green, the most visible color across varied environments and lighting conditions. The matching outline color (also slightly neon green) reinforces this visibility while maintaining contrast against backgrounds through the outline thickness.
Why the Circle Crosshair is Superior
Most top-tier ARC Raiders streamers prefer the circle crosshair over traditional crosshair shapes, and for good reason. The circle design offers several competitive advantages that directly improve your gameplay:
Clear Line of Sight
Unlike traditional crosshairs with lines extending from the center, the circle crosshair eliminates those obnoxious lines that can block your view of the target. This gives you an unobstructed view of your enemy, allowing you to track movements more effectively and make micro-adjustments to your aim without visual interference.
Accurate Spread Visualization
The circle crosshair provides a superior representation of your weapon’s spread, especially during movement. When you’re sliding, jumping, or strafing, the circle accurately shows how your accuracy is affected. This visual feedback helps you understand exactly when your shots will land where you’re aiming versus when they’ll spray wildly, critical information for timing your engagements.
Reload Timing Indicator
Experienced players use the circle crosshair to identify the exact moment their weapon is ready to fire after reloading. The circular shape makes it easier to notice when the crosshair stabilizes, allowing you to start shooting at the earliest possible moment and gain crucial milliseconds in firefights.
Dynamic ADS Feedback
This is perhaps the most powerful feature of the circle crosshair: when you aim down sights, the circle progressively tightens and becomes smaller, providing continuous visual feedback about your accuracy state. As you enter ADS, watch the circle contract, the tighter it gets, the more accurate your shots become.
This dynamic behavior gives you precise information about when to pull the trigger. Instead of guessing whether your weapon has settled from the ADS transition, you can see exactly when maximum accuracy is reached by observing how tightly the circle has constricted. This is particularly valuable for sniper rifles and DMRs where first-shot accuracy is critical, but it benefits all weapon classes by showing you the optimal firing window.
Other crosshair shapes lack this dynamic feedback mechanism, they remain static regardless of your accuracy state, forcing you to rely on feel or memorization rather than clear visual confirmation.
Customization for Different Playstyles
While we strongly recommend the circle crosshair with the settings outlined above, ARC Raiders provides extensive customization options because different players have different preferences and playstyles. The accessibility settings allow you to experiment with various combinations:
- Aggressive close-range fighters might prefer larger, more visible crosshairs to track targets during fast movement
- Precision players and snipers might opt for smaller crosshairs with center dots for pinpoint accuracy
- Players coming from other games can recreate familiar crosshair styles to reduce the learning curve
- Colorblind players or those with visual preferences can adjust colors to maximize personal visibility
The key is finding what works for your eyes and your playstyle. Start with our recommended settings as a baseline, then make incremental adjustments if needed. Most players find the circle crosshair optimal once they experience the ADS tightening mechanic in actual gameplay.
Enable Moving Reticle
In addition to the crosshair settings above, make sure to enable the Moving Reticle option in your settings. This feature provides critical information about your shot placement by showing when your reticle is touching environmental obstacles instead of your target.
With moving reticle enabled, you’ll know immediately if your shots will be blocked by cover, walls, or other objects. This prevents wasted ammunition and gives you instant feedback to adjust your position for a clear shot.
Why Green is the Best Crosshair Color
While some players prefer red or stick with the default white crosshair, we strongly recommend using green (RGB: 0, 255, 0) for maximum visibility across different environments and lighting conditions.
Green stands out against most backgrounds in ARC Raiders, from dark indoor areas to bright outdoor environments. Whether you’re fighting in shadowy corridors or sun-drenched extraction zones, the green crosshair remains clearly visible without blending into the environment.
This color choice isn’t just a gaming preference; it’s backed by real-world tactical applications. Military forces worldwide predominantly use green reticles on their optical sights and targeting systems. The human eye is most sensitive to green wavelengths, allowing for faster target acquisition and reduced eye strain during extended engagements. Additionally, green reticles preserve night vision better than red in low-light situations, making them the preferred choice for professional operators who need reliable targeting in any condition.
Alternative Color Options
That said, crosshair color can be somewhat personal, and certain situations might call for alternatives:
- Red – Works well in environments with heavy vegetation or green-tinted areas, turn the other two colors down
- White – Provides high contrast in darker areas but can blend into bright environments, turn all colors to max
- Cyan – Another obvious option that works well across varied lighting, this can be done by turning red to 0, and the other two colors to max
However, for all-around performance and consistency, green remains the top choice used by competitive players.
The settings given are a top choice for me, I enjoy playing ARC Raiders and have noticed a difference in my own gameplay once I’d optimised my reticle settings, the simple reasoning being that the standard cross crosshair doesn’t react different during animations, cuasing you to potentially stop the reload and thus have less bullets in the chamber, as well as providing a clearer sight of the target most of the time.
