Fireflies Won't Kill Themselves — Here's How to Actually Damage Them in ARC Raiders

A practical breakdown of the most efficient damage method for the Fireflies Trial, written for players who’ve already died to one at close range and would prefer not to repeat the experience.

Let me be upfront about something before we get into the strategy. The Fireflies Trial sounds simple on paper. Find flying robots, shoot flying robots, collect points. What the game doesn’t tell you — at least not loudly enough — is that Fireflies are hunters, not patrols. They don’t wander. They close distance on you with purpose, and if you’re treating this like a standard farming run, you’re going to spend more time respawning than scoring.

The other thing nobody emphasizes enough: you must extract alive for your damage points to count. Die mid-raid, and the game quietly erases everything you did.

What the Fireflies Trial Actually Asks of You

The target is 4,000 damage points for a three-star rating. Each Firefly kill awards 800 points, which means you need exactly 5 clean kills to max the trial. That’s it. Five robots. The math is generous — the execution is where people stumble.

Here’s the full trial landscape for context, because the Fireflies Trial doesn’t exist in isolation. If you’re running the final week of the season, you’re juggling multiple objectives simultaneously:

The good news is that Fireflies and Flying ARC enemies share the same best map. You can stack both trials in a single Spaceport run, which is the single most efficient thing you can do with your time this week.

Why Spaceport Is the Only Map Worth Discussing

I’ve seen players try to farm Fireflies in Buried City and Stella Montis. I understand the impulse — you’re already there, you’ve got momentum, why not. The answer is that Spaceport’s open terrain fundamentally changes the engagement dynamic in your favor.

In tight urban environments, Fireflies close distance before you’ve had time to identify their weak spot. In Spaceport’s open zones, you see them coming. That gap between “spotted” and “in your face” is where the entire strategy lives. It gives your heavy ammo weapons room to breathe, it lets you line up the weak spot shot before the Firefly has closed to gas-hazard range, and it means you’re fighting on your terms rather than reacting to theirs.

The weak spot is the yellow gas tank on the underside. This is not optional information. Hit it and you get a fast kill. Ignore it and the Firefly releases a gas hazard at close range that will ruin your positioning, drain your health, and potentially end the run that was going so well.

The Weapon Question — What Actually Works

This is where I want to push back against the generic advice you’ll find in most guides. “Use a heavy weapon” is technically correct but not particularly useful. Here’s the actual reasoning behind the choices:

The Jupiter is the premium option for Firefly farming. It deals tremendous damage to flying ARC enemies specifically, and the Firefly’s movement pattern — aggressive but predictable once you’ve seen it a few times — is manageable with the Jupiter’s fire rate. The caveat is that landing consistent shots requires composure. If you’re panicking because a Firefly is already inside your comfort zone, the Jupiter becomes harder to use effectively.

Seeker Grenades are the answer to the aim consistency problem. They track. They don’t care that the Firefly is moving. For players whose accuracy on moving aerial targets is “developing” — and there’s no shame in that — Seeker Grenades turn a skill-check into a resource management question.

Anvil Renegade Grenades serve a different purpose: area suppression when multiple Fireflies are in proximity. They’re not your primary damage tool, but they’re excellent for controlling the engagement space and preventing the scenario where two Fireflies are closing on you simultaneously.

For your overall build while running this trial, the current meta points toward a 15 Combat / 10 Survival / 5 Tech skill allocation with the Anvil as primary. The Combat investment maximizes weapon effectiveness against ARC enemies, while the Survival points keep you alive long enough to actually extract — which, as established, is the whole game.

How to Verify This Before Committing

Here’s something you can actually check yourself rather than taking my word for it. Before your next Fireflies Trial run, do this:

1. Load into Spaceport with the Jupiter or your heavy ammo weapon of choice
2. Find the first Firefly — don’t engage immediately
3. Let it begin closing distance toward you, then take the shot at maximum comfortable range rather than waiting for it to get closer
4. Note whether you hit the yellow gas tank or the body

The difference in time-to-kill between a gas tank hit and a body shot is significant enough to be immediately obvious. A gas tank hit at range feels almost anticlimactic — the Firefly goes down before it’s had a chance to become a threat. A body shot at the same range starts a fight that takes longer and costs you more resources. Run this comparison three times and the weak spot priority will be permanently burned into your muscle memory.

The Condition Map Multiplier — The Strategy Most Players Skip

This is the part of the Fireflies Trial that separates efficient players from everyone else, and it’s genuinely underutilized.

2x condition maps — specifically Electromagnetic Storm, Locked Gate, and Night Raids — apply a double multiplier to your damage points. Mathematically, this means you need half the effort for the same result. Instead of five Firefly kills for three stars, you’re effectively looking at three kills with clean hits.

The Night Raids condition is particularly interesting for Firefly farming because the reduced visibility actually works in your favor in a counterintuitive way: Fireflies’ yellow gas tanks are more visible against a dark background than in full daylight. The weak spot that you’re trying to hit becomes easier to identify, not harder.

If you’re planning your trial runs for the week and a 2x condition map is available, that is the run you prioritize. Everything else is a backup plan.

Gear Up Before the Grind

One thing worth mentioning for players who want to skip the early-game gear treadmill and get straight to competitive trial runs: U4GM.com carries ARC Raiders items that can bridge the gap between where you are and where you need to be for efficient Firefly farming. Getting the right weapon tier before you start the trial grind means fewer failed extractions and faster point accumulation — which, given the extraction-or-nothing scoring system, is a meaningful practical advantage.

The Stacking Strategy — Running Multiple Trials Simultaneously

Since Fireflies and Flying ARC enemies both spawn in Spaceport, and since both trials target 4,000 points, the optimal approach is to run them together. Here’s the priority order for a combined run:

1. Identify Fireflies first — they’re the more dangerous of the two enemy types and you want to engage them on your terms, at range, before they’ve spotted you
2. Clear Fireflies at distance using Jupiter or heavy ammo, targeting the gas tank
3. Transition to Flying ARC enemies after Firefly objectives are complete — these are less aggressive and easier to farm methodically
4. Open any ARC Probes you encounter during the run — this is essentially free points that require almost no additional effort
5. Extract conservatively — don’t push for one more kill if your health is low and you’re carrying a full trial’s worth of points

The temptation to squeeze out one more Firefly kill when you’re already at four is real. Resist it. The math on a failed extraction — zero points, wasted resources, emotional damage — is always worse than extracting early with 3,200 points and running a second raid.

Build Comparison for Trial Efficiency

Different playstyles approach the Fireflies Trial differently. Here’s how the current meta builds perform specifically in this context:

The Overwatch build deserves more attention for Firefly farming specifically than it typically gets in general meta discussions. The Longbow’s precision at range is exactly what the gas tank weak spot rewards — you’re not spraying, you’re placing shots, and a sniper-oriented build with 15 Survival points means you have the health buffer to absorb the occasional mistake without losing the run.

I’ve run the Fireflies Trial enough times to have made every mistake in this guide at least once. Tried to outrun a Firefly in open terrain. (It caught me.) Ignored the gas tank and body-shotted my way through a 45-second fight that should have taken eight seconds. Pushed for a fifth kill with 15% health and didn’t extract. The trial isn’t hard — but it has a specific texture of failure that catches players who treat it as a formality rather than a system to understand.

The yellow gas tank is the whole game. Spaceport is the right map. Extract alive. Stack the 2x condition maps when they’re available. Five kills, 4,000 points, three stars.

Everything else is just noise.