Beautiful Light First Hours Walkthrough: Your First 5 Raids Step by Step

So you've loaded into your first Beautiful Light raid and you're standing in a ruined street wondering what the hell to do. Your squadmates are pinging locations you don't recognize. Your PDA is beeping about an Artifact somewhere east. And somewhere out there, six people who chose to play as monsters are already hunting.

Here's what I'd tell my past self, raid by raid.

Raid One: Don't Try to Win

I mean it. Your first raid should be a throwaway run. Bring the default gear, accept that you're going to die, and use it to learn.

When you spawn, ignore the Artifact ping immediately. Instead, open your PDA and study the map. Beautiful Light drops you into procedurally-scattered but structurally-consistent maps -- the buildings and landmarks stay the same between raids, but extraction points, Artifact locations, and loot spawns shift around.

Pick a direction. North, south, whatever. Walk that way until you hit the map boundary. Learn what the edge looks like, what buildings are there, what the cover situation is. This is boring advice but it pays off. Knowing where the map ends means you never get lost in a firefight.

On your way, practice using cover. Beautiful Light isn't an arcade shooter. If you're standing in the open for more than two seconds, you're dead. Move from wall to wall, car to car, doorway to doorway. The movement feels deliberate and weighty -- your character has momentum, and changing direction while sprinting takes a beat.

You will probably get killed during this raid. Maybe by an Anomaly player who spotted you wandering alone. Maybe by a rival squad who heard your footsteps. That's fine. You learned the map. Next raid you'll live longer.

Raid Two: Find Your First Artifact

Now you know the map layout. Time to actually do the objective.

When you get close to an Artifact, your PDA starts pulsing faster and your character's breathing gets audibly heavier. That audio cue matters -- other players can hear it if they're close enough. So when you're near the Artifact, slow down. Walk, don't run. Check corners before entering rooms.

Artifacts themselves glow with this sickly pulsing light. You can see them through walls at close range, which is both a blessing and a curse. It helps you find the thing, sure, but it also tells everyone else exactly where the action is.

Grab the Artifact and immediately move. Don't stand there checking your inventory or discussing strategy with your squad. The moment you pick it up, your position is broadcast to every Anomaly player on the map. Not the operators -- just the monsters. This is the game's way of forcing conflict.

Now comes the extraction. You need to pop a signal flare, which takes about three seconds of standing still, and then survive until the helicopter arrives. The flare is visible from across the map. Every squad sees it. Every Anomaly sees it. Calling extraction is basically ringing a dinner bell.

Pick your LZ carefully. Open ground is bad -- you want buildings or natural cover nearby where your squad can set up defensive positions. Ideally, somewhere you've already cleared.

I've had the most success extracting from elevated positions. Rooftops are risky because you can get trapped up there, but the sightlines make it harder for Anomalies to sneak up. Industrial areas with catwalks and multiple levels are ideal.

Raid Three and Four: Learn the Anomaly Types

By now you've been killed by Anomalies at least a few times. Time to understand what you're up against.

There are six Anomaly forms players can unlock and evolve into. Each has different movement, different attacks, different counterplay. The Crawler is fast and sticks to walls. The Brute is slow but can one-shot you if it lands a charge. There's a flying type, a stealth type, an artillery type -- and the sixth form is the one everyone argues about on Discord.

When you die, watch the kill cam. Pay attention to how the Anomaly player moved, where they came from, what triggered their attack. This is free intel. The best operator players I know spent their first week dying to Anomalies on purpose, just to learn their patterns.

Here's a tip most guides won't mention: Anomalies have a sound signature. Each type makes distinct noises when they're nearby. Crawlers make this skittering sound on hard surfaces. Brutes have heavy, rhythmic footsteps. The stealth type is nearly silent but emits a faint hum when cloaked.

Train your ears. When you hear an Anomaly sound, call it out. "Crawler sound, second floor somewhere." Even if you can't see it, your squad now knows to watch the ceilings and walls.

Raid Five: Hunt Back

Once you're comfortable as an operator, try queuing as an Anomaly yourself.

I know it sounds counterintuitive -- why play the monster when you're trying to learn the human side? Because playing Anomaly teaches you exactly what Anomaly players look for. You'll learn which operator behaviors make someone an easy target (sprinting alone, not checking above eye level, standing still to loot). You'll learn the spawn points, the patrol routes, the map areas where Anomalies have the advantage.

Then when you go back to playing operator, you'll instinctively avoid those mistakes.

Also, playing Anomaly is genuinely fun. It's a completely different game. You're no longer scared and cautious -- you're the thing other players are scared of. The power trip is real.

By raid five, you should have extracted at least once or twice, understood the basic flow (infiltrate, locate, secure, extract), and started to develop opinions about which weapons and gear suit your playstyle. The RPG skill tree and merchant mission system open up after you complete a few successful extractions, but that's a topic for another guide.

For now, just focus on surviving. Everything else comes after.