If you have been grinding raids in Arena Breakout: Infinite and only ever open a Contact to hand in a mission, you are leaving a genuine fortune on the table. One of the most-upvoted questions on the official subreddit this week was blunt about it: "I'm a new-ish player, I really don't use them often at all" — and the replies from veterans were a long list of trades that quietly save tens of thousands of Koen per run. Contacts are not just quest-givers. They are ABI's vendor, barter and reputation system rolled into one, and they are one of the highest-leverage, least-understood parts of the economy.
This guide explains exactly what Contacts are, how the Loyalty Level reputation system works, why building that reputation directly lowers the cut you pay, which barter trades are worth memorising, and whether the whole system is actually "worth it." Everything here is framed for Season 7: Utopia (live since September 16, 2026) and the PC game only — not the separate mobile Arena Breakout, which has different vendors entirely.
Key takeaways (Season 7: Utopia, October 2026)
- Contacts are ABI's trader layer. Each one sells gear for Koen, offers item-for-item barter trades, and gives you missions. They are not called "traders" as a proper noun and they are nothing like Tarkov's Prapor/Therapist roster — the mechanics are ABI-specific.
- Reputation = Loyalty Level, and it pays you back. Completing a Contact's missions raises your reputation with them, which lowers the commission they take, unlocks better stock, and gates higher barter tiers.
- Barter beats the Market for a lot of mid-tier gear. Veterans report contract deals landing ~15,000 Koen cheaper than the Market on single items, with a restock timer (commonly around 8 hours) rather than an unlimited buy.
- Check your Contacts at the start of every season. Exchanges and prices get reshuffled at season boundaries, and some of the best value windows only exist for the first few days.
- This is the "earn Koen without PvP" layer. Barter lets you turn cheap looted materials into expensive gear, which is the whole point if you hate dry-pushing other players.
What are Contacts in Arena Breakout: Infinite?
Contacts are the game's vendor and quest-giver characters — the people you visit between raids to buy, sell, barter and pick up missions. In ABI's own copy they are always "Contacts," never "traders," and each one specialises in a slice of the loadout. The roster you will meet includes weapons-and-ammo dealers, an armour-and-headset specialist, a medic-and-provisions seller, and a couple of limited-stock dealers.
Here is the practical breakdown of who sells what, based on community vendor references (verify the exact spelling in your client, as stock rotates by season):
- Weapons & ammo Contacts — the bulk of your gun, mag and ammo buying. Multiple Contacts overlap here, so the same round can have different prices depending on who you ask and your reputation with them.
- Armour & headsets Contact — body armour, rigs and head gear. The subreddit regularly flags this Contact as a source of Tier-5 armour and rigs below Market price, with a cooldown timer between purchases.
- Meds & provisions Contact — healing items, food and drink. One widely-repeated tip: you can pick up strong healing stims here for roughly half their Market value.
- Limited-stock / backpack Contact — time-limited items, backpacks and some body armour, usually on restock timers.
The headline point: a Contact is three systems in one. The storefront sells for Koen. The barter window swaps your looted junk for gear. And the mission chain is what raises your standing with that Contact so the other two get cheaper and deeper.
How Loyalty Level and reputation work
Reputation in ABI is tied to each individual Contact. Every main and faction mission you complete for a Contact raises your standing with them, and that standing is what unlocks the good part of the system. According to the official Contacts framing and corroborating community guides, higher reputation does three things:
- Lowers their commission. The cut a Contact takes on transactions shrinks as your reputation climbs. On a marketplace where a single listing can eat a few thousand Koen in fees, that compounds fast across a season.
- Unlocks better stock. Higher-tier gear, better ammo and more barter options appear only once you have proven yourself on that Contact's mission line.
- Gates barter tiers. The most valuable item-for-item exchanges — the ones that hand you modded weapons or top-tier armour for a pile of cheap materials — sit behind reputation thresholds.
A useful rule of thumb from experienced players: barter typically unlocks a given tier of gear roughly one Loyalty Level earlier than buying it outright for Koen. If you are rushing toward a specific kit, the barter route through a Contact you have reputation with is often the faster and cheaper path than saving the full Koen price.
⚠️ Verify before you quote it: the exact number of Loyalty Levels, the precise reputation thresholds, and the exact commission percentages are not published in an official Morefun post. Treat any specific "there are X levels" claim from a content farm as unverified. What is reliable is the direction: more missions for a Contact → lower fees, better stock, deeper barter.
Why barter trades are the real value
This is where Contacts stop being a chore and start being a money printer. The player-driven Market is where most people buy gear, but it carries a listing tax and floats on supply and demand. Contact barter sidesteps both — you trade looted materials (or a cheaper item) for something worth far more, at a fixed rate, often at a hard discount to the Market.
Real examples players shared on the official subreddit this month, in their own words:
- "When DK8 released, it was around 15k cheaper on contract compared to the market and you can buy it every 8 hours." — a classic barter pattern: a meaningful per-unit saving, capped by a restock timer so you cannot infinitely arbitrage it.
- "PSU purple item into GS2 headset" — hand over a looted purple-tier component, walk away with a premium headset you would otherwise pay full price for.
- "AUG for only ~90k if you have gold-rimmed glasses, which you can easily get on Farm — Small Hall mission. It would otherwise cost ~170k in the gunsmith." — nearly half price on a full weapon, gated only by a cheap, farmable material.
- "You can buy T5 armour and T5 rigs cheaper than Market, there's a timer after each purchase."
The pattern is consistent: find the barter that converts a cheap, farmable item into expensive gear, then buy the maximum the restock timer allows every cycle. That is the backbone of making Koen without ever winning a PvP fight — you are mining value out of the vendor layer instead of out of other operators' corpses.
Season-timing arbitrage
Veterans also flag a sharper play: some weapons are worth stockpiling from Contacts right before a new season, because balance changes can send their Market value through the roof. One player's example: "the M24 went from 29k to 270k in one night because of new changes, and you could buy as many as you like" from the Contact before the shift. You will not hit that lottery every season, but it is why the advice "check your Contacts at the start — and the end — of every season" keeps getting repeated.
Are Contacts actually worth it?
Short answer: yes, with one honest caveat. If you are swimming in hundreds of millions of Koen, saving 20–30k on a gun part is a rounding error and you will reasonably skip most trades. For everyone else — and especially newer and mid-stash players — Contacts are one of the best Koen-per-minute activities in the game, because the savings require no raiding risk at all. You buy between raids, in safety.
The caveat raised by some high-end players is real: ABI's crafting system (the Trophy Room) now covers a lot of ammo and advanced armour, so a few barter deals that used to be essential are less critical than they were at launch. But "less essential than before" is not "useless." The armour/rig discounts, the half-price meds, the cheap gun parts for budget builds, and the weapon barters are all still live value every single season.
If your goal is maximising Koen rather than just saving it, pair this with the in-raid loot routes and Market flipping covered in our how to make Koen fast guide, and lean on the specific exchanges in our best barter trades breakdown.
How to actually use Contacts well (a simple routine)
- Run each Contact's mission chain at least far enough to climb a Loyalty Level or two — that is where the fee cuts and barter tiers unlock.
- Open the barter tab first, Market second. Check whether a Contact will barter the item you want before you pay Market price plus tax for it.
- Pre-loot barter materials on purpose. If a trade wants gold-rimmed glasses, add the mission or POI that drops them to your loop so you always have the input stocked.
- Buy the full restock every cycle on any barter that beats the Market, then resell surplus on the Market when prices allow.
- Re-audit at every season start. Prices and exchanges reset; the best windows are early.
This routine turns Contacts from a menu you ignore into a steady, risk-free income stream that funds your actual raids — which matters even more now that you cannot buy Koen with real money, so every bit of gear has to come from your own play. (If that is news to you, our pay-to-win breakdown explains exactly what changed at the 1.0 launch.)
FAQ
What's the difference between Contacts and the Market in Arena Breakout: Infinite? Contacts are fixed NPC vendors with set prices, barter trades and missions — their stock and rates change with your reputation and by season. The Market is the player-driven marketplace where other operators list looted items for Koen at floating prices, minus a listing tax. Use Contacts for reliable deals and barters; use the Market for items no Contact sells or for selling your own loot.
How do I lower the commission Contacts charge? Raise your reputation (Loyalty Level) with that specific Contact by completing their missions. Higher reputation lowers their cut, unlocks better stock and opens deeper barter tiers. There is no shortcut — it is mission-gated, per Contact.
Are barter trades better than buying with Koen? Often, yes. Players consistently report barters landing cheaper than both the gunsmith and the Market — for example a weapon for roughly half its gunsmith price in exchange for a cheap, farmable item — and barter frequently unlocks a tier of gear about one Loyalty Level earlier than a straight Koen purchase. The trade-off is restock timers that cap how many you can take per cycle.
Can I buy Tier-5 armour cheaper from Contacts? According to current community reports, yes — the armour-and-rig Contact sells Tier-5 body armour and rigs below typical Market prices, with a cooldown timer between purchases. Verify the live price in your client, since stock rotates by season.
Do Contact prices and trades change every season? Yes. Exchanges, stock and prices get reshuffled around season boundaries, and some of the strongest value windows only exist in the first days of a season. The repeated veteran advice is to re-check every Contact at the start of each season rather than assuming last season's deals still apply.
Are Contacts worth using if I already have a huge Koen balance? Less so for the small trades — if you are sitting on hundreds of millions of Koen, saving 20–30k on a part is negligible. But the big barters (cheap full weapons, Tier-5 armour, half-price meds) still save meaningful money, and they carry zero raid risk, so most players keep using them regardless of balance.
Facts verified against the official Steam news feed and store page for Arena Breakout: Infinite (appid 2073620) and the official arenabreakoutinfinite.com Contacts reference, cross-checked with player reports on r/ArenaBreakoutInfinite (October 2026). This guide applies to Season 7: Utopia, live since September 16, 2026, on PC (Windows) only.
