Embark has been on a bit of a matchmaking kick recently. It announced some weeks ago that Arc Raiders would be getting a more thorough system which takes into account specific player behaviour across solo, duo, and trio lobbies as well as a more nuanced look at self-defence. Both are solid updates to the game in theory, but in practice it's become clear that you just can't balance for assholes.

Update 1.36 added a more stringent matchmaking system which takes into account every player action across various lobbies. But because this new system was so reactive, it also meant that all it took was downing one aggressive raider to throw players from the comfort of PvE lobbies into the hellscape of PvP. Now, I actually enjoy PvP lobbies, but they aren't for the faint of heart, so before long Embark was backed up with complaints from players who were mistakenly hurled into these death matches.

To try and help, Embark decided to add a self-defence clause to the matchmaking system which meant that players would stay in nice PvE lobbies even if they shot and killed another raider if they weren't the primary aggressor. I don't actually know how the system figures this out—I guess it takes into account whether a player is damaged before shooting or not—but regardless this update fixed one issue and started another.

Before long, Arc Raiders rats realised that this self-defence patch basically gave them a free pass to run rampant in PvE lobbies, killing and looting everyone they could find, as long as they didn't shoot first.

But how do you convince a pacifist player to put a bullet in your head? Maybe you say mean things about their mum, perhaps a little jab at their unstylish last-season skin? Or you could just jump in front of their gun while they're shooting at something else—that last one works the best.

PSA: ABMM workaround already in use for the Queen from r/ArcRaiders

"It was bound to happen, we had two free kits with hairpins healing everyone and picking them up. I realised one kept trying to jump in front of my Equalizer and I decided to use what I thought was a Queen beam to make a break given I 'shot first'." Player craybe managed to capture the exact moment a rat jumped in front of his gunfire. "I then get hit by the quick wheel bug when going for a snap to make distance. So, beware these dickheads on Queen and Matriarch as they will surely multiply to mess with your ABMM."

The rat then proceeds to pretend as if they're the victim, telling the rest of the lobby that they'd been shot and pointing some naive do-gooders towards craybe. They kill him before he can plead his case or get away.

"I had three queen cores up my butt (he means in his safe pocket) so no huge loss and I was more amused to see them use the strategy after calling out that we had a sniper north of us, and all the false friendly crap. All they got was a busted Equalizer and a Bettina I barely use. I'm more annoyed the snap turned into a smoke at the end of the clip."

I'm glad that nothing too valuable was lost, but it's still a sucky situation. It could very well just be rose-tinted glasses, but I do feel as if Arc Raiders' matchmaking was better when the game first released and players knew very little about how it actually worked—cheesing the system was harder and assholes were easier to identify and kill back then.

Now, you don't know who you can trust and who's out to stab you in the back, so keep your eyes peeled for any suspicious behaviour raiders—the rats walk among us.

The biggest thing to happen in Arc Raiders recently (if you don't count the Expedition near miss) was Embark's decision to rework the matchmaking to be more attuned to players' actions in solo, duo, and trio queues. The only problem with having better matchmaking is having to wait a bit longer in queue for the game to actually fulfil this promise.

"Starting today, we'll be testing adjustments to our matchmaking algorithm aimed at improving the quality of your matches," a dev explains in an official blog post. "One thing to note: the algorithm may take a little longer to find a match, since it's now working harder to find you a better one."

Hopefully, after waiting a bit longer than usual, you'll run into raiders with a similar mindset to yours when you head Topside, those that match your playstyle and squad size "making for more fair and enjoyable raids". This is thanks to the matchmaking taking into account an individual's behaviour while in different squad sizes, meaning you can be a bloodthirsty murderer in solos and a happy-go-lucky team player in squads.

So far it seems as if the biggest issue players have isn't with the matchmaking, but what it takes to get there. As always "there is room for improvement—especially during low-population hours, in certain regions, or in specific map conditions."

Ever since matchmaking was first discussed for Arc Raiders, there were those that asked why all of this was necessary when Embark could just manually split PvE and PvP via different gamemodes. If only it were that easy. But it's clear that all this effort is going into matchmaking because Embark wants players to be comfortable in their games up to a point.

Even in predominantly PvE lobbies there is still a chance of you coming across a PvPer in disguise, or just someone having a bad day—that's what keeps the suspense high and players on edge.

Regardless of intent, though, Embark clearly has its work cut out when it comes to perfecting matchmaking, and with the promises that "we're working to improve those cases" let's just hope the next stage will be speeding up the queuing process.

Clearing your raider for Expedition is a pretty big deal in Arc Raiders. It involves tons of prep and a dedication that you're willing to start the next season with a fresh character and stash (alongside some perks that the Expedition offers your new avatar). It's not something that everyone is willing or able to do, which is why this latest bug left players in such disarray.

The bug in question impacts those who manage to finish the 100K damage challenge: Once completed, players would be automatically signed up for the upcoming fourth Expedition, whether they wanted to be shoved out into the wasteland or not.

[Embark] Update on Expedition sign-up bug - Sign-ups reverts starting tomorrow Friday, July 17, 2026 5:00 PM. (done in waves) from r/ArcRaiders

Thankfully Embark is intervening now, before anyone's exiled Topside. "We want to err on the side of caution," Embark explains in a message to players via social media. "We will revert the Departure sign-up for players whose sign-up behaviour appears representative of this issue. This may be done in several waves, starting tomorrow, Friday, July 17, 2026 5:00 PM."

But even with the intervention scheduled for the weekend the devs still advise players to "check the in-game Expedition tab and verify that it shows the correct information for your case," just in case your raider is still ready to be sent off.

"If you had previously been signed up for departure automatically and this does not revert by the end of day tomorrow, please reach out to our support team as soon as possible. If you have changed your mind and want to depart, you can still opt in to do so. Additionally, Last Call will be available as usual for those of you who aren’t able to sign up for Departure before the deadline."

It seems like Embark are on top of the situation, but there are still some players who are deciding to take extra precautions: "I'm taking a screenshot of my intentional signup, damage completion and Expedition vault contents so I can open a ticket when they fuck this up," one declared on Reddit. I guess it is better to be safe than sorry.

The first hotfix since Arc Raiders' 1.36 update has rocked up, and while it may be small it does tackle some important issues, namely a new duplication exploit which has popped up recently and saw mountains of explosives spawn even faster than the throwables glitch.

"We have just pushed a hotfix on all platforms to mitigate a duplication issue, an official blog post explains. "As we stated before regarding the use of exploits, we will continue issuing bans on accounts that have been gaining significant advantage."

All's well that ends well, right? If only it could be so easy. Like most things that happen on the internet, this hasn't satiated all players, as some question why Embark can fix this glitch but not one that is seen to be considerably worse.

"This hotfix proves embark can respond overnight, so why is weapon duping still here?" player Loose_Fish5725 asks. "A dupe that literally anyone could abuse gets discovered, spreads like wildfire, and gets patched in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, we've had duplicated Bobcats and weapons circulating for weeks. Entire kits are being duplicated, sold, and recycled, destroying the economy, yet that's somehow a lower priority?"

The weapon dupe glitch in question is like many others but the issue is with it flooding Arc Raiders lobbies with 'fake' weapons and ruining the economy as rare weapons become pretty common. If you've seen players with hordes of Bobcats on your travels that'd be why.

"The speed of this fix proves the developers can react quickly when they choose to," the player continues. "That's why it's frustrating watching the in-game economy continue to suffer while the most impactful exploit remains unresolved."

The reality of the situation, though, is likely quite simple. Embark was probably able to fix the new duplication glitch because it was new and came from the most recent patch. Older duplication glitches are harder to deal with simply because it's been around for longer and is relentless in how it just keeps popping up.

It's also easy to ban accounts with ridiculous stack value, but it's harder to correct the internal economy when much of the duplicated gear has been spread across accounts that found items fair and square during matches and not by duplicating them. That's all to say that Embark will likely be fighting duplication glitches for the rest of the game's lifecycle, the important thing is to try and stay on top of it.

There's been more duplication exploits in Arc Raiders at one point or another than I can shake several suspiciously identical sticks at. It's the get rich quick scheme that a lot of raiders opt in to, there's been multi-million rubber duck hauls and prisons made of just ziplines. It seems like there's no end to the creativity of a dupe exploit, but Embark has confirmed that it's been cracking down on them.

"Like with anti-cheat, we are always working against duplication exploits. We’re keeping a close eye on the game economy, and constantly catalogue, investigate and seek to counteract exploits," Embark explains in the latest patch notes. "Recently, we’ve fixed some exploits related to duplication. We always want to make sure fixes are widely effective, so we make sure to monitor and evaluate our success before sharing that progress with you."

The most interesting part of this is the graph Embark includes as part of their update on tackling cheaters. It shows the percentage of players "with unusually high 'profit per minute'". Looking at the graph, you can see that things got particularly bad towards the beginning of June, which may have coincided with the 1.33.0 update that tested a ban on free loadouts.

Since then, however, things have gotten better. The percentage of players that may be guilty of using duplication exploits has apparently dropped to under 1%, the lowest it's been in months.

As for the regular old cheating Embark also notes that work on snuffing that out has been going well: "Over the past few weeks, we’ve completed our rollout of Denuvo Anti-Cheat. It is now enforced for all players, and the results we’ve seen so far have been promising. Thanks to the efforts of our anti-cheat team, we are continuously getting more effective at identifying and acting against cheaters."

Embarks recent efforts to rid Arc Raiders of cheating have seemingly gone quite well over the last few months, as it's treated as a "top priority" for the team to handle. All I can say is, good. Cheating in Arc Raiders was a right pain, and one of the reasons I stopped playing as much as I used to. So let's hope it's only up from here.

Understanding matchmaking in Arc Raiders has been something of a white whale for players, especially since we first got confirmation that aggression-based matchmaking did actually play a part in creating lobbies. Since then Embark has been more open about what actually goes into its matchmaking and is more responsive to players who asked for changes, with its latest update adding perhaps the most sought after change.

Following on from the matchmaking survey Embark put out in May, Arc Raiders has "implemented one of the most requested matchmaking features," according to the latest patch notes. "We now track your playstyle separately for Solo, Duo, and Trio rounds, and match you accordingly.

"Say you are a friendly solo player, but your two squadmates always want to dominate trios in PvP. Before, being friendly solo could push you into more cooperative trio rounds, and playing PvP-focused in a trio could push you into more PvP-focused solo rounds—so changing squad size meant matchmaking took a bit to adjust."

This has actually been an issue I've encountered. My friends are split down the middle with different playstyles, with some being cooperative and others bloodthirsty killers. That's always meant that we've rarely played together as everyone likes keeping their solo lobbies just the way they are, and can't be arsed with having to retrain the matchmaking after briefly switching styles.

"Now there's no overlap," the patch notes explain. "You'll be able to go from friendly questing and plant-picking in Solo rounds to adrenaline-fueled PvP trio games (if that's how you usually play in those respective cases), by simply changing your squad size. The same holds for Duo—all three are tracked on their own."

I absolutely love this from Embark and is yet another example of how the devs have been slowly and consciously improving the quality of Arc Raiders, especially since the initial hype died down. It's so good, in fact, that I really wish we'd gotten this change sooner, but it's better late than never. At least I've got a new reason to drag my friends back into Arc Raiders now.

You can tell Embark is still figuring out what to do with Arc Raiders expedition wipes, because they keep changing every season.

The studio announced this week that the fourth expedition is completely changing the main incentive for wiping from permanent extra skill points to a mixture of premium currency and blueprints.

Indeed, time has shown that players care more about blueprints than the opportunity to be a little bit quicker than the competition. In the new format, each completed departure objective guarantees you 150 Raider Tokens and one blueprint that will carry over through the wipe.

There are a total of five departure objectives, so you can rack up 750 Raider Tokens through grinding—equivalent to roughly $7 of premium currency. In case you're wondering, that's around half the price of a single standard store bundle in Arc Raiders. The blueprints earned are randomly pulled from a pool that includes some really valuable stuff:

• Heavy Gun Parts Blueprint
• Complex Gun Parts Blueprint
• Padded Stock Blueprint
• Extended Barrel III Blueprint
• Muzzle Brake III Blueprint
• Stable Stock III Blueprint
• Vertical Grip III Blueprint
• Venator Blueprint
• Rascal Blueprint
• Osprey Blueprint
• Trailblazer Blueprint
• Anvil Blueprint
• Bettina Blueprint
• Hullcracker Blueprint
• Tempest Blueprint
• Vulcano Blueprint
• Dolabra Blueprint
• Aphelion Blueprint
• Combat Augment Mk 3 Flanking Blueprint
• Tactical Augment Mk 3 Defensive Blueprint
• Looting Augment Mk 3 Safekeeper Blueprint
• Looting Augment Mk 3 Survivor Blueprint
• Wolfpack Blueprint
• Powered Descender Blueprint
• Snap Hook Blueprint

As Arc Raiders diehard Tim Clark pointed out to me, this is actually the second way Embark has enabled blueprints to make the trip through wipes. You can already purchase up to five expedition vault slots from Ermal that will preserve anything stored in them, so if you make full use of the challenges and vault, then you can get a headstart on the next wipe with 10 blueprints.

Sounds like a decent change for folks that have been keeping up with expeditions this whole time, but if you haven't already started on the first three, then this information isn't all that useful. Embark seems to know that this is a core problem with its unique wipe mechanic—because they have to be done in order and only once per season, if you haven't already been doing them you're less and less likely to ever engage with the option. To that end, it sounds like expeditions will undergo bigger changes in the future:

"We understand the frustration of new players that are only now starting to do their Expeditions. We need to find the right balance of rewarding our veteran players but also give new players fair and fun ways to catch up and not feel like they are always behind. This is a continuous effort and we'll keep you updated as we have more to share," the blog post reads.

The window for the fourth expedition opens on July 7th at 1pm CEST/11am UTC/4am PT and closes on July 21st at 10am CEST/8am UTC/1am PT.

I am nothing if not a coward and a rat. Not in the sense that I'd be lurking around any extracts in Arc Raiders waiting to jump someone—I could never do something so evil—but in the way that I like to scuttle around in the shadows, staying out of fights, and attacking arcs from odd angles so they can't hurt me back. Like I said: a coward and a rat.

But some people don't have to stoop to such levels, as you can see with one Arc Raiders player, rI1975, who recently took us through a masterclass on how to destroy a Bastion with no Deadline mine in just 16 seconds.

How to kill a bastion in 16 seconds (without deadline). from r/ArcRaiders

"Too often I see people with hullcrackers or anvils just spending multiple minutes fighting Bastions, wasting ammo and time," rI1975 adds. "It's much easier than you think."

I see your surgical take down of a Bastion and raise you my inherent fear of getting too close, missing a shot, and then getting squished? As other players pointed out in the comments this video makes it look way too easy.

One player manages to summarise my amazement: "You need to be wearing the doctor's outfit with this kind of surgical skin". While others just seem in awe of the accuracy and fearlessness of this player.

All it took to take the Bastion down in the end was three shots to its knee with a hullcracker, knocking it down, three shots to its core at the back to blow it open, and one brutal kill-shot into the internals of the Bastion itself. While it was a close call, from when the first shot hit it did indeed all only take 16 seconds to take it down.

Since Embark recently added the Nomadic Envoy, who only trades for big arc parts, learning how to quickly flatline Bastions is a useful skill, especially as they drop a tonne of cores, and so are one of the most efficient ways to grind valuable big arc parts.

I have certainly relied on Deadlines to take down bigger arcs since they were introduced, but the hullcracker is also a fantastic weapon that shouldn't be taken lightly, as the video above demonstrates. It was actually my favourite weapon from all the way back in the preview and has continued to be a stalwart in my stash ever since.

To PvP or to PvE? This is a question that's plagued Arc Raiders ever since its launch, with players split between their love for banding together and killing arcs, as opposed to their love for tearing each other limb from limb and taking the scrap to trade for more scrap—it's a tough choice.

Embark has hinted at Arc Raiders being a more friendly extraction shooter, with CEO Patrick Söderlund explaining that it's not about "shooting other players", even if they didn't expect such a passionate PvE crowd to emerge. Since then there's been a PvE-forward event which saw players band together against the machines, plus more information shared about the matchmaking that supposedly splits off the more aggressive players.

But one player has had enough. Forward_Problem_7550 took to Reddit with an idea for a 'Rival Gangs' PvP mode, and honestly, I like the sound of that: "Sick of hearing about PvE. Give the PvP players what we actually want."

Sick of hearing about PvE, Give the PvP players what we actually want… from r/ArcRaiders

The Rival Gangs idea would see players jump into a high difficulty map modifier which would provide them with increased loot value and less active return points and hatches. But the catch is raiders would need to be equipped with at least 30,000 raider coins worth of weapons: "Hostilles have been spotted in the area. Only well-equipped Raiders are getting clearance to head Topside."

The concept of turning PvP into a map modifier is a very appealing option to have, especially if you could go in, wreak havoc, and not have any of it damage your matchmaking standing. The idea that you'd need a minimum amount of gear would also be a sound idea, not just to give players more of an incentive to take out other raiders, but to ensure there's somewhat of a level playing field and that everyone has something to lose. Having a minimum loadout value entry requirement is something that Marathon has also toyed with for its Ranked mode and Cryo Archive map.

But this is all just the hopes and dreams of a fan. Even with all the good will, we likely won't be seeing the Rival Gangs map modifier in Arc Raiders. Although that's not to say something similar couldn't make an appearance later down the line—it's certainly within the realms of possibility.

Are PvE-only lobbies a thing in Arc Raiders? Will one measly kill mark me as a hostile player in future matches? These are questions Embark tackles head-on in a new matchmaking-focused blog post. This is by far the most the developer has spoken in detail about its unique aggression-based matchmaking system since we first learned about it, and it's a genuinely interesting read.

"We take multiple factors into account when forming a lobby. One of the strongest is your playstyle across previous rounds, especially as it relates to how you engage with other Raiders," the post reads. "It's important to understand that playstyles aren't binary. This isn't 'friendly' vs. 'shoot on sight.' It's a continuous scale."

Embark says that while some players are always friendly and others are bloodthirsty maniacs, "most raiders fall somewhere in between—maybe friendly until threatened, maybe opportunistic, maybe cautious, maybe unpredictable on a bad day."

What Embark wants to make exceedingly clear is that Arc Raiders' matchmaking does not exclusively match you with those who play exactly the same. "Our system tries to place you with players who sit closer to you on that scale, while still keeping Topside from becoming completely predictable."

To communicate that point, Embark included an illustration of the range of playstyles you're likely to encounter based on your behavior. The graph, which does not represent "real matchmaking telemetry," shows that you're most likely to play with players in adjacent ranges of aggression—as in those who are slightly less or slightly more PvP-hungry than you are. With my extremely small kill count, that explains why the majority of my matches have no PvP at all. But if you're in that middle majority, spicy lobbies are a lot more common.

Embark has recently made two changes to its behavioural judgments based on feedback:

1. Defending yourself is no longer treated the same as starting a fight. Previously, your playstyle didn't capture whether you started a PvP encounter or merely defended yourself. This meant cautious Raiders could be treated as more PvP-focused than they actually are. Now, the two are treated differently.
2. Low-activity rounds carry less weight in your playstyle history. Rounds with little Topside interaction—like spawning and surrendering—used to impact player's estimated playstyle more than expected. Reducing their weight helps the system reflect how you genuinely play when you're out there making choices.

The studio also took this opportunity to clear up common misconceptions about how matchmaking works in Arc Raiders:

• There are not only two kinds of lobbies—friendly and aggressive. It's a scale, not two buckets. Most players land somewhere between the extremes, and matchmaking is more likely to pair you with Raiders whose playstyle is similar to yours on that scale—without guaranteeing a specific outcome every round.
• One shot or kill does not immediately put you in "PvP-focused" lobbies. Matchmaking isn't meant to overreact to single moments - it looks at patterns over time, and changes tend to be gradual rather than instant.
• There are no "PvE-only" lobbies/servers where other Raiders will never attack you. Topside always carries risk. You may trend toward meeting Raiders with similar preferences, but there's no guarantee you'll never be attacked by another Raider.
• Your end-of-round feedback does not affect matchmaking. The survey is valuable for us when we look at trends and make design decisions, but it isn't used as a "next lobby" lever.
• Your loadout does not affect matchmaking. Matchmaking isn't driven by your kit, and we don't scale lobby difficulty based on how much your loadout costs.
• Patches and updates don't reset your matchmaking profile. Your playstyle history carries over across patches. You may notice slightly rougher matches in the first few minutes after an update—that's just because the pool is small while players are still updating - but it recovers quickly as more Raiders come online.
• Looting knocked-out players doesn't affect your matchmaking. Matchmaking looks at how you engage with other Raiders, not what you do with their gear afterward.
• We don't matchmake based only on the squad leader. Each member influences the squad profile - the leader has no special weight compared to their squadmates.
• Turning crossplay on or off does not impact the level of cooperation/PvP in the round. Changing crossplay changes who's in the matchmaking pool (and thanks to that, the matchmaking time), but it doesn't guarantee the tone of your encounters.

Good to know, though I doubt this reassurance will totally squash the superstition around Arc Raiders' invisible social machinations. Guides lead Sean Martin singled out the "One shot or kill does not immediately put you in a 'PvP-focused' lobby" claim in our work chat:

"I don't believe them lol. I literally killed like two people defending myself over the weekend and my next match was hell."

I think we've all had days like that.

Arc Raiders' has had somewhat of a long struggle with cheaters. It's plagued the extraction shooter pretty much from day one, with the few players who are guilty of it ruining the game for the masses as they'd use wallhacks or extra-sensory perception to ruthlessly hunt down other players.

Over the months since Arc Raiders' launch, Embark have attempted to combat cheaters by targeting Steam family sharing, dishing out strict consequences for those caught in the act, and systematically dolling out ban waves. Embark even recently published a short blog post on the subject, announcing that the studio is still taking the fight to cheaters with their kernel-level anticheat and are looking at more ways to eliminate this behaviour from the game. Which leads us to Denuvo.

Part of the latest Arc Raiders patch notes which introduced the new weapon, durability buffs, and a trader from Topside, also included a segment about Denuvo anti-cheat: "As mentioned in our Ensuring Fair Play article, we want to continue improving our anti-cheat solutions and more accurately detect foul play across the Rust Belt. Following a positive rollout in The Finals, Denuvo anti-cheat will also come to Arc Raiders starting May 19th, initially to a limited player pool, with plans to expand after close monitoring."

It's not uncommon for the mention of Denuvo to ruffle feathers. This anti-cheat is renowned for claims of it plaguing games with performance nerfs and stutters alongside it having ample access to your PC as it's a kernel-level anti-cheat. Embark has addressed some of these concerns, however, as it promises: "We will not be using Denuvo's Digital Rights Management (DRM) service, and are working to ensure minimal impact on performance."

It doesn't seem to be much of an issue anyway though, as most Arc Raiders players seem more concerned about riding their lobbies of cheaters and who will be the first hit with this new anti-cheat rather than concerns about the anti-cheat itself: "If this actually nukes ESP/ wallhack users the game might genuinely recover."

Theories of who exactly the "limited player pool" will encapsulate are floating around with some debating whether it could be distributed by region or PvP lobbies. The consensus so far seems to be that PvP lobbies are where anti-cheat is needed the most, because players using cheats against other players is far worse than using cheats to kill Arcs quicker.

"PvP lobbies are where the majority of cheaters will end up anyways," one player says. "There are still cheaters in PvE lobbies, but none of us PvE players care if they have aimbot or can see our inventory or position anyways, as long as they don't kill us."

Hopefully, this next step in Embark's journey towards fairer play will deliver visible results for players who are tired of being hunted for sport by cheaters. But it doesn't sound as if Embark is dusting its hands of the situation, more so that this is just another step on the road to recovery: "With Denuvo anti-cheat and Anybrain, we are working to strengthen Arc Raiders' systems even further. Keep sending us reports of any information that you believe might help us to do so, it's highly appreciated."

The first Arc Raiders patch since Embark shook up its update schedule has arrived. Major updates are only coming twice a year, but regular balancing changes continue unabated. That's what we have in patch 1.29.0: Embark is targeting a handful of bugbears while also introducing a new anti-ARC grenade launcher.

Perhaps the biggest change for active players is a partial reversion of weapon durability. Speranza weaponry isn't holding up like it used to. The idea was to force players to use more resources to keep their gear true, but the overwhelming response is that's actually annoying. Embark acknowledged in the patch notes that the lowered durability of some guns was "too much," and so it's toughening up some of the most common guns in the game.

Specifically, the Ferro, Anvil, Canto, Osprey, Renegade, Torrente, Bettina, and Jupiter can be shot more before they break. The percentage increase is different for each gun, ranging from 18% to 54%. The biggest durability boost by far goes to the Renegade, going from 175 to 269 shots. All of the numbers below assume a tier 1 weapon.

Embark classified these as the "worst offenders," but also said it will "monitor for any pain points that come up around durability in the coming weeks, and continue to adjust accordingly."

Then there's the Rascal, a new pocket-sized grenade launcher that functions as a lower-tier option for anti-Arc offense. Embark's official description:

"Lightweight, compact, and easy to carry, this unconventional launcher packs a punch despite its… quirks. While it’s slower to reload, and a bit unpredictable on the aim, the Rascal shines as a reliable side-arm for those who want anti-ARC firepower without the risk of lugging around a Hullcracker."

Patch 1.29.0 is also packing quality-of-life stuff, like the ability to view your teammates' info after an unsuccessful match, as well as the Nomadic Envoy, a new trader with Elie covered in detail today.

Last week Embark explained to players that it would be scaling down the frequency of major updates in Arc Raiders, citing the need to slow down to provide concise and "more impactful" changes. But now, just one week later, we've got another patch with quite a few highlights: a new weapon, durability adjustments, and a new trader from Topside.

The trader is the standout addition in my book. Part of a group of nomadic envoys who roam Topside, his name's Ermal, and he'll turn up in Speranza every week with a bunch of new items and perks for raiders that are level 25 and over to get their hands on. This is what will be on offer on a weekly rotation:

• Cosmetics
• Blueprints
• Raider Tokens (the premium currency)
• Progression items such as items needed for current Raider projects
• Expanded Stash space (although this resets post-expedition)
• Expedition Vault access which allows raiders to store up to five items for retrieval post-Expedition

Players will be able to trade "high-value Arc materials and stockpiled rare weapons" in exchange for all of these items and perks. But all of this trading isn't cheap. One cosmetic costs a total item value of 500,000 coins, I'm talking Queen Reactors, Matriarch Reactors, and Rocketeer Drivers just to name a few.

I've been waiting for some real trading to arrive in Arc Raiders for quite some time. Although I was hoping for an official trading route to open up between players, instead of using third party sites, this is still a hugely welcome addition. And I'm not the only one who thinks this.

"Has anyone realised how good this new trader is," Head-Chance3425 says in a social media post. "This will completely turn the game in favour of killing Arc because rewards are madness. To be able to earn coins and skins just by killing big Arc is amazing. Not to mention stash, blueprint carryover, and other cool stuff. I think this is one of the best updates so far in favour of gameplay and I love it."

Arc Raiders has always been at its best when Arcs have been the primary target. It encourages raiders to work together to take down bots three times their size and I think it provides a more compelling reason to go Topside rather than to just hunt down fellow raiders.

Embark is slowing down the live service treadmill for Arc Raiders. The hit extraction shooter will now receive major updates twice a year. That's in contrast to its current run of monthly updates, which have been hit or miss in the seven months since launch.

Arc Raiders' bi-annual updates will be "larger in scale, more impactful, with the goal to genuinely change how you play the game," according to a blog post penned by executive producer Aleksander Grøndal.

"When Arc Raiders launched, we planned to offer monthly updates. The intention was to keep you all engaged, to ensure the game always felt fresh, and to give you reasons to keep braving topside. But once the game was in players' hands, we saw that the kind of long-term experience we want to create for Arc Raiders requires more transformative updates."

Arc Raiders will not go dark in the months between milestone additions: a dedicated "live service team" will continue to deliver "regular live updates," cosmetics, balance changes, bug fixes, and in-game events. In the post, Grøndal says its current schedule makes it impossible to pursue larger changes the game needs.

"Some of the progression improvements we want to implement simply need more development time that we haven't been able to address properly while running on a monthly cycle. Moving to larger updates allows us to spend more time refining the systems players engage with the most," Grøndal wrote.

The first test of Arc Raiders' new cadence will be Frozen Trail, a major update planned for October that Embark says is its biggest yet:

• A Sprawling New Frontier: Explore a new landscape in the Rust Belt with layered design and new mysteries to uncover in the largest map in the game.
• Our Most Ambitious ARC Operation So Far: Including new ARC enemies with fresh designs, and unique behaviors that will challenge Raiders in new ways.
• New Systems of Progression: Many players have maxed out their Raider Den and hit the Skill Point ceiling. Frozen Trail will introduce new goals and more ways to shape your Raider’s progression.
• Exploring the origin of Arc: What are Arc and where do they come from? Frozen Trail gives Raiders the opportunity to begin uncovering that mystery.
• Improved Skill Tree
• Alongside new weapons, items, instruments, cosmetics and more

That's exciting stuff, but it's also five months away.

In the short term, Embark is also introducing a new nomadic trader that offers unique rewards and cosmetics in exchange for high-value items. The trader is a targeted response to "a few common problems" that Embark is monitoring:

• You’re holding a lot of high-value items with no way to offload them in rewarding ways.
• Your Stash is filling up with the game’s new items and we haven’t increased the capacity.
• Very few of you are going on the Expedition, either because it is not rewarding enough, or because it is too painful to part with your favorite items and Blueprints.

While larger changes to the Expeditions system are in the works, the nomadic trader will offer a perk that allows players to carry five items over with them into the next Expedition (including blueprints).

I've been away from Arc Raiders for months now, but we have several PC Gamer staffers still playing daily. I solicited editorial director Tim Clark's reaction to the news:

"I can tell you that with my many thousands of hours in Destiny 2 I could see this coming a mile off. Some players genuinely don't understand how hard the process of producing new high-fidelity assets and animation are, let alone complex systems that require testing. The monthly cadence never looked sustainable, and the thinness of those updates was seen in the increasingly grumpy playerbase.

"But October now looks an awful long way off, and Frozen Trails will have to blow people's minds if Arc is to avoid falling into the same trap as so many live service games that have struggled to keep their audiences sated with new stuff to do."

The trajectory of Arc Raiders mirrors the ways people are playing it. Embark began with a roadmap that fit the blueprint of PvP-focused shooters, but many players have glommed onto its MMO qualities as a highlight: social collaboration, grinding, and completionism. As Tim says, it has a lot more in common with Destiny than Call of Duty. Arc Raiders does not call for updates—it demands expansions.

Arc Raiders' new Turbines are legit terrifying. I'm not sure if it's peel of thunder that rolls across the map as they drop from the sky like a vengeful robot angel, or how tricky they can be to approach due to all the mines and lightning they throw at you—either way, they're not the easiest foe to defeat with a few players, let alone solo.

Well, the good news is that you don't necessarily need to. As is usual for each new enemy, the Arc Turbine drops the Turbine Compressor material you'll have to use in the current project, Avian Alarm, but you'll also need it to craft the new Powered Descender item (though I'm not sure why you'd want to, considering its effectiveness).

Besides trying to kill Arc Turbines, it turns out that you can get Turbine Compressors from Arc Couriers as well. Similar to Vaporizer Regulators, these are somewhat rare drops considering they're epic materials, but if you hit every Arc Courier you spot, you'll likely get one or two, which is all you need for the project.

Arc Couriers are rarely contested, so this might make things a lot easier if you're struggling to take down the Turbine. If you're looking for an area with lots of couriers, try the swamp on Dam Battlegrounds or the Electromagnetic Storm map condition which spawns Couriers more.

Otherwise, if you're looking for the fastest way to destroy an Arc Turbine, you'll want to wait until it lands and either stick Deadlines to it before ducking in cover, or plink away at it from range with a Hullcracker, both of which you can buy daily from the Speranza traders. The Turbine's weak spots are the spinning yellow cylinders at its core, so that's what you're aiming for.

Just be careful not to shoot it while it's in the air, as it's heavily armored, and will simply rain down more lightning on you. Bide your time and wait for it to land before you strike.

Let's be real for a second: repairing weapons in games is not a fun activity. In fact, the only time I remember ever enjoying upkeeping my shooters was in Red Dead Redemption 2, when I got to lather them with gun oil and make them all nice and shiny. Is repairing weapons in Arc Raiders enjoyable? No, of course not—it's effectively admin.

It's ultimately just a number that goes up and down, but as our very own Evan Lahti argued to me, a necessary part of expending the resources we accumulate in a loot-centric game.

Well, Embark obviously felt that we weren't expending enough, because in the most recent Riven Tides update, it massively nerfed weapon durability with the following statement:

"The weapon economy has increasingly started looking more and more unbalanced, where players engaging in heavy PVP have to make a lot of difficult decisions around their weapons while the most friendly players have ended up in a chronic state of weapon accumulation. We want to balance this out so that all players are challenged by weapon attrition, as well as introducing new ways to combat it."

The key changes from the patch notes are:

• Common, Uncommon, and Rare weapons have increased durability loss per shot
• Durability on weapons you find outside locked rooms is reduced

There are positives, too, such as the fact that we now regain 25% weapon durability on upgrading one (something I've long wanted), and durability loss on weapons acquired from downed raiders is reduced.

It's not a bad idea in principle. Arc Raiders is a game about scrappy daredevils cobbling together guns from trash they find out in the world—it makes sense they would break quickly, but for me, the problem with these changes is threefold.

First off, is a "chronic state of weapon accumulation" really an issue? At this stage people have hundreds and hundreds of hours in the game (200 for me), but I feel like Embark abdicated any right to worry about what people hoard in their stashes when it made resets optional. Usually in a game like this, a forced reset would level the playing field, emptying those vaults, but it's way too late in the day to suddenly decide you want to make a half-hearted attempt to clear out said vaults.

If someone wants to keep 100 Bobcats in their stash, more power to them. Weren't we all just arguing last year about white weapons being way too powerful and people with great gear constantly getting ratted by Kettle and Stitcher-wielding PvPers? Rarer weapons have rarely felt worth it in the past, and it'll definitely put a damper on getting lucky and finding one when its durability on spawn is likely decreased now.

I'm also not really sure what the patch notes mean when they say "introducing new ways to combat it". What new ways? Upgrading a gun to repair it isn't any less resource-intensive than just repairing it. As far as I can see, we've been given no tools to mitigate durability loss.

If the concept is "crappy guns break faster", why not reduce durability loss on upgraded guns but make those upgrades cost a little more? That would be a sensible balance of investment and risk, and would incentivise players to upgrade their weapons versus using the basics. This would also lead to more valuable loot in the PvP pool. Why not add attachments that reduce durability burn rate as well, seeing as we have attachments that increase it and these will be a no-go for most players after these changes.

Why not make weapon durability provide interesting consequences, too? When you're on low durability, say, maybe your weapon can potentially jam, Far Cry 2 style? I genuinely think Embark has gone about these tweaks in such a confusing way that seems to incentivise PvP more than anything else. But ultimately, when I'm repairing my Anvil after every single outing, I'm not thinking "Yay, this is so much fun," I'm thinking, "Okay, so I have to pay a toll every run now".

Arc Raiders' latest update, Riven Tides, brought a ton of new arcs, patches, and gadgets to the extraction shooter, and while most of the changes have gone over well with players there is one part that's proving a little difficult to get a handle on: the powered descender.

This is a new epic gadget which basically works as a parachute for players jumping from heights. Equipped with two thrusters, it'll soften the blow of falling when used, meaning players can be a bit more daring with their jumps. On paper it sounds simple enough, but there are a couple of asterisks to it which have sent some players falling to their doom.

I am extremely disappointed from r/ArcRaiders

"I am extremely disappointed," player lologugus says in a social media post. It's accompanied by an 11-second video clip of them jumping off the dam in Dam Battlegrounds, only to accidentally set themselves on fire when trying to use the powered descender and then downing themself once they hit the ground. Not the smoothest landing.

But the thing is, it's not necessarily the gadgets issue. There are other clips of players using it just fine, it seems like there is just a limit to how high you can use it to parachute from. You see, the powered descender just reduces fall speed, it doesn't negate it. So if you drop from the top of the dam or Spaceport's tower it won't be able to reduce the speed enough to ensure you get out unhurt.

There's also a charge time before the powered descender will work at full strength, and players need to be wary of the fact that it won't run infinitely—it uses fuel and it will run out. So don't go jumping off every building worry-free without checking up on the gadget first.

But before you can give the powered descender a go you gotta find it first. Its blueprint can be found in valuable lockers across the Riven Tides map. You'll have to be quick, because all the lockers seem to be picked clean almost as soon as a game starts, but maybe you'll get lucky.

The new Arc Turbine enemy in Arc Raiders' Riven Tide update is a bit of a terror. Not only does it spawn quite late into a round, meaning you have to kill it fast or risk not exfilling, but its projectiles create lightning strikes, which it'll try to zap you with. Unfortunately, you'll need to kill it to get the new Turbine Compressor material for the Avian Alarm project.

You can also use this material to craft some of the new items, like the Powered Descender fall mitigation tool. This is a tough enemy, so make sure you bring plenty of shield rechargers and healing, but otherwise, I'll explain how to find Arc Turbines below plus your best bet for killing one.

Where to find the Arc Turbine in Arc Raiders

The Arc Turbine is a late-spawning enemy that usually appears on Riven Tides at the 16-13 minutes remaining mark, though I have also encountered them on Dam Battlegrounds and Buried City. It's easy to tell if one is spawning because you'll hear a giant thunderclap and will be able to spot it descending in the sky from a distance. They don't spawn consistently, so if one doesn't appear by the 13-minute mark, you may as well extract.

Sometimes, though, two Arc Turbines will spawn instead of just one. The spawn locations are in the northern part of the map along the shore, either:

• In the northeast by the Tidebreaker seawall
• In the northwest near the Azzurro Beach and the hotel
• In the north near the Port Authority Building
• Further south, just to the west of the Customs House

The only time I've seen the one spawn near the Customs House is alongside the one that drops by the Port Authority Building, so this might be the only combination in which two Arc Turbines appear at once. When one arrives it'll land and open up for a while, before taking off and moving to a new location.

How to kill an Arc Turbine in Arc Raiders

The Arc Turbine is a tricky enemy to defeat—far more challenging than a Rocketeer, Vaporizer, or Bombardier. As you might have guessed, the Arc Turbine's weak spot, a bunch of spinning yellow cylinders at its core, is only revealed when it lands and opens up, giving you two options in terms of killing it:

• Bring Deadlines to plant on the inside of the Arc Turbine: It should only take a couple of Deadlines to kill an Arc Turbine if you plant them on its inside. The problem is that when it lands it drops a bunch of mines in the area, which makes approaching it quite tough. It also won't stay in position for long, so it's a race against time trying to reach it and plant your mine before it takes off. Theoretically, Trigger 'Nades might also work, but you won't have much time to place and detonate them before the Turbine takes off. Remember that you can buy a Deadline daily from Apollo.
• Use a Hullcracker or a sniper rifle to hit its cores from a distance: If you find the right angle, you can plink away at the Arc Turbines' innards from range when it's landed, but remember that if you're close enough, it will start firing out lightning projectiles at you. Still, if you have a full squad of three fighting it, this might be a more viable approach depending on what gear you have available to you. In case you forgot, you can buy a Hullcracker daily from Apollo.

After a little while, the Arc Turbine will take off. Don't try and shoot it while it's flying: it's heavily armoured and will just rain lightning down on you. Instead, think of it like damage phases for a boss. Wait until it lands again and then approach to set up your second Deadline, or continue plinking. The real issue with the Arc Turbine is that it spawns so late in the round, and relatively far away from an elevator depending on your luck.

With that in mind, I definitely think the Deadline strategy is the best and fastest method, provided you can deal with the mines on approach. Hell, you could even plant two Deadlines at once if you have a teammate and you both approach via the same route. The Arc Turbine doesn't seem to have any defensive capabilities at close range, though it will take off shortly after you get close. In many ways, you can sneak up or surprise attack it with the first Deadline and then just hide in cover until it lands again.

As mentioned, killing one and looting it will net you the new Turbine Compressor material, which is used to craft some of the new gear, like the Powered Descender, and you'll need two to complete the Avian Alarm project.

Finding Ship Models is a big part of the new Riven Tides update in Arc Raiders, since you need these trinkets for the Avian Alarm project. It makes sense that a sandy coastal map would introduce a bunch of boat-based trinkets—god knows what function they perform in a bird-based alarm system, but honestly, who knows how anything works in Arc Raiders?

There are also a few new quests, such as Battening Down, Shoring Up Defenses, and Collision Course. Otherwise, though, here's the best way to get Ship Models in Arc Raiders.

Where to find Ship Models in Arc Raiders

First off, it's important to note that Ship Models only seem to be available as trinkets on the new Riven Tide map. I tried a Bird City event just to check this and I didn't find a single one, so either I'm very unlucky, or as new items they're exclusive to the new map, which would make sense.

As is generally the case for trinkets, you can find Ship Models in Residential areas, such as the Hotel Panorama Azzurro, but you can also find them as loose items around the map. I found one in a small building in the Weighing Checkpoint, which is Industrial/Mechanical, so they are dotted all over. The best way to get Ship Models, however, is the Beachcoming map condition for Riven Tide. Similar to Bird City, this map condition takes over the area, so it's just a part of the regular matchmaking pool.

In this event, you have to use the Dockmaster's Detector to find caches on the beach north of the Port Authority Building and dig them up. However, most caches seem to contain a Ship Model of varying rarity. In every cache I opened, I got a ship, including the purple rarity "Sirena Dorata," so you should be able to quickly find them. Here are all of the Ship Models available:

• Wind Sprite (common)
• Twilight Compass (uncommon)
• Velocity (rare)
• Sirena Dorata (epic)
• Leviathan's Crown (legendary)

Unfortunately, Dockmaster's Detectors do wear down after a while, similar to Snap Hooks, but you can get more via the first stage of the Avian Alarm project, find them on the map, and you might even be able to craft them (though I haven't located a blueprint yet).

Finding a Comet Igniter for Tian Wen in Arc Raiders' Collision Course quest is simple if you know the trick to getting them. If you don't, or you haven't encountered this Arc enemy much, then it's much more of a bother.

These exploding balls always seem to catch me at the most inopportune moment and send me running for the hills so as not to get vaporised by their huge shockwave. That said, here's how to get this item and destroy a Comet for Tian Wen.

Destroy a Comet and deliver a Comet Igniter to Tian Wen

While you can find Comets on just about every map, there are loads patrolling the beach on the new Riven Tides map. These Arc look a little like Fireballs or Pops, except they're larger, more similar to a Surveyor—essentially, they're a big metal ball with a blue light on the front that will turn yellow if they spot you.

When they decide to murder you, they'll roll in your direction before blowing up. The thing is: you have to kill a Comet before it blows up to get its Comet Igniter. Doing so will spawn a separate loot container that looks a little like a core as opposed to the usual ring. Loot this and you'll find a Comet Igniter inside. The best and cheapest way I've found to quickly kill a Comet before it blows up is using Seeker Grenades and Snap Blasts.

It only takes a few of these grenades and you can buy them from Apollo daily. I especially like the Seekers as they track to enemies. As long as the Comet hasn't spotted you, you'll have plenty of time to keep tossing them till it's dead. Then, just loot the container, stow the Igniter in a safe pocket, and deliver it back to Tian Wen to complete this one.

Arc Raiders' latest big update, Riven Tides, is finally upon us and it doesn't just bring beach holidays and ice cream cone arcs—there's also a bunch of updates in the patch notes, but the biggest change is coming for your guns.

Weapon durability is getting dropped and high-level spawns are being moved closer to the epicentre of the map. This is both to try to combat gun stockpiling and to turn up the heat: "We're reducing weapon spawn around the outskirts of the maps to increase value and tension of high tier areas and locked rooms."

"The weapon economy has increasingly started looking more and more unbalanced," the patch notes read. "Where players engaging in heavy PvP have to make a lot of difficult decisions around their weapons, the most friendly players have ended up in a chronic state of weapon accumulation. We want to balance this out so that all players are challenged by weapon attrition, as well as introducing new ways to combat it."

Now the durability of weapons you find on the outskirts of the map could be as low as 15, while weapons found in the centre, especially high-level ones in locked rooms, will be around 60, with the average durability on spawned weapons sitting around 30. But weapons won't just have a lower durability off the bat, they'll also lose it faster per shot:

• Common weapons: +75% durability loss on shot.
• Uncommon weapons: +50% durability loss on shot.
• Rare weapons: +35% durability loss on shot.
• Epic weapons: -5% durability loss on shot.
• Legendary weapons: -10% durability loss on shot.

This is an excellent way to make more common weapons less valuable while also making rarer guns more reliable: "We've heard clear frustration that maintaining high-tier weapons is very expensive compared to the lower-tier ones. We want high-tier weapons to have more longevity compared to low-tier weapons."

But it's not all bad news—there are also some weapon changes that'll come in clutch, especially for those who engage in PvP. First off, upgrading a weapon will now repair 25% of the weapon's max durability" to make upgrades less expensive and give players more of an incentive to boost low durability weapons.

Secondly, a weapon's durability loss after a player is knocked out is being dropped from -30% durability to just -15% durability. "We want heavy PvP to be a viable way to play Arc Raiders," the patch notes explain.

All in all, the weapon changes may seem like a big deal but in practice all it does is bring everything closer to the centre. There's even less incentive for PvP'ers to be precious over low-level guns now, while those in friendly lobbies will likely engage in some more unfriendly games as everyone who wants better guns will be pushed together into a smaller area.

I've actually got a ridiculous stack of weapons right now. So this update will be a fantastic excuse for me to burn through some of the more common guns and actually free up some space in my stash.

Completing the Battening Down quest in Arc Raiders took me longer than I expected. Usually I'm pretty good at sussing out locations, but one in particular, the leaking oil pipe you have to repair, is actually very hard to find. While you get directions pointing you towards the correct pipeline, no parts of it are visibly leaking, so it's hard to be sure until you find the spot.

You also have to photograph the seal wall and sample some seaweed, but those parts are much easier. All that said, here's how to complete Battening Down in the new Riven Tides update.

Photograph the cracks forming in the sea wall

Depending on where you spawn, you might want to do these in a different order, but photographing the sea wall and fixing the oil pipe are quite close to each other. For this one, you'll want to head to the Wavebreaker sea wall location in the northeast—I was able to take a picture at the southern end of the far left strut you can see sticking out on the map.

Usually with these photo-based objectives, there are multiple locations you can snap it, so I imagine you can take the pic on the south end of any of the Wavebreaker struts that run north to south.

Fix the leaking oil pipe in the northeast

Now, head northeast across the Wavebreaker to the big partially buried pipeline. This one is easy to spot since it's the rightmost pipeline and is the only intact one. Head to the southern end, where it meets the sea wall, then follow the leftmost pipe north until you hit the yellow interact icon to fix it.

This one took me a while since the section of the pipe you repair isn't visibly leaking at all—it just looks like a pipe, frankly. Interact to fix it and you're all done here.

Sample the shoreline near the hotel beach

Once that's done, head west to the Azzurro Beach, just north of the Hotel Panorama Azzurro. You'll find a little area with a pier and a load of sunloungers and torn parasols, but you need to head north a little way to the shoreline, keeping your eye out for piles of seaweed.

When Apollo says "sample" the shoreline, he literally means you need to sample some seaweed, so look for a pile and interact with the yellow marked icon to scan it. With all three done, that's the quest complete.

Arc Raiders has many wonderful qualities that make it the most popular extraction shooter around, but its current Expeditions grind isn't one of them. Serving as Arc's take on the season wipe, Expeditions give players the option to reset their progress in exchange for permanent upgrades, like extra stash size and skill points.

Up until now, that process was a major resource grind that involved hoarding mountains of scrap to reach an arbitrary goal. For the next one, Embark is shaking things up.

"For the third Expedition, we're doing things a little differently—the big news being that Skill Points will be earned by dealing damage over the five day window, NOT stash value," the developer said in a blog post published today.

And here's how that will work:

• Instead of gathering stash value and coins, players will now have to deal damage to get all five skill points (regardless if it's your first, second or third expedition). All players who have completed their Caravan will get the challenge (no need to sign up to see it).
• You can complete the challenge by dealing damage with any weapon or gadget against any target (except practice range).
• Players will have five days to complete the damage challenge (Tuesday to Sunday).

"We know that grinding for monetary value isn't the most exciting experience. By introducing damage-based objectives and trials instead of stash value, we're providing more freedom and variety in how you can complete the Expedition, encouraging the use of loot rather than hoarding it throughout the five-day window," Embark said.

"Above all, we want expeditions to be fun and not an endless grind. We believe these changes create a fair and engaging challenge that keeps everyone active across the full five days."

Speaking as an Arc player who may never do an Expedition, a five-day bot purge does still sound like quite the grind, but at least it's better than hoarding. As these players are ultimately opting into deleting all of their gear, it only makes sense to incentivize cutting loose with the shiny guns and shields they've been too scared to take out of the vault. Plus it should result in fewer matches where the quickest, most experienced players clear out every compound of even the most basic scrap before I get there. Save some rags for me!

If you've already completed the previous two Expeditions, finishing the third will net you the final piece of the Patchwork outfit. Congrats to our most dedicated raiders.

Here is the conversation around Arc Raiders, presented as a play in one act. Player One: "I like the PvE, and I only want to experience the PvE." Player Two: "I like the PvP actually and I should be allowed to shoot you." Player One: "You're toxic." Player Two: "No, you're toxic." Curtains.

According to figures Embark Studios has shared with the Guardian, the same percentage of Arc Raiders players are focused on the co-op as the PvP. It's roughly 30% for each, with the leftover 40% in the "why not both" camp.

"It caught us a little bit by surprise," executive producer Aleksander Grøndal said. As Embark has explained before, they did not expect such a passionate PvE-only community to spring up around their action shooter, but are "Pleasantly surprised, just to be clear."

Arc Raiders is designed to allow for co-operation—another fun figure from the Guardian article is that over 95% of players use the proximity chat—and enemies like the Matriarch were introduced to give players even more reason to team up. Though the speed of co-operation when the Matriarch was first introduced still surprised the developers. "In an instant—like literally in less than 30 seconds—everyone on that server stopped shooting each other and faced the bigger challenge together," Grøndal said. "And I hadn't really anticipated the fact that every single one would cooperate that easily in a 30-second timeframe."

It's the opposite of what happened with DayZ. When it was only available in Dean Hall's native New Zealand, DayZ was defined by friendly co-operation. Then it opened up to the rest of the world, and suddenly became a hellscape of robbery and torture. New Zealanders are just that much nicer than everyone else, I guess.

According to Grøndal, the look and feel of Arc Raiders is partially responsible for the community it's created. "Yes, the Arcs have captured the surface and they’re the dominant. But if you look around you, nature has come back from an ecological collapse," he said. "The animals are back and the world is thriving. We want to instil hope in the player."

Speranza Bounties is Arc Raiders players' answer to getting shot in the back at extraction by some randomer who screamed "don't shoot" before you could even see them. It's not the first time something like this has taken shape, but it is the first iteration that actually has a bounty system.

"Speranza Bounties is a community-driven platform for tracking and reporting players who betray others in-game," the description reads (via GamesRadar). "Mark targets, vote on the most wanted, and confirm eliminations to build your reputation as a bounty hunter."

Once someone is marked, alongside a string of offences they have apparently committed, such as "Extract Ambush" or "Long Con", other users can vote on who is the most hated or worthy of getting killed in-game. You can confirm a kill by sending in "a screenshot or video as proof of elimination" and there are apparently rewards waiting for "hunters who eliminate the weekly top 10 bounties", but those haven't been revealed yet.

So far 77 players have been eliminated in-game, the first of which was streamer TheBurntPeanut. But strangely enough, despite being eliminated, TheBurntPeanut still sits at the top of the most wanted with 705 votes due to crimes like "voice chat snake", "vault vulture", and "hate speech". Other streamers on the list include: Nadeshot, Nickmercs, Cloakzy, and Tfue. Thus proving the issue with bounty hunting systems: they're really just used to punish high-profile players such as streamers.

We've seen a similar situation play out recently in Marvel Rivals with its incentivised throwing epidemic. It got so bad that NetEase had to step in and restore lost points for those targeted and tighten up malicious disruption rules in-game. Arc Raiders also saw something similar to a bounty system pop up before with The Speranza Watchlist, but that just ended up being more of a role-playing tool than an actual hitlist.

It does, however, seem like reception of Speranza Bounties is split, with some welcoming a chance to shame unsportsmanlike behaviour, while others point out that witch hunts rarely end well. There's also the argument that it's "a waste of time and resources", and perhaps a slight overreaction.

Sure, Embark has explained how it never intended Arc Raiders to be a strictly PvP game: "The game isn't about shooting other players." But this is an extraction shooter, and other players have free will, so as long as they're not cheating I see no issue in killing other players, other than it being irritating when someone lies to you about their intent in-game.

I actually find Arc Raiders interesting because it carries so many multitudes. You can experience the best and worst of people in this game. I've been backstabbed many times but I've also had other players go out of their way to help me. You never really know what you're going to get when you head Topside but that's what keeps me invested.

This lapsed Arc Raiders player was not ready for the Flashpoint update. I hopped into a Blue Gate match with the new Close Scrutiny condition aiming to have a firsthand encounter with the Vaporizer, the fresh ARC drone unleashed topside.

Mistake! The first thing I witnessed upon emerging from spawn was the crimson glow of a raider flare. Just below the flare was a pair of Vaporizers, sized similarly to the Rocketeer, melting its next victim with blue laser beams. Another flare. These things live up to their names.

At least four other raiders in my friendly solo lobby had to come together to take it down while another went for revives. I would say the Vaporizer is basically a Rocketeer that shoots lasers, but this would disrespect its seemingly relentless armor, Matriarch energy shield, superior agility, and ability to melt multiple targets at once. The Vaporizer does not gradually hunt from a distance like its explosive predecessor, but darts across the sky, flanking at any opportunity.

Early encounters indicate the Vaporizer has two main moves. From a distance, there's a ranged laser blast that instantly vaporizes a light shield (ask me how I know this), eats a big chunk of health, and sets you and the ground on fire. Get close enough to really earn its attention, and it'll use the sustained laser beam guaranteed to kill unless you can break line of sight. Much like all of the big baddies, your only real chance against one solo is to to hug a piece of cover with a generous overhang and tear down its armor piece by piece.

During the Close Scrutiny event, the Vaporizers can spawn in packs of three around the Assessors, unique loot opportunities that drop from the sky every few minutes. My coworkers who play a lot more Arc Raiders than I do say you should pack like you're fighting a Queen: Wolfpacks, Hullcrackers, and way more healing items than you think you'll need. Even with all that in mind, I've never seen more PvE death and destruction than with Close Scrutiny. I definitely should have brought more than one stack of defibrillators.

While I wasn't aching for more bots capable of killing me faster than I can react, my understanding among Arc Raiders diehards is that this is exactly what they've been asking for. The current crop of Arc have become somewhat trivial for the folks who've been playing daily since October, so it tracks that a new bot that draws comparison to the dreaded Rocketeer would get their blood pumping again.

I got VAPORIZED! from r/ArcRaiders

Of course, I have no doubts Speranza's finest will work out how to trivialize the Vaporizer, given a few days. At least one has already tried the ol' rodeo Deadline maneuver to great success. Elsewhere in today's update, players are celebrating that free loadouts have finally been knocked down a peg.

The Waking the Grid quest in Arc Raiders appears immediately after you complete Dust on the Wires, and this one also sees you heading for the Spaceport to track down some tricky locations and rooms. This time, you'll have to find a Guard Tower, the Security Control Center, and the Data Office in the Arrivals Building, all of which might trip you up depending on your familiarity with the map.

Still, it's certainly not the hardest quest in Arc Raiders by a longshot. Here's how to complete Waking the Grid.

Activate the security sensors in one of the Guard Towers

Your first step will be heading to one of the many Guard Towers that dot the big Spaceport wall surrounding the central area itself. There's an easy-to-access one just to the east of Fuel Lines, and to the west of Control Tower A6 that I recommend.

Simply climb the break in the wall to the east of it to access its door on top of said wall, then zipline up and interact with the yellow-marked console on your left.

Start the Security Control Center in the Departure Building

Now you need to go to the Departure Building to the north of that Guard Tower I mentioned, specifically, to the Security Control Center. The easiest way to find this is, as shown in the clip below, entering from the southwest side of the building, going straight past the long desk, left, and then left again into the room itself.

You'll want to look for a terminal desk in the back right with red lights—interact with this to complete the next stage.

Search for any trace of a security breach in the Arrival Building Data Office

For this next stage, you're going to the Arrival Building to your north, and you want to look for the Data Office. You can find it by, as shown in the clip below, entering the main Arrival Building entrance, then turning left at the main desk (if you're coming from inside the Spaceport), then turning right, following the sign marked Data Office. Head through a door, and the objective is in the back left of that room.

You'll know you're in the right place because you'll hear an alarm sound. Interact with the yellow marked wires to cut them and complete the quest.

The Dust on the Wires quest is one of the first you'll be greeted with when you load up Arc Raiders new Flashpoint update, and while it's relatively straightforward, it's got a lot of stages. You'll be heading to Spaceport for Shani to investigate the whereabouts of a missing scout patrol, which involves finding a Field Depot and a few other locations.

You'll also have to deliver an item back to her, so I'd suggest bringing a safe pocket to be on the safe side. All that said, here's how to complete Dust on the Wires in Arc Raiders.

Visit a Field Depot and use the Field Radio

This first step involves heading to either of the two Field Depots on the east side of Spaceport, though I personally recommend the southern one, marked above, between the Security Checkpoint to the south, and the Communications Tower to the north.

As with all Field Depots, it's easy to spot by the antenna on the roof. Once there, interact with the yellow-marked terminal on the desk inside.

Interact with the terminal in the old Raider Tower north of the Maintenance Hangar

Now head to the Maintenance Hangar (to the west of the Field Depot in the previous step), and keep your eyes peeled for a rusted metallic tower just to the north of it. This structure looks like it's made of scrap and is quite small, plus it's actually the tower in the quest image.

Climb the stairs around the outside and interact with the yellow-marked terminal inside.

Find traces of the scout patrol near the Maintenance Hangar and search the remains

Descend from the tower and head back towards the Maintenance Hangar. You'll want to circle around to its other side. Just to the southwest of the hangar, on the road, you'll find the traces of the scout patrol by an overturned trolley—interact with the "transmit location" prompt. Now head south down the road a little way and interact with the other overturned trolley by the barrel and the blue cloth.

This will produce the Scout Patrol Note, which you have to deliver back to Shani, so stow it in your safe pocket if you have one.

One of the biggest surprises of last year was the enormous success of the launch of Arc Raiders. It surpassed 12 million players by January, turned out to have Nexon's most successful launch ever, and enjoyed enough concurrent players to rival even the publisher's the biggest MMO's. It's been a spectacular ride so far. That is, with a few caveats.

Players have been concerned about Arc Raiders' rougher edges for some time now. There's been a pretty relentless cheating problem, an ongoing issue with balancing weapons and arcs, and complaints from the community about the lack of endgame content. But rest assured, the devs are at least aware of it all.

"Balancing is always, not really a problem, but something we keep top of mind all the time," production director Caio Braga says in an interview with GamesRadar. "That is one thing. It's all new to us, the live environment with this amount of players. We've been trying to identify what are the most impactful updates we can give to players. There are a few things that we see that are more engaging and some others less engaging, and because we're not a huge team, optimizing for that impact is something that we are learning and trying to do better and better in every update."

The biggest difficulty in balancing Arc Raiders lies in the way it combines PvE and PvP experiences. PvP-focused players generally want better balanced guns and weaker arcs as they don't want to be bothered by a pesky robot while hunting down their fellow man. While those more invested in PvE want stronger arcs for lobbies to work together to take down.

Arcs also seem weaker as players get increasingly better at dealing with them, which is a bypbyroduct of a slightly stale end-game. It's pretty easy right now to get to the point where arcs and even other players aren't a massive threat to you.

Sure, the expeditions mode helps with this somewhat as it wipes your skill tree and all of your gear, but there's still a gap in high level threats. Hell, even the Matriarch isn't a big deal for most players anymore. Have you ever seen a PvE lobby take on one of those? Because I have and it's terrifying, like watching an insect fall into a weaver ant colony.

"[The endgame] is one of the things we want to keep working on," Braga adds. "We want to challenge the players. Especially the players that are reaching the end of our content. We want more for them. I want them to have more to do, and because they are at the end of it, it's also important that we challenge them more and more. It is something we want to continue doing, but always giving players tools as well so that other players can partake of the fun."

Earlier this month at the 2026 Game Developers Conference, Embark production director Caio Braga gave a talk titled "When your AAA game isn't fun: the Arc Raiders story of starting over with intent."

PC Gamer spoke with Braga after the talk to answer some questions on our mind: Will Arc Raiders ever have vehicles? What does Embark make of high-profile failures in live service games? You can (and should) watch the full interview above.

One topic that was top of mind for Braga was the community's influence on updates and how behavior somewhat differed from playtests pre-release. Embark has its fair share of cooperative sessions among the studio, but Braga says the studio tends toward bloodthirsty PvP, including one particularly ruthless coworker.

"His nickname is the Hatch Camper. He loves PvP in the game. He's like Spider-Man: He's here, then he jumps out and ziplines behind you again. He kills whole squads all the time. He's very good at the game," Braga said.

"So we have both: We have people trying to have fun encounters, and some people just trying to be very efficient. That's good because we have a mix—that's what we want from the players as well."

Some other topics Braga touched on: How the Arc we know now were once hated by early players, the unexpected passion for PvE, and where Embark stands on adding vehicles to Arc raiders (the prototypes exist!).

Arc Raiders' upcoming Flashpoint update launches on March 31, less than a week from now. For this Embark has promised players a new map condition, arc threat, player project, and a Scrappy update. Despite being just days away we haven't heard too much about the free update, with the latest detail drop teasing the migration of Shredders from Stella Montis.

"Someone forgot to close the Stella Montis doors on their way out," Embark Studios says in an official social media post. "Check your corners, the Flashpoint update drops next week." It wasn't me guys, I promise.

So this is it. Shredders have finally made their way out of the confines of Stella Montis, and will likely be heading to Blue Gates' cramped corridors. It's not an unexpected move; Embark has been talking about this for some time, with the design lead Virgil Watkins recently revealing that in order to escalate the PvE threat they'd be moving the Shredder: "They'll figure out how to get out of there eventually" (via GamesRadar).

Even before this, players had realised that it was only a matter of time before we'd encounter Shredders on different maps. A few months ago an image of a Shredder seemingly outside made its way into the weekly trials. So, yeah, this development comes as a surprise to no one.

In fact, many players aren't that happy about this update. It's not because they can be annoying as all hell to deal with, being finicky bastards that turn the hallways of Stella Montis into a Saw trap. Instead players are worried that this will count towards the promise of a new arc in the Flashpoint update.

"Shredders are the new Arc aren't they," one player says. While others repeat this disappointment, as many admit that so far, the update isn't living up to Embark's hype: "If adding the shredder to another map is their way of doing an update then I will happily play marathon for now until they actually bring new stuff."

I'd say that Embark has had a good history of providing content. Shrouded Sky brought us hurricanes and beards, Headwinds changed matchmaking, and there's been new projects, decks, and plenty of balance patches between all of that, like nerfing the Il Toro and buffing Rocketeers.

It's not perfect, sure. There's still a substantial cheating problem despite all the work Embark has done to combat this. But as someone who now only drops into Arc Raiders for a couple of matches here and there, mostly to just catch up with friends, it's more than enough for me. The lack of new content is only a real issue for those players who still play it more often than not, I can see how simply moving Shredders from one map to another could seem like a bit of a slap in the face.

But we've still got a few more days until the update releases, plus an ominous teaser, so who knows there could be a whole new arc waiting in the wings for then. If that's not the case then, I guess we'll just have to wait for the Riven Tides update next month which will add a new map, large arc, and map condition.

Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios has "mutually agreed to part ways" with co-founder and chief content officer Rob Runesson, according to an IGN report, following allegations of sexual misconduct with a streamer. Embark said its investigation did not substantiate the claim, but that the decision to part ways was made because the situation had proven "unsustainable."

The allegations against Runesson were initially shared anonymously by someone who claimed to have spoken to a "popular female streamer of The Finals," who allegedly made statements about being in a romantic and sexual relationship with Runesson that they could not escape because of their reliance on Runesson for stream promotions. Those allegations were eventually made public by streamer Balise, and were also shared on The Finals subreddit.

The Finals streamer who made the initial statements about Runesson told IGN that a number of the allegations cited were either out of context or misleading. Despite that, Embark and Runesson decided it would be for the best to part ways.

"Our leadership team was recently made aware of allegations against an Embark employee," Embark said. "We take these matters seriously, and as a part of our process for addressing any types of allegations, we immediately hired a law firm to conduct an external investigation. The investigation did not substantiate the allegations, but we found the situation unsustainable and mutually agreed to part ways with Rob."

The split with Runesson comes a month after Embark suspended its "outbound esports efforts" for The Finals, following multiple complaints about player misconduct. Embark said the suspension "gives us the space to evaluate and review the system in its entirety, and determine the best way forward."

The Finals esports have been paused. from r/thefinals

Arc Raiders has proven to be a big hit and showed that the extraction shooter had legs for a more casual crowd, but like The Finals before it, it's drawn negative attention for its use of AI voices.

In a new interview, Embark CEO and Nexon executive chairman Patrick Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio has begun to phase out "a lot" of the AI-generated voice work in Arc Raiders.

"We re-recorded some of the lines post-launch and made them with real voices … There is a quality difference," Söderlund said. "A real professional actor is better than AI; that's just how it is."

Though Arc Raiders now has fewer AI voice lines than it did at release, the studio isn't phasing out its use of AI. Söderlund reaffirmed a sentiment he's shared before: that AI is enough of a timesaver to keep around.

"We look at [AI] first and foremost as a production tool," he said. "We can test things internally. We can test 15 different lines without recording them, and then we know what to record. It's also a way for us to work, not replace actors. We don't necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time."

AI isn't only concerning for creative reasons—its environmental and economic impacts contribute to a broad suite of ethical worries. While it seems like Söderlund appreciates that AI voice work can't match the real thing, if you've been dodging Arc Raiders due to its use of the technology, these re-recordings don't seem to signal a larger sea change at Embark.

There's a well known gaming maxim I just made up that says "All shooters are better with vehicles." That is why classic Halo Big Team Battle remains a top three multiplayer experience, and why Arc Raiders may one day give players a fresh set of wheels.

Speaking to PC Gamer at Game Developers Conference 2026, Arc Raiders production director Caio Braga (who also gave a talk at the show) said vehicles are "not off the table" for the extraction shooter, but they're not actively in development either.

When asked about the possibility of a "quad bike" that can quickly navigate a map at the cost of making a ton of noise, Braga made no promises, but said the team previously experimented with vehicles that ultimately didn't make the cut in Arc Raiders.

"We have prototypes for vehicles from seven years ago that haven't been touched in a while," Braga said, "but it's not off the table." In fact, few things are off the table for the successful extraction shooter that, Braga reminds, Embark plans to support for a long, long time.

"It's quite open. We talked about [supporting Arc Raiders for] 10 years. We want this game to last for a long time. So I think everything is a bit open as long as it fits our lore and the kind of experience we want to give."

Vehicles would certainly help Arc Raiders stand out more than it already does: Outside of Call of Duty's brief foray into the genre with DMZ and Battlefield 2042's awful extraction thing, the extraction game is a historically boots-on-the-ground affair.

In fact, vehicles in general have fallen out of favor in multiplayer shooters. Battlefield 6 still has them in spades, as do a few battle royales, but you're hard-pressed to find new shooters blazing a trail with vehicular action in mind. Bungie, which gave us the glories of Warthog road trips in Halo, left its driving gloves at home with its own extraction shooter, Marathon.

Puzzling out the Dam Battlegrounds key locations in Arc Raiders is a big part of learning the map. While it's exciting to find a keycard when you're out looting, you then have to work out where to actually use it on the map, as well as if it's worth your time. Uncommon rarity keycards, for example, like Dam Surveillance, rarely have good loot in my experience.

Rare and epic rarity, though, are definitely worth cracking open if you happen to be in the area. While you're looting these rooms, it's important to remember two things. First off, put your key in your safe pocket until you actually use it on the door. This way, even if you get downed on your way there, you can keep the key for another run.

Second, bring a Door Blocker, and potentially a grenade trap if you're looting the Control Tower. After you unlock the door, you can close it and place the Door Blocker on the other side, which will mean any other players that want to enter will have to breach first, giving you some warning. The grenade trap will act as a fun surprise for them if they do enter.

Arc Raiders Dam Battlegrounds key locations

There are six unlockable doors in Dam Battlegrounds, not including the four Raider Hatches marked on the map which you can unlock with a Raider Key to exfil at.

Dam Surveillance Key location

• Rarity: Uncommon

This first locked door location is in the Water Treatment Control, towards the centre of the Dam Battlegrounds map. As you can see in the video, you'll want to head inside, go past the counter, turn right, and then turn right again down the corridor to find the door.

The Dam Surveillance Key is only a green rarity, so the loot isn't that great. You'll also get one of these keys as part of the Greasing Her Palms quest for Celeste quite early on, since visiting this room is one of the objectives.

Dam Testing Annex Key location

• Rarity: Rare

This second pair of locked doors is located in the Testing Annex building in the south of Dam Battlegrounds. There are two doors you can unlock with this key, but since it gets consumed on use, you can only open one at a time unless you bring two keys along.

As in the video, go through the main entrance, turn right through the door, pass through the flooded section and out the other side to come face-to-face with the first door. The other door is down the corridor to your left. In my experience, the left locked room is a bit better loot-wise, but it's also up to RNG, so take your pick. Since the Dam Testing Annex Key is rare, the loot should be reasonable.

Dam Controlled Access Zone Key location

• Rarity: Rare

This locked door is actually new and was added with the Controlled Access Zone area in the Shrouded Sky update to Dam Battlegrounds. You'll want to head to the Controlled Access Zone in the north near the Power Generation Complex, where you'll find a ladder you can descend to get inside.

Just like in the video, once you're down the ladder, run along the walkway, turn left down the stairs, descend the next stairs, then follow the walkway left around the pillar to find the door. Unlike the Controlled Access Zone puzzle, you don't have to install any batteries or push any buttons—just slot in the key to open it up.

Power Rod Key location

• Rarity: Epic

Now, this door in the Power Generation Complex in the north Dam Battlegrounds doesn't require a keycard. Instead, you'll have to use a Power Rod item to open it. You can potentially find these in the cabinets next to the door, or get them by dismantling Snaphooks.

To get here, drop down into the Generator Hall near the extraction lift, or take the stairwell down, and then head east down the corridors until you reach the Power Generation Complex and can turn right into the big control room with all the terminals. The door is in here at the back on the left.

Dam Staff Room Key location

• Rarity: Uncommon

These last two key locations are in the Control Tower in the centre of Dam Battlegrounds. The staff room is on the ground floor, close to where you enter.

From the main entrance, head past the reception desk towards the left, where you'll find another entrance into the building on your left. To the right, directly opposite this door, is where you use the Dam Staff Room Key.

Dam Control Tower Key location

• Rarity: Epic

This last key is at the top of the Dam Battlegrounds Control Tower. Since it's an epic key, I'd suggest you bring a Door Blocker and potentially a mine of some kind so you can set them up and loot in peace. Also, while you're up there, don't forget to open the window shutter and loot the balcony as well.

From the main entrance, go right around the side of the building, through that door, and breach the door directly in front of you to enter a lift shaft with some grapple lines. Look up first to make sure there are no turrets in the shaft (blast them if there are), and then take the line up to the top. Follow the corridor, looking for the locked door on your right.

The window has closed for the latest Expedition, and with that, a wave of players start afresh. You know what that means: Scrappy demands another round of tributes. I'm talking prickly pears, lemons and apricots, and worst of all, mushrooms.

While these items were never abundant in Arc Raiders lobbies, they weren't nearly as hard to get a hold of in the past, or at least I don't remember it being so. It's a bloodbath out there right now with players trying to satiate Scrappy's desire for organic matter.

"Begun, the Mushroom Wars have," greycolbalt says. "Came across this mass grave when I loaded in late. Scrappy demands sustenance." I count six dead bodies in this image, all surrounding a bunch of mushrooms growing from the trunk of a nearby tree. Perhaps this is the gold that drove these raiders to such atrocities.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case—as I said before, organic resources like mushrooms seem to be harder to get a hold of with everyone starting their quests again and the fact that the Lush Bloom map modifier hasn't made an appearance for some time now.

All we've got to work with is modifiers like Cold Snap, Hurricane, Matriarch, Night Raids, or the dreaded Bird City, though this final modifier is surprisingly good, as you can scavenge all sorts of fruit and the occasional mushroom from chimneys. However, no Lush Blooms does mean it's infinitely harder to come across items like mushrooms.

Whoever this is, I've come across your body about a dozen times now while trying for the mushroom tree myself. I hope you can end the cycle soon. from r/ArcRaiders

You can find prickly pears by rummaging around cacti, and if you're willing to risk it apricots and lemons can be found in the death square, otherwise known as the Town Hall gardens on Buried City, or in the Olive Grove on Blue Gate. But mushrooms are much harder to find.

The problem with these little myceliums is that they are only found in a couple of places: the Hydroponic Dome on Dam Battlegrounds or on trees south of Little Hangar on Spaceport. I've also seen a couple in dark, dank areas like the new Controlled Access Zone area on Dam. But once they've all been harvested on a map, that's it, unless by some miraculous turn of fate you stumble across a lush basket, though without the Lush Blooms event, your chances are slim.

Rustling up a Broken Guidance System in Arc Raiders is one of the final steps in the third Expedition. I can't say I'm too confident in my Raider's chances, though, if we're installing a Broken Guidance System in their transport. Maybe this explains why my last two Raiders haven't returned home yet?

You only need one of these rare industrial items, but you might be struggling to track it down in locations with that tag. It's a bit strange, after all, and only seems to spawn in certain areas.

While there are a couple of locations where you can get the Broken Guidance System, one of them is far better than the other, and seems to spawn this item quite frequently. So, here's where to find it.

How to get a Broken Guidance System in Arc Raiders

While you can get a Broken Guidance System in Stella Montis, in areas like Medical and Assembly, that map can be a bit spicy in terms of PvP, as I'm sure you know. If you ain't a PvP god, you're better off searching in the Hydroponic Dome Complex in Dam Battlegrounds. Weirdly, the Broken Guidance System is a consistent loot item that spawns here.

You'll want to search both the red lockers and the breachable metal crates, since I've found them in both containers in the past and it's where I got mine. Since the Hydroponic Dome Complex is usually a pretty chill area, besides all the Arc and those dreaded new Firefly enemies, that is, you'll be able to loot at your leisure and, fingers crossed, pick one up. Plus, it's close to an extraction lift..

Besides Bombardier Cells, you'll also need Advanced Electrical Components and a few Breathtaking Snowglobes to complete this stage of the third Expedition, the latter definitely being the hardest item to find for this Expedition

More tweaks have been dished out for Arc Raiders in its latest patch notes. We've got "a very hot fix" for the Dam Controlled Access Zone, and bug fixes for a snaphook glitch and an issue where arcs would cause drops in performance. But the biggest change is certainly how the drop rate of rare blueprints has been nerfed.

"The main reason for this change is that the First Wave Caches have been handing out a lot of blueprints, especially given how good players have been at tracking them down and looting them," the patch notes explain. This isn't the first time blueprints have been in surplus, but I never seem to be able to capitalise on the moment, as I still have some gaps in my blueprint checklist.

But it's not all bad news, to make up for the fact that rarer blueprints will now be harder to find, Embark is upping the drop rates for "higher-tier materials inside the caches". This'll mean it'll be slightly easier for those who can craft better gear to do so, a welcome change, especially considering Wolfpacks recently became more pricey to craft.

"So while you might see a few fewer blueprints overall, you’ll be getting better materials in return," the patch notes continue. "Caches will still be a solid way to find blueprints, just not to the point where you can reliably walk away from every session with three to five of them." The dream is dead, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

Other issues which have been fixed include:

• An issue that prevented players from completing the final stage of the "Worth Your Salt" quest if someone else had already done it in the same raid.
• A rarer issue where players would crash if they used the player proximity menu.
• An exploit which would let players put weapons in a safe pocket without using the Safekeeper Augment.

The most interesting fixed issue is probably the snap hook glitch, though. Players will no longer be able to put the snap hook in their safe pocket while using it. This'll make using these coveted items a lot more stressful unless you've found the rare snap hook blueprint, which is probably harder to find now, thanks to the nerf. Whoops.

Finding a Breathtaking Snowglobe in Arc Raiders can be a bit of a challenge. These epic trinkets, similar to Lance's Mixtape, are worth a lot of cash after all, so they tend to get snapped up right sharpish by loot-hungry Raiders. The bad news? You need three of these items to prep for the third Expedition.

Besides Advanced Electrical Components, this is by far the trickiest ask resource-wise. Similar to other epic items, whether you get one is somewhat determined by RNG, but there are a few things you can do to game the system, and there are definitely locations where these trinkets frequently spawn.

How to get a Breathtaking Snowglobe in Arc Raicers

Since the Breathtaking Snowglobe is an epic trinket, your best bet is looking in residential areas, but particularly the Buried City. The two most consistent methods to find them are:

1. Run the Bird City map condition on Buried City
2. Search chimney nests or sealed loot areas with lots of drawers like those near Santa Maria Houses

The Bird City event increases the likelihood of trinkets dropping, whether you're running around looking in chimney pots on the rooftops or searching drawers, cupboards, and cabinets in other locations. Last night while playing Bird City, I found one Breathtaking Snowglobe in a chimney nest, so it's definitely still possible despite the event's loot nerf.

The second method is to check sealed loot rooms. My favorite, on the top floor of the building marked on the map above, west of Santa Maria Houses, has always been an incredible spot for Breathtaking Snowglobes and other epic trinkets like Lance's Mixtape. You'll sometimes find them in either the filing cabinets near the door or in the big brown chest of drawers at the back. I've even found them loose on the sofa in the past.

If you don't have luck there, try the pharmacy off to the side of Plaza Rosa. Either way, your best bet is running during Bird City to get the increased likelihood of trinket drops, and then rushing the chimneys and loot rooms before anyone else.

You'll need to track down Advanced Electrical Components for the third Expedition in Arc Raiders. Overall, it's a much easier bunch of resources to grab this time around, but Advanced Electrical Components are one of the trickier asks, especially if you don't have a Level 2 Refiner and just got back from your previous Expedition like I did.

It's a classic case of seeing an item a million times, but forgetting where it actually spawns as soon as someone tells you to find some. So, here are the two best methods for collecting some Advanced Electrical Components.

How to get Advanced Electrical Components in Arc Raiders

While you can find Advanced Electrical Components in Electrical areas, such as the Power Generation Complex on Dam Battlegrounds, or Fuel Control on Spaceport, these two methods are far more efficient than just hoping they'll drop:

1. Break open operational Arc Probes
2. Craft them in the Refiner (Level 2)

First off, breaching into working Arc Probes will often get you Advanced Electrical Components, and since there are three compartments to loot on a probe, you can often get quite a lot. Remember, we're talking about functioning Arc Probes, the ones that rocket down from the sky and then take off after a short duration.

These are quite easy to track down since they make a loud resonant pinging sound like a radar. You can also try running the Prospecting Probes map condition, which means there are far more of these guys to crack open.

Your second method is upgrading your Refiner to Level 2 with 3x Toasters, 5x Arc Motion Cores, and 8x Fireball Burners. After that, you can craft Advanced Electrical Components. Each one will cost you:

• 2x Electrical Components
• 3x Wires

While both of these materials are easy to get, if you don't already have a Level 2 Refiner, it's probably faster to just keep your eyes peeled for working Arc Probes.

Arc Raiders' latest update added a slew of new content: a couple of arcs, beards, and also introduced some changes and fixes. The price of crafting Wolfpacks has gone up, making Rocketeers way more important now, but these changes have also made the angriest arc topside more dangerous.

One part of the patch notes reads: "Fixed an issue where the rocketeer sometimes would not shoot despite having a clear view of its target." Great, so now that one shred of respite I'd receive after getting pummelled by rockets, among other arc projectiles, is gone. Is nothing scared in this world?

Just what we wanted Embark, thanks. from r/ArcRaiders

Other Arc Raiders players are equally as pleased as I am to hear the news. "I did have a thought that the problem with the rocketeers was their abundance of mercy," one player says, while another player warns players that this'll affect the old ways of farming rocketeers.

"Before you could farm rocketeers by standing in a particular spot inside a reinforced reception," SirJohnSekiro says. "The rocketeer would hover outside the door and just… stare at you. Let's see if I can still do that." And they were never seen again. I'm not joking, this player never replied to the thread, the rocketeers got 'em. Rip SirJohnSekiro, you'll not be forgotten.

If hiding in a doorway doesn't do the trick anymore, then I dread to think how much worse it is in the open now. "I'm at the point where I won't even bother with spaceport anymore," zoeymeanslife adds. "It's just not worth being caught out in the open. I think the game still needs a lot of tweaking, especially in how this game handles open spaces. Either there should be more cover, or things like the rocketeer should be detectable earlier."

I've certainly had instances where rocketeers won't leave me alone, even if I hid within a building for long periods of time. Sometimes, the only course of action is to put it in the ground and stop it from following you for good. But at least there's more incentive to kill rocketeers now, that is, if you like using wolfpacks.

While it may suck that this bug has been fixed, it may have some upsides. One being that you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that when you kill a rocketeer, you were fighting it at full strength. But it'll also hopefully get rid of the weird glitch where rocketeers weren't affected by lure grenades.

It only happened to me once before, but I'd used a lure grenade on a particularly aggressive raider. I'd been backed into a corner with rapidly depleting ammo and no other options when I saw a rocketeer hovering close by. I had nothing else to use, so I chucked a lure grenade at the aggressor and waited for the arcs to do the rest. A couple of wasps turned up, but the Rocketeer just went about its day as normal. I died, and so did the attacking arc.

Reactions to large game updates always come in two phases: the "wow cool" phase that plays out as folks try out the major new stuff, and the "hey wait a minute" phase that follows once players realize the consequences of the patch notes' fine print.

The "hey wait a minute" moment for Arc Raiders' Shrouded Sky update was a change to the Wolfpack, a dominant seeking grenade that does massive damage and players rely on to easily destroy some of the most troublesome Arc. Previously a relatively cheap crafting recipe, making a Wolfpack now also requires a rare component from the Rocketeer: an ultra-lethal and especially hated Arc that is, paradoxically, the preferred target of the Wolfpack grenade. As Evan wrote yesterday, it's a balancing change that will "alter the fate and behavior of countless raiders."

[Fun fact: Did you know Wolfpack grenades are named after the Gjallarhorn rocket launcher in Destiny, which fires Wolfpack rounds that also split into multiple seeking submunitions that do an ass-ton of damage.]

There was enough uproar about the Wolfpack change that Embark felt the need to address the crafting update directly on Discord. Its reasoning won't come as a huge surprise: the Wolfpack was too good for how cheap it is, and now it's not.

"We understand your frustrations with the new crafting recipes. We adjusted the Wolfpack recipe by adding a Rocketeer Driver and removing two Explosive Compounds to bring the ratio of cost vs effectiveness more in line with the trend of other items," Embark community rep Ossen said in the statement. "Wolfpacks offered a lot for their cost (fast deployment, auto-tracking, and very high damage), so rather than diminish the capability of the Wolfpack itself, we opted to adjust the crafting components to better reflect its power."

While some players will ultimately disagree with Embark's assessment of the Wolfpack, I find its method of knocking the grenade down a peg encouraging: Don't decrease the Wolfpack's worth by taking away its punch, make the Wolfpack a truly valuable find. This sort of indirect nerf is common in genres that blend combat and crafting, but as Arc Raiders is the first extraction shooter for many, the annoyance is understandable.

It's clear that Embark wants to draw a larger distinction between low-tier, mid-tier, and high-tier gear. The same patch notes included widespread nerfs for two popular common weapons, the Kettle and Stitcher, that were widely considered so good that you don't really need to bother crafting anything better. That will likely change now, and encourage players to rely less on free loadouts to be successful. In today's statement, Embark also acknowledged that the Il Toro shotgun's power is getting a hard look:

"We see your comments about the need to adjust the effectiveness of the IL Toro and that work is currently underway but our goal is to approach these changes carefully to ensure they’re well-tested before going live. Balancing weapons is an ongoing priority for the team."

Looks like that stockpile of 12 Wolfpacks I've been hoarding since November just spiked in value… any takers?

If you've been out there utilising cheats to gather up unfair numbers of, you know, toasters and lemons and whatever else it is Arc Raiders tasks you all with collecting, I've got bad news. Embark is coming for you like the goddamn Black Death.

In an update published yesterday, the studio threw down the gauntlet to Arc cheaters, pledging that it is "further tightening our rules and stepping up enforcement. Serious infractions now carry stricter consequences."

On top of its challenge to cheaters, Embark sounds a little defensive in these patch notes, perhaps owing to the struggles it's had with cheating in the past and Marathon's recently announced hardline anti-cheat stance.

"When we shared our last update about tackling unfair play, we didn’t fully convey the complexity and scale of what goes into cheat detection," writes Embark. "Our defenses operate on multiple levels: some checks are simple and definitive, while others are behavioral and data-driven and evolve over time.

"These methods take longer to develop, must adapt as game systems change, and don’t always offer instant certainty the way blunt software detections can."

It sure reads like a studio trying to reassure players and make up for some lost prestige after a competitor scored a clean hit, but it's not just an explanation. As I mentioned earlier, Arc Raiders is tightening its punishments against cheaters going forward, too: "Strong detections will receive permanent bans right off the bat, while others will receive a temporary suspension and a single chance to correct the behavior."

Embark also says that "Recent updates to Family Sharing have strengthened our ability to curb misconduct and streamlined the removal of bad actors," and it's prepping to launch "a systematic manual review of ban appeals.

"The game is young and the volume of telemetry is enormous, but this process ensures every case is handled with care as we continue to learn quickly and invest heavily in the precision of our enforcement tools." In other words: 'our anti-cheat tech is really good, guv, honest, it just needs time to mature, and in the meantime we're tightening the screws on cheaters currently in the game'.

Sounds reasonable, but if Arc can't get a handle on its cheaters, we know there are competitors out there just waiting to prove they can—and the jury's still out on whether Bungie will live up to its hefty promises against cheating, exploits, and so on.

Something I love about videogames is the way that a single line of patch notes can have a disproportionate butterfly effect on millions of sessions. This little sentence, part of today's Shrouded Sky update, will alter the fate and behavior of countless raiders:

• Wolfpack - Added Rocketeer Driver as a crafting cost.

The Wolfpack is Arc Raiders' most valuable grenade—a get-out-of-trouble-now ripcord that one-shots or cripples the most troublesome Arc, has good range, and locks onto targets automatically. It's a prized throwable for Matriarch and Queen raids and already something you're happy to find when looting.

With this change, Embark will begin to reduce the number of Wolfpacks in circulation by making acquiring them much more challenging—until today, a Wolfpack could be crafted with three explosive compounds and two Arc Motion Cores, which themselves could be crafted at the Refiner workbench from easy-to-acquire materials. If you wanted a Wolfpack, you probably had the parts lying around to make one. Now players will probably go on "Rocketeer runs" in order to gather the rare part that produces Wolfpacks. It should spark livelier looting around Rocketeer husks, leading to more betrayals, traps, and higher-stakes trades around a mob that experienced players previously avoided. Rocketeers are officially big game.

It's one of the most interesting and funnily recursive changes yet to Arc Raiders' still-nascent gear economy. The #1 tool for quickly dealing with a Rocketeer, the Wolfpack, now itself requires the precious organ of a Rocketeer. You will now kill Rocketeers in order to get the part that allows you to make the thing that kills Rocketeers. Which you use to kill Rocketeers. Which contain the ingredients necessary to kill Rocketeers.

Alpha and omega; a closed cycle of Rocketeer life and death. It's like in nature, the reproductive seed cones of some trees only open and spread in the presence of wildfire heat. The fire is both destructive and regenerative to the forest.

Most experienced players would probably argue that this small but significant crafting recipe change needed to happen. Evidenced by frontline war footage like "When The Whole Server Wolfpacks the Queen in Arc Raiders," their power as a delete button is at odds with easy availability. I am a fan of epic-tier ARC parts having more meaning within the game's economy: until now they've mostly been just a source of money, but this will make bagging them, one way or another, more memorable.

An official comment from Embark Studios community lead Julia Ossen on Wednesday reflected this intention. "Wolfpacks offered a lot for their cost (fast deployment, auto-tracking, and very high damage), so rather than diminish the capability of the Wolfpack itself, we opted to adjust the crafting components to better reflect its power."

A second patch note in the list of bullets reads, "Fixed an issue where the Rocketeer sometimes would not shoot despite having a clear view of its target." Are Rocketeers also more dangerous? I don't think so—I haven't noticed that Rocketeers fight any differently from the two test runs I made this afternoon. It sounds like this might be more of an edge-case behavior rather than reprogramming the combat systems of Space Jesus, as it's called by some. Though thousands of players have used the Rocketeer as a surfboard (now 3.7% of all players, according to achievement data), most players would rank it as the deadliest Arc that was in the game at launch—it's a death sentence to be caught by one in the open—and certainly it isn't the enemy that that needs a firmware update.

The next deadliest Arc, most likely, is going to be whatever this terrible thing is that players have begun spotting in the Shrouded Sky.

The Shrouded Sky update has arrived in Arc Raiders, and Embark is throwing us a curveball. Today's patch introduced a hurricane map condition, two new Arc enemies, and some meaningful balancing changes, but the masterminds in Sweden snuck something else in, too.

Some players are spotting a UFO in the shrouded skies, a broad aircraft with a W-shaped silhouette emitting a pair of blue energy streams toward the ground. Here's the brief encounter recorded by Reddit user Bewarden:

What in tarnation is that? from r/ArcRaiders

"What in tarnation is that?" Bewarden asks. Whatever it is, it's probably not friendly. Some theorized that the pair of lights indicates two Arc flying next to each other, but if you throw the clip in fullscreen and look closer, we're clearly looking at one huge aircraft.

"This sh*t is massive," user Dry_Breadfruit1743 accurately observed in the comments. Given the height the UFO is flying at, its relative size must be somewhere between a Queen and Bastion, but of course, with wings. It's also very loud, leaving a trailing wail in its wake that sounds like an alien jet fighter. Other sightings of the "jet" Arc (if it even is an Arc) are hard to find so far—I've seen just one other report.

Is this our first look at one of the other "new Arc threats" promised in the Arc Raiders 2026 roadmap? If so, we might be seeing Arc Raiders begin to tease future updates in advance like other multiplayer shooters do—remember when Helldivers 2 players discovered flying bugs and Arrowhead denied their existence?

And frankly, how would you fight that thing? How will it fight us? Perhaps it'll stay high in the sky and only leave itself vulnerable during deadly strafing runs. If that's the case, we're gonna need a lot more Wolfpack grenades (which coincidentally just got harder to craft). Maybe taking one down will require more sophisticated anti-air weapons that we don't have yet.

As for when it'll arrive, there are two immediate options: the "Flashpoint" update slated for March and the "Riven Tides" update in April. Embark says both updates will expand the Arc fleet, but the April update specifically calls out a "new large Arc," which would certainly fit the bill of this menacing Batwing.

Locating a Firefly Burner in Arc Raiders is required for the final stage of the new Weather Monitor System project. Similar to the Comet Igniter, you'll have to defeat a Firefly, one of the two new arc enemies added in the update, in order to collect it. These enemies aren't too tough to kill, but you'll want to avoid them getting close and breathing fire on you.

The Shrouded Sky update also has some new tricky quests, such as A Rising Tide and Worth Your Salt, but by comparison, grabbing a Firefly Burner is a much easier task to accomplish.

How to get a Firefly Burner in Arc Raiders

You'll need to destroy one of the new Firefly arc enemies to get a Firefly Burner. Unlike the Comet Igniter, this item is far easier to get, since it seems to drop with almost every Firefly kill, similar to a Hornet or Wasp Driver.

The Firefly is a flying arc similar to a Hornet, except that it gets in close and sets you aflame like a Fireball. You can find them on every map, but I've had the most luck on Dam Battlegrounds around the Hydroponic Dome Complex and in the swamp. This area has always been incredible for flying arcs—just be somewhat cautious you don't accidentally aggro a Rocketeer if one happens to be nearby. Fireflies look a little like Hornets, except that they have a slightly more pointy shape, like a jet fighter, and they look like they're wearing a little hat because of the extra metal plate on top of them. If you're unsure, remember you can tag enemies to find out what they are.

Despite their different visual appearance, you kill a Firefly the same way as a Hornet—you want to either shoot its back two rotor fans or blast away the armour on its front two fans to take those out. As ever, a Ferro will serve, but an Anvil would be better. If you want a cheap and dirty solution, I recommend Seeker Grenades, since, as I learned in the Shared Watch event, they absolutely decimate flying arc enemies.

The key difference is that the Firefly will just melt you if it gets in close and, unlike with a Hornet, you won't have much chance of dodging the fire it spews, so you'll want to take it out as fast as possible, or hide in a building to plink at it. Once destroyed, loot its corpse and you'll find a Firefly Burner.

Completing A Rising Tide in Arc Raiders' new Shrouded Sky update sees you venturing into the new Controlled Access Zone area in Dam Battlegrounds. It's a relatively simple quest, which is more than I can say for Worth Your Salt or tracking down a Comet Igniter, but you will have to visit both the Buried City and Dam Battlegrounds to get it done.

Finding the foreman's apartment is by far the most confusing step, since the way you access it is a bit awkward. All that said, here's how to complete A Rising Tide, find said apartment, and get to the Controlled Access Zone for the final step.

Find the foreman's barricaded apartment south of Piazza Roma

This first stage is the trickiest in the quest, since you have to gain access to an apartment with a barricaded door on the middle floors of Piazza Roma's north tower. You can climb the stairs and drop down onto a platform in between the buildings, or the better option? Head to the rooftops to the east and take the zipline that runs between Piazza Roma's two towers, before dropping onto the platform to your right as you pass between them.

You can see me doing just this in the clip above. After that, interact with the desk-like terminal with monitors to "Access the foreman's digital logbook" and then extract.

Reach the Power Generation Complex and find a way into the Controlled Access Zone

Your destination this time is Dam Battlegrounds. First, you want to head to the Power Generation Complex in the north to complete that quest stage, then travel southwest to the Controlled Access Zone, where you're looking for a ladder at the spot marked on the map above. Slide down inside to finish that stage.

Search the Controlled Access Zone for any clues about the foreman's reconstruction project

The final stage of the quest is to locate a whiteboard with some notes in the Controlled Access Zone and take a photo of it. You can see the route in the video above, but it's basically down the ladder, around the walkway in the room with the big hanging arc, and into the room with windows overlooking it. The only problem is you need to install a battery on the walkway to power the door to the room, and if someone hasn't already done it, you'll have to instead.

You can see the process in this Controlled Access Zone puzzle guide, but basically, you'll find a battery at the bottom level of the main room in the watery section, though its location can vary slightly. Plug this in back on the walkway close to where you climbed down the ladder, head inside the room, and interact with the whiteboard to complete the quest.

Completing A Dead End in Arc Raiders is just one of the many new quests you can undertake as part of the Shrouded Sky update. This one sees you heading into the underground of Blue Gate to crack open a locked room and collect an item for Shani—it's fairly straightforward, but a bit confusing if you've never ventured there before.

Blue Gate's underground can be a bit of a PvP hotbed, so be somewhat cautious in the area. Unless you're a PvP monster, that is, in which case, murder all in your path. You might also be struggling to find a Comet Igniter for the new Weather Monitoring System project, but otherwise, here's how to complete A Dead End in Arc Raiders.

Find MANTIKOR'S underground facilities

To find MANTIKOR'S underground facilities, you'll need to head down to the Security Wing in the underground section of Blue Gate. If you've never been here before, you can get to this area in a number of different ways, either descending through the Headhouse or entering via the Checkpoint's Outer Gates, and then going through the Traffic Tunnel towards the Security Wing on the west side.

Find a way into the locked room in the Security Wing

Once there, you need to unlock a door labelled on the map as Access Capacitor, and, similar to the doors in Stella Montis, you need to find three batteries and deliver them there to power it up. These batteries can spawn in multiple locations—I found them in the room just down the corridor from the Access Capacitor door, against the side of a bank of machinery, shown in the clip below.

You can also find them above that room, next to a circular tunnel entrance by some pipes. Either way, deliver all three batteries to open the door, unless someone has already done it.

Search the locked room for any records on Project Heartwood and find the Dusty Film Reel

Once inside the room, you'll want to head to the table in front of the four screens, then look to your right to see a couple of machines with film reels—interact with the leftmost one. This will start a film playing on the screen at the centre of the room. Now go over to the left side of the screen and interact with the smaller machine to produce the Dusty Film Reel. Pop this in a safe pocket, extract, and deliver it to Shani to complete the quest.

Finding a Comet Igniter in Arc Raiders is the first challenging step in the Weather Monitoring System project. While the first stage is relatively easy, you'll need one of these new arc materials for the second part. As you might have guessed, it comes from one of the two new enemies that were added in the Shrouded Sky update.

While you're here, you might also want to know how to complete the new Keeping an Eye Out and Stable Housing quests, but either way, here's where to find a Comet Igniter in Arc Raiders and some potential spots one of these enemies can spawn.

How to get a Comet Igniter in Arc Raiders

You get the Comet Igniter item from the new Comet enemy. These big rolling balls are a little similar to Arc Surveyors, except that when they spot you, they'll try to blow you up instead. Though there's no guarantee, you can generally find them out in open areas, versus Pops and Fireballs, who are inside structures.

I found mine in the square north of Plaza Rosa in the Buried City, which is usually a spawning ground for Bastions and Leapers, but all maps have them, and Dam Battlegrounds on the dam itself by the Control Tower is another good potential location. You'll often spot them dropping in from above, so keep an eye out for arc trails in case it's one of them landing. Their explosion is also really loud and fairly distinctive, so you'll be able to tell if one dies nearby.

Comets are easy to recognise because of the single light on the front of them, plus a strip of light running over the top of the ball. Similar to other arc, this will turn yellow and then red when they spot you, and that's when you need to run. Like Arc Surveyors when they try to run you over, Comets will spin up first before rushing at you, then will stop nearby, charge up with a high-pitched whine (the same sound the Leaper makes when it charges a shockwave), and explode in a big AoE. Afterwards, you can loot their parts.

Comets don't seem to drop an igniter if they self-destruct, which I suppose makes sense considering they use it to ignite. If they blow up, they'll only drop a lootable ring container which never seems to have a Comet Igniter. This is why you need to kill them before they blow up, which will cause them to produce an additional core-like container which has the Comet Igniter inside.

Similar to Arc Surveyors, or any other arc, you'll want heavy weapons like a Ferro or an Anvil, or to use grenades like Seekers to quickly deal with them before they get close.

We learned last week that the Arc Raiders Shrouded Sky update, due out tomorrow, is adding a hurricane map condition that'll push us around, give us bursts of speed, and limit the viability of shields. We also caught a glimpse of a new Arc enemy—a teaser that Embark has expanded on today in a dedicated Shrouded Sky blog post.

Turns out, we're getting two new robo threats, not just one: meet the Firefly and the Comet. Have you ever seen two faces more punchable?

As Embark lays out in today's Shrouded Sky blog post, the Firefly is a "floating nightmare: an armored flying machine that emits a jet of flame, burning your Raider to a crisp unless you can move quickly or find cover."

Based on that description, I'm imagining an even more annoying Wasp that dives into your grill and roasts you until shot down. Though judging by the supplemental trailer Embark put out today (embedded below), the Firefly might actually be closer in size and might to the Hornet. It certainly seems to have Hornet-level armor plating on the front of its rotors.

The Comet, which we now know was the Arc some suspect would be a snake-like creature, sounds like an outdoor version of the Pop: a "spherical Arc machine that calmly patrols the surface" and will "lock on with a frightening focus before exploding with a seismic boom."

Pops are so easy to deal with in Arc Raiders that I'm not immediately intimidated by the Comet. Perhaps that's exactly what Embark is hoping players will expect: We don't see a Comet actually attack in today's trailer, but I wager their "calm" patrol means they're somewhat difficult to detect, and I bet they have a bigger boom than their smaller cousins.

While I'm a little surprised these two new threats are variations are Arc bots we've already been curbstomping since the start, I'm glad Embark is continuing to expand the small bot fleet. For how fleshed out the Arc fleet is in general, I've always felt like Wasps and Hornets are too common outside. The Firefly and Comet should help shake things up.

Also on deck for Shrouded Sky, which starts tomorrow, February 24: another free Raider Deck (the game's name for battle passes), more premium bundles, and beards for all.