ARC Raiders

ARC Raiders has about two dozen named ARC machines, from the one-shot Tick to the Queen and Matriarch bosses. Most fall fastest to a specific weak point such as propellers, thrusters or yellow leg joints, and most drop a unique part used for crafting and upgrades.

To kill a Bastion or Bombardier in ARC Raiders, hit the yellow leg joints to slow it, then the yellow canister or cylinder at the back. A Bombardier also relies on Spotters, so kill those first. A Shredder dies to its bottom thruster, with two Trigger Nades enough to finish one.

The Bully, Skulker and Hydra are the new ARC in ARC Raiders' Frozen Trail update of Oct 8, 2026. Hit the Bully's yellow leg joints with a Hullcracker, break the Skulker's wheels, and fight the Frigate's three-part Hydra from cover in short windows.

Flying ARC in ARC Raiders fall when you break what lifts them. Shoot two of a Wasp's four propellers, a Hornet's two rear propellers, a Snitch's plates, a Rocketeer's armored thrusters, a Firefly's yellow fuel canister, and a Vaporizer's side rotors once its shield drops.

Small ground ARC in ARC Raiders die quickly once you know the spot. One hit kills a Tick, one medium shot pops a Pop, a Fireball falls when its panel opens, and two heavy shots behind the barrel kill a Turret. The Leaper is the dangerous one, best hit with heavy ammo on the eye and Blaze Grenades.

To kill the Queen in ARC Raiders, strip her leg armor and shoot the structure beneath, or hit the head spot. To kill the Matriarch, strip her two front plates and shoot the red core in her head. Bring a squad, Hullcrackers and Wolfpacks; they drop the reactors that craft the Equalizer and Aphelion.

ARC Raiders' Workshop has a Workbench, six upgradable stations (Gunsmith, Gear Bench, Medical Lab, Explosives Station, Utility Station, Refiner) and Scrappy, the rooster who gathers materials between raids. Station costs below are from Nov 2025 guides; update 2.0 added Gunsmith 4, which takes 3 Radial Press, 3 Magnetic Accelerator and 1 Emperor Modulator.

In ARC Raiders keep what upgrades and quests want (ARC parts, Rusted Gear, Batteries, Sensors), recycle junk with no other use, and sell Trinkets and high-value oddities. Every published keep or sell list predates Frozen Trail (Oct 8, 2026), so use the game's item tracking for new materials.

The Outpost is ARC Raiders' customizable Raider base, added in update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026. A three-stage project called Sheltered Retreat, open from level 18, unlocks it for good; it then holds furniture made from 100 Designs and the Research Bench, whose top level enables Weapon Amplification.

The ARC Raiders Stash starts at 64 slots and reaches 328 since update 2.0 (Oct 8, 2026), before bonuses. Five Expeditions add 60 more, for 388 by arithmetic, and Nomadic Envoy space is bought on top. Expand it from the Inventory screen with Coins.

In your first hours of ARC Raiders, take free loadouts onto Dam Battlegrounds, avoid ARC instead of fighting it, keep what you find in your Safe Pocket, extract early, and spend your first Coins on stash space. Most of what you carry is lost when you die, so learn the maps before you risk good gear.

In ARC Raiders you choose a loadout in Speranza, deploy Topside on a timer of about 30 minutes, loot, and leave by elevator, Raider Hatch or Ballistic Gondola. If you are knocked out you lose everything except your Safe Pocket; a Free Loadout risks nothing but has no Safe Pocket.

To win PvP fights in ARC Raiders, shoot in bursts and keep moving, break line of sight when hurt, and save your dodge for grenades. To stay friendly, use proximity chat and watch whether a Raider holsters, because the Don't Shoot emote is also used as bait. Matchmaking leans toward Raiders who play as you do.

You can play ARC Raiders solo by setting Fill Squad to Off and pressing Play. Embark tracks your solo playstyle separately since update 1.36.0, and it tries to match equal squad sizes, but solo gets no built-in compensation and squads can still appear.

The steadiest way to make Coins in ARC Raiders is to sell Trinkets and other items with no crafting use, judged by value per slot, because vendor prices are fixed and there is no player market. Published routes such as Old Battleground on Dam Battlegrounds date from 2025, and Embark has since cut the best-known crafts.

The cheapest ARC Raiders loadout is the Free Loadout, which costs nothing. The best-known budget kit is Game Rant's Ferro and Stitcher on Looting Mk.1, about 13,000 Coins in Dec 2025. No allowed press loadout has been republished for update 2.0 or later, so every kit here carries its date.

ARC Raiders' default PC keys are WASD to move, Left Shift to sprint, Left Alt to dodge, E to interact, Tab for inventory and M for the map. Most gamepad buttons can be rebound since update 1.13.0, and update 2.0 changed the default gamepad mapping without publishing the new layout in its Steam highlights.

Most ARC Raiders connection errors, such as ARAU0297, are server-side, so check Embark's news, X and Discord before changing anything. Embark has no official status page that we could find. Known crash causes include Windows Update KB5121003, Xbox Series S memory and AMD ray tracing, each with its patch below.

ARC Raiders blueprints unlock crafting recipes and are mostly random loot, best in high-loot areas, locked rooms and major map conditions. Since update 2.3.0 (Oct 27, 2026) the Dolabra, Bobcat, Equalizer, Jupiter, Tempest and Vulcano blueprints can drop in any major map condition, at a slightly lower chance.

ARC Raiders' quick-use items are movement gadgets (Zipline, Snap Hook, Grappling Hook), deployables, grenades, traps, instruments and healing items. Update 2.0 added the Grappling Hook, Tether Launcher, Yank Grenade, Cameras and Mountaineer's Detector; update 2.3.0 raised Flame Spray damage and changed the Adrenaline Shot.

ARC Raiders keys open locked rooms on each map and are used up when they open a door, and the Raider Hatch Key opens an extraction hatch. Dexerto listed the named keys by map on Apr 29, 2026; no reliable source has a full Pendola Pass list as of Oct 31, 2026.

ARC Raiders has three shields (Light, Medium, Heavy) and an Augment decides which of them you may wear, along with your backpack slots, weight limit and safe pockets. Mk.1 and Mk.2 Augments craft at the Gear Bench or sell at Lance; Mk.3 Augments need Gear Bench 3. Heavy Shield charge rose to 90 in update 2.3.0.

Buried City is the ARC Raiders urban map in Southern Calabretta, unlocked after 6 rounds in TheGamer's Feb 2026 guide. Its best loot is at the Hospital, Space Travel and Town Hall, and it has four key rooms, metro station exits and the Bird City condition.

Dam Battlegrounds is the ARC Raiders starting map, open by default and rated low difficulty. Its best loot is at the Hydroponic Dome Complex, the Control Tower and Research and Administration, and it has four key rooms plus the Controlled Access Zone.

To extract in ARC Raiders, reach a map's exit, use the console and get inside before the round ends; it sets off an alarm and leaves by itself after 2 minutes. A Raider Hatch is a silent, instant exit that uses up a Raider Hatch Key. Pendola Pass uses a Ballistic Gondola instead.

The ARC Frigate is a map condition added in ARC Raiders update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026, in which a colossal flying carrier crosses the map. You board by disrupting a Reclaimer, destroy its power cores and drop its cargo, mainly for Amplification Modules. It allows no Free Loadout.

Map Conditions are scheduled ARC Raiders modifiers that change a map's weather, enemies, loot and rules for a one-hour slot. Embark publishes the schedule by server region at arcraiders.com/map-conditions, listing Night Raid, Electromagnetic Storm, Hurricane, Locked Gate, Frigate and more.

ARC Raiders has seven maps as of update 2.3.0 - Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, The Blue Gate, Stella Montis, Riven Tides and Pendola Pass. Dam Battlegrounds is open from the start and is the easiest; the next three unlock by playing rounds.

Pendola Pass is the newest ARC Raiders map, added in Frozen Trail, update 2.0, on Oct 8, 2026. You leave by calling a Ballistic Gondola from a radio beacon, loot zones change value from raid to raid, and the Fallen Emperor inside opens with an Emperor Gateway Conduit.

Riven Tides is the ARC Raiders coastal map added in update 1.26.0 on Apr 28, 2026. Its best loot is at the Hotel Panorama Azzurro, opened room by room with six Hotel Keycards, and the Port Authority Building. Update 2.0 raised its loot value by about 15%.

Spaceport is the ARC Raiders launch complex map, unlocked after 12 rounds in TheGamer's Feb 2026 guide and rated medium to high difficulty. PCGamesN rates five of its seven areas High for loot, including the Launch Towers, and it holds the Hidden Bunker.

Stella Montis is the indoor ARC Raiders map, a mountain research facility added in update 1.2.0 on Nov 13, 2025 behind a community unlock that is now open. Its best loot is at the Cultural Archives, Medical Research and the Seed Vault, and it has its own Night Raid.

The Blue Gate is the ARC Raiders mountain map, unlocked after 18 rounds in TheGamer's Feb 2026 guide and rated high difficulty. Its best loot is at Pilgrim's Peak and the Checkpoint, both heavily guarded, and it has four key rooms and its own Locked Gate condition.

ARC Raiders is a multiplayer PvPvE extraction adventure by Embark Studios, out Oct 30, 2025 on Steam, Epic, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for $39.99. You go Topside for loot, fight machines and other players, and keep only what you carry out. The game is on update 2.3.0, Oct 27, 2026.

Embark Studios made ARC Raiders. It is a Stockholm studio founded in November 2018 by six game industry veterans including CEO Patrick Söderlund, it is a subsidiary of Nexon, and it also makes the free-to-play shooter The Finals.

ARC Raiders needs at least a Core i5-6600K or Ryzen 5 1600, 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 Ti or RX 580; Steam recommends a Core i5-9600K or Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB and an RTX 2070 or RX 5700 XT, as read Oct 31, 2026. Press settings guides favor motion blur off, lower shadows and effects, and Reflex on.

ARC Raiders is on Windows through Steam and Epic, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and GeForce Now, with crossplay across them that you can turn off in the Gameplay settings. There is no Mac or native Linux version, and its anti-cheat has caused trouble on Linux and Steam Deck.

ARC Raiders had 81,998 people playing on Steam on Oct 31, 2026, down from an all-time Steam peak of 481,966 per SteamDB but far from dead, and Nexon reported over 16.3 million copies sold in its June quarter report. Consoles and Epic are not in Steam's count.

ARC Raiders costs $39.99 on Steam, or $59.99 for the Deluxe Edition, as of Oct 31, 2026. It is not free to play; it was free only for a weekend, Oct 8 to 12, 2026. Six paid DLC are on Steam, led by the $29.99 Frozen Trail Collector Set.

Raider Tokens are ARC Raiders' premium currency, for cosmetics. Reward Passes replaced Raider Decks and Cred on Oct 8, 2026; the Frozen Trail pass has 60 levels, a Free track with all its gameplay items and up to 200 tokens, and a 1,150-token Premium track that pays up to 1,150 back and holds no gameplay items.

ARC Raiders scored 86 on PC on Metacritic and 87 on OpenCritic as of Oct 31, 2026, holds 81% positive Steam reviews, and won Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2025, Online Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards and Multiplayer at the BAFTA Games Awards. The main criticism concerned AI voices and cosmetic prices.

ARC Raiders came out on Oct 30, 2025 on Steam, Epic, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, nearly four years after its Dec 2021 reveal as a free-to-play PvE shooter due in 2022. It was delayed, rebuilt as a paid PvPvE game, tested twice, and reached its first anniversary on update 2.3.

Speranza is the underground home of ARC Raiders, the oldest neighborhood of Toledo. Its five traders are Celeste, Shani, Tian Wen, Apollo and Lance, and a sixth slot, the Nomadic Envoy, was filled by Ermal from May 2026 and by Cassio from update 2.0, open from level 25.

ARC Raiders is set on a future Earth where the rich fled by rocket in the Exodus, machines called ARC descended in two Waves, and survivors live underground in Toledo, whose oldest neighborhood is Speranza. The story runs through quests and updates, and in Frozen Trail it reaches Pendola Pass, where an Emperor has fallen.

ARC Raiders has 50 achievements on Steam, seven of them hidden until earned. The rarest on Oct 31, 2026 are Enemy of My Enemy (0.9%), For Science! (2.0%), Just Dropping In (3.5%) and Death From Above (4.7%); Legend of Speranza needs level 75, and A Tale for the Ages means destroying the Queen.

The two dated ARC Raiders builds from press after the Frozen Trail skill tree rework both put 41 of 76 points in Mobility: KeenGamer's PvP build runs 41 Mobility, 24 Conditioning and 11 Survival, and Beebom's all-round build runs 41, 26 and 9. They differ on the choice nodes, and solo players should drop the downed skills.

Feats are ARC Raiders' daily tasks: Easy, Medium and Hard pay 15, 25 and 50 Reward Points, and three weekly Milestones pay 250 each. Timed events such as Flickering Flames, Last Resort and Phantom Targets pay rewards for Merits, and Trials Season 6 runs Oct 8, 2026 to Jan 12, 2027, with the Maestro Outfit as its grand prize.

The ARC Raiders skill tree has three branches, Mobility, Conditioning and Survival, reworked in Frozen Trail (update 2.0, Oct 8, 2026) so each branch has one either-or choice in the middle and two pick-from-three nodes at the end. Leveling to 75 gives 76 points, Expeditions add up to 15, and a reset cost 2,000 Coins per point when last stated.

The ARC Raiders main questline is the 60-quest launch chain that starts with Shani's Picking Up the Pieces and runs through all five traders, with three more quests (A First Foothold, Reduced to Rubble, With a Trace) once The Blue Gate opens. Objectives here are PC Gamer's from May 1, 2026; rewards are launch rewards from Nov 2025.

ARC Raiders had 100 quests as of Riven Tides (PC Gamer, May 1, 2026), and Frozen Trail added 22 more on Oct 8, 2026, for about 122. They come from the traders Shani, Celeste, Tian Wen, Apollo and Lance, and since 2.0 from Cassio; since 2.0 they also grant XP, and since Sep 2026 an Expedition no longer has to reset them.

ARC Raiders has added quest lines in every big update: North Line (3 named), Cold Snap (5), Headwinds (7), Shrouded Sky (5), Flashpoint (9), Riven Tides (6) and Frozen Trail (22, of which 11 are named by reliable sources as of Oct 31, 2026). This page gives each line's objectives or rewards, with dates.

ARC Raiders uses Denuvo Anti-Cheat at kernel level, Anybrain detections and in-house models, and since Sep 30, 2026 any account caught cheating is permanently banned with no warnings. Embark also uses license and hardware bans, and returns loot lost to identified cheaters automatically.

Cold Snap (1.7.0, Dec 16, 2025) gave ARC Raiders its winter condition, the Flickering Flames event and the first Expedition. Headwinds (1.13.0, Jan 27, 2026) added Solo vs Squads, the Trophy Display and Bird City. Shared Watch (1.15.0, Feb 10, 2026) added a PvE-only event and brought the snow back.

An Expedition is ARC Raiders' optional prestige reset, trading your level, stash, skills and blueprints for permanent bonuses and temporary buffs. Five have run, the last from Sep 8 to 29, 2026. None is running or dated now: Embark says Expeditions return in early 2027 with major changes.

Shrouded Sky (1.17.0, Feb 24, 2026) brought ARC Raiders the Hurricane condition, the Firefly and Comet and a big weapon balance pass. Flashpoint (1.22.0, Mar 31, 2026) added the Close Scrutiny ARC Operation, the Vaporizer, the Dolabra and the Canto.

Frozen Trail is ARC Raiders' 2.0 update, released Oct 8, 2026, and Embark's biggest since launch. It added the Pendola Pass map, the Frigate and Redirection conditions, three new ARC, two weapons, Weapon Amplification, the Outpost, a reworked Skill Tree, Reward Passes and 22 quests.

ARC Raiders matches you partly by playstyle, one of the strongest factors, on a scale rather than friendly and aggressive buckets, as Embark explained on May 20, 2026. Similar players are more likely, never guaranteed, and since Jul 2026 Solo, Duo and Trio playstyles are tracked separately.

North Line is ARC Raiders' first content update, patch 1.2.0, released Nov 13, 2025, two weeks after launch. It added the Stella Montis map, the Matriarch and Shredder, a community unlock event, and a fix for the desync problem. This page also covers the launch patches through 1.6.0.

The latest ARC Raiders update is Live Update 2.3.0, released Oct 27, 2026, which added the Noxious Set and the Soul's Offering project, raised the Heavy Shield's charge from 80 to 90 and moved Emperor loot deeper inside. This page lists every Embark post on Steam since launch, newest first.

ARC Raiders has no PvE mode as of Oct 31, 2026. Embark tested a PvE matchmaking toggle with no player damage from Oct 13 to Oct 20, 2026, players ran more than 30 million PvE rounds, the toggle was then removed, and Embark expects to say more in November.

The Riven Tides update is ARC Raiders' patch 1.26.0, released Apr 28, 2026. It added the coastal Riven Tides map, the ARC Turbine, the Beachcombing condition, the Last Resort event, the Avian Alarm project and a big change to how weapons lose durability.

Embark has not named or dated the next big ARC Raiders update. What it has announced is two content updates a year, fixes every three weeks, weekly store updates, a PvE follow-up in November 2026, Trials Season 6 ending Jan 12, 2027, and Expeditions returning in early 2027.

ARC Raiders has nine automatic and burst guns in this group: the Rattler, Kettle, Arpeggio, Tempest and Bettina assault rifles, the Stitcher, Canto and Bobcat SMGs, and the Torrente LMG. The Rattler, Kettle, Canto and Bettina can also be amplified.

The Anvil is the one ARC Raiders gun placed in S tier on all five press lists read here, and Renegade, Tempest and Venator also rank high. Every list predates update 2.0, and none ranks the Bantam, Stiletto or amplified weapons as of Oct 31, 2026.

ARC Raiders mods fill muzzle, grip, magazine, stock and barrel roles in up to three tiers, and six ammo types feed its guns. Most mod figures are launch-era, dated Oct 29, 2025; Extended Barrel changed in update 1.29.0, and the Anvil Splitter stopped being a mod in update 2.0.

ARC Raiders has three pistols, the Hairpin, Burletta and Venator, and two hand cannons, the Anvil and Bantam. Update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026 moved the Anvil to Rare and added the Bantam as the new Uncommon revolver.

ARC Raiders has three shotguns, the Il Toro, Vulcano and Dolabra, and four battle rifles, the Ferro, Stiletto, Renegade and Aphelion. The Stiletto arrived in update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026 as a cheap light-ammo alternative to the Renegade.

ARC Raiders' long-range and anti-ARC guns are the Osprey and Jupiter sniper rifles, the Rascal and Hullcracker launchers, and the Equalizer beam weapon. Update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026 raised explosive damage on ARC armor plates by over 50%.

Weapon Amplification is ARC Raiders' fifth quality level, added in update 2.0 on Oct 8, 2026, for 15 guns. It needs a level IV gun, a Gunsmith and Research Station at level 4 and a matching Amplification Module, and it cannot be undone.

ARC Raiders has 26 named weapons as of update 2.3.0 (Oct 27, 2026), from the Common Rattler to the Legendary Jupiter. The newest are the Bantam and Stiletto from update 2.0, and no reliable source publishes a full current stat table.