Embark Studios has revealed what’s coming in ARC Raiders Frozen Trailer, the first major update in their now biannual content strategy. Frozen Trail will venture to a new map with massive new ARC robots to encounter when it arrives on 8th October.
Here’s everything we know from the new game trailer and a press Q&A session.
Pendola Pass
Forzen Trail will take players further north from the Rust Belt, exploring the icy reached of Pendola Pass. This location features a giant broken down ARC Walker, which has been pinging a beacon that has drawn raiders to the village that it now straddles. It’s properly chilly up there, with a new Flash Freeze weather effect that will force you to rush and take refuge indoors and in shelter to avoid it. There’s also the other ARCs to deal with, as the ping brings new variants to the area, both with new ground robots and the imposing ARC Frigate – this present a new endgame opportunity to board and sabotage it, solving a puzzle aboard, but not actively destroying it.
Alongside the Frigate comes the Bully, a quadrupedal bot that will aggressively chase and attack you, and the Skulker, which scoots quickly along the ground before popping up a turret to take pot shots at you. Aboard the Frigate you’ll find the Hydra, which springs up as a gun-toting tower which can target multiple Raiders and teams at once.
The Frigate is a world event that can appear in other maps in the game, but for the time being the Bully, Skulker and Hydra will be more constrained to Pendola Pass.
Progression and The Outpost
Progression in ARC Raiders is getting a bit of an overhaul. Embark has tweaked parts of the skill tree to remove duplication and add a few new skills, but a much bigger deal is the Outpost. This is a customisable space set outside Speranza, which you can redecorate and populate with the workbenches that you want, and use for crafting.
At this time it is similar to Speranza in that it’s effectively a part of the menu system, but it’s something that Embark plans to expand, so you might be able to explore it in 3D in future, and it could be a lynchpin feature for any social hub areas that the studio could create in future.
Weapon Amplification, Stencils & new guns
The Outpost is where you’ll construct the Research Station, which unlocks Weapon Amplification. This system lets you research weapon upgrades for an initial set of 15 weapons, tasks you with finding the materials and ARC components and then apply them to your weapons. It can turn the Venator into a full-auto pistol, add a scope to the Renegade, add fire bullets or a drum magazine to the Rattler.
Add to this the new Stiletto light ammo battle rifle and the Bantam snub nose revolver – with a neat hipfire animation – and weapon stencils for customising weapon visuals, and you’ve got a good bit of added variety with the game’s weaponry.
Grapples and Tethers
There’s a trio of new gadgets in the update.
The grappling hook is a hand-thrown rope that lets players rappel down buildings, swing across gaps and even latch onto ARCs to be dragged around. The only real limit to its use is your player stamina, so you can Spider-Man around a fair bit.
More offensively you have the Tether Launcher which, similar to the tether in Horizon: Zero Dawn, will let you restrict ARC and enemy movements by attaching them to the ground, scenery, maybe even each other. The Yank Grenade takes this a step further by landing, latching onto a nearby enemy and dragging it to its location.
Music and Pictures
There’s two new musical instruments, the Banjo and Harmonica, and there’s an actual in-game camera with zoome, aperture presets, auto and manual focus and selfie modes.
Rewards Pass
A new battle pass system is being introduced with both paid and free reward tracks. This is purely for cosmetics, with 60 tiers to work through, but also includes Raider Tokens, enough to buy a successive pass. Here’s the official breakdown:
The Frozen Trail Reward Pass consists of 60 levels of in-game rewards, and two tracks: the Free Pass, available to all players who own the base game, and the Premium Pass. The Premium Pass can be unlocked via the in-game store for 1,150 Raider Tokens, or via the Frozen Trail Collector Set store bundle, and includes 50 additional rewards, including exclusive Raider cosmetics and 1,150 additional Raider Tokens. This brings the total of Raider Tokens available for completing the Reward Pass across both Free and Premium Tracks to 1,350.
It all adds up to a pretty significant update for ARC Raiders, and it needs to be with the biannual release schedule for major content updates. There’s some new places to visit, weapons and gadgets to use, and overhauls for progression that lay the foundations for future changes.
