Arc Raiders just received its biggest patch to date with the Frozen Trail update, and as you can probably already expect, there’s a whole lot to unpack with this one.
The Frozen Trail patch, named the Arc Raiders 2.0 update, is delivering a ton of new content to the extraction shooter alongside tweaks and complete revamps to some of the existing content.
“We’ve been working on this one for a while, and we couldn’t be more excited to finally put it in your hands,” the devs said in a statement. “Whether you’re here for the new content or just want to know what we’ve fixed, there’s something for everyone.”
In this article, we’ll go through everything you need to know about the Arc Raiders Frozen Trail Update before jumping into the game and seeing all the changes yourself.
Arc Raiders 2.0: Frozen Trail Patch Notes
The Frozen Trail update will include a new map, map conditions, enemies, weapons, a brand-new Outpost system, a skill tree revamp, alongside a plethora of other stuff.
Without further ado, let’s take a detailed look at the patch notes for Arc Raiders Frozen Trail, as revealed by Embark:
Highlights
- New Map – Pendola Pass
- New Map Conditions – Frigate & Redirection
- New Enemies – Bully, Skulker, Hydra
- New Weapons – Bantam & Stiletto
- Amplified Weapons
- Revamped Skill Tree
- New Items – Grappling Hook, Basic & Advanced Cameras, Tether Launcher, Yank Grenade, Mountaineer’s Detector, Banjo & Harmonica
- The Outpost, including a new Research Bench
- Lootable “Design” items that unlock craftable Outpost furniture
- Quest System improvements, 22 new quests added
- New Reward Pass system
- Weapon Stencils
- Updated default gamepad mapping
- Reworked Map Selection screen, including visual and usability improvements
- Collector DLC is available now
- Max Stash Size increased by 2 new levels (328 Max without Expedition bonuses)
Skill Tree Revamp
The Frozen Trail update has added a bunch of new skills to the game while improving some existing skills,
“We’ve heard the comments (and seen in the data) that the Skill Tree was not living up to its role in offering sufficiently interesting ways of building your character to better define and refine your playstyle,” the devs said. “The goal of the Skill Tree revamp is twofold: to look at under-performing skills, modify or replace them, and to get closer to the goal of making choice and expression a more core feature of the Skill Tree.”
Embark has further stated that there will likely be more tweaks and updates in the near future to existing and new skills.
Weapon Stencils
The Frozen Trail update has introduced Weapon Stencils, a new cosmetic option for players looking to personalize the look of their weapons with a range of stencil patterns. Stenciled weapons can still be lost like any other weapon: if you’re downed, other Raiders can loot your weapon along with its stencil.
- 14 Weapon Stencils:
- 5 Stencils are exclusive to Frozen Trail Premium Pass
- 1 Stencil is exclusive to DLC
- 8 Stencils can be found Topside
Once learned, players are able to apply Stencils to compatible weapons. Applying Stencils requires Stencil Parts, which can be found Topside.
Outpost
New Outpost can be unlocked by completing a project.
- Remember to accept the quest and bring your camera!
- Outpost can be expanded with different modules
- Unlocking the outpost will unlock access to the research station
Furniture Designs:
Similar to blueprints, they can be learned and used to craft different furniture for your Outpost.
- 100 Furniture Designs have been added to the game
- 4 Furniture Designs are exclusive to Frozen Trail Pass
- 1 Furniture Design is exclusive to DLC
- 73 Furniture Designs can be found Topside
- 22 Furniture Designs are unlocked by upgrading the Outpost
Reward Pass
The Reward Pass is a new form of progression system in Arc Raiders and the evolution of Raider Decks. Cred has been removed from the game and replaced by Reward Points, a new currency that’s automatically applied toward your progress on whichever pass you currently have active.
The first new pass is the Frozen Trail Pass, featuring 60 levels across a Free and a Premium track.
Raider Decks have been moved into the new Legacy Pass, and any rewards you’ve already unlocked are kept and will appear as granted. You can continue progressing through the Legacy Pass at any time by setting it as your active pass. Note that only one Reward Pass can be active at a time, so your Reward Points will go toward whichever pass you’ve selected.
Feats Rework
Feats are now split into 3 different categories: Easy, Medium and Hard.
- Easy: 15 Reward Points, +1 weekly milestone progression
- Medium: 25 Reward Points, +2 weekly milestone progression
- Hard: 50 Reward Points, +3 weekly milestone progression.
Weekly milestones are granting 250 Reward Points each, there are 3 of them available per week:
- Milestone 1: Get 4 weekly milestone progress
- Milestone 2: Get 8 weekly milestone progress
- Milestone 3: Get 12 weekly milestone progress
After completing your weekly milestones, you can keep completing Feats, but no major milestone rewards will be granted until the weekly timer is reset.
Twitch Drops
Players will be able to get new backpack attachments by watching streamers play Arc Raiders on Twitch.
Watch at least 60 minutes to receive the Oxygen Respirator, and 120 minutes for the Mailbox.
These Twitch Drops will be live between October 8 – November 4, 2026.
Content and Bug Fixes
Animation
- Knockback animations now align with the actual direction you’re pushed in.
- Fixed an issue where, after reconnecting and being revived, your character could jitter and display broken animations while moving.
- Fixed an issue where you could get stuck on small obstacles when sliding.
- Added animations to show the player interacting with their map and inventory.
- Added mouth animation for when players are talking in proximity chat.
- Added new contextual character animations; like exhaustion when running out of breath for a while and brushing off dust after sliding.
- Fixed an issue where players kept some items in their hands during the knockout animation or during some interactions.
- Additional animation polish and tweaks.
ARC
- Adjusted the multi-target laser from the Vaporizer to give players a clearer window for dodging with fast traversal and dodge mechanics.
- Added fire status effect visuals for ARC drones.
- Moved higher tier loot from the armor pieces of the legs to the legs pieces for Queen and Matriarch.
- The armor plates are supposed to protect the legs, so it made sense to relocate the loot to the protected area. Having the loot inside the armor took away from the experience and was inconsistent with how other ARC work. Armor pieces can still contain some loot.
- Improved AI sight handling to prevent rare detection errors in enemy awareness.
- The Matriarch can once again use all of its ranged attacks.
- Rebalanced physical force effects against certain ARC enemies.
Audio
- Adjusted how character sounds are occluded by walls and obstacles for more natural audio positioning.
- Added more variations to metal groan sound effects to improve environmental ambience.
- Added missing sound effects to the Snap Hook for attaching, detaching, and rope movement to improve audio feedback.
- Updated the sound for Skill Tree unlocks and added a hold-interaction audio cue in the UI.
- Fixed an issue where some weapon sounds could fail to play.
- Improved the quality of the Raider Voice model, providing a higher fidelity of voice conversion.
Cosmetic
- Updated Celeste’s appearance.
- Added an Emissive Toggle for backpacks with light sources. That means you can now turn off the lights from your favorite backpacks to go full stealth mode.
- The Zenith Outfit now has all of its intended toggles. Players who own the outfit will receive the missing toggles shortly.
Gameplay
- “Solo vs. Squads” is no longer available in the matchmaking options.
- Reworked the explosive damage formula for ARC. In practice this means that explosive weapons like the Hullcracker will deal over 50% more damage against armor plates but around 30% less damage against more fragile parts.
- Made certain changes to skills that were in the previous Skill Tree iteration to fit them better within the new one:
- Stamina gained from Fight or Flight increased by ~25% per level.
- Stubborn Mule stamina regen values increased by ~33%.
- Increase Back on Your Feet healing from 30 to 40.
- Added more contextual Ping information for ARC and various objects.
- The Stash can be upgraded further, by two tiers. The new maximum (without Expedition rewards or acquired Nomadic Envoy space) is 328 slots.
- You can now drop loot to the ground directly from containers
- You can no longer sprint-climb ladders when exhausted
- Addressed some instances where vaulting onto destroyed ARC parts or other movable surfaces could unexpectedly launch or shove the player.
- Weapon slot weight reduction now applies only to the loadout; other containers and sub-containers are unaffected.
- You can now open the map while downed.
- Improved hit registration when shooting while on top of ARC.
- Heavy Shield: reduced durability decay from 0.20 to 0.15 and decreased movement penalty while equipped from 15% to 10%.
- Added Scrambling. Sprinting at steep slopes will allow you to scramble up them for a short time.
- You now automatically enter a sliding state after tumbling for too long.
Items
- Increased Flame Spray range to better match its visual effect and improve usability.
- Ziplines now break when intersecting something after being placed.
- Reduced Snap Hook range from 20m to 18m, increased durability consumption from 2% to 4% per use, and raised power cost from 50 to 60.
- Fixed an issue where items were appearing outside their intended areas or containers. These items will now only be available within their designated locations.
Weapons
- Updated Anvil’s rarity from Green to Blue.
- The Anvil Splitter is no longer usable as a mod, and it has now become an improved upgrade option for the Amplified Anvil. We have also removed the Tech Mod slot from the Anvil to reflect this. The item itself should no longer drop, but will remain in the game for a while, allowing players to sell or recycle it into Amplified Fragments used for repairing Amplified Weapons.
- Fixed an unintended behavior where the Jupiter’s damage would propagate twice to ARC parts behind its intended target. As a result, the Jupiter is now stronger against armor, but slightly weaker against weak spots.
- The Hullcracker will no longer appear incomplete when inspected in the menu.
- Fixed an issue where the Dolabra would not destroy the yellow weak points inside the Harvester.
- Fixed an issue where weapons picked up from the ground appeared without their attached parts.
Maps
- Improved alignment of Doorblockers (now vertical) for small side-sliding-doors.
- Improved texture quality on several maps, resolving blocky and inconsistent visuals.
- Fixed areas on several maps where players could get stuck on terrain while in a Downed state.
- Some areas on the edges of maps are darker than intended.
Blue Gate
- Adjusted lighting on Blue Gate, refining exposure, color grading, and atmosphere.
- Fixed some spots on Blue Gate where players could get stuck.
Buried City
- Fixed the Hospital Roof not being climbable.
- Restored ray-traced lighting on boarded window shutters in Buried City.
- Fixed a lighting issue in Buried City where illumination bled into an interior space.
Riven Tides
- Increased overall loot value on Riven Tides by approximately 15%.
- Fixed some spots where environmental objects could float unintentionally.
Performance
- Implemented various optimizations related to memory usage, general performance and stability.
- Optimized character customization replication, fixing a bug where different players could sometimes see different outfits.
- Reduced memory usage for enemies to improve stability and performance in busy encounters.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when changing graphics settings.
- Upgraded to AMD FSR version 4.1.1.
Traders
- Trader offers have been updated:
- Celeste now trades new materials used in crafting furniture and newly introduced gameplay items.
- Tian Wen will no longer sell Anvil and Hullcracker offers. They will, instead, be part of the weekly Nomadic Envoys rotation.
- qLauncher Ammo and Energy Clips have a daily purchase limit.
- Shani’s offers are now Coin based and include Cameras, Light Sticks and other social items.
- Apollo has had a set of Epic Augments added to the offers.
- Living up to their reputation, the Nomadic Envoys have allowed Ermal to go back on the trail and have, instead, brought in Cassio, who will continue to trade for valuables, but also ask friendly Raiders for help with certain quests.
Quests
- Completing quests and quest objectives now grants XP. Added XP as a visible reward in quest descriptions and on quest completion; XP is now shown alongside other rewards when claiming a completed quest.
- Multiple older quests have been updated to require taking photos with the new camera to complete objectives that mentioned taking photos of something in the world.(The League, Reduced to Rubble, Life of a Pharmacist, Battening Down, Groundbreaking)
Social
- Fixed party join not working sometimes when accepting game invites on XBOX.
- Fixed an issue related to in-game Voice Chat not working in certain instances, particularly for PS5 and XBOX players.
UI
- Updated quest list sorting, making progression easier to follow.
- Fixed an issue where long lists could disappear while scrolling in the Settings menu.
- Fix issue where the Nomadic Trader offers could appear when using the Acquire Resources menu.
- Emote and Quick Wheels respond to mouse input more smoothly.
- End-of-round screen now previews milestone progress and rewards earned this round, and milestone updates are shown in the in-round log.
- Fixed an issue where learning certain recipes displayed an incorrect “unknown not installed” message instead of a proper unlock notification, including Snap Hook, Blaze Grenade, and Crash Mat.
- Fixed formatting and text display for in-round daily quest notifications.
- Store panels now scroll when content exceeds the screen and fixed an issue where the last toggle could be blocked and not selectable.
- Fixed issue where not all data from a round would reliably show up in the End of Round Map screen.
- Fixed a bug where closing the Inventory during matchmaking could disable gamepad navigation until switching screens.
VFX
- Fixed an issue where burning visual effects could remain stuck on other players after the effect had ended.
- Fixed an issue that could cause terrain textures to appear as blocky or mismatched squares on some maps when using higher graphics presets.
Fans can check out the full patch notes for the Arc Raiders Frozen Trail update by visiting the devs’ official post.
