ARC Raiders Maps, Extraction & Raid Terms

Embark Studios launched ARC Raiders on 30 October 2025, and the game plays across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S with crossplay. Every session runs on the same loop. You leave the underground city of Speranza, spend up to half an hour on the surface collecting what you can carry, and then try to get back down. What you bring home is yours to keep; what you are carrying when you fall can be picked up by the next Raider who walks past.

This glossary explains the words around that loop: the seven maps and what makes each one different, the map conditions that rewrite a raid, the ways out, and the choices you make before you deploy. It reflects the game after the Frozen Trail update (version 2.0, released 8 October 2026), which added Pendola Pass, the ARC Frigate and a new kind of extraction.

Term	In short	Where you meet it
Topside	The surface, meaning any playable map	Patch notes, quest text, item tooltips
Speranza	The underground hub between raids	Main menu
Round and raid timer	One trip Topside, usually 30 minutes	Top of the in-raid map
Maps	Seven main maps, unlocked by rounds played	Map selection screen
Map conditions	Rotating modifiers such as Night Raid	Map selection screen, official site
ARC Frigate	A boardable ARC ship over the map	ARC Operation condition, since 2.0
Harvester	A guarded ARC structure with blueprints inside	Minor map condition
Extraction points	Elevators, metro stations, airshafts, hatches, gondolas	In-raid map
Raider Hatch	A locked exit that needs a key	In-raid map, Shani's shop
Loadout and free loadout	What you take in, or a random kit for free	Before every deploy
Squads and matchmaking	Solo, Duo or Trio, matched partly by playstyle	Main menu, PvE toggle test

Topside and the Rust Belt

Topside is the Raiders' word for the surface, and in practice it means any playable map. The region those maps belong to is the Rust Belt: ruined Italian towns and countryside mixed with the giant concrete remains of the Exodus era, when shuttles launched people off a failing Earth. ARC machines patrol all of it. Other Raiders are up there too, and no rule makes them friendly; some trade, some help, some shoot first.

When a quest or an item tooltip says something "can be found Topside", it means it comes from containers, ARC wrecks or the environment during a raid, not from a trader or a workshop bench.

Speranza

Speranza is your home: the oldest neighborhood of Toledo, an underground city under the Rust Belt. In game terms it is the hub you return to after every round. From Speranza you choose a map and a squad, sort your Stash, craft at the Workshop, buy from the traders, take quests and spend skill points.

Items in your Stash are safe in Speranza. Risk begins only when you move something into your loadout and deploy. The general idea of a safe base between missions is described under player hub.

Round, raid and the raid timer

A raid is one trip Topside; the game's own menus and patch notes mostly call it a round. On every main map a standard round lasts 30 minutes. Two conditions run longer, 40 minutes: Hidden Bunker on Spaceport and Locked Gate on the Blue Gate.

The clock matters because the end of a round is deadly. Shani, Speranza's head of security, warns everyone over the radio at the ten, five and two minute marks that an ARC Orbiter is on its way, and anyone still on the surface when time runs out does not make it home. Extraction points also start closing as the round goes on (see extraction points), so a late exit means fewer options.

You still earn experience for time spent Topside and for what you did there, even in a round that ends badly. The number of rounds you have played, not your level, is what unlocks the later maps.

Maps

There are seven main maps plus the Practice Range, a training area with two-hour sessions for trying out weapons and mod combinations. The map selection screen shows a difficulty rating for each map. Map unlocks depend on rounds played:

Map	Unlocks after	Setting	Known for
Dam Battlegrounds	Available from the start	Flooded power plant	Beginner-friendly sessions
Buried City	Early in your first rounds	Desert town	Bird City condition
Spaceport	12 rounds	Exodus launch site	Hidden Bunker, launch towers
The Blue Gate	18 rounds	Mountain gateway and valley	Locked Gate condition
Riven Tides	20 rounds	Coastal resort and port	Highest difficulty rating
Stella Montis	24 rounds	Mountain research facility	Indoor fights on two levels
Pendola Pass	25 rounds	Frozen village and fallen Emperor	Flash Freeze, gondola exits

Dam Battlegrounds

The first map everyone gets. It is built around the Alcantara Power Plant, known simply as "the Dam", sitting in poisoned, waterlogged marshland that plants and animals have taken over. Embark treats it as a place for newer players: in April 2026 it removed Comets from standard Dam sessions and cut the number of Fireflies, because those ARC made beginner rounds too hard. Locked rooms such as the Control Tower and the Testing Annex need their own keys.

Buried City

An old-world town half swallowed by sand dunes, with narrow streets, empty plazas and apartment blocks, a very different place from the steel and concrete of the Exodus sites. Its exclusive minor condition, Bird City, fills chimneys with nests that hide trinkets. Key-locked spots include the Hospital and the Town Hall.

Spaceport

Acerra Spaceport, where Exodus shuttles once lifted off. Places players name when planning a route include the Launch Towers, the trench and the shipping warehouse, which has its own key. Two conditions belong to it: Hidden Bunker, where squads race to find four buttons that open a sealed bunker on the outskirts, and Launch Tower Loot, which puts a locked stash at the top of a launch tower under heavier ARC guard.

The Blue Gate

A huge gate structure that marks the way into the mountains, with a scarred valley around it. Its signature major condition, Locked Gate, shuts the gate down and asks Raiders to collect four key cards to open what is hidden behind it, in a 40-minute round.

Riven Tides

Added on 28 April 2026, Riven Tides is an abandoned harbor resort: a shoreline, an Exodus port and the Panorama Azzurro hotel, whose rooms open with numbered keycards. It carries the top difficulty rating on the map screen and brought the floating ARC Turbine with it. Its own minor condition, Beachcombing, buries finds in the sand that you dig up with a Dockmaster's Detector. Frozen Trail raised the overall loot value on Riven Tides by about 15%.

Stella Montis

A remote research facility in snowy peaks, said in the game's lore to have been humanity's last stand for preserving what it had. Its map has two layers, an upper and a lower level, and its halls were the first home of the Shredder, an ARC built for close-quarters fights.

Pendola Pass

The Frozen Trail map and the first one beyond the reach of Speranza's tube network. It is a frozen Italian mountain village and former Exodus transport hub, with a supermarket, a town square, a summit observatory and a buried train depot. At its center lies a fallen Emperor, one of the giant walking ARC normally seen only on the horizon, with rare tech inside for those who find a way in.

• Flash Freeze: storms of extreme cold sweep the valley, and you need shelter until they pass.
• Ballistic Gondola: the way out. You activate a transceiver, a gondola comes down, and you breach one of its tubes to board.
• Dynamic loot zones: a test system, so far only here. A zone keeps its loot type (a residential area stays residential), but how valuable it is changes from raid to raid, so fixed farming routes work less well.
• Redirection: a condition exclusive to this map in which Emperor Beacons can be looted and placed to pull valuable payloads to your position.

Map conditions

Map conditions are modifiers that rotate across the maps on a fixed schedule; the official ARC Raiders website lists what is active in each region hour by hour. They come in three kinds:

• Minor conditions add an event or extra loot of one type without changing the whole map. Examples: Lush Blooms (more plants and fruit), Prospecting Probes (many guarded ARC Probes), Husk Graveyard (lots of downed ARC to search), Uncovered Caches (old Raider caches that explode if left exposed too long), Bird City, Beachcombing, Harvester, Matriarch and Redirection.
• Major conditions change atmosphere and rules, raising both danger and loot: Night Raid (more keys and better loot behind locked doors, more ARC), Electromagnetic Storm (lightning that fries electronics, disrupts ARC and hits Raiders), Cold Snap (snow and frostbite, ripe Candleberries), Hurricane (strong wind, worse sight and hearing), Hidden Bunker and Locked Gate.
• ARC Operations are large ARC events: Close Scrutiny, where groups of Surveyors and Vaporizers scan for materials, and the ARC Frigate.

Some conditions do not allow a free loadout, and the map screen marks them. Some Trials challenges can only be completed while a particular minor condition is active, so it pays to check the schedule before you queue.

ARC Frigate

The ARC Frigate is an ARC Operation added in Frozen Trail: one of the largest ARC vessels hovers over the map, and Raiders can get on board, push through its corridors, open paths and fight for rare tech. The top of the ship is defended by the Hydra, a three-part turret built to handle whole squads. Other Raiders want the same prize, so expect to cooperate with them or fight them in tight spaces high above the ground.

During a Frigate round, locked doors are not active, overall loot value on the map is lower, Raider Hatches are closed and free loadouts are not allowed. The condition can roll on Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, the Blue Gate, Riven Tides and Pendola Pass. One way aboard that players use is the ARC Reclaimer, a drone that keeps flying down from the Frigate and back up again.

Harvester

The Harvester is a minor condition that places a large ARC harvesting structure on the map, guarded by the Queen. Inside, Raiders gather three fusion cores, load them into the central pillar, then shoot out the glowing yellow targets that appear. Doing that opens containers that can hold Legendary Equalizer or Jupiter blueprints. The Queen can fire her laser into a node on top of the Harvester while Raiders are inside, which electrocutes everyone in the structure, so the sequence is a race as much as a puzzle.

Extraction points

An extraction point is any exit that takes you back underground to Speranza. Extracting is what makes loot permanent: get out, and everything you carry goes to your Stash. The standard types are:

• Cargo elevators, metro stations and airshafts: you activate a terminal and wait for your ride. Elevators take a while to arrive and are loud, so the area around them often draws ARC and other Raiders.
• Raider Hatches: small locked exits that need a key.
• Ballistic Gondolas: the Pendola Pass exit, called in with a transceiver.

Most terminals show a shutdown time on your map, and once a terminal closes, that exit is gone for the round. A Raider who has been downed can still crawl to a terminal and use it, which is why a knocked-down player near an exit is not always out of the round.

Raider Hatch and Raider Hatch Key

A Raider Hatch is a one-person exit locked until someone uses a Raider Hatch Key. Once unlocked it stays open for a short time and any Raider can drop through, one at a time. Hatches have no shutdown timer, so they stay usable late in a round when other exits have closed. Keys are single-use; Shani sells them for Coins and they also turn up as loot. Hatches are closed during the ARC Frigate condition.

Loadout, free loadout and safe pocket

Before each deploy you choose a loadout. A custom loadout is built from your Stash: weapons, shield, healing, gadgets and an augment, which sets your backpack size, weight limit, shield compatibility and number of safe pocket slots (one to three). Items in a safe pocket stay with you even if you are knocked out. Not every item fits a normal safe pocket; one rare augment, the Looting Mk. 3 (Safekeeper), has a safe pocket that takes anything. You can also deploy with nothing at all.

A free loadout costs nothing: you get a random low-tier kit with a weapon, ammo, a Light Shield, healing and a utility item, plus a Free Loadout Augment that has no safe pocket and accepts only Light Shields. Embark describes free kits as a safety net for your economy. Since March 2026 matchmaking places players with custom loadouts into fresh servers more often, so free-kit players are more likely to join a round already in progress. Choosing a free loadout moves your custom kit back into the Stash, which needs free space.

Squads and matchmaking

You can queue Solo, as a Duo or as a Trio. Matchmaking tries to put squads of equal size together and also weighs your playstyle: how you have engaged with other Raiders over many past rounds. It is a sliding scale, not "friendly" and "aggressive" lobbies, and it shifts slowly. Since May 2026 defending yourself is counted differently from starting a fight, and since July 2026 your playstyle is tracked separately for Solo, Duo and Trio. Your loadout's value, looting downed Raiders and crossplay settings do not change it. The old "Solo vs. Squads" option was removed in Frozen Trail while Embark rethinks it.

Standard rounds are PvPvE: other Raiders can always attack you. Embark has announced a PvE toggle test from 13 to 20 October 2026, with servers where Raiders cannot damage each other, overall loot value is lower and some conditions (Night Raid, Locked Gate, Hidden Bunker, Frigate and Redirection) are not offered. Meeting another squad does not have to end in a firefight: the game has proximity chat and an emote wheel for talking things out.

Related terms

• ARC Raiders Enemies & Combat Glossary: every ARC machine, shields, ammo and the downed state
• ARC Raiders Loot, Crafting & Progression Terms: Stash, workshop, blueprints, Expeditions
• General gaming terms: server region · timer bar · strategy and meta