What's in 2.3.0
Highlights
- Souls Offering, a new player project led by Celeste
- Heavy Shield base charge 80 to 90
- Flame Spray damage 10/s to 13/s, with half the durability drain
- Firefly Burner now ignites on impact when thrown
- Six weapon blueprints can drop in any major map condition
- Emperor and Frigate loot: better rewards deeper inside
- A batch of Grappling Hook fixes, including the extreme-speed launches
- The Expedition Vault is being disabled, with Bronze Statuettes as compensation
Embark also announced a schedule change. Since Frozen Trail launched, fixes have shipped weekly. After this update, fixes return to every three weeks, and store updates stay weekly.
New Player Project: Souls Offering
Celeste is asking Speranza to pause and honor the Raiders lost Topside, especially on Pendola Pass. Each offering is unique, and everyone who takes part shares in the project. The notes don't list the project's stages or rewards yet.
A Souls Offering altar. Image: Embark Studios.
Image: Embark Studios.
Image: Embark Studios.
The Noxious Set
The Noxious Set arrives in the store with this update: a character outfit with a spiked helmet, a gas mask and a glowing chest core.
The Noxious Set. Image: Embark Studios.
Weapon and Item Balance
| Item | Change |
|---|---|
| Heavy Shield | Base charge 80 to 90 |
| Flame Spray | Damage 10/s to 13/s; durability drain cut by 50%; fire no longer passes through walls |
| Firefly Burner | Activates on impact when thrown, travels leaving a trail of fire, and explodes after about 3 seconds. Before, you had to shoot it to vent fire |
| Adrenaline Shot | Usable at max stamina; no longer stacks, a second shot refreshes the duration |
| Barricade kits | Can't be placed into solid walls or spaces that are too tight |
| Mines | Can't be placed on dismantling barricades (they used to float in midair) |
Heavy Shield usage is still low after the 2.0 buffs, so its base charge goes up. It should slightly improve survivability against most weapons without opening too big a gap over the Medium Shield.
The Heavy Shield has now been buffed twice in three weeks. 2.0 cut its decay from 0.20 to 0.15 and its movement penalty from 15% to 10%, and 2.3 adds 10 more charge. If you dropped it at launch, it's worth another try for Frigate and Emperor runs where fights are long. The Flame Spray buff matters on Pendola Pass too: fire melts the frozen doors, and with half the durability drain it lasts much longer as a utility tool.
Blueprints and Loot
- The Dolabra, Bobcat, Equalizer, Jupiter, Tempest and Vulcano blueprints can now drop in any major map condition. The drop chance for that pool is slightly lower to make up for it.
- The Emperor Key blueprint drops less often from Redirection pods. To compensate, the pods have a small chance at ARC parts and high-tier ARC loot.
- Furniture Designs had inverted drop rates. Rarer Designs now really are rarer.
The blueprint change widens where you can farm the Dolabra and the others: any major condition counts now. The Emperor Key change goes the other way. The Emperor Gateway Conduit Blueprint was already rare from the large Emperor Payload, and it's rarer now. Our Emperor guide covers the other source, the Surveyor Vault.
The Emperor and the Frigate
Emperor
- Loot is redistributed: containers near the entrance give lower-tier rewards, with higher-tier loot deeper inside.
- The exploit prevention used in locked rooms now covers more of the Emperor.
- Killboxes at the top of the compactor are tweaked so players aren't unfairly killed there.
- Collision fixes around and inside the fallen Emperor, including a missing ceiling that let players leave the playable space.
Frigate
- Areas further in have a higher chance of higher-tier rewards.
- New visual hatches and clearer audio on the power core vents show how far the puzzle has progressed.
- You can ping the Frigate from long range while it enters the area, and pings on or near it now mark the exact spot.
- Missing collision fixed, so players can no longer hide inside geometry or get stuck on the wings.
- The cargo gate is updated, and Frigate interiors keep their global illumination, so they're no longer overly dark.
- Lower memory use and better stability, which should cut crashes in the cargo hold with larger groups.
Both changes push the same way: the quick grab at the door is worth less, and the payoff is deeper in. Plan to commit to the full route. Our Frigate guide walks through it stage by stage, and the Emperor guide covers getting inside.
Grappling Hook, Camera and Zipline
Grappling Hook
- No more extreme-speed launches when the line snags on geometry.
- Reeling an ARC with the rope wrapped around an obstacle now pulls it toward the wrap point, not toward you.
- The hook reattaches to debris when its target breaks apart.
- Works inside the Matriarch's shield while it's active.
- Tether items now affect players swinging from a grappling hook.
Camera
The Advanced Camera gets Color Push and Black & White filters, Classic Film has a refined grain, and the Basic Camera blurs less, so selfies are clearer. The Camera HUD now fills widescreen displays.
Zipline
Getting on from the ground now moves you upward correctly, and the preview cable no longer disappears at long range.
Gameplay Fixes
- Downed Raiders stop losing health once they're in the Ballistic Gondola.
- Heavy landings now trigger correctly while dodge rolling, which closes a trick that negated fall damage.
- You can no longer stand on the Skulker indefinitely.
- Rolling enemies stop laying tracks after they die, and ARC move better near map borders.
- Vaporizer debris no longer flies away or jitters.
- Bettina, Bobcat and Kettle eject their magazines on reload again.
The Expedition Vault Is Going Away
Expedition Vault: it's being disabled. Everything in it moves to your stash, and you get Bronze Statuettes as compensation for any slots you bought.
Other UI changes worth knowing:
- A camera bob option in Gameplay settings.
- The Reward Pass screen renames Daily Feats to Feats and Weekly Bonus to Milestones.
- In the Amplification tree, branch points now list exactly which amplifications they would block.
- The Codex adds a "Times Revived By A Stranger" stat, and the Bilguun's Hideout entry now unlocks after visiting it on Spaceport.
- Daily Quests now refresh in the menus after they expire.
- The End of Round screen shows attached mods and applied Stencils.
Maps, Performance and Stability
- Pendola Pass: no more clipping through the gondola extraction, better container placement in the Storm Huts (a Medical Bag could be looted through a wall), a fixed ammo box, and removed chairs that blocked looting in a shelter.
- Spaceport: a stuck spot at a small fence gap is fixed.
- Stella Montis: several stuck spots are fixed.
- FSR is updated to 4.1.1.
- A workaround for a ray-tracing GPU crash on AMD RX 7000 cards.
- Lower audio memory on Xbox Series S to reduce out-of-memory crashes near the Frigate.
- A failsafe returns you to the main menu if the end-of-round survey screen fails to load, instead of leaving you stuck in the tunnel.
- Better volumetric smoke, skin shading and ambient occlusion, with less ghosting and flicker.
Known Issues
The ones most likely to affect your raids:
- Extracting with partial progress on To The Skies can make the quest impossible to complete.
- In When Everything Falls, objectives like "Photograph Port A" may not complete.
- If you lose or sell a quest item, such as the Equatorial Sundial for Clean Hands, the quest can't be completed. Keep quest items until you turn them in.
- ARC Reclaimers can fail to dock on the Frigate, and vaulting on one can push you off.
- Falling while using the Grappling Hook can bounce you high into the air.
- A stuck spot near the Railroad on Pendola Pass.
- The Raider Tool shows its default skin, and some weapon models can grow dramatically during a raid.
- Some Xbox players may see instability or crashes.
If you're heading for the Frigate or the Emperor this week, start with our Frigate guide and Emperor guide. For everything that came with Frozen Trail, see the 2.0 patch notes breakdown.
See you Topside, Raiders.
— Arc Raiders Hub