Embark Studios has laid out Frozen Trail, the ARC Raiders update it has been describing as the extraction shooter’s biggest, ahead of a free release on all platforms on Thursday, October 8. The studio teased it on September 18 and set a September 23 premiere, which took the form of an hour-long video and press Q&A.
Pendola Pass and the new ARC
The headline addition is Pendola Pass, a snowy mountain map on the northern edge of the Rust Belt built around an old Italian village and transport hub. Embark calls it its most ambitious and most challenging map to date, larger and more vertical than most existing locations. A flash freeze weather condition damages players who stay outside shelter too long, and the corpse of an Emperor — the colossal ARC previously only glimpsed at a distance — lies slumped against the mountainside, its interior explorable for loot.
Three new enemy types arrive alongside it. The Bully is a stocky, aggressive ground unit that pursues players relentlessly and, like the existing Leaper, uses machine-learned behaviour — a technology executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told Polygon is "still a bit of an advanced research task on our end". The Skulker keeps its distance and takes potshots before retreating out of sight. The Hydra is a stationary turret split into three autonomous sections that can target several players at once. A fourth addition, the Frigate, is a massive airborne carrier Embark frames as a high-stakes challenge for experienced raiders: rather than being destroyed, it has to be boarded and sabotaged through puzzles and hazards, with the Hydra waiting on board. The Frigate will appear on multiple maps; the Bully and Skulker are confined to Pendola Pass at launch.
Weapons, skills, outposts and the pass
Frozen Trail adds two weapons — the Stiletto, a light-ammo battle rifle pitched as an early-game alternative to the Renegade, and the Bantam, a quickfire revolver — plus a weapon amplification system. Using a new research bench, 15 existing guns can be upgraded to an amplified tier that grants an ability rather than raw stats, such as incendiary ammo, fully automatic fire or an added scope. Stencils work as reusable weapon skins. New gadgets include a stamina-based grappling hook, a tether launcher, a camera and instruments.
The skill tree has been reworked, with skills removed, new ones added, and some nodes now presented as a choice between abilities rather than a full unlock. "We believe that creates more interesting choices and supports more playstyles," Grøndal said in a press Q&A, without detailing the new skills. Outposts are personal spaces outside Speranza that players build up with decor, furniture, trinkets and upgrade benches; players cannot walk around them at launch, and Grøndal said an explorable Speranza and the ability to invite friends in remain under discussion.
The update also changes how rewards are sold. A Reward Pass replaces the Raider Deck system and splits into a Free Pass, which every owner gets and which carries the gameplay-affecting items such as weapons and gear, and a paid Premium Pass costing 1,150 Raider Tokens, about $10, that holds cosmetics only. Completing it returns 1,350 Raider Tokens, 200 of them on the free track.
Frozen Trail is the first release under the six-month update cadence Embark adopted in May, after ARC Raiders’ concurrent player count fell from a Steam peak above 480,000 to around 25,000 a day. Grøndal said the update brings repeatable activities and takes a step toward giving players more reason to fight one another, but called a fuller answer to the endgame and PvP-incentive complaints a longer-term effort. An Expeditions redesign is in progress for the end of the year, and the next major update has no date.
