ARC Raiders’ Expedition System Is Bleeding the Game Dry: Stop Holding Our Best Gear Hostage
ARC Raiders just slammed the reset button with its first seasonal wipe via the Expedition Project—and it’s already stumbling. In a genre where wipes fuel last-chance loot frenzies and refresh the grind, this reset is landing with a thud.
If you have ever played through a pre-wipe in an extraction shooter, you know the drill: everyone throws on their best toys and goes loud before the reset. ARC Raiders just rolled out its first seasonal wipe framework, the Expedition Project, and somehow we got the exact opposite. Players are tiptoeing around with Level 1 junk like it is a glass heirloom. The reason? Embark tied permanent, next-season power to how fat your wallet is at wipe. Yeah, that will change how people play.
What Expedition actually does (and why it is making everyone hoard)
- Expedition is ARC Raiders' take on a seasonal wipe: an optional fresh start with rewards attached.
- When the event wraps on December 22, the game snapshots your stash and wallet.
- Your next Raider gets up to 5 permanent skill points based on that final value: 1 million coins per point, maxing out at 5 million for all five.
- There are also cosmetic items, a few stash slots, and minor buffs in the bundle.
The pre-wipe meta is... Level 1 gear
Once the studio explained the reward math, the hype tanked. Because the snapshot happens at the end, anything you use between now and December 22 literally lowers your final value. Every gun you risk, every piece of armor you lose, is a permanent hit on next season's build. So instead of flexing endgame loadouts, people are hiding, extracting fast, and stockpiling. Several early Expedition supporters even admit they changed course the second they saw the numbers.
'Creating a gameplay loop that punishes using your gear will kill the game.'
- one frustrated player
The math is brutal if you are not a grinder
Five million coins is a tall order for casual and even mid-core players, especially when rare loot tops out around 14,000 coins. Do the math on that conversion and tell me it does not skew hard toward the most dedicated farmers. That is the core problem: a system meant to celebrate a season's effort ends up rewarding whoever hoards the most in the final days.
How players are responding
The vibe right now is not great. Some folks are shrugging and aiming for a single point. Others say they will skip the wipe entirely. More are stepping away until Embark changes the system. It is a strange place to be: a pre-wipe where the optimal play is to avoid fights and run with throwaway gear, all to squeeze out a couple of permanent points next season.
This should feel like a victory lap, not a penalty
End-of-season chaos is supposed to be fun. You cash in, you go wild, you burn down your stash because it will all reset anyway. Instead, the Expedition rules make you play scared for what amounts to cosmetics, a few stash slots, some light buffs, and at best five skill points. That is a tough sell.
Embark needs to rethink the timing or the thresholds here, and fast. Players are not wrong to be annoyed — the feature does not just hand out underwhelming rewards, it actively changes how the game is played in a way that is the opposite of fun.
How are you planning to handle the December 22 snapshot? Going all-in on hoarding, or ignoring the whole thing until it changes?