Responding to concerns and criticisms about Arc Raiders' updated Expedition system, developer Embark Studios announced a major change and released some new information that collectively make the system sound much more agreeable.
For this Expedition cycle, players will have to deal damage in a limited-time challenge in order to earn maximum bonus skill points, meaning the money they may have saved for the previous value-based rewards is now worthless. Originally, players would've had just five days to complete the challenge, leaving many worried about their available free time.
Embark says players will now have a full 13 days to complete the damage challenge, which will run from April 28 through May 11 – a much more reasonable chunk of time for folks with limited gaming hours and/or unlimited life obligations.
"Like with anything that requires balancing, the Expedition Project is always a work in progress, and we’ll continue to react to the way you play and to seek ways to improve enjoyment," Embark community member Dusty says in the Arc Raiders Discord. "Keep the feedback rolling in, my friends!"
Alongside this extension, Embark released new details confirming just how much damage you'll need to deal. The exact values scale up considerably, making early skill points very easy to grab even in one or two raids.
Here are the damage values for each skill point reward:
- 1 Skill Point - 5,000 damage
- 2 SP - 10,000 damage
- 3 SP - 30,000 damage
- 4 SP - 50,000 damage
- 5 SP - 100,000 damage
Arc Raiders generally obscures damage values in gameplay (tooltips have some details but there are no health bars or damage numbers), so Embark offered an example to put this number spread into context: "100,000 damage is approximately equivalent to destroying 20 Bastions. We have tested these thresholds internally, and found that in a single, very good round, 8,000 - 10,000 damage was an achievable number."
You won't actually need to kill 20 Bastions, of course; you can deal damage to anything, from small Arc to Matriarchs to players. But it's a useful comparison. Bastion-tier Arc aren't enormously difficult to take down; you can reasonably kill a few in one run if you're well-stocked, which you probably will be if you're burning off all your best gear before the expedition, especially if you aren't overly concerned with the loot since it's about to vanish anyhow.
There is an important caveat on this, however. Embark community manager Atreides clarified that "damage counts individually," meaning playing in co-op will actually divide the total damage each person in your team can deal to a target. "Make sure everyone gets a chance to deal some damage," Atreides advises. Additionally, you do not have to extract in order for damage dealt to count, so don't sweat that.
With these changes and details in hand, the Arc Raiders community seems much more comfortable with the new Expedition system – which, in principle, does sound more fun than just hoarding cash all season. As a reminder, the catch-up skill points available to folks who didn't max out the previous Expedition rewards are still value-based at 300,000 coins a pop.
