You can tell Embark is still figuring out what to do with Arc Raiders expedition wipes, because they keep changing every season.
The studio announced this week that the fourth expedition is completely changing the main incentive for wiping from permanent extra skill points to a mixture of premium currency and blueprints.
Indeed, time has shown that players care more about blueprints than the opportunity to be a little bit quicker than the competition. In the new format, each completed departure objective guarantees you 150 Raider Tokens and one blueprint that will carry over through the wipe.
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There are a total of five departure objectives, so you can rack up 750 Raider Tokens through grinding—equivalent to roughly $7 of premium currency. In case you’re wondering, that’s around half the price of a single standard store bundle in Arc Raiders. The blueprints earned are randomly pulled from a pool that includes some really valuable stuff:
- Heavy Gun Parts Blueprint
- Complex Gun Parts Blueprint
- Padded Stock Blueprint
- Extended Barrel III Blueprint
- Muzzle Brake III Blueprint
- Stable Stock III Blueprint
- Vertical Grip III Blueprint
- Venator Blueprint
- Rascal Blueprint
- Osprey Blueprint
- Trailblazer Blueprint
- Anvil Blueprint
- Bettina Blueprint
- Hullcracker Blueprint
- Tempest Blueprint
- Vulcano Blueprint
- Dolabra Blueprint
- Aphelion Blueprint
- Combat Augment Mk 3 Flanking Blueprint
- Tactical Augment Mk 3 Defensive Blueprint
- Looting Augment Mk 3 Safekeeper Blueprint
- Looting Augment Mk 3 Survivor Blueprint
- Wolfpack Blueprint
- Powered Descender Blueprint
- Snap Hook Blueprint
As Arc Raiders diehard Tim Clark pointed out to me, this is actually the second way Embark has enabled blueprints to make the trip through wipes. You can already purchase up to five expedition vault slots from Ermal that will preserve anything stored in them, so if you make full use of the challenges and vault, then you can get a headstart on the next wipe with 10 blueprints.
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(Image credit: Embark Studios)
Sounds like a decent change for folks that have been keeping up with expeditions this whole time, but if you haven’t already started on the first three, then this information isn’t all that useful. Embark seems to know that this is a core problem with its unique wipe mechanic—because they have to be done in order and only once per season, if you haven’t already been doing them you’re less and less likely to ever engage with the option. To that end, it sounds like expeditions will undergo bigger changes in the future:
“We understand the frustration of new players that are only now starting to do their Expeditions. We need to find the right balance of rewarding our veteran players but also give new players fair and fun ways to catch up and not feel like they are always behind. This is a continuous effort and we’ll keep you updated as we have more to share,” the blog post reads.
The window for the fourth expedition opens on July 7th at 1pm CEST/11am UTC/4am PT and closes on July 21st at 10am CEST/8am UTC/1am PT.
