Embark has just announced major changes to the way Expeditions work!

What’s the Expedition?
For those who don’t know what the Expedition is in ARC Raiders, it’s a way to fully reset your character so that you can play through the progression again.

As a reward for doing the Expedition, you'll get some permanent benefits (extra stash space, extra skill points, new skin/variant) and some temporary benefits (XP boost, scrappy materials boost, repair value boost).

You keep the permanent benefits forever, but the temporary benefits are lost/reset once you stop doing consecutive Expeditions.

What’s New
The main points of the changes to Expeditions that Embark just announced are:

• Permanent skill point increases are no longer acquired based on your stash value at the end of the Expedition window.

• They’re now acquired by completing a challenge in the 5-day window (sort of like a big scale Expedition Trial).

• For now, the challenge is to do damage (to any ARC or players) during the 5-day Expedition window. So aside from step 5 of the Expedition, which still has you submitting about 800k of materials, you won’t have to grind for stash loot anymore to get the max available skill points… just log in and play (and damage stuff).

• Catch-up skill points, from completing prior Expeditions but not having earned all available skill points when you did, still cost $300k per skill point. These can only be earned after completing the base challenge for your skill points in current expedition.

• There’s a new “Last Call” feature which lets people who completed the Expedition requirements but didn’t log in during the 5-day window to click to Depart still choose to depart on their first login after the window has ended. They will not get the opportunity to earn the skill points, but they can still get the other benefits, and they can always get the missed skill points by doing the next Expedition and paying for the catch-up points (300k stash value each).

• The next (4th) Expedition’s reward will be the start of a new skin instead of yet another evolution of the Patchwork skin.

• Embark hinted that they hear the community’s concerns about losing everything when they do the Expedition and are looking into changing what players keep and what gets reset when doing the Expedition.

Why the Changes?
Embark also had this to say about why they made the changes:

“We know that grinding for monetary value isn't the most exciting experience. By introducing damage-based objectives and trials instead of stash value, we're providing more freedom and variety in how you can complete the Expedition, encouraging the use of loot rather than hoarding it throughout the 5-day window. Above all, we want expeditions to be fun and not an endless grind. We believe these changes create a fair and engaging challenge that keeps everyone active across the full 5 days.”

Here’s a link to the original blog post:

arcraiders.com/news/a-triumphant-exit

I hope this gets more people interested in doing the Expeditions.

Hope to see you soon Raiders!