ARC Raiders Update 2.3.0 Patch Notes: Souls Offering, Heavy Shield Buff and Expedition Vault Removed

Three weeks after Frozen Trail, Embark Studios has shipped ARC Raiders Live Update 2.3.0. It went live on October 27, 2026 on all platforms, and you need to restart the game to download it. This isn't a content drop on the scale of 2.0, but it does a lot of useful cleanup: a new community project, buffs for two underused items, a loot shake-up inside the Emperor and the Frigate, and the end of the Expedition Vault.

Embark also used the notes to announce a schedule change. From here on, fix updates return to a three-week cadence, while store updates arrive weekly.

TL;DR

• New player project: Souls Offering, a remembrance project for fallen Raiders, led by Celeste.
• New store cosmetics: the Noxious Set.
• Heavy Shield base charge goes from 80 to 90.
• Flame Spray damage rises from 10 to 13 per second, and it uses 50% less durability.
• Firefly Burner now ignites on impact when thrown. Adrenaline Shot works at full stamina.
• Emperor and Frigate loot is now better the deeper you go.
• Six weapon blueprints can drop in any major map condition, and the Emperor Key blueprint is rarer from Redirection pods.
• The Expedition Vault is gone. Its contents move to your stash and purchased slots are refunded with Bronze Statuettes.

Souls Offering: the new player project

Souls Offering is the new player project. It's rooted in Toledo's four contradas and the Raiders lost in Pendola Pass. Celeste asks Speranza to stop for a moment and honor those who fell. Embark's framing is that each offering is personal, but everyone who takes part shares in the result. The official trailer above sets the tone. With the update landing right before Halloween, the timing fits.

Balance changes

Two items come out of this patch clearly stronger.

The Heavy Shield buff follows its Frozen Trail tuning, and Embark says it's still watching how the shield performs in fights. The Flame Spray changes go further. It hits harder and lasts much longer, and the fix that stops fire from going through walls takes away its cheapest trick. The Firefly Burner change is a big usability win: you no longer have to throw it and then shoot it.

Loot changes: go deeper

The biggest change for veterans is where good loot spawns.

• The Emperor: Containers near the entrance now give lower-tier rewards. The good stuff sits further inside.
• The Frigate: Loot is spread the same way, so deeper areas are more likely to hold high-tier rewards. The cargo gate was also updated, and you can now ping the Frigate from long range as you approach.
• Blueprints: The Dolabra, Bobcat, Equalizer, Jupiter, Tempest and Vulcano blueprints can now drop in any major map condition. The pool's drop chance was lowered slightly to make up for it.
• Emperor Key blueprint: It drops less often from Redirection pods. In its place, those pods have a small chance to give ARC parts and high-tier ARC loot.
• Furniture Designs: Their drop rates had been inverted, so rare designs were dropping more often than common ones. That's fixed.

If you've been grabbing entrance loot in the Emperor and heading out, that plan no longer pays.

Grappling Hook, cameras and other gameplay fixes

The Grappling Hook gets another round of fixes after 2.2. You can now use it inside the Matriarch's active shield, and Tether items affect Raiders who are swinging on it. It no longer launches you to extreme speeds when the line snags on geometry, and it reattaches to debris when its target breaks apart.

Other changes worth knowing:

• Downed Raiders no longer lose health after getting into the Ballistic Gondola.
• Dodge rolling no longer skips heavy landings, and repeating one no longer cancels fall damage.
• Players can't stand on the Skulker forever anymore.
• More protection against getting into locked rooms in the Emperor, plus tweaks to the killboxes at the top of its compactor on Pendola Pass.
• The Advanced Camera gets Color Push and Black & White filters, and the Basic Camera blurs selfies less.

Expedition Vault removed

The Expedition Vault is being disabled. Anything stored in it moves to your stash, and purchased Vault slots are refunded with Bronze Statuettes. The Vault tab and its offer had already been pulled from the UI in update 2.2.0 on October 20, so this finishes that change.

Map and stability fixes

Pendola Pass gets several collision fixes around the Fallen Emperor, including a missing ceiling that let players leave the play area. Players can no longer clip through the gondola extraction, and a few Storm Hut containers were moved. Spaceport and Stella Montis also lose some spots where players could get stuck.

On the technical side:

• Xbox Series S uses less audio memory, to cut out-of-memory crashes, especially around the Frigate.
• A ray tracing crash on AMD RX 7000 cards gets a workaround.
• The Frigate's cargo hold uses less memory and is more stable with larger groups.
• If the end-of-round survey fails to load, a failsafe now sends you back to the menu instead of leaving you stuck in the tunnel.

Known issues

Embark lists several bugs it hasn't fixed yet:

• "To The Skies" may become impossible to finish if you already made partial progress.
• Some "When Everything Falls" objectives, such as photographing Port A, may not complete.
• Losing or selling a quest item can block its quest. For example, the Equatorial Sundial is needed for "Clean Hands."
• The Raider Tool shows its default skin no matter which skin you equip.
• A spot near the Pendola Pass railroad can still trap players.

Hang on to quest items until the quest is done.

What it means for players

Update 2.3.0 rewards players who commit to a run. The Emperor and Frigate now pay out for going deep, not for grabbing what's by the door. Expect fewer quick in-and-out runs and more fights in the back rooms. The Heavy Shield and Flame Spray buffs are worth testing this weekend, especially in close-range fights on the Frigate. Souls Offering gives the community a shared goal heading into November. If Embark sticks to the new three-week cadence, the next fix update would be due around mid-November.