You hop into ARC Raiders, queue up for “just one more run”, and before you know it the night’s gone. That mix of clutch extractions, near-death escapes and losing half your stash on a bad push is what keeps you in, and now Embark’s thrown something new into that loop. A month after launch they have dropped the first Expedition Project, and if you care about long-term power or squeezing every drop out of your ARC Raiders BluePrint collection, you kinda need to pay attention. It is live on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and yeah, it is basically a prestige system, just wrapped in extraction-style risk.

What Makes This Wipe Different

Most games in this genre just pull the plug and wipe everyone on a schedule, whether you are ready or not. Here it works different. You only unlock the Expedition Project at level 20, and then it is on you to opt in or ignore it. If you say yes, the game hard-resets your Raider level, your entire skill tree, your stash and all your blueprints. It sounds brutal, but you are not dumped back into a slow tutorial. You skip the whole Speranza onboarding, every map is open from the start, and workshop upgrades you had are already there. So you are not crawling back from zero, you are more like starting a fresh season with the training wheels off.

Min-Maxing The Carry-Over

The hook that will get the spreadsheet players going is the stash valuation. Once you sign up for the expedition, the game totals up the value of everything you own plus your Coin balance. For every one million Coins’ worth of gear and currency, you get one bonus skill point on the new Raider. You can grab up to five of these, so the sweet spot is hitting roughly five million in value before you commit. That is where the real min-max kicks in: some people will hoard junk just to bump the number, others will craft and flip items to push that last bit of value. Starting a fresh run with five extra skill points changes how early fights feel, how greedy you can be, and it makes those first few drops a lot less scary.

Permanent Wins And Temporary Buffs

There is more than raw stats on the line. Every account that signs up scores permanent unlocks: the Patchwork Raider outfit, a scruffy Scrappy Janitor Cap, and a flat +12 stash slots. Anyone who has lost gear because they could not fit one more rifle into storage knows how big that extra space is. On top of that you get temporary buffs baked into the expedition: repairs cost you less with a 10% repair bonus, you earn XP 5% faster, and Scrappy drops around 6% more materials. Those boosts do have a timer on them. If you skip the next Expedition Project, they fall off, but if you keep joining runs in a row the bonuses ramp up over your next three expeditions and start to feel like a proper edge instead of a tiny perk.

Short Sign-Up Window, Big Decision

The catch is the schedule. The sign-up window opens on 17 December and shuts again on 22 December, and everyone who opted in goes out together on the 22nd. So you do not really have weeks to think it over. You are deciding if you are willing to torch your current loadouts, favourite guns and comfort build for a cleaner long-term setup, more stash space and those front-loaded skill points. If you like to plan your progression, or you are already eyeing ways to buy ARC Raiders BluePrint and pump your stash value before the cut-off, this first expedition feels less like a reset and more like a gamble you actually choose to take.