If you have logged into Arc Raiders lately and seen the Flickering Flames timer ticking down, you know the pressure to stack Candleberries is real, especially when you start looking at that Bettina III and the Red Light Stick and realise they are locked behind a full Candleberry Banquet turn‑in, so planning efficient runs and maybe grabbing some extra ARC Raiders Items while you are at it becomes more or less the whole point of your session.
Dealing With Cold Snap
The Cold Snap modifier is the part most people complain about, and they are not wrong, but if you ignore it you just burn through stims and respawns. You queue into anything with the snowflake icon and the game starts chewing through your health the moment you hang around in the open, so you want to move from shelter to shelter instead of sprinting in straight lines. Domes, broken warehouses, those old outposts around the Dam, they are not just scenery now, they are your route markers. You dip in, warm up, check the exits, then push out again. A lot of players forget to do this and end up dying in sight of a big patch of bushes, which is great for you if you are a little more patient.
Where Candleberries Actually Spawn
The Dam Battlegrounds is still the best place to learn the loop, because everything is fairly close and the terrain is easy to read once you have done a couple of raids. The Hydroponic Dome Complex to the north can spawn a silly amount of bushes, but it is also where aggressive squads like to camp, so if you are solo it often makes more sense to angle south toward the Scrapyard and the Wreckage instead. Down there you usually get a quieter run, roughly four stable bush spawns, and enough broken cover that you can reset if another team spots you from long range. When you feel confident, you head over to Buried City. That zone can be a jackpot: the area around the Church Ruins and Plaza Rosa can easily push you past sixty berries if the instance is not already stripped, though you do have to assume at least one other squad is chasing the same route.
Extra Sources People Skip
On your way between the big clusters, you want to break the habit of ignoring the smaller props. Wicker baskets and fruit baskets look like filler, but they can drop up to five Candleberries at once along with things like Moss, so you are effectively leaving an extra bush on the table every time you jog past one. Raider caches are another big one: opening one and seeing a chunk of ten berries pop out feels like the game is apologising for the last dead run, so check every cache you can reach safely. If you spot a downed Arc Courier, do not overthink it, just loot it and move on; it is often a quick grab with almost no risk if you are already in cover.
Putting Together A Clean Run
Once you piece all of this together, a good raid starts to feel pretty simple: queue with Cold Snap active, pick a map where you know the main bush spots, and draw a route that keeps you bouncing between cover so frostbite never gets a chance to really kick in while you are chasing Candleberries and any useful ARC Raiders gear that drops along the way.
