ARC Raiders: Damage Leapers Trial Guide

Every week, the same cycle repeats: five Trials appear, Raiders either grind for leaderboard glory or grab their 3-star loot and vanish. If you ended up here, you probably died to a Leaper in ARC Raiders at least twice and now want to feel competent. Good. Read this. Do not die.

The Damage Leapers Trial is straightforward: find Leapers, reduce them to scrap, extract with score. The catch is that a Leaper will happily crush you flat in a single leap, fire mid-air rockets, and shockwave you into the ground for good measure. ARC Raiders Trials scoring rewards aggression, so standing around hoping for the best is not a strategy.

Key Math Two Leapers during a 2× Major Map Condition is enough for your 3-star reward. Outside a modifier, you need three. Stop raiding without checking the event timer first.

The ARC Raiders weekly Trial rotation scores you per damage event: exactly 2 points per damage dealt to a Leaper, Bastion, Rocketeer, Bombardier, or Vaporizer. Score shown on screen is doubled: what you see is not what you get. Plan accordingly.

A standard daytime Leaper is worth roughly 1,760 points destroyed. Flip on a 2× Major Map Condition: Cold Snap, Night Raid, Electromagnetic Storm: and that same kill yields around 3,500. Two kills. Extract. Done. If you want to push the ARC Raiders leaderboard, stay on the map and loop spawns until the raid timer dies. This method nets 4,000–28,000+ depending on party size and how efficiently you rotate.

Promotion Fast Track Top 30 in your division earns a 2× rank promotion: skipping an entire sub-rank. If you are aiming for Speranza Hotshots, Night Raid on Dam with a full squad during a 2× event is non-negotiable.

Loadout

The best loadout for Leaper farming is not exotic. It is whatever lets you kite a machine that jumps at 60 mph without dying to a stray AoE pulse. Below is a tiered breakdown. Bring the essentials column if you want your 3-star and out. Bring the premium column if you intend to embarrass people on the leaderboard.

Map Selection

There is one correct answer: Dam Battlegrounds Leaper locations. Every other map is a backup plan for people who enjoy suffering. Dam hosts up to five Leaper spawn points across four distinct areas, offers wide sightlines, elevated cover for kiting, and is structurally far more forgiving than Buried City subway tunnels where a Leaper can pin you against a wall with zero escape angle.

Blue Gate is a valid secondary choice: Reinforced Reception, Adorned Wreckage, and Ruined Homestead all have confirmed spawns: but the spawn density simply does not compare. Do not waste a 2× modifier window on a lesser map. Leapers do not spawn at all on Stella Montis. This is not a secret. Choose accordingly.

Confirmed Spawn Points: Dam Battlegrounds

• Control Tower base (lower dam wall): up to 3 simultaneous Leaper spawns visible from one position
• Water Treatment Extract / elevator area: one regular spawn, easy to isolate
• Hydroponic Dome Complex: Leaper or Bastion, check from range before committing
• Testing Annex / Junkyard zone: Leaper patrols between annex, the parking lot, and the stairwell
• Swamp path near zipline toward Research: roams between hydro, the broken bridge Baron husk, and zipline area
• Red Lake area: secondary spawn, consistent but lower traffic

Scouting Tip Climb the building near the generator room that overlooks the broken bridge. From here, every Leaper patrol path on the Dam map is visible except the Testing Annex unit when it walks out of line of sight. Binoculars or an Osprey make this faster. Blind rotations are wasted time.

The Optimal Route

Route logic: how to kill Leapers efficiently is not about raw damage speed, it is about spawn cycling. Leave a zone immediately after a kill. Leaper respawns require the area to be vacated. Sitting on a corpse waiting for another one to materialize is a beginner mistake that costs you score every loop.

1. Control Tower Base Start here. Pull up to 3 Leapers to the dam wall. Use range to aggro them one at a time: do not pull the entire spawn at once unless your loadout is premium. Destroy, loot optional, leave immediately.
2. Water Treatment Extract Move up through the Dam interior. One Leaper typically spawns here. Isolated fight, easy cleanup. Good fallback position if the Control Tower is contested by other Raiders.
3. Hydroponic Dome Complex Approach from range. If a Bastion is present instead of a Leaper: and it often is: skip it. A Bastion will waste your Heavy Ammo and time. Move on.
4. Return to Control Tower Spawns have had time to reset. Repeat the loop. Continue until desired score is reached or the raid timer forces extraction.

Solo or squad: the route is the same. In a squad during a 2x modifier ARC Raiders event, optionally split: one player holds Control Tower, one covers Testing Annex. Full map coverage with coordinated callouts doubles effective score per minute. In public lobbies with PvP risk, stay together.

How to Fight a Leaper Without Dying

A Leaper is a four-legged armored brute with a shockwave pulse, a long-range leap that will hit a sprinting Raider running in a straight line, and mid-air rockets. Its primary weak point is the central eye. Leaper weak point ARC Raiders: shoot the eye. Hitting it causes knockback, interrupting a leap charge and buying repositioning time. Targeting the eye consistently also reportedly increases the chance of dropping two Leaper Pulse Units instead of one.

Step-by-Step Engagement

• Pull the Leaper from range using Anvil or Jupiter. Do not close distance unnecessarily.
• Kite it to a doorframe, building edge, or narrow corridor. Leapers cannot enter confined spaces: use this or lose.
• Maintain distance. The AoE shockwave pulse on landing deals heavy damage to anyone close. Getting hit by it is not bad luck: it is poor positioning.
• Aim center-mass or for the eye. Do not spray randomly: heavy armor means wasted ammo on off-target shots.
• Throw Trailblazer Grenades underneath, not at it. Two grenades, one dead Leaper. Three Trailblazers kill a Bastion if you need that information later.
• Apply Blaze Grenades or Fireball Burners for sustained fire DoT. Fire is the Leaper's primary elemental weakness: a burning Leaper dies considerably faster than a cold one.
• Wolfpack Grenades are immediate kills. Use sparingly if stock is limited.
• Do not sprint in a straight line while a Leaper is targeting you. It is accurate enough to hit you. Strafe or use cover transitions.
• If the Leaper disengages and starts retreating to its patrol area, that means sufficient damage has been dealt. Chase or let it reset: your choice based on ammo situation.

AoE Pulse Warning The harvested Leaper Pulse Unit can itself be thrown as a weapon: it generates a kinetic AoE strong enough to break a blue shield. If another Raider lobs one at you mid-fight, you have approximately no time to react. This is mentioned purely so your death has context.

PvP Pressure

Dam Battlegrounds is a high-traffic map. Other Raiders know where Leapers spawn. The ARC Raiders best map for Trials is also the map where someone is most likely to third-party your fight the moment you commit to pulling a Leaper. Solutions, in ascending order of effort: die several times without shooting in a pre-raid lobby to be matchmade into quieter lobbies; bring Smoke Grenades for disengagement; set Barricade Kits at chokepoints near your farming position; accept that some runs will be lost to PvP and factor that into session goals.

In genuinely friendly or PvE-weighted lobbies, split the squad. One at Control Tower, one at Testing Annex. The increase in score per raid is significant. In contested lobbies, cluster up and treat Leaper farming as a secondary objective while maintaining situational awareness. Dying mid-loop resets your position and wastes time. ARC Raiders score maximization requires surviving, not just killing.

After the Kill

Once a Leaper is destroyed it explodes into several lootable pieces. Each fragment can contain materials. The primary item is the Leaper Pulse Unit farming drop: required for Shani's Into the Fray quest, Utility Station upgrades (Station 2 to 3 requires four units), late-stage Outfitting projects, and selling at 5,000 coins per unit. Do not leave without looting the legs and side panels: most Raiders take only the core and leave units on the ground. If you are farming Trials score, you can skip looting and rotate faster. Choose your priority before the raid, not during it.