ARC Raiders Trader Guide: Ermal, PVE Mode & China Beta

The Ermal Nomadic Envoys trader arrived in patch 1.29.0 and immediately demanded you hand over things like Queen Reactors for a shirt. Embark heard the feedback: nobody was trading: and patch 1.30.0 slashed costs across the board, switching most cosmetics and blueprints from high-tier to low-tier ARC parts. Good, because you're drowning in arc alloy and have been since week two.

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Ermal unlocks at Raider level 25. There's no quest, no cutscene, no hand-holding. Below 25 he just stares at you. Expedition resets drop you back to zero, so reach 25 again before expecting him to speak.

Low-tier ARC parts: arc power cells, arc rubber, arc synthetic resin, arc alloy, hornet drivers, comet igniters. Not the purple/gold stuff. The exact categories the game lets you select may vary by rotation: check before spending.

Current Weekly Rotation: What to Buy, What to Skip

Item	Cost	Verdict
Cavalier Outfit	200k low-tier ARC parts	Down from 500k high-tier. Buy if you care about looking human.
Backpack Attachment	100k low-tier ARC parts	Down from 100k high-tier. Marginal upgrade, your call.
Vitopot Blueprint	Low-tier parts + firearms (halved from last week)	Solid blueprint, price is now reasonable. Get it.
Kinetic Converter	100k low-tier ARC parts OR firearms	+15% fire rate. Previously an Anvil Splitter slot. Better deal.
Tempest 3	50k low-tier ARC parts OR firearms	Just craft 10 Stitcher 4s. Attachments don't count toward value.
Power Rod	Rubber Ducks	Bird City must be in rotation. Probably not worth the effort.
Raider Tokens (25)	150k high-tier ARC parts	Abysmal value. Only buy if you've upgraded everything else.

Permanent Services

Stash Expansion: +12 stash slots. Resets on Expedition completion. Buy it when you need it, not to stockpile.
Expedition Vault: up to 5 item slots that survive an Expedition reset. Previously brutal to max out; now capped at 200k per later slot. If you play regularly, this is the single most valuable thing Ermal offers.

Kinetic Converter: Worth the Farm

The kinetic converter farm is straightforward: it has no blueprint, so you loot it directly. Best routes are Riven Tides Hotel (outside zipline to 4th floor, clear the loot room) or Buried City pharmacies for safer, slower repetition. The Control Tower roof on Damn Battlegrounds also has breachable crates. Cold Snap or Night Raid conditions reportedly improve drop rates: nobody has confirmed why, but the community data agrees.

The attachment gives +15% fire rate with a recoil penalty. Build around the recoil. Pair it with horizontal grip attachments. Don't run it naked and wonder why your shots go everywhere.

The trader offering a kinetic converter for 100k low-tier parts is genuinely good value. If you have the parts and no Riven Tides keys, just buy it and stop farming.

Tempest 3 Shortcut Nobody Told You

The Tempest 3 at Ermal costs 50k in low-tier ARC parts or firearms. Before you pay: a Stitcher 4 is worth 5,000 coin value and requires only basic gun parts, metal parts, and three mechanicals. Build ten of them, trade them in. Attachments placed on weapons don't count toward trade value: the game revealed this the hard way. Raw weapon value only.

Sheath Skin Set: 1,600 Coins

The store's current bundle is the Sheath set. The lore description about a satellite dish stapled to a helmet is accurate. It has a removable cape, a removable mask, a visor, and the option to go completely helmetless (goofy, but available). The mask and visor don't change color with dye. The cape gives mild Helldivers energy. Comes with the Moonlander backpack charm. Whether 1,600 coins is reasonable is a personal problem, not a gameplay one.

Update Cadence: Slower, Bigger

Embark has dropped weekly patches. The new rhythm is major updates every few weeks, with smaller live adjustments in between. The stated goal is a live update roughly every three weeks, but that's not a promise. Trader rotation still refreshes weekly at 6 AM PT / 1 PM UTC. This matters because missed weekly items have no confirmed return schedule.

China Beta: Tencent Is Running Experiments on Your Game

Western studios cannot release games in China directly. They partner with a Chinese publisher: usually Tencent: who builds a separate client for the Chinese market. Embark did the same with The Finals. ARC Raiders now has its own Chinese closed beta at arc.q.com, running under an NDA. The announcement video hit over a million views before anyone outside China saw a second of footage.

The Chinese client is a separate development track. Nothing in it is confirmed for global servers. Embark hasn't commented on any of the findings. That said, two new modes have leaked through community reports, and both have global players losing their minds.

The Two New Game Modes

Rebellion Incident

All players spawn as allies. Nobody can shoot anyone. To enable PvP, a player must manually trigger "rebellion": which marks them on the map for the entire lobby. You get a red light above your backpack. Everyone can now shoot you. It's a PVE mode with a social penalty attached to betrayal. PvE-focused players get more loot density and lower risk. The deterrent to griefing is being visible. Whether this holds in practice is an open question.

Double King / Dual Boss

The Queen and Matriarch spawn simultaneously on one map. Additional supply drops across the ground combat zone. The main concern is performance: two boss-tier ARCs active at once is a stress test. If it runs cleanly, there's a real argument for bringing this to the global build. Embark will be watching the data.

Weapon Skins in China

Tencent's version also includes weapon cosmetic skins: something the global game currently lacks entirely. Named variants include Full River Red, Lemon Battery Renegade, and Arc Trails Arpeggio. Every major game Tencent has touched (Apex Legends, The Finals) ended up with regional cosmetic exclusives before eventually pushing some version globally. This pattern is reliable enough to treat as a preview, not a coincidence.

Whether weapon skins break gameplay in an extraction game: no, they don't. Weapon silhouettes and audio are distinct enough that a skin doesn't change information. It changes nothing except how satisfying it is to loot your own corpse.

The global Frozen Trail update is reportedly planned for October 2026 and may introduce the PVE Rebellion mode to all regions. Embark has not confirmed this...

ARC Raiders Trader Guide: Ermal, PVE Mode & China Beta FAQ