ARC Raiders Flashpoint 1.22.0 Overview

This is the third major update of 2026, hot on the heels of Headwinds and Shrouded Sky. The ARC Raiders Flashpoint update does not care that you were comfortable. It does not care that you had a system. It definitely does not care that you spent three raids learning the Spaceport antenna timing. That was cute. Here is what actually changed.

Close Scrutiny: ARC Operation

The Assessor arrives from the sky in a controlled descent, drops into position like it owns the place, and then just... sits there. Celeste calls it an Assessor. Raiders call it a loot pinata wearing combat boots. The machine itself shows no signs of aggression. The unprecedented ARC patrols guarding it, however, have an entirely different energy.

The Close Scrutiny ARC Operation is described as "not for the faint-of-heart," which in corporate terms means it will absolutely end you. This is a new type of major map condition with a brutal tradeoff baked into its design: the overall loot density across the map drops significantly, concentrating rewards inside and around the Assessor zone. You can play it safe and find empty containers all raid long, or you can go fight the machine with your best kit and compete with every other raider who had the same idea.

Threat Assessment Close Scrutiny redistributes loot around a heavily guarded ARC target. Expect the Vaporizer to be present. Expect other raiders. Expect both at the same time while you are standing on a hatch.

Enemy Balance Changes: The Full Horror

In a development that confirms Embark Studios has access to at least one person with a sense of humor, you can now feed Scrappy specific food items to influence what loot the robot collects. This is called the Scrappy feeding boost system, and it is exactly as silly as it sounds. It also works, which is worse, because now you have to think about it.

The system functions as a loot-type biasing mechanic: feed Scrappy a category of food, and the loot returned skews toward a corresponding material type. It is essentially a vending machine that eats olives. The bond between raider and robot has officially been deepened, whether you wanted that or not.

Scrappy's nest bead level cap system has been adjusted alongside this, though the specifics remain deliberately vague in official notes. Feed him consistently, and he rewards you. This is a better relationship model than most things in Speranza, where the primary reward loop involves being shot at by machines and then running to an elevator.

Balance Changes: The Grief Section

Every patch has a section that makes you personally angry. In Flashpoint, it is the Rocketeer changes, delivered with the casualness of someone telling you your lunch was moved. The good news: loot value in locked rooms went up. The less good news: the ARC that guards those rooms was also updated. The universe remains in perfect, cruel equilibrium.

The Rocketeer Situation

Rocketeers will now take less damage from collisions and will no longer be instantly destroyed upon impact while stunned. The ARC Raiders balance changes patch 1.22 specifically addressed this because players found that stumbling or stunning a Rocketeer at the right moment could eliminate it through environmental collision. That exploit is gone. Rocketeers are now sturdier, angrier, and aware that you were exploiting them. They have feelings about it.

The Loot Improvement Situation

Locked room loot value has been scaled upward based on key rarity. This is genuinely good. If you are spending a Rare Key, you are now more likely to find Rare loot inside the room instead of three metal scraps and a single bandage that judged you on entry. Baron Husk loot spawns were also increased, which means hunting the big machine is now more economically sensible.

Free Augment Recycling

Free Augments can now be recycled into 6 plastic and 6 rubber parts. If you have been sitting on a pile of free augments you do not use, they are now currency. Small wins. Count them.

Matchmaking Note Players who build their own custom loadout are now more likely to be placed into fresh servers. Per Embark's dev note, free loadouts are meant as a safety net: not a permanent lifestyle. Custom kit players are rewarded with cleaner lobbies. This also affects matchmaking time, which the team is monitoring.

All five maps received attention in this patch, some more dramatically than others. Blue Gate and Spaceport lead the list of significant reworks, while Dam, Buried City, and Stella Montis received the standard treatment of more sentinel spawns, navigation adjustments, and the inevitable "fixed floating objects" that suggests someone was placing furniture mid-raid.

The most impactful change for endgame players: Shredders are now present on all maps, not just Stella Montis. Dam Battlegrounds gets them only during specific map conditions, but everywhere else: Blue Gate, Buried City, Spaceport: they can now appear. The Shredders all maps Flashpoint change fundamentally alters threat calculations on routes that were previously Shredder-free. Adjust your pathing or explain to your teammates why you walked into one.

Security Codes in Blue Gate now come exclusively from Code Printers, not random containers. More importantly, codes expire upon extraction. The beloved strategy of collecting codes in one run, then using them in the next raid without fighting for them, is gone. You now have to be in the map, with the code active, and extract with whatever you found using it. This is how it was always meant to work. The community found a loophole and used it for approximately one full patch cycle before Embark patched it. Classic.

Crafting Improvements: Finally

The Arc Raiders crafting system improvements in Flashpoint are legitimately good and deserve acknowledgment before we return to complaining. The core change: when you are missing materials for a craft, you can now fulfill them directly from the crafting window itself. Recycle, refine, or purchase: all in a single screen without flipping between tabs like someone trying to file taxes on a phone.

A list of available sources is presented when materials are missing, so you know immediately whether to recycle scrap, use refinement, or spend currency. This reduces the "back-and-forth tab sprint" that characterized crafting sessions in previous patches, where building a single item required visiting three different stations in Speranza and questioning your life choices between each one.

• Missing materials can now be sourced directly in crafting view
• Recycle, refine, or purchase options appear in one window
• Stash value is now visible on the inventory screen
• Bundle prices now display full bundle value: no more mental math
• Purchase dialog shows detailed content breakdown before you commit
• Store tab shows a "new items" marker when rotation changes: no more manually checking if anything is new

This Is Just Better The crafting changes are unambiguous improvements. If you have opinions about this, reconsider them.

Bug Fixes: A Highlight Reel of Things That Were Wrong

The ARC Raiders patch notes bug fixes section of Flashpoint is extensive, which is either a sign of a committed development team or a sign of what was in the build before this patch went out. Both can be true. Below are the fixes worth caring about, ranked by how much they affected your survival rate without you realizing it.

Gameplay Fixes

• Ziplines and ladders while carrying items: Fixed. You can no longer climb a zipline while carrying a Field Crate. Items drop when you grab the line. This existed. People used it. Now it doesn't.
• ARC spawning on late-joining players: Fixed. Joining near the end of the late-join window no longer causes ARC to immediately spawn on your position. That was a special kind of welcome.
• Vault damage on Comets: Fixed. You could take full fall damage when attempting to vault on a Comet's body. As if the Comet wasn't already enough of a hazard.
• LMB/RMB delay while unarmed: Fixed. Using mouse buttons while unarmed could delay or prevent equipping a weapon. This happened constantly and was infuriating in exactly the situation where it mattered most.
• Fireflies through walls: Fixed. Flying ARC, particularly Fireflies, would spawn inside geometry in Stella Montis and attack players from outside the walls. That was not a feature.
• Tick interactions: Fixed. All interactions are now disabled when grabbed by a Tick except the fight-off input. Previously, a Tick could grab you and you would accidentally interact with something nearby while trying to escape.

Audio Fixes Worth Noting

Weapon audio latency was considerably reduced on Windows systems with at least 16 GB RAM. If you are on less than 16 GB, the guns still sound like your GPU is thinking about it. Directional audio for flying ARC was improved, sounds coming from behind the player are cleaner, and doors can now be heard from farther away: which is great, because knowing a door opened somewhere near you is the difference between repositioning and standing in the wrong hallway looking confused.

Still Broken

• Firefly may disappear after going idle and drop an incendiary grenade. Spontaneous. Untargeted. Hilarious in hindsight.
• Shredders float to the ceiling in some Hidden Bunker rooms. Physics apparently optional down there.
• ARC may spawn inside geometry on The Dam.
• Pressing fire on an empty mag triggers a reload, then the weapon auto-fires after. You are technically shooting twice with one intent.
• Helmet visors become transparent after the first extraction. Cosmetic. Existentially strange.