ARC Raiders Pops Trial Guide: Receive Damage Fast S5

The Receive Damage from Pops trial is one of the new Season 5 objectives, and it asks you to do the one thing every raider is trained to avoid: let a Pop explode on you instead of shooting it first. This is the absorb-type Trial Embark added for ARC Raiders Season 5, running July 7 to September 30, 2026, and it flips the usual survival instinct into a scoring mechanic. Bring healing, bring patience, and stop treating every beeping robot like a threat.

A Pop is a small unarmored ARC that rushes a raider and detonates on contact, dealing heavy damage to shields and health in one hit. For this trial, every confirmed hit you take from a Pop blast counts toward your score, so killing it early from range earns you nothing here. The objective rewards controlled, deliberate engagement, which is a polite way of saying the game wants you to get blown up on purpose.

What a Pop Actually Is

Pops are small, fast, unarmored ground ARC, essentially a suicide drone on wheels. They emit a beeping sound that speeds up as they close in, then detonate the moment they reach you. They spawn in swarms around indoor corridors, ambush points, and loot rooms, so where there is one Pop there are usually three more rolling in behind it.

How to Farm This Trial Without Dying

The entire ARC Raiders trial guide logic here is simple: find a Pop, let it get close enough to detonate, survive the hit, repeat. Do not let two Pops hit you back to back, that combination downs most raiders outright. Space out your hits, heal between them, and never try this trial while already low on shield from a firefight.

• Equip the heaviest armor you own, since Season 5 already recommends heavy gear for the rising ARC activity around Riven Tides.
• Carry more bandages and shield rechargers than you think you need, this is a healing-item trial disguised as a combat one.
• Head to Pop-dense indoor spawns such as hotel floors or vault rooms rather than open ground where they scatter.
• Take one hit, retreat a few steps, patch up, then bait the next Pop, never stand still and let a group swarm you at once.
• Free Loadouts work fine for this since you are not here to fight, you are here to get punched by a robot repeatedly.

Important: a single Pop can strip a large chunk of health in one explosion, and a second Pop detonating seconds later can down you before you even reach a bandage. Treat this trial like a controlled beating, not a free-for-all, or you will be extracting on a stretcher instead of with your score.

Like other ARC Raiders weekly trials, the three-star reward for this Trials Season 5 objective sits around the standard 3,000-point threshold seen across this week's rotation. Score scales with confirmed hits taken, not kills, so a slow deliberate run of ten to fifteen absorbed hits comfortably clears the bar. Rewards here are cosmetic only, so nobody is getting a stat boost for this, just bragging rights and a step closer to the Scorta outfit.

Why Embark Added This Trial

This Pop ARC Raiders objective is part of a wider Season 5 theme, where the devs are testing loadouts in new ways instead of the usual damage-and-destroy formula. The developers themselves called it out directly, describing the new season as bringing fresh ways to test your loadout on top of returning challenges, and turning a normally avoided hazard into something worth chasing on purpose fits that pattern. If you liked absorb damage trial mechanics from other games, this is Embark's version, minus the dignity.

Gear Checklist Before You Load In

1. Heaviest armor set available, since Season 5 assumes you are tanking hits deliberately this time.
2. A full stack of bandages, because you are volunteering for damage rather than avoiding it.
3. Shield recharger for the gap between Pop hits so the next explosion does not chain into a down.
4. A sidearm for cleanup once your score is banked, since leftover Pops will not politely wait around.

Once you hit your target score, extract immediately. There is no bonus for style points, and standing around near more Pops after you have already banked your score is how a completed three star trial ARC Raiders run turns into a very avoidable death report.