ARC Raiders Reveals First 2026 Trials Challenges

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Now that the new year is underway, Embark Studios has launched the first set of ARC Raiders Trials for 2026, offering players new objectives to complete for valuable in-game rewards. Following the conclusion of 2025, ARC Raiders players experienced their first Expedition, effectively starting over with new characters and progression. This marks the beginning of Season 2, and the second week of its Trials challenges.

If you’re new to ARC Raiders and wondering about Trials, they’re a way to earn gear and items for exploring the surface. These challenges change every Monday and usually involve tasks like destroying specific ARC enemies, exploring certain locations, or interacting with objects while you’re on the surface. You can try a Trial with each match, but your score doesn’t carry over between games. Each Trial has three star levels, earned by scoring 1000, 2500, and 4000 points. You’ll receive a random Uncommon, Rare, or Epic item as a reward for each star you earn.

Players often found the Trials challenges to be too similar, so the developers of ARC Raiders tried something different last week: they asked players to hit enemies called Rocketeers with snowballs. This was a new kind of challenge because Rocketeers are powerful enemies that can quickly defeat players. Luckily, players quickly figured out they could stun the Rocketeers with a special grenade, then quickly throw snowballs while they were vulnerable. It was still a risky task, but it was a fun change of pace. Now, just a week later, players need to gather snowballs again, as the new Trials challenges require them to throw snowballs at Bastions this time.

How To Complete ARC Raiders Week 11 Trials

  • Damage Snitches
  • Throw snowballs at Bastions
  • Damage Bastions
  • Search Supply Drops
  • Harvest plants

New challenges are now available in ARC Raiders, running from January 5th to 12th. To earn the most points, players need to focus on a few key tasks: damaging Snitches, hitting Bastions with snowballs, damaging Bastions directly, finding Supply Drops, and collecting plants. Like last week, you’ll need to play in the Cold Snap mode to gather snowballs, which are essential for taking down Bastions. These powerful enemies fire quickly and can be found in areas like Buried City, Blue Gate, Dam Battlegrounds, Spaceport, and Stella Montis. The most effective strategy, similar to the Rocketeer challenge, is to first stun a Bastion with a Showstopper grenade, then quickly throw as many snowballs at it as you can.

For the challenges left to complete, you can damage Snitches on any map, but you’ll find them much more often on maps like Spaceport or Blue Gate. Night Raids also have more ARCs, which increases your chances of finding Snitches. To find Supply Drops, look for small call stations around the map – these appear more frequently on Dam Battlegrounds and Buried City. Lastly, you can harvest plants by collecting Mushrooms, Agave, Great Mullein, or Moss. While these plants are available on most maps, they’re most common on Spaceport.

Players of ARC Raiders have a lot to look forward to this week! Embark Studios is back from the holidays and will release their first update of 2026 on January 6th. The update will address balance issues by reducing the power of the Trigger Nade, and the developers are also working on a fix to prevent players from using macros to rapidly fire the Kettle. While this update won’t include any new content, Embark Studios is expected to share their plans for the year ahead soon.

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2026-01-05 14:38