If you’ve been speed-running the Hurricane map condition over the last week to stuff your stash with high-tier blueprints, I have some bad news: Embark Studios just shut down the buffet.
Following the massive Shrouded Sky content drop in late February, players quickly figured out how to completely break the game’s risk/reward economy. Between an overpowered loot table and a game-breaking inventory exploit, extraction felt a little too easy. Today, Embark deployed a “very hot fix” (Update 1.18.0 / 1.000.026) across all platforms to restore the tension that makes ARC Raiders tick.
Here is the tactical breakdown of what just changed, and how it impacts your next raid.
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Update 1.18.0 Highlights at a Glance
| Change Category | Issue / Mechanic | The Fix |
| Loot Balancing | Hurricane Caches | Rare Blueprint drop rates nerfed; High-tier material drop rates buffed. |
| Major Exploit | Safe Pockets | Patched the bug allowing players to stash weapons without the Safekeeper Augment. |
| Item Exploit | Snaphook | Patched the bug allowing players to safe-pocket the Snaphook while it was actively in use. |
| Quest Progression | “Worth Your Salt” | Fixed a bug preventing completion if a squadmate finished the quest first in the same raid. |
| Performance | ARC AI / UI | Fixed FPS drops caused by certain ARC enemies and crashes in the Player Proximity menu. |
Image via Steam
The Hurricane Cache Nerf: Why Embark Pulled the Plug
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Since the Shrouded Sky update, the First Wave Caches on the Hurricane map condition have been absolute goldmines. Highly skilled (and highly coordinated) squads were consistently extracting with 3 to 5 rare weapon blueprints per session. It completely trivialized the crafting grind and flooded the player base with endgame firepower.
Embark noticed. In the developer notes for this patch, they explicitly stated that players were simply too good at tracking and looting these caches. To balance the scales, the drop rate for rare blueprints in these specific caches has been noticeably lowered.
However, it’s not a total loss. To compensate for the blueprint nerf, Embark has significantly buffed the drop rate of high-tier crafting materials inside those same caches. You might not walk away with a guaranteed Bobcat blueprint every run, but you will extract with the materials needed to actually upgrade your existing arsenal.
Community Reaction: Surprisingly, the community isn’t grabbing their pitchforks. A quick glance at the ARC Raiders subreddit shows that most veteran players agree the drop rates were fundamentally broken and needed to be reined in.
Exploits Patched: The Return of Gear Fear
The other massive change in 1.18.0 targets two specific exploits that were ruining the core tension of the extraction shooter genre.
The Safekeeper Exploit: Until today, a glitch allowed players to drag their primary weapons into their Safe Pockets without actually having the Safekeeper Augment equipped. This meant you could bring high-tier guns into a raid, use them to clear POIs, and then instantly stash them in an unlootable container if you were about to die. That exploit is dead. Gear fear is officially back on the menu.
The Snaphook Glitch: Players figured out a bizarre exploit where they could put the Snaphook into their Safe Pocket while actively using it to grapple, leading to infinite pulls and broken physics. This has been entirely patched out, forcing players to use the item legitimately.
Stability and Quest Fixes
If you’ve been stuck on the final stage of the “Worth Your Salt” quest, you can finally clear it. Previously, if a random player or a squadmate completed the objective in your instance before you did, the game soft-locked your progression for that raid. Embark has also deployed a highly requested “very hot fix” to the Dam Controlled Access Zone to prevent similar progression blockers.
Finally, if you were experiencing bizarre frame drops during heavy firefights, the devs have optimized the ARC AI, stopping certain enemy types (like Surveyors and Rocketeers) from tanking server performance.
