ARC Raiders Endgame Guide: What to Do After Frozen Trail

ARC Raiders endgame, as of the Frozen Trail update, comes down to three things: weekly Trials, the top tier of your Workshop (which now runs through the Outpost) and the Nomadic Envoys' stash space. Expeditions, the reset-for-bonuses loop that used to sit on top, are paused until early 2027. If you're looking for one thing to grind, make it Trials. The rewards include blueprints, and the challenges change every week.

Updated 2026-10-21: Store Update 2.2.0 (October 20) removed the Expedition Vault tab and offer, so Cassio no longer lists Expedition Vault slots here. On 2026-10-14 we rewrote this guide from the ARC Raiders Wiki and Embark's 2.0 notes after the old version got the Trials thresholds, Cantina Legend and Expedition unlock wrong and described stations that do not exist.

Screenshot: ARC Raiders Steam store page

What the late game looks like right now

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Trials: the weekly loop

Trials are five weekly challenges, each scoring one kind of action. Points are tallied when you extract and only your best run per challenge counts, so a death costs you that run, not your week. Each challenge pays a random uncommon, rare and epic item or blueprint at 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 points. For this week's five and the cheapest ones to clear, see our ARC Raiders weekly reset guide.

The ranked side is what keeps the late game going for players chasing cosmetics. Once you score, you join a division of 100 raiders at your rank, and your combined best scores decide where you land when the week ends. There are 14 ranks. At Rookie the bottom of the division stays put. From Tryhard upward, the bottom 20% or more drops a rank. Hotshot opens a global leaderboard, and its top 1,000 become Cantina Legends. Season 6 runs from October 8, 2026 to January 12, 2027, with the Maestro Outfit as the grand prize.

Image: TrialRank_Daredevil_III, Hotshot and Cantina_Legend badges from the ARC Raiders Wiki, arranged by GameBrief. Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

Not everyone loves the ladder. On r/ArcRaiders, u/Cozart_Games wrote: "I like the trial system for the rewards and trying to 3 star everything, but besides that I found the ranked leaderboards annoying to keep up with for the whole season" (comment). We're with them. The item rewards don't care about your rank, so three-starring the challenges that suit your kit is the real endgame value; the ladder is optional.

GODEEPER: Which guns to build toward once Trials blueprints start dropping. ARC Raiders Weapons Tier List →

The Workshop's top tier runs through the Outpost

Gear progression ends at your benches, not at a trader. Gunsmith level 3 is where the epic and legendary guns are crafted. Level 4 needs the Outpost plus 3 Radial Press, 3 Magnetic Accelerator and 1 Emperor Modulator, and it adds weapon amplification. That makes the Outpost project a gear step, not just furniture.

Unlocking the Outpost also opens the Research Station, and each Research Station level needs a matching Outpost level. Embark's Frozen Trail preview ties weapon amplification to the Outpost as well: a fully upgraded Research Station gives access to a fifth quality level for a range of guns, starting with 15 weapons. Two of its upgrades lean on the new Frozen Trail machines: level 2 takes 5 Skulker Targeters and level 3 takes 6 Bully Fragmenters. If you're farming Skulkers and Bullies for Trials anyway, keep the parts.

Image: Gunsmith_4 and Research_Station_1 renders from the ARC Raiders Wiki, arranged by GameBrief. Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

Our Outpost guide walks through the unlock project, and the Workshop upgrade items guide covers what the lower station levels eat. If you're still short of level 3 benches, our crafting guide is the place to start.

Stash space from the Nomadic Envoys

From level 25, Cassio trades high-tier ARC parts for two stash expansions of 12 slots each. The first costs 200,000 in item value and the second 400,000. He also runs a weekly rotation that now includes the Anvil and Hullcracker, which Tian Wen stopped selling in 2.0; Update 2.2.0 on October 20 removed his Expedition Vault tab and offer. The expansion resets if you depart on an Expedition, which matters again once they're back. Our stash size guide has the full ladder.

Expeditions: on hold until early 2027

Expeditions were the prestige layer. From level 20 you could build a caravan and send your raider off, resetting their level, skills and inventory in exchange for rewards: 12 extra stash slots per Expedition, up to five skill points (or "mystery rewards" on the later ones) for damage dealt during the departure window, and temporary buffs to repair costs, XP and Scrappy materials. Those buffs stacked up to three times for consecutive departures (up to 30% on repairs, 15% XP and 18% more Scrappy materials) and were lost if you missed a window.

On August 21, 2026 Embark said the fifth Expedition would be the last until early 2027, citing tight departure windows, the reward structure and accessibility for new players. The wiki says the team is targeting January. Buffs you'd already earned persist during the pause, and partly built caravans were converted into Bronze Statuettes you can spend at the Envoys. Our 5th Expedition news piece has the background.

GODEEPER: How Coins, Seeds and Reward Points fit together after Cred was removed. ARC Raiders Currency and Progression Guide →

Our take

The October 2026 endgame is thinner than it was with Expeditions running, and some players feel it. One r/ArcRaiders post put it bluntly: "Trials was the only thing keeping me in the game" (thread). We'd treat that as the plan rather than the problem. Three-star the Trials that fit your loadout every week, put Skulker and Bully parts toward the Research Station, push the Outpost for Gunsmith level 4, and trade surplus ARC parts to Cassio for stash space. When Expeditions return, we'll update this page with what the new version resets and pays.

How we checked this

We rewrote this guide on October 14, 2026 from the ARC Raiders Wiki's Trials, Expedition, Workshop, Outpost and Nomadic Envoys pages and Embark's Frozen Trail 2.0 notes and Trials Season 6 post. We haven't played the late game ourselves; every threshold, cost and reward above comes from those pages.

Related Reading

• ARC Raiders Weekly Reset Guide: this week's Trials, Feats milestones and the Envoys' offers.
• ARC Raiders Vendor Leveling: What Actually Unlocks Gear: Workshop stations, blueprints and quests instead of trader levels.
• ARC Raiders Augments Guide: Best Frames Ranked: the Mk. 3 augments worth carrying into Trials runs.
• ARC Raiders Queen Boss Guide: Weak Points & How to Kill: weak points and how to take the Queen down.
• ARC Raiders Skill Tree Tier List: where late-game skill points go after the 2.0 revamp.

References

• Trials, ARC Raiders Wiki
• Expedition, ARC Raiders Wiki
• Workshop, ARC Raiders Wiki
• Outpost, ARC Raiders Wiki
• Nomadic Envoys, ARC Raiders Wiki
• Frozen Trail 2.0 update notes, Embark Studios
• Frozen Trail First Look, Embark Studios
• Trials Season 6: Frozen Trials, Embark Studios
• Store Update 2.2.0, Embark Studios
• ARC Raiders on Steam