The ARC Raiders "Expedition" Grind: Here's the Full Shopping List to Reset Your Character
The final departure window for this cycle opens tomorrow. It's time to start farming.
For the last two months, most of the player base completely ignored it. Why would you willingly throw away your maxed-out stash full of legendary gear? But then Embark Studios officially revealed the exclusive cosmetic skin upgrades rewarded for departing, and suddenly, everyone is having a panic attack.
You have been able to slowly commit resources to the project for months, but the actual Lock-In Phase starts tomorrow, and the final departure window closes on March 1st. If you hit that lock-in button, there is no canceling. You are committed. If you are reading this and deciding at the absolute last second to join the caravan, you have a monstrous grind ahead of you. Here is the exact shopping list you need to complete all six stages of the Expedition.
What You Lose (And What You Keep)
Before you start dumping your life savings into this project, you need to understand the gravity of the wipe. This is not a soft reset.
If you depart on the Expedition, you are throwing away almost everything. Your character level reverts to zero. Your entire skill tree progression is wiped. Your workshop is gutted. Every single high-tier PvP weapon and piece of armor in your stash is gone.
What do you actually keep? You keep your account meta-progression. Your bought and earned cosmetics, your achievements, and your rankings are safe. What do you gain? Bragging rights. You get the exclusive Expedition cosmetic skin that proves you survived the grind, alongside permanent account "buffs" for your next run. These buffs are primarily quality-of-life upgrades and progression smoothers to help you level faster the second time around, completely avoiding any pay-to-win combat advantages.
The Grand Shopping List (Stages 1 through 4)
To get your ticket on the caravan, you have to feed the project a massive amount of raw materials. You complete this in stages.
Stage 5: The Ultimate Wealth Test
Once you survive the RNG nightmare of hunting down Humidifiers and Magnetic Accelerators in Stage 4, the game stops asking for specific items and simply asks you to prove your net worth.
Stage 5 is the "Loading Phase." You do not need specific drops; you just need raw, liquid value. You have to dump a staggering amount of items into the caravan based entirely on their Coin value.
Combat Items (250,000 Coins): You have to dump weapons, ammo, and high-tier grenades into the hopper until it reaches a quarter of a million in value.
Survival Items (100,000 Coins): This requires you to dump shields, medical supplies, and defibrillators.
Provision Items (180,000 Coins): You will need to sacrifice nature items, high-value keys, and generic valuables.
Materials (300,000 Coins): This is the ultimate stash-clearer. If you do not know which junk items are safe to sell, it doesn't matter anymore. Dump all your recyclable trash in here until you hit 300k.
Stage 6: The Lock-In and Departure
Stage 6 requires absolutely zero materials. This is simply the departure button.
Starting tomorrow, the Lock-In Phase goes live. If you have successfully completed Stages 1 through 5, you can hit the button to lock your account into the Expedition. Again, there is no canceling this. Once you lock in, you are queued for the wipe. You have until March 1st to finalize the process before the caravan leaves without you.