Embark Bets ARC Raiders’ Future on the Frozen Trail Update

Embark Studios will ship Frozen Trail, a free update for ARC Raiders, on October 8 after it stopped monthly patches in May. SteamCharts shows how costly that wait already was for the Steam population the studio can actually count.

The First Look on September 23 is a snow map, a boarding raid, gun mods, and a house you still cannot walk through. Those features are the bet. The chart is the stake.

Embark Traded Monthly Patches for One October Drop

On May 13, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal wrote that monthly updates were the launch plan, then said the long-term game needed slower, heavier drops. He told players Embark would ship major updates twice a year, larger in scale, with a live team still handling balance, bugs, store tweats, and events.

Over time, we’ve found that the pressure of a monthly cycle limits how impactful these updates can be. You feel it, and we feel it too. Running at that pace isn’t sustainable, or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game.

Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer, Embark Studios, May 13 development update

He also said the extra months would go into progression, the economy, fair play, and anti-cheat, the unglamorous work extraction players notice only when it fails. Frozen Trail was already named as the first of those bigger drops, and as the largest since the game launched on October 30, 2025.

The Steam side of that promise is ugly. SteamCharts’ last 30 days averaged 20,827.3 concurrent Steam players, with a period peak of 36,906. January 2026 averaged 241,196.7, with a peak of 465,097. That is a 91.4% drop in the monthly average. These figures are Steam only; PlayStation 5 and Xbox sessions are not in the public counter.

STEAM CONCURRENT PLAY, SELECTED MONTHS

May, the month Grøndal posted the cadence change, still averaged 61,053.6 Steam players. The last 30 days sit 65.9% below that May average. Frozen Trail is trying to reverse a slide that continued after the studio asked for time.

A Snow Map Built Around a Dead Emperor

Embark’s first look at Frozen Trail puts the new map north of the Rust Belt. Celeste and Shani traced a strange signal ringing across Toledo to Pendola Pass, an old Italian village and Exodus transport hub locked in ice.

The studio lists a supermarket, a dead town square, an observatory, and a buried train depot. The thing that actually calls Raiders there is simpler. One of the Emperors has fallen, and rare technology sits inside the wreck. The job, Embark wrote, is to get there and find a way in.

Flash freezes cut through the valley and punish anyone who treats the snow like scenery. Embark also flagged a new map condition in the same post, without publishing a full rule card. The design intent is clear enough: you cannot linger outdoors the way you can on milder Rust Belt maps, so routes, interiors, and timing matter more than a loot run on flat ground.

Pendola Pass is also the narrative on-ramp Grøndal promised in May, the first serious look at where ARC come from. That mystery was one of the reasons the studio said monthly patches were too small.

Raiders Will Board the Frigate Hundreds of Feet Up

ARC’s answer to the fallen Emperor is a vessel Raiders have started calling the Frigate. Embark describes it as one of ARC’s largest ships, sent to patrol the area, and as a job for highly skilled players who see a prize inside the danger.

You board it. You work its internal passages, unlock paths, and fight ARC new and old. Other Raiders want the same prize, so you collaborate or cut through them in close quarters hundreds of feet up. The studio did not present a health bar you empty until the wreck falls out of the sky.

The Frozen Trail Update is just around the corner. Are you ready to gear up and face whatever is waiting for us beyond the Rust Belt?

Join us now on YouTube for a live premiere and take a first look at some of the upcoming content from the Frozen Trail Update, coming October 8.… pic.twitter.com/7QEd6TuA5U

— ARC Raiders (@ARCRaidersGame) September 23, 2026

That framing matches the May language about operations that change how you play, not another open-field walker to shoot from cover. It also leaves an open design question the First Look does not close: how often the Frigate shows up, and whether Pendola Pass is the only map that has to live with it.

Bully, Skulker, and Hydra Share the Valley

Three new ground threats land with the update, and Embark wrote them as a set of jobs rather than a bestiary dump. The Bully rushes. The Skulker waits. The Hydra holds a corridor and splits fire.

NEW ARC IN FROZEN TRAIL

• The Bully: A machine-learned attacker that gives no ground, gallops onto your position, and mixes lethal hits, so cover and timing matter more than a straight duel.
• The Skulker: An opportunistic pest that hugs the edge of your vision, dumps a flurry, then slips out of sight so the next contact is already on you.
• The Hydra: A turret of three stacked, autonomous sections that can work an entire squad; Embark says it is found on the Frigate and wants diverted attention, fast cover, and a short damage window.

Gadgets are doing as much work as the new machines. The Grappling Hook is the traversal toy the studio has been sitting on, built to climb awkward ledges, abseil off buildings, and swing gaps. Grøndal told preview reporters it had been at the top of the wishlist for a long time.

Two tether tools sit beside it. The Tether Launcher strings a wire between two points, pinning targets or even tying a Raider to an ARC and letting the machine drag them. The Yank Grenade pulls a nearby target hard on detonation, which Embark says is useful for slamming flying ARC into the dirt or yanking a player out of cover.

The rest of the kit is quieter. A full camera gadget saves shots to the Codex, with zoom, aperture, manual and automatic focus, and a selfie mode. Two instruments, the Harmonica and the Banjo, come topside in October; the Banjo blueprint is offered in the Collector Set DLC.

Your Outpost Starts as a Menu You Can Furnish

Celeste is offering Raiders who take the Pendola job a home between the Rust Belt and the mountain range. Embark calls the Outpost an extension of the Raider Den, the first step toward reclaiming parts of the surface, and a place to drop modules, furniture, and a Research Workstation.

You decorate it. You do not walk around it at launch. Grøndal said in the press Q&A that moving through the space is something the team is thinking about as the feature grows. The official blog is blunter still: the Outpost is the start of a feature Embark hopes to push much further, until it is a personal space that lets you become the Raider you want to be.

That is something we’re thinking about as we look to evolve this feature.

Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer, Embark Studios, Frozen Trail press Q&A

The workstation is why the room exists for now. A fully upgraded Research Workstation opens a fifth quality level on a range of guns. That tier does not hand out raw stats. It unlocks a branching path of modules that change how a gun behaves. Embark is launching the system on 15 weapons, with more planned.

The studio’s own examples are a fully automatic Burletta, a Renegade with a scope, and a Rattler with incendiary bullets and a 64-round magazine. Grøndal told preview reporters amplified guns are not meant to be obviously stronger, and that Embark avoided juicing the weapons that already dominate fights. The pitch is late-game loyalty to a favorite gun, not a new meta stick that ends every raid in a blink.

AMPLIFIED WEAPON EXAMPLES

Weapon Stencils sit next to that grind as a cosmetic layer you can lose. Embark warns that a Raider who beats you will be happy to walk off with the personalized gun. If the gun goes, the look goes with it until you apply the stencil again.

What the Reworked Skill Tree Takes Away

A single Raider will no longer be able to take every skill. Embark is removing some abilities, adding others, and making the remaining picks hurt, because the old tree let people collect the useful nodes and end up looking the same. Grøndal said the point is a choice between abilities rather than unlocking everything, and the May letter already admitted many players had maxed the Raider Den and hit the skill point ceiling.

Two new guns fill the early kit while that tree gets stricter. The Stiletto is a light-ammo battle rifle, cheap to craft, aimed as an early alternative to the Renegade; Embark says mashing the trigger costs accuracy. The Bantam is a snub-nosed heavy-ammo revolver with a hip-fire trick the studio is selling as a frozen-finger cowboy gun, useful against ARC and other Raiders.

Taken with amplification, the skill change is the same wager in a different menu: fewer complete builds, more identity, more reasons to reroll a Raider instead of treating the tree like a checklist. That only works if the new nodes feel good on October 8, and if losing an old skill does not read as a nerf dressed up as depth.

Cred Expires When Frozen Trail Goes Live

The economy half of the bet is less photogenic than a dead Emperor. In live update 1.45.0 on September 8, Embark said it is retiring Cred when Frozen Trail launches. Remaining Cred stays spendable until October 8, then expires. Spend it with Shani or on leftover Raider Deck rewards. Claimed Deck rewards stay yours, and those rewards will also exist in the new system.

That new system is the Reward Pass, framed as an evolution of Raider Decks. The Free Pass, unlocked by Feats, includes 200 Raider Tokens, five new outfits, new gameplay items, and 20 cosmetic items such as Scrappy outfits, furniture, charms, attachments, and emotes. The Premium Pass adds premium outfit toggles, exclusive colorways, weapon stencils, hairstyles, and 1,150 Raider Tokens as rewards. A free Legacy Pass folds existing Raider Decks together so current progress is not wiped.

The Collector Set DLC bundles the free and premium passes with the Renzo cosmetic set, the Dragon’s Breath weapon stencil, the Bob hairstyle, and 2,400 Raider Tokens. Embark has not posted a price in the First Look. Gameplay items sit on the free track in the official breakdown, which is the cleanest way to keep a paid track from looking like a power buy.

THE ROAD FROM THE CADENCE SHIFT TO THE PVE TEST

1. May 13, 2026: Grøndal announces twice-yearly major updates and names Frozen Trail as the first.
2. September 8, 2026: Update 1.45.0 warns that Cred will expire on launch day and starts Expedition 5.
3. September 23, 2026: Embark publishes the Frozen Trail First Look and premieres the Pendola Pass video.
4. September 24, 2026: The studio says it will test a PvE matchmaking toggle.
5. October 8, 2026: Frozen Trail goes live as a free update, and leftover Cred dies.
6. October 13, 2026: The PvE test window opens and runs through October 20.

The PvE test is the tell that content alone may not be the whole wager. Under Embark’s own First Look post, the sharp replies were not about snow. They were about a PvE mode, cheaters, and a sense that the wait had already lasted too long. A day later, Embark said it would let players toggle between classic PvPvE and a PvE queue from October 13 to 20, five days after Frozen Trail ships. The studio also said the test is not a promise that a PvE mode will exist later, and that a future version could look different.

Embark scheduled a Frozen Trail Q&A livestream for Friday, September 25, at 6 p.m. CEST. The patch still has 148 days of cooking behind it, a map built on a dead Emperor, and a house that is still a menu. SteamCharts will print the next monthly average whether the Frigate sings or not.