There’s a dead Emperor slumped against a mountain, and Embark Studios wants you to climb around inside it.
If you’ve played Arc Raiders, you already know the Emperor. It’s that unfathomably huge Arc machine you can spot patrolling the edges of the Blue Gate map, and it shows up for a second through the storm in the tutorial. Frozen Trail finally puts you face to face with one. This one is a fallen Emperor, sprawled across the new Pendola Pass map, and you get to explore its innards. The scale is gargantuan. The whole point is that it should feel like you aren’t supposed to be in there.
Frozen Trail lands Oct. 8, and it’s the biggest update Arc Raiders has ever had.
Why this update matters more than most
Arc Raiders had a barnstorming debut last year. 2026 has been slower. The extraction shooter’s drop in popularity is well documented, and while its player base is still healthy and consistent, it’s nowhere near the size it used to be.
So in May, Embark paused the monthly updates to work on something more substantial. Frozen Trail is what came out of that break. The studio showed it off in an hour-long preview event, a long video followed by a Q&A, ahead of next month’s launch.
The Frigate is a raid you can’t just shoot to death
The headline threat is the Frigate, which is coming to multiple maps and sounds like Arc Raiders’ take on an endgame raid. Embark hasn’t shared full details yet. A press release called it a “massive airborne carrier that presents a high-stakes challenge for experienced raiders ,” and it’ll drop rare loot.
Here’s the part I like. You don’t beat the Frigate by blowing it up. You solve puzzles and sabotage it. That’s a smart swerve away from the Queen and the Matriarch, two tough enemies whose whole strategy was soaking up a hell of a lot of damage.
Onboard, you’ll meet the Hydra, a brand-new Arc foe that works like a turret with three separate sets of guns, so it can target multiple enemies at once. Pendola Pass also gets the Skulker, a smaller enemy that takes potshots at you from far away, and the Bully, a chunky, aggressive thing with machine-learning behaviors along the lines of the Leaper. Those two will spread to other maps eventually. Just not right away.
Your old guns are about to get weird
You get two new weapons: the Stiletto, a light ammo battle rifle, and the Bantam, a snub-nosed revolver. Fine. The better news is the new weapon amplification system, which lets you completely modify guns you already own.
Craft a new type of workbench and you can make the Burletta pistol fully automatic. Or set the Rattler up to fire incendiary ammo. Frozen Trail launches with 15 possible amplifications.
Yes, there’s a grappling hook
Embark considers the Grappling Hook one of the most ambitious gadgets it’s made for the game. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal said in the Q&A that it’s been at the “top of the wishlist for a long time.”
It does what you’d hope. Fire a rope at a surface and climb it, or rappel down the side of a building. You can also go full Spider-Man and swing across gaps, or hook an Arc enemy and let it drag you along (which sounds like either the best or worst idea you’ll have all night).
Two more rope toys come with it. The Tether Launcher connects two points, so you could use it to keep an airborne enemy from chasing you. The Yank Grenade shoots ropes at nearby enemies and pulls them toward it, which should be great for hauling other raiders out of cover during PvP.
Only three people get on the gondola
Pendola Pass also messes with the extraction formula. On every other map, you call an elevator or a train and hop on. In these snowy mountains, the only way out is a gondola, and it fits only three raiders at a time. Good luck with that.
There’s also a new weather condition, Flash Freeze, that forces you to find shelter immediately before the cold kicks in.
Builds are finally going to mean something
The skill tree is getting reworked. Some skills are gone, some are tweaked and some are brand-new. The goal is to make choices “more impactful,” and Grøndal said players will now have to pick between a few abilities instead of “being able to unlock everything.”
Put that next to weapon amplification and the direction is clear. Right now, the differences between players are marginal. Embark wants actual build diversity.
Skins, a banjo and a camera
Weapon skins, one of the most requested features, are finally here. But this is Arc Raiders, so you can’t just buy or unlock whatever you want. Some come through the store and a new Frozen Trail reward pass. Most weapon stencils have to be found as loot, the same way blueprints work.
Two new instruments are coming too, a banjo and a harmonica. And because Arc Raiders photography has taken off, there’s an in-game camera now.
Then there are outposts, which give you more ways to customize. You can’t walk around them yet (Grøndal confirmed the team eventually wants them to be explorable spaces), but you can fill them with furniture, crafting stations, trinkets and more. Grøndal said they’re the first step toward giving players a “home on the surface.”
Frozen Trail arrives as a free update on Thursday, Oct. 8, for PS5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. Bring a banjo for the gondola ride down.
