Arc Raiders just dropped Patch 1.3.0, and oh boy — this one shakes the meta. If you’ve been deleting squads with the Venator or melting big drones with the Hullcracker, it’s time to adapt. Embark has pushed a wave of balance changes, quality-of-life tweaks, and bug fixes… plus a mysterious note:
“Your Raider Den has been ducked out.”
(Whatever that means — we’re checking.)
Here’s everything you need to know.
🧨 Major Balance Changes
🔫 Venator Nerf (The Big One)
Players predicted it — and it happened.
The Venator has been over-performing, especially fully upgraded. Some players called it a “pocket AR” that could wipe squads before they even reacted.
Changes:
- Fire-rate upgrades reduced
- Old: 22% / 44% / 60%
- New: 13% / 26% / 40%
- Weight increased: 2 → 5
Result:
It now shoots slower and feels heavier. Still strong — but no more rapid-fire laser deletion.
💥 Hullcracker & Explosive Damage Nerf
Players were using explosives to “delete” larger drones by damaging multiple parts at once — including unintended multipart hits.
Explosive Update:
- Rebalanced explosive damage to be more consistent
- Small drones: basically unchanged
- Large drones: reduced damage, need more precision
- Hullcracker adjusted to match new explosive rules
Result:
You can’t brute-force down Bastions or Barons as easily. Aim matters more now.
🧰 Item & Economy Changes
Deadline
- Buy: 8,100 → 15,000
- Sell: 3,000 → 5,000
- Crafting cost increased
- Trader stock reduced: 3 → 1
Power Cell
- Sell value nerfed: 640 → 270
Launcher Ammo
- Buy and crafting values changed
- Craftable at workbench without blueprint
This heavily impacts grenade/launcher enjoyers and people relying on Power Cell flipping for cash.
🤖 ARC & AI Improvements
Shredders got a big overhaul:
- Better pathing
- Better reaction to lure grenades
- Less janky corner behavior
Exploit fixes:
- No more reinforcement calls from outside the map
- No more clipping into locked rooms using barricade tricks
🗺️ Map Fixes
Important highlights:
Dam Battlegrounds
- Elevator shaft softlock fixed
Spaceport
- Hidden Bunker collision fixes
- Launch Tower wall exploit patched
- Control Tower key-skip exploit fixed
Blue Gate
- Railings no longer block bullets incorrectly
Stella Montis
- Fixed terrain fall-through spots
- Removed unsafe player spawns too close to ARC
🧩 Miscellaneous Fixes
- Voice chat crash on non-AVX2 PCs fixed
- Reconnect → surrender crash fixed
- Weekly Trials UI corrected
- AMD GPU crash reduced with recommended driver
- Shredder invisible collision fixed
- Raider Den secretly “ducked” (??)
🎮 Player Reactions
Across Reddit, Discord, and YouTube, players immediately laser-focused on two topics:
1. The Venator Nerf
Many say it was deserved; others call it a “skill tax” forcing precision instead of spray control.
2. Hullcracker Changes
Some worry this kills its viability against large drones. Others say it’s finally “balanced instead of broken.”
Extraction PVP mains?
They’re laughing — because Venator panic-spam is now gone.
👍 Final Thoughts
Patch 1.3.0 brings the biggest weapon balance shake-up since launch. Venator mains will feel it immediately, and Hullcracker users will need to aim smarter.
But the overall direction? Good.
The game feels fairer — especially in PVP.
