Expedition Guide: Steps, Rewards and Reset

Last updated: 2026-10-30

An Expedition is a recurring prestige Project in ARC Raiders: you build and supply a Caravan, then voluntarily retire your Raider — resetting level, skills, blueprints and inventory — in exchange for permanent account unlocks and stacking buffs that make every future Raider stronger. It unlocks permanently once any Raider reaches level 20.

• Unlock: any Raider reaches level 20 — permanently unlocked account-wide.
• Status: Paused (patch 1.48.0), expected to return in early 2027 with major improvements.
• Cycle length: roughly two months, split into a preparation phase and a final one-to-two-week Expedition Window.
• Core trade-off: your Raider leaves the Rust Belt for good; account-level rewards carry over.

What Happens When You Depart

Departing is a personal undertaking: all signed-up Raiders automatically leave when the Expedition Window closes, then you create a new Raider. Account-level progress — cosmetics, achievements, Raider Tokens, Merits, Cred and anything involving real money — is preserved.

Resetting quests is an opt-in choice, so you can continue from where you left off instead of restarting them.

The Expedition Cycle

Each Expedition is built in six Caravan stages, then ends in a short window:

1. Prepare — contribute goods and equipment to your Caravan across six stages. Contributions can be made at any time, including between windows, and progress carries over across cycles.
2. Sign up — once the Window opens, sign up to depart. Completing the Caravan does not count as signing up.
3. Complete the challenge (optional) — deal damage during the Window to earn up to 5 bonus Skill Points (or Mystery Rewards on later Expeditions).
4. Depart — all signed-up Raiders leave automatically when the Window closes, and your new Raider collects the permanent and temporary rewards.

The six Caravan stages are Foundation (1), Core Systems (2), Framework (3), Outfitting (4), Load Stage (5) and Departure (6). The first stage, Foundation, requires committing and permanently losing:

• 150 Metal Parts
• 200 Rubber Parts
• 80 ARC Alloy
• 15 Steel Spring

The Damage Challenge

Bonus Skill Points are granted based on total damage dealt during the Expedition Window:

For scale: 100,000 damage is roughly 20 destroyed Bastions. In internal testing, a single very good round produced 8,000–10,000 damage, so plan for several raids inside the Window if you want the full five points.

Temporary Buffs

Temporary advantages stack up to three times across consecutive departures, but you lose the stack the moment you miss one departure window:

Permanent Rewards

Permanent rewards persist forever and are tied to which Expedition you complete, in order — you must finish and depart one before starting the next:

From the fourth Expedition onward you no longer earn Skill Points from the challenge. Instead, each departure objective rewards one temporary Blueprint (resets on your next Expedition, protected from duplicates but not against Blueprints carried in the Nomadic Envoys Vault) plus 150 Raider Tokens, which are permanent. Possible Blueprints include Heavy Gun Parts, Complex Gun Parts, Padded Stock, Extended Barrel III, Muzzle Brake III, the Venator, Rascal, Osprey, Trailblazer, Anvil, Bettina, Hullcracker, Tempest, Vulcano, Dolabra, Aphelion, Combat/Tactical/Looting Mk. 3 variants, Wolfpack, Powered Descender and Snap Hook.

The Catch-Up System

If you completed an earlier Expedition without earning all available Skill Points, you can reclaim missed points during later Expeditions at 300,000 stash value (coin or items) each, after that Expedition’s own points are earned — up to 5 reclaimed at once. Two limits: you can only reclaim points from Expeditions you actually signed up for, and catch-up points will not be available indefinitely.

Should You Do an Expedition?

Players who completed the first Expedition generally call it worth doing, with caveats:

• Knowledge survives the reset. Even with blueprints and skill points wiped, knowing where the best blueprint and loot spots are makes re-grinding far faster than a fresh account.
• Stacking points matter. Five extra Skill Points per Expedition means three completed Expeditions permanently grant 15 more Skill Points than a player who never departed.
• Casual players may skip it. Twelve extra stash slots, unique cosmetics and a five-point bump are subtle gains, and building the Caravan is a long fetch grind — the final stash-value hoarding step is the most boring part for players with limited time.