ARC Raiders Update 2.3.0: Souls Offering Guide, Heavy Shield Buff and Blueprint Changes
ARC Raiders Live Update 2.3.0 went live on October 27, 2026. It adds the limited-time Souls Offering player project and the Noxious Set. It also buffs the Heavy Shield, reshuffles loot in the Emperor and Frigate, and widens the drop pool for six weapon blueprints. Embark Studios asks players to restart the game to download it. Souls Offering runs through November 16, 2026, so you have roughly three weeks.
ARC Raiders Update 2.3.0 at a Glance
The patch is mostly about loot behavior and equipment tuning. The table below covers the changes most likely to affect how you plan a raid. All entries come from Embark's official patch notes.
| Area | What changed in Update 2.3.0 | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Player project | Souls Offering added (four stages) | Time-limited rewards; some required items are scarce |
| Cosmetics | Noxious Set added | Arrives with the update; store updates stay weekly |
| Equipment | Heavy Shield, Flame Spray, Firefly Burner, Adrenaline Shot tuned | Shifts gear choices for combat and escapes |
| Loot | Emperor and Frigate loot moved deeper inside | Rewards deeper exploration, with more risk |
| Blueprints | Six blueprints drop in any major map condition | New farming routes for blueprint hunters |
| Storage | Expedition Vault disabled | Stash space fills up |
Embark also confirmed a schedule change. Weekly fixes ran after Frozen Trail, but fixes now return to a three-week cadence, with store updates staying weekly.
Souls Offering: What Has Confirmed
Embark's notes describe Souls Offering as a themed tribute. Celeste encourages Speranza's residents to honor Raiders lost topside, especially after harrowing stories from Pendola Pass.
All Four Souls Offering Stages
The table lists the stage requirements and rewards as reported by multiple community guides on October 27.
| Stage | Requirements | Rewards |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Construct Vaulto's Offering | 1 Dead Flowers, 2 Rock Salt, 15 ARC Alloy, 1 Expired Respirator | Stiletto II, Extended Barrel I, Angled Grip II, Stable Stock II |
| 2. Construct Ferrovia's Offering | 3 Dead Flowers, 2 Railway Lanterns, 15 Advanced ARC Powercells, 10 Remote Raider Flares | Torrente II, Compensator III, Extended Medium Mag III, Stable Stock III |
| 3. Construct Murteta's Offering | 2 Fancy Plates, 1 Mask Fragment, 1 Insulation Roll, 5 Fertilizer | Vulcano I, a shotgun suppressor, Extended Shotgun Mag III, 3 Firework Boxes |
| 4. Honor the Fallen | Set off fireworks on the Santa Maria Houses rooftop | Pilgrim Backpack, Offering Display Table design |
Stage 4 lies in Old Town, Buried City. You deposit materials through the Projects tab. You don't have to collect everything in one raid. Stash items persist between runs.
How to Plan Your Souls Offering Run?
Because the requirements are spread across three stages, the smartest move is to start gathering for all of them at once. Four Dead Flowers are needed in total, one for Stage 1 and three for Stage 2. Dead Flowers and Rock Salt are residential trinkets rather than harvestable resources. Guides report finding Rock Salt in kitchen cupboards and drawers.
Some of these ARC Raiders items are bulky in count rather than rare. Fifteen ARC Alloy and fifteen Advanced ARC Powercells come mostly from ARC enemies and their parts. Those are the stages where you lose the most time if you wait. One guide advises keeping the Expired Respirator for the project rather than recycling it, which is a good habit for any project item. Keep trinkets you'd normally sell in your stash until you've checked the Projects tab.
Stage 3 hands you three Firework Boxes, but Stage 4 needs only one. Save at least one. Several guides emphasize this, and burning all three early could force an extra trip.
Time management matters here. Three weeks is plenty if you pick up project items on every run, but waiting until the final days invites queue pressure from everyone else racing the same deadline.
Heavy Shield Buff and Other Gear Changes
Embark's dev note explains the logic behind the Heavy Shield change. The 2.0 update gave it small buffs, and the data showed the durability drain rate responded noticeably. Usage is still low, so the base charge value rises again.
| Feature | Previous Version | New Version (2.3.0) | Player Impact (editorial analysis) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy Shield base charge | 80 | 90 | 12.5% more charge; modest survivability gain |
| Flame Spray damage | 10 per second | 13 per second | 30% more damage output |
| Flame Spray durability drain | Baseline | Reduced by 50% | Roughly doubles usable time per item |
| Firefly Burner | Had to be shot to vent fire | Activates on impact when thrown, leaves a fire trail, explodes after about 3 seconds | Easier to deploy as area denial |
| Adrenaline Shot | Could not be used at max stamina | Usable at max stamina; repeat doses refresh duration instead of stacking | Safer to pre-use before a push |
The Heavy Shield is still only a nudge. Embark says it wants to avoid opening too large a gap with the Medium Shield, so don't expect a meta shift. The Flame Spray change is larger on paper. A 30% damage increase combined with half the durability drain makes it a more efficient close-range tool, and a fix also stops its fire from passing through walls.
Blueprints and Loot: Where Farming Changes
The loot notes are the most consequential for anyone hunting ARC Raiders blueprints. Dolabra, Bobcat, Equalizer, Jupiter, Tempest and Vulcano blueprints can now drop in any major map condition. Embark slightly lowered the drop chance for that pool to offset the wider availability. In practice, you no longer need to wait for a specific condition to hunt those blueprints, though each individual roll is a bit less likely.
Redirection pods now drop the Emperor Key blueprint less often, offset by a small chance at enemy parts and high-tier ARC loot. Furniture Design drops were also fixed after the rarity order had been inverted, so rarer designs now drop less often as intended.
Emperor and Frigate containers near entrances now give lower-tier rewards, with better loot further in. That raises the value of committing to a deeper route, but it also lengthens the time you spend exposed. Embark also expanded its exploit prevention in the Emperor's locked rooms and adjusted the compactor killboxes in Pendola Pass that could unfairly kill players.
Stash Space and the Expedition Vault
Embark is disabling the Expedition Vault. Items inside move to your stash, and purchased slots are compensated with Bronze Statuettes. The notes don't state an amount. If your stash is already crowded, clear space before you start collecting Souls Offering trinkets, or you may have to discard items mid-raid.
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