ARC Raiders 1.33.0 Patch Notes: Forgotten Relics & Free Loadout Test

ARC Raiders Live Update 1.33.0 went live on June 16, 2026. It is a live-service update rather than a major content drop, but it is meatier than that label suggests: a new event and community project, a balance experiment that touches the two hardest map conditions, a sound pass players are raving about, and a long list of fixes. The full official changelog is on the arcraiders.com patch notes.

If you only have a minute, the two things to act on are the Forgotten Relics event (time-limited, so the Saltwalker Outfit walks out the door July 27) and the free-loadout test, which changes how you should approach Night Raid and Close Scrutiny starting now.

Forgotten Relics runs from June 16 to July 27, 2026. The event currency is Merits, and you bank them two ways. The first is passive: XP you earn from looting, killing ARC, fighting other Raiders, and extracting converts to Merits automatically, at a rate community guides report as roughly 1 Merit per 100 XP. The second is active: physical relics are scattered across the maps and hidden inside lockers, drawers, crates, and cupboards, and each one is worth Merits based on its rarity. The catch is that you have to extract with a relic to keep its value, so a relic in your bag is not banked until you make it out.

Spend Merits on the event reward track. The headline reward is the new Saltwalker Outfit, which community guides report sits around the 150-Merit mark, with weapons, gameplay items, Raider Tokens, and Saltwalker customization pieces spread up the track. Those same guides put a full clear at roughly 3,150 Merits. Embark has not published exact Merit costs.

Relic Merit Values by Rarity

Embark did not publish a per-relic value table, so the figures below are community-compiled and approximate, organized by the rarity tiers the event uses. The confirmed anchors are the Train Model at the bottom (10 Merits) and the legendary relics at the top (150 Merits).

Values are sourced from community trackers and may be adjusted by Embark; treat them as a planning guide, not gospel. Dam Battlegrounds and the Buried City residential and medical zones are the farming spots that keep coming up for relic density. Check the current threats on each before you commit using our maps guide and the ARC machines database.

How Much Grinding Is the Full Set?

Here is the math, using the community-reported figures, since Embark has not published the rate or the totals. If the Saltwalker sits near 150 Merits, that is roughly 15,000 XP, most of a single good run. The full clear near 3,150 Merits is the real commitment: about 315,000 XP equivalent across the roughly 41-day window, or near 7,700 XP per day on XP alone. Relic extractions cut that down fast, since a legendary relic is worth as much as a strong run's XP on its own. The takeaway holds whatever the exact rate turns out to be: the outfit is easy for anyone who plays, but the complete track rewards players who actively hunt and extract relics.

Converging Paths is a community project tied to the Nomadic Envoys who recently arrived in Speranza alongside the trader Ermal. It runs the same window as the event, June 16 to July 27. Each completed stage advances a Display Case that shows off the relics recovered along the way, so progress is something you can actually see fill in.

Embark confirms the project pays out 300 Raider Tokens in total, with the final stage handing over a Red-Black variant of the Saltwalker Outfit and the Sextant backpack charm. Community guides describe it as a six-stage donation chain, a single objective to start and then item and material donations, and also list extra donation rewards such as the Rascal launcher and a Surge Coil Blueprint along the way. The per-stage token split below is community-reported, since Embark published only the 300 total.

This is the change people will argue about. For a three-week test, the Free Loadout is switched off in two map conditions: Night Raid and Close Scrutiny. Both are the high-risk, high-loot modifiers, so they are exactly where a no-cost kit felt most unfair. The Free Loadout normally lets you drop in with a randomized starter kit and a guaranteed augment at zero cost and no cooldown, risking nothing of your own while you hunt players who brought real gear. Inside these two conditions, that option is gone, so everyone now commits a kit with something to lose.

Players have asked for a free-loadout limit since launch, and plenty welcomed the test. The skeptics are louder, though, and their point is fair: a determined camper can still bring a cheap level-one kit and play the same way.

The counter-view, from players who have run the modes since the patch, is that the modes simply feel better with fewer disposable bodies dropping in. Embark framed this as a measured test it can roll back or expand, which is the right way to trial an economy change of this size. If it sticks, expect it on more conditions next.

The patch shipped a round of audio work: tuned footstep volumes, clearer Raider Cache cues, louder metal-slide sound, and a fixed extraction announcement. It is not billed as a headline feature, but it became one of the most-praised parts of the update, with players saying the sound now lets them place enemies far more precisely. The map-selection screen also got an art upgrade, and Embark noted in the same breath that it is looking at smarter Map Condition scheduling.

Embark widened its anti-cheat enforcement again, building on the Denuvo Anti-Cheat layer that arrived in patch 1.29.0 and the broader stack we covered in the fair play update. Alongside the bans, the patch's Loot Compensation feature returns gear stolen by confirmed cheaters straight to the victim's in-game mail. The community response was loud and positive.

The QoL changes are where 1.33.0 racked up its highest upvote counts. The single most-praised tweak is a small one: the Rocketeer now drops Launcher Ammo instead of Heavy Ammo, so the rockets you spent killing it actually get replaced.

• The Rocketeer now drops Launcher Ammo instead of Heavy Ammo.
• New inventory shortcuts for Sell, Recycle, Repair, Salvage, and Drop speed up stash management.
• A stash merge overflow is fixed, so combining stacks behaves correctly.
• Map Condition countdowns now appear only 60 minutes before a condition goes live, with timezone-aware scheduling under investigation.
• Ermal's offers now display stack sizes correctly.
• The health and armor bar no longer jitters while healing.

• Aiming down sights now applies the correct accuracy.
• Firewall and Pop parts no longer clip into the environment.
• Barricades no longer expand incorrectly around knocked-out players.
• Quest objective ordering displays in the right sequence.
• Characters no longer T-pose after a dodge roll.
• Weapons no longer detach from the character after vaulting.
• The extraction announcement audio plays correctly.
• Queen and Matriarch plant on terrain more reliably, reducing unfair knockback.
• The Firefly grenade-drop issue is resolved.
• Sandveil outfit neck and shoulder stretching is fixed.
• A fall-through-the-map spot near the Pilgrim's Peak building wall is patched.

1.33.0 also added a premium Reaver Set bundle to the store for players who want the look without the grind. Embark has not itemized the bundle's full contents or price in the patch notes, so check the in-game store for the current offer rather than trusting secondhand numbers.