ARC Raiders Buried City Lore: The City Under the Sand and Who Lived There

What Buried City was before the Collapse

The map's own description sets it apart from the rest of the Rust Belt. It calls the city a piece of the old world, quite unlike the cold steel spires of the Exodus age, and asks you to walk its narrow streets and empty plazas knowing that people once lived here. The Codex adds that dunes kept it covered for a long time, which is why it offers rare insight into life before the Collapse.

Embark's launch summary described a pre-collapse city under sand dunes, with a hospital, a mall, town squares, apartment buildings and older architecture. Put that next to the launch towers of the Spaceport and the difference is obvious. This is a town people lived in, from an older age than the Exodus.

Weather keeps reshaping it. The Codex warns that the ever-shifting dunes are treacherous and unstable, and in After Rain Comes a flash flood knocks out solar panels Speranza had set up near the Grandioso Apartments.

The name Marano

The Codex says signs around the city reveal it was originally called Marano by its inhabitants, a name that has long since faded. The game backs that up in its place names. Shani's Combat Recon sends Raiders to the buses near Marano Park, and Tian Wen's Market Correction points to a rival cache near Marano Station.

Other names point to an Italian town with its own shops and neighborhoods: Piazza Roma, the Santa Maria Houses in Old Town, the Arbusto Farmacia, the Grandioso Apartments, the Su Durante Warehouses. The Space Travel Building, where Celeste wants a barricaded area on the sixth floor checked, hints that space travel was part of everyday business here too.

Marano is also the name of a real town outside Naples, which feeds a community theory about where the Rust Belt sits. Embark has not confirmed any real-world location.

The people Buried City left behind

The best storytelling in Buried City happens inside rooms. Several quests ask you to read the traces of one person.

The pharmacist

Lance wants to give his place in Speranza a makeover in Life of a Pharmacist, and he wants it looking nothing like a raggedy Raider Den. So he sends you to the Arbusto Farmacia by the collapsed highway to document how the pharmacist lived: hobbies, family, taste and skills. It is a whole quest about one stranger's home, and it works because the room still holds so much of them.

The researcher who hid the seeds

The Root of the Matter closes a thread that started at Dam Battlegrounds. When the farming project went under, its lead researcher took some of the seed samples and sealed them away. You find her vault in the Research Building, in a room the quest calls a room with a great view, and bring the Experimental Seed Sample to Celeste.

Another researcher's flat sits on the top floor above the Convinio in Piazza Roma, where Apollo sends you for research data in Paving the Way.

The family at the highway camp

A Warm Place to Rest is the bleakest quest on the map. One of Apollo's customers saw a family taking cover in an old encampment in Buried City, and he offers to pay anyone who brings them back to safety. At the Abandoned Highway Camp you search for signs of survivors and follow red markers, and the last objective reads: inspect the grave.

Books, coffee and a lost analyzer

Not every trace is sad. Apollo wants a romance, a detective and an adventure book from the Library in the City Center for Speranza's stale shelves in Building a Library. A Raider brought him a coffee machine she found in the city, missing a few parts, which sets up Espresso, and Lance's A Reveal in Ruins sends you through the city's pharmacies for a lost ESR analyzer. Somebody in Speranza still cares about a good cup of coffee, and the city still has the parts.

Speranza's business in Buried City today

The city is more than a ruin to read. Speranza runs part of its daily life through it, and the competition for its streets is real.

• Shani keeps an antenna near the Red Tower in Old Town, and when signals drop out she has you find a battery cell, restart the generator and boot the terminal in Communication Hideout.
• Tian Wen uses the city as a drop-off point. Someone steals from her cache at the Su Durante Warehouses in Marked for Death, and by the next quest she blames competition from Toledo setting up shop where they do not belong. Her answer escalates from sabotage to surveillance on a roof terrace southwest of the Southern Station, then to a bug planted on a rival weapon cache near the Gas Station in Industrial Espionage.
• Celeste's scouts saw a member of the Tubes Management make a dead drop in the courtyard of the Santa Maria Houses, and Digging Up Dirt is her chance to find leverage on them for a change. The thread picks up again at the Spaceport.
• Tian Wen's greenhouse needs a moisture meter from the Grandioso rooftop and a nutrient meter from the broken rooftop gardens at Piazza Roma in Unexpected Initiative. She insists she is only doing Celeste a favor.

ARC and conditions in Buried City

Buried City's ARC story is about cover. Shani's Combat Recon opens with the warning that Bombardiers have given ARC an entirely new way to flush Raiders out of hiding. The quest has you scout cover in the Parking Garage staircases, the buses near Marano Park and the attics around Main Street, then destroy two Spotters.

The Nomadic Envoy's Taking Stock quest asks Raiders to ping a Bastion on Buried City, and Shani's LiDAR scanner in Eyes in the Sky goes on top of the Galleria sign.

Map conditions change the mood more than the story. Bird City fills the town with flocks of birds, and the rotation on October 10, 2026 also listed Night Raid, Lush Blooms, Prospecting Probes, Close Scrutiny and the ARC Frigate. Frozen Trail 2.0 made the Hospital Roof climbable again and restored ray-traced lighting on its boarded window shutters.

What is Buried City in ARC Raiders?

Buried City is a map set in a city from before the Collapse that sand dunes covered for years. Strong winds have uncovered part of it, and its Codex entry says signs show the inhabitants called it Marano.

What was Buried City called before?

The in-game Codex says signs around the city show it was originally called Marano. Place names such as Marano Park and Marano Station appear in quest objectives.

What happened to the family in A Warm Place to Rest?

The quest never tells you directly. Apollo hears that a family was sheltering in an old encampment, and at the Abandoned Highway Camp you search for survivors, follow red markers and inspect a grave. The objectives stop there.

Who is Tian Wen fighting in Buried City?

Someone has been stealing from her drop-off point, and she blames competition from Toledo setting up shop in the city. Her quests there move from checking a trap to sabotaging and bugging rival caches. More on her in the Tian Wen lore page.