The Exodus in ARC Raiders: Who Left Earth and What They Left Behind

What was the Exodus?

While floods, fires and earthquakes were wiping out most of humanity, a project to send people into space went ahead. Embark's North Line announcement describes the ruins of Stella Montis as hints of what humanity left behind "in its push towards the stars." The Frozen Trail preview calls it the Exodus Project, and the Codex calls it the Exodus Initiative.

The Codex entry on the Exodus is short. It says a handful of survivors escaped the destruction by leaving Earth on advanced spacecraft, that not much is known about how they did it, and that what little Exodus-era technology survived is highly prized in Toledo, the underground city Speranza is part of.

Look at how carefully that entry is worded. It opens with "It is said," and the Launch Towers entry calls it the fabled Exodus. To someone born underground in 2180, this is a story handed down for generations, and the Codex warns that stories from the Collapse got mixed up with legend along the way. The lore timeline shows where it sits among the other eras.

What is confirmed about the people who left

Less than you might expect. The Codex confirms they left from Acerra: the Spaceport is where the Exodus shuttles roared into the heavens, and the entry sums the place up as "a monument to the ones who left, and the ones who were left behind."

It also shows the Exodus was contested. Celeste's quest A Wrench in the Works describes resentment reaching the Spaceport's own ground staff, with a mutiny brewing "right in the heart of the Exodus." In Home to Roost, Shani reads logs about mutinies repressed by MANTIKOR, the group that shut down research into surviving the Collapse, and the entries stop a few weeks before the Exodus. The Codex says the revolt began when workers learned Project Heartwood had been all but designed to fail, which made them doubt the promise of a mass exodus.

Plenty stays blank.

• The Codex gives no number beyond "a handful" of survivors.
• Nothing official says who got a seat. The popular story that only the rich escaped does not appear in any text we could find.
• No quest, Codex entry or Embark announcement names where the ships went.
• The game never says whether they arrived, or whether anyone on Earth has heard from them since.

Exodus infrastructure Raiders still find

Embark's own site describes the setting as old Italy blended with brutal infrastructure for space travel, and much of that infrastructure traces back to the Exodus. These are the places it shows up.

Acerra Spaceport

The Spaceport is the launch site. Its Launch Towers are visible from miles away, and the Codex says they mark the end of what must have been an era of unimaginable technological progress. Shani knows of magnetic decryptors there "from back during the Exodus" in Deciphering the Data, and in Worth Your Salt Celeste finds notes on salt-based batteries that Spaceport engineers were developing, work the Codex files under Project Heartwood.

Building the place had a cost. The Codex says power from the Alcantara Dam was diverted to the Spaceport, which left Buried City exposed to rolling blackouts.

The Exodus port on Riven Tides

Riven Tides sits on the western coast of the Rust Belt. Embark says the shore has been abandoned twice, once during the Exodus and once by First Wave survivors who could not hold the exposed settlement against ARC. Raiders cross the Exodus port and loot the Panorama Azzurro hotel next to it, and the Codex says the mutineers had sympathizers at both the hotel and the Riven Tides docks.

Pendola Pass, the transport hub

Frozen Trail's Pendola Pass is, in Embark's words, an old Italian village and Exodus transport hub. The preview points to two signs of the Exodus Project: the observatory and a buried train depot that once served as a major transit hub. The quest Exploring Pendola Pass sends Raiders to the Cielo Sereno Observatory and the Railyard, and the Train Model trinket is described as a schematic of pre-Exodus locomotion.

Rail seems to have carried a lot of the Exodus. Line in the Sand turns up transport schedules for critical Exodus components on a Stella Montis hard drive, and the Codex says the first sign of the revolt was a heist at Marano train station after workers found the shipping routes for spaceship parts.

Stella Montis and the loot in your stash

Stella Montis holds a safe untouched since before the Exodus, which Tian Wen's client wants opened in Stable Housing. Smaller pieces end up in your backpack. Exodus Modules are a crafting material for guns like the Tempest and Hullcracker, the Exodus Technical Handbook is a research item full of obscure jargon and diagrams, and the Precision Gimbal trinket is supposedly a key part of Exodus spaceships. All of them are in the items database.

How the Exodus connects to the ARC mystery

The game puts two facts side by side and lets you draw the line yourself. The Exodus sent people up into space. ARC comes down from orbit: the Codex says the machines are named for the arced shapes they make on radar as they come in, and in Mixed Signals Shani notices Surveyors transmitting data back into orbit.

Frozen Trail tightened the overlap. The fallen Emperor lies at an Exodus transport hub, ARC answered its fall by sending the Frigate, and the signal that drew Celeste and Shani there is what started the expedition. Whether Pendola Pass matters to ARC because of the Exodus, or the Emperor just happened to come down there, is not settled.

The theory that the Exodus built ARC (theory)

The most popular reading in the community is that the people who left built ARC, sent it back, or lost control of it. It would explain the orbit clue and why ARC seems so interested in Earth's soil.

Nothing official says so. The Steam page still calls ARC's origins a mystery, and when Embark set out Frozen Trail's direction in May 2026 it posed "What are ARC and where do they come from?" as a question Raiders would only begin to answer. Our ARC origin page lists the confirmed clues, and the theories page rates this one against the others.

What is the Exodus in ARC Raiders?

The Exodus was the effort to get people off Earth by spacecraft during the environmental collapse, generations before 2180. Its shuttles launched from Acerra Spaceport. The Codex says a handful of survivors escaped this way and that little is known about how.

Did only the rich escape in the Exodus?

No official source says that. The Codex describes the people who left as a handful of valorous survivors, and quest text shows mutinies among the people working on the Exodus. Who got a seat, and why, has not been explained.

Where did the Exodus ships go in ARC Raiders?

The game does not say. No quest, Codex entry or Embark announcement we have found names a destination or confirms contact with anyone who left.

Is Pendola Pass an Exodus site?

Yes. Embark's Frozen Trail preview calls Pendola Pass an old Italian village and Exodus transport hub, and points to its observatory and buried train depot as signs of the Exodus Project.