Show me your quacking war face. Well, show the swarm of rubber ducks Arc Raiders devs Embark have seemingly unleashed upon your character’s living quarters your quacking war face. Otherwise you’d better be careful where you put your feet, lest you upset them and loose avian anarchy on the world. Also, a gun which might have been your favourite for decimating squads of poor shootery fools with other loadouts has been nerfed.
“The fully upgraded Venator has been over-performing recently, capable of outgunning full squads using close range weapons,” Embark admit in the notes for patch 1.3.0. “We’re re-tuning the fire-rate gained from upgrades to pull down the pacing a bit, while still keeping its damage and accuracy intact. This should encourage players to take some more time with their shots rather than mag-dumping the first poor soul they encounter. The community also rightfully pointed out that the weight of the Venator was inconsistent with the weights of our other pistols, so we’ve corrected that as well.”
Its upgraded fire rate’s been dialled down from 22/44/60% to 13/26/40%, while its weight’s more than doubled from 2kg to five. Meanwhile, the Deadline mine’s been made more valuable when buying or selling, less plentiful in the inventories of traders, and requires more components to craft. Staying in the resupply zone, launcher ammo can now be crafted without blueprints, power cells sell for less cash, and any explosive weapons you strap to your back have had their damage rejigged.
In terms of that last bit, Embark have “adjusted explosive damage to make it more consistent across the board, and we’ve re-balanced the damage of the Hullcracker to account for that change”. So, you’ll need to be more precise to keep on taking down the likes of larger drones quickly with the launcher, while smaller foes should still behave largely as they did before if you try to blow them up.
Beyond those, two things have been made less rare. First, Aphelion blueprints. Second, rubber ducks. “Your Raider Den has been ducked out,” the devs either warn, threaten or just say depending on your view of small birds. There are also plenty of tweaks to maps, including on stopping people using barricades to cheekily clip through walls into locked rooms where they might find a safe, duckless refuge.
If you’re still busy raiding the non-lost arcs, make sure to check out our guides for everything from the best guns to doing stuff with tripods so you aren’t left running around like a headless rubber duck.
