Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer
Last week I was: trying to work out how to unlock the Headwinds update quests
This week I’ve been: riffling through bird nests to earn some extra Expedition cash
The Arc Raiders Expedition mechanic is in a fairly good place right now, especially with the announcement that those contentious $1 million skill points have been reduced to $600k, and you can also claim skill points you missed out on in previous Expeditions at the low, low cost of $300k each. For example, I only got three skill points when I reset last time, but instead of $2 million, I now only have to pay $600k for the remaining two. In fact, $2 million would get me those old skill points and two of the second Expedition ones as well.
A lot of people still think that the blueprint reset is too much of a sacrifice to undertake the Expedition, especially when you can’t take, say, one or two blueprints forward with you into the new season, but personally, my biggest gripe with Expeditions right now is the quest reset system.
When you send your Raider off on an Expedition, you lose all quest progress, which is fine—you might not want to do them again, but quests have decent rewards, including blueprints, and these can help you get going when you’re starting fresh, though they don’t give you XP sadly.
No, the thing that bothers me is that the new quests Embark is adding with each update this year require quest progress. The Headwinds update at the end of January added two sets of quests, one which required you to complete all the Stella Montis quests (including annoying ones like Snap and Salvage, which involve tracking down rare Exodus materials), and a second set which seemed to require you to complete the Blue Gate questline.
The more updates and quests that are added to the game, the more Expedition players will have to complete each time to unlock the new ones.
Now, I get it, the Expedition is voluntary and I don’t have to do it, but here’s the thing: I really like both the Expedition Project and the game’s quests, especially as they move the overall narrative forward and teach me about the world. Does that mean I’m willing to complete all quests every time I reset my character through the Expedition just to make sure I can access the new update quests? I’m not sure I have that in me, honestly.
What might make things easier is if Embark told us the quest unlock requirements in advance of the updates, or in fact, at all, so we’re not stumbling around in the dark or logging in on update day only to be disappointed that we can’t do the new quests and have no idea what we have to do to get them. In many ways, I think quests should be treated more like the Stella Montis ones, i.e. you unlock them right at the start. Hell, you could even have multiple quests featured at vendors for more of a pick-and-choose system.
Because here’s the thing—the more updates and quests that are added to the game, the more Expedition players will have to complete each time to unlock the new ones. And that’s not mentioning the sheer fatigue that’ll set in having to finish all these quest chains every two month Expedition period.
To clarify, I completed all of Arc Raiders’ quests before my first Expedition, and retired my Raider figuring that new content wouldn’t be reliant on it, so the new update quests requiring that previous progress was an unpleasant surprise.
It’s not the biggest gripe, honestly, but I just don’t want to have to choose between doing my Expedition Project, which is a fun scavenger hunt I enjoy, and playing the new quests, which I also get a kick out of. While I definitely understand the value of completing the introductory quests again at least, ultimately I see no reason why new update quests should be locked behind old quest progress, especially if you’ve done them all before.
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