Expeditions in ARC Raiders: the reset you choose
An Expedition wipes your Raider on purpose, in exchange for permanent account unlocks. It unlocks at level 20, runs on an eight-week cycle, and nothing happens unless you press the button.
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An Expedition is a reset you ask for. It unlocks at level 20, it wipes your Raider's level, skills, inventory, stash, workshop and crafting progress, and in exchange it hands your account permanent unlocks and buffs for the cycle that follows. Nothing happens until you press Depart — if you never do, you keep playing the Raider you have, indefinitely.
That last sentence is the one to hold on to, because the system looks alarming from the outside. It's a prestige loop, not a season wipe.
What goes, what stays
| Resets with your Raider | Survives on your account |
|---|---|
| Level and skill tree | Cosmetics, earned or bought |
| Inventory and stash | Achievements and awards |
| Workshop and crafting unlocks | Rankings and metagame standing |
| Quest progress | Anything bought with real money |
The dividing line is consistent once you see it: anything your Raider carries is temporary, anything your account holds is permanent. It's the same line that decides what you lose when you die, applied to a longer timescale — which is why the two systems feel related even though one is a mistake and the other is a decision.
You also skip the onboarding on the way back in. A second Raider starts as a Raider, not as a tutorial.
The eight-week clock
The cycle runs about eight weeks, and the last week is the departure window — the stretch where you can actually finish and leave. Before that you're preparing: building and stocking a Caravan through a series of stages, each asking for particular materials.
This is what turns the Expedition from a button into a project. The materials have to come out of raids, which means the weeks before a departure change how you play — you're farming toward a list instead of toward your own stash, and the recipes you've unlocked decide how much of that list you can cover yourself.
Departing on time matters: the buffs granted for the next cycle grow with consecutive on-time departures, up to a ceiling. Miss a window and you don't lose your Raider, you lose the stacking.
Is it worth doing
Yes, if you're going to keep playing — the whole point is that the rewards are account-wide and the costs aren't. You're trading a character you'd have outgrown for bonuses that apply to every character after it.
No, if you're mid-way through something you care about and the window is closing. There's another cycle in eight weeks, and the buffs stack from wherever you start.
The one thing Expeditions deliberately don't give you is a combat edge. The rewards are quality-of-life, cosmetics and account progression by design, so a Raider who has departed three times isn't going to out-gun you in a raid — which is also why skipping a cycle costs you comfort rather than competitiveness.