Last updated: 5 September 2026

ARC Raiders Maps Guide All 6 Zones Explained

ARC Raiders currently has six raidable zones, and picking the right one for your level and playstyle matters as much as your loadout. Some zones are forgiving mountain passes with clear chokepoints; others are dense, PvP-heavy hubs where a full backpack can vanish in seconds. This guide walks through all six — what makes each one distinct, how they compare in difficulty, and which extraction options each offers — plus the recommended order to unlock your way through them.

01Blue Gate — Where to Start

Blue Gate is built around mountain pass terrain with natural chokepoints, making it the most commonly recommended entry zone for new Raiders. Its layout rewards learning fundamentals — rotating between cover, watching sightlines through the passes — before you're facing the more open or vertical zones later on.

The map mixes abandoned mountain towns and orchards on the surface with an underground complex — connected by the map's "Tubes" tunnel network — crawling with ARC machines below. Despite being an entry-friendly zone, Blue Gate still sees serious PvP activity around its key-locked rooms, so don't assume it's purely a beginner's playground once you're past your first few runs.

02Dam (Dam Battlegrounds)

The Dam is a waterlogged industrial zone, with toxic hazard areas mixed into its layout. It's generally grouped with Blue Gate as an accessible early zone — consistent, moderate profit without the fiercest competition.

The map's landmark is the Alcantara Power Plant — a Raider stronghold during the First Wave — alongside hydroponic dome structures and research buildings scattered across the site. Industrial and research buildings here are commonly cited among the best loot pulls for the risk involved.

03Spaceport (Acerra Spaceport)

Spaceport trades the Dam's relative calm for large, open launch-infrastructure terrain and some of the fiercest player-vs-player competition of any zone below Stella Montis. Expect frequent fights over its best containers.

Built on the remains of Earth's Exodus shuttle-launch program, the map's launch-infrastructure buildings — control towers, departure halls, multi-floor container storage — are stacked with loot crates. Because of the PvP pressure, Spaceport rewards a build that can both fight and extract quickly rather than one built purely for looting efficiency.

04Buried City

Buried City is an arid wasteland zone with a maze-like street network, which makes navigation and route-planning more important here than in the more open zones. It's the only zone with metro station extraction points in addition to the standard elevator and airshaft options.

The desert city was originally called Marano before its ruin, and its sand-choked streets, crowded villas, and sun-bleached rooftops give the map its distinct look. Its layout suits Raiders who've learned to move efficiently through tight corridors rather than open sightlines.

05Riven Tides

Riven Tides is ARC Raiders' newest map, launched April 28, 2026 as part of Patch 1.26.0. It's the game's first coastal, tidal zone, split across a beachfront resort, an industrial dockyard, and open coastline — with the Panorama Azzurro hotel (the largest single building in the game), towering harbor cranes, and stacked container yards giving it more verticality than the flatter maps.

Riven Tides introduced two map conditions unique to it: Beachcombing, where high-value loot is buried in the sand and only visible with a Dockmaster's Detector equipped, and a Tidal Cycle that floods and drains low-lying routes on a fixed timer. It also debuted the ARC Turbine, a new airborne ARC boss with a color-coded (red/yellow/blue) telegraph system that typically shows up near Panorama Azzurro after the 15-minute mark of a match.

06Stella Montis — The Endgame Zone

Stella Montis is ARC Raiders' dedicated endgame map — a research facility built into the northern mountains. It has the smallest map footprint of any zone in the game, but concentrates the highest-value loot and the most dangerous ARC units into that compact space — a deliberate risk/reward trade-off rather than a bigger, longer raid. It's best attempted once you're already comfortable with your loadout and extraction timing on every other map, rather than at a specific level.

The best loot here tends to be behind Key-gated rooms, the same way it is on Blue Gate. Because of the map's small footprint, engagements with both ARC units and other Raiders tend to happen at closer range and more frequently than on the larger maps — come prepared for sustained combat, not just looting.

07Extraction Options Across Zones

Every zone shares the same core extraction toolkit, with some variation in what's available where:

• Cargo elevators — available on Dam and Spaceport; the slowest but most reliable extraction method.
• Metro stations — currently unique to Buried City.
• Airshafts — faster than elevators, available on multiple maps, including as Blue Gate's primary extraction option.
• Raider Hatches — the fastest, silent option, but require a Raider Hatch Key and are disabled entirely during an Electromagnetic Storm map condition.

See our extraction guide for the full mechanics behind each method, timing, and how to avoid getting ambushed on your way out.

08Map Conditions Now Run on a Regional Schedule

Live Update 1.42.0 (August 18, 2026) replaced the old single, global timetable for Map Conditions — the weather-like modifiers and special events that rotate across zones — with regional map condition scheduling. Instead of every player worldwide seeing the same conditions on the same global clock, each matchmaking region now runs its own offset schedule, timed to better line up with that region's own peak play hours.

The practical upshot: you're less likely to log in during your own peak hours and find nothing but a plain, condition-free map just because the schedule happened to favor a different region at that moment. The same update added a Region label to the Map selection screen showing your current matchmaking region, so you can tell which schedule you're on — check it, since what's live for you won't necessarily match what players elsewhere are reporting.

09Recommended Progression Order

If you're working through the zones for the first time, the community-recommended path is: Blue Gate → Dam → Spaceport → Buried City → Riven Tides → Stella Montis. This roughly tracks increasing complexity and PvP intensity, with Stella Montis reserved for when you're comfortable with your loadout and extraction timing on every other map. There's no hard level gate stopping you from raiding zones out of this order, but going in under-leveled and under-geared against the later maps' player base is the most common reason new Raiders lose their whole backpack.