After 100 Hours in ARC Raiders, It's Time to Do Something…

After 100 hours with Arc Raiders, I can confidently say I’m a fan. There’s a particular kind of tension that keeps players like me coming back to the game. It isn’t simply the adrenaline of a clean extraction or the thrill of ambushing another squad; it’s the way every moment feels precarious. That tension is undeniable, and it’s why ARC Raiders stands out among the growing extraction shooter genre. However, something in its combat loop that has grown too prevalent and destabilizing: the prominence of grenades.

ARC Raiders released on October 30, and in the months since launch, players have seen a steady stream of patches, fixes, and balance adjustments across 11 updates. Embark Studios has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to adapt the game in response to community feedback—just take the recent map event frequency increase after ARC Raiders player backlash—but even with these efforts, the way grenades define combat remains a sore point. And it dips more into fundamental design rather than simply rebalancing the numbers.

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By Kyle Knight

Embark Nerfed Trigger 'Nades in January

In community spaces leading up to ARC Raiders Update 1.11.0, grenades were not merely a nuisance—they were a defining feature of the meta. Steam Community threads and subreddit discussions were rife with complaints about how Trigger ‘Nades could turn any choke point into a death zone, or how their use at extraction points warped encounter outcomes. The January 13 update openly acknowledged the disproportionate influence of grenades on the meta, stating that the Trigger ‘Nade currently dominates PvP encounters and was being selected far more frequently than any other throwable option.

In response, developers made specific changes to Trigger ‘Nade mechanics to curb its effectiveness.

The detonation delay between arming and explosion was more than doubled, from 0.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds, granting opposing players more time to react.
Alongside this, damage falloff was reworked so that explosions concentrated their impact closer to the center, dealing less damage at the outer edges of blast zones.
These adjustments were intended to make air-trigger tactics less reliable while preserving the grenades’ overall utility.

This patch represents the clearest evidence that it’s not merely a perception problem. Embark acknowledged that players favor Trigger ‘Nades because the tool can solve every problem a Raider might encounter. Grenades obviously offer controlled, direct firepower, but with a bit of improvisation, they can also: flush players out of hiding, trap players while they’re hiding, scout without repercussion, and quickly reset most engagements. They’re great against players and they can do it all against ARC, too. Sure, this is true for Trigger ‘Nades and the remote detonation does open up some unique strategies, but the same applies to all the best grenades in ARC Raiders.

The Issue is Bigger than Trigger 'Nades

The issues that emerge from this dominance are systemic. Grenades have begun to overwrite the core dynamics that ARC Raiders' PvP combat otherwise encourages. Combat is supposed to be driven by positioning, careful attention to sound cues, and incremental (sometimes gut) decision-making. Excelling with weapons requires aim discipline, ammo awareness, and a basic understanding of how that tool will behave when fired, all while risking exposure. The same cannot be said for grenades.

The unintended consequence is an explode-first, ask-questions-later rhythm that eats away at the tactical core of ARC Raiders. Instead of clever flanks, silent infiltrations, or improvised deception, tension often boils down to spotting a player and layering explosives until something cracks. That’s a blatantly less dynamic gameplay loop, and it doesn’t align with the heart-racing action that initially pulled me in.

The shift made in Update 1.11.0 was necessary, but it doesn’t fully address the root of the problem. Increasing the fuse time and concentrating damage only softens the worst abuses of Trigger ’Nades. It doesn’t address grenades generally in a way that supports the game’s intended flow. The items still fulfill too many functions at once. They remain a source of lethal damage, positional pressure, and free information. The crux of the problem isn’t simply that grenades are strong; it’s that they are too universally effective for too little investment.

ARC Raiders is at its best when adversaries are forced into asymmetric encounters, when engagements hinge on intuition and environmental reading, or deal brokering, rather than the expectation of incoming explosions and recurring exploits allowing ARC Raiders meta item duplication. In games built around fast, close-quarters chaos, like Call of Duty or Battlefield, there’s an established context for power like grenades. They are just one of the many reliably powerful tools players have at their disposal, alongside an armory of guns, potential vehicles, melee weapons, or other support items. ARC Raiders advertises something different. It promises tactical extraction, emergent conflict, and meaningful trade-offs between aggression and caution. When one item type begins to short-circuit those trade-offs, it weakens the broader system.

How Can Grenades Evolve With ARC Raiders

Since Update 1.11.0, some shifts have been noticeable. Raiders may not be hoarding Trigger ‘Nades as they once did, but it didn’t do much to discourage players from using grenades more than their guns. Even as recently as the ARC Raiders' new Bird City event, explosives remain a catch-all solution, in part because the rest of the sandbox has less to offer in comparison. Options like mines and support items like barricades and zip lines do exist, but they’ll do little to deter an aggressor with a backpack full of Light Impact or Blaze Grenades.

Grenades should have a more defined risk, one that better offsets their high potential. That might involve limiting the number of grenades a player can load in with, increasing the resources needed to craft them, or potentially even something more drastic with skill tree specialization. While some ARC Raiders players won't want Marathon- esque limitations, I fear that grenades will continue to undermine the game’s own strategic architecture if they're not addressed.

Actual resolution will not come from slight detonation delays or isolated falloff adjustments, but from changing how explosives fit into the world. Until then, every encounter will carry a persistent reminder that some tools in this game dominate not because they are well-designed, but because they circumvent the very dynamics that make ARC Raiders worth playing. I'm hopeful that as the game continues to evolve, Embark Studios reassesses and rebalances throwable items. If not for me, then for every Raider nuked into oblivion while opening some filing cabinets.

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