Arc Raiders dev teases an even bigger threat than the Queen and finally tells us what wiping gets you

As I write this, Arc Raiders' time to shine is just hours away. Embark Studios' extraction shooter wowed during its recent Server Slam and is riding a wave of hype, the height of which still pleasantly surprises me. By and large, we know what to expect when the servers go live, but I was offered one final chance to pick Embark's brain and see if I could extract (pun kinda intended) anything spicy. From feeling "validated" after receiving criticism for transforming Arc Raiders into a premium, PvPvE multiplayer game, to when we might see new Arc machines even tougher than the feared Queen, to what you'll actually get for completing an expedition and wiping, here's what I learned from my chat with design director Virgil Watkins.

I've been dying to get my hands on Arc Raiders again since its Server Slam - that weekend generated some of my favorite gaming moments of the year. I wasn't even mad when I got hit by lightning. Watkins says participation in the Server Slam "peaked slightly higher" than Embark expected, but the team is most happy with how well it was received by those droves of players. One of the only thorns in its side, however, was a section of long-time supporters claiming that the Server Slam was a visual downgrade compared to previous playtests.

"The optimizations we did were only intended to target the very bottom range of hardware, so if they compared to Tech Test 2, then absolutely, at their intended settings, they would have seen a visual downgrade, because the target frame rates and target stability we needed to hit was not even close on those specs, so we had to do some correction," Watkins says, before assuring me that "epic settings shouldn't be affected" by any of these optimizations and any other last-minute tweaks before launch. He also acknowledges that a few lighting and draw distance bugs may have also contributed to the game looking worse, and while fixes will arrive, it's not guaranteed they'll be ready for launch day.

I personally enjoyed the level of difficulty Arc Raiders presented. The fact that only 77 Server Slam squads took out a Queen, currently the biggest and most formidable machine in the game, shows that there are already some tough challenges to tackle. But, let's face it, gamers are greedy. So I ask whether there's anything even more daunting that we can tackle immediately. Watkins says that at launch, the Queen will remain the biggest threat, but hints that "there are going to be some developments in the days and weeks after" - to me, that sounds like a new Arc machine offering an even greater challenge, but we'll see.

He suggests, though, that Arc Raiders' map conditions will help scale difficulty more than just bigger, badder bots. I've already seen how terrifying the night raid and electromagnetic storm modifiers can be, but Warkins says that "when you play those on the farther maps, then that's amplified even further. Whereas the night raid on Dam may have been, you know, a bit challenging, once you try it on maybe Spaceport or Buried City or Blue Gate, you're going to have a larger set of problems to deal with." He also says that while Embark can trigger most modifiers across all the game's maps, some are exclusive, whereby "the mechanic is intrinsic to what that map is and has."

"I think because we've tried to make the game quite approachable, and you can only kind of fail so far in the way we've set it up, I think we have a slightly freer hand to put players in [those] situations," he says after I quiz him on Embark's stance on difficulty. "And I don't want to draw any direct parallel to Dark Souls, but it's that sort of idea space of being okay [with getting] smacked super hard and going, 'Okay, you know what? That was something.' [But you still want to] start working your way back toward taking down that challenge or finding a way to deal with it in your current circumstances."

While I and many others have experienced most of Arc Raider's systems by now, one that no one has touched is account wipes. They're a staple of extraction shooters, but for many newcomers to the genre, the idea of earning loot and gear only for it to be taken away just doesn't click. Arc Raiders takes an optional, Call of Duty Prestige-style approach in its efforts to appeal to a wider audience. The opportunity to wipe arrives every eight weeks, and if you've completed an in-game quest called an Expedition Project, you can wipe if you want to. This will reset your account, but as Embark teased in a recent blog post, some "permanent unlocks" will also be earned alongside cosmetic rewards. But what are those unlocks, and what other gameplay benefits are there to wiping?

"So what we're targeting right now, at least for the first Expedition, based on how much stuff or how much wealth you accrue by the end of it, you get up to five bonus skill points on your subsequent run to invest in your skill tree," Watkins tells me. " [That's] on top of the ones you might already earn. You [also] get a small stash space increase.

"This is where we had to try to be very careful on where that line is, because, as stated, we really don't want [the benefits of wiping] to translate into a direct combat advantage against any other player. So then we're kind of keeping it as much as possible in the meta game layer. It could be argued that you have a small economic advantage by having a few more stash spots to utilize and things like that. But I don't feel that our skill tree is designed in a way that having five extra skill points means I'm going to win a fight because of that."

I've been blown away by how much hype there's been for Arc Raiders this year in the build-up to launch. Aside from some clumsy handling over announcing its release date, Embark's drummed up wide-reaching support for the game. At the start of this year, I never anticipated it would be in a stronger position and have more chance of success than Bungie's Marathon… but here we are. Things haven't always been this full of sunshine and optimism, though. Embark faced criticism when it decided to take Arc Raiders back to the drawing board, turn it into an extraction shooter, and make it a premium release rather than a free PC game. Watkins says it feels "pretty good" and "validating" to compare those times to the excitement fans feel now, and says Embark has zero regrets about abandoning plans to make Arc Raiders a PvE experience.

"There was no meta game," he recalls. "People thought it was a looter shooter, [but] there was no inventory - there was nothing like that. It was: drop in, try to run through a desert for 15 minutes and maybe kill a giant robot, and then… that was it. So it was a pretty rational decision, I feel, to try to put some more structure around the game."

Arc Raiders launches tomorrow, October 30. I, for one, will be diving right in to start grinding for wipe number one in eight weeks' time.

If you want some pre-release knowledge, head to our guide on Arc Raiders Hatch Keys, or peruse our best Arc Raiders builds for launch. Plus, be sure to check out the Arc Raiders system requirements before you grab it.

If you hop into Arc Raiders during launch week, be sure to stop by the PCGamesN Discord to let me know what you think and share any tales of wild extractions, lucky loot finds, or epic deaths.