Arc Raiders Maps: All 6 Battlegrounds Explained 2026

Arc Raiders launched on October 30, 2025 as Embark Studios' PvPvE extraction shooter, and the map roster has grown since then. As of August 2026, six battlegrounds are live: Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, Blue Gate, Stella Montis, and Riven Tides, the newest addition, which arrived in the April 28, 2026 update. Every map carries its own risk rating, extraction routes, and mix of ARC enemy types, and picking the right one matters as much as loadout choice. This breakdown covers what is on each map, how dangerous it is, and where to look for the fastest ways out.

Dam Battlegrounds

Dam Battlegrounds is built around the ruins of the Alcantara Power Plant, a former Raider stronghold from the First Wave of the ARC invasion. The terrain is toxic and waterlogged, with flooded lowlands cutting across the map and open sightlines around the dam structure itself. Embark rates it Medium risk, making it the safest of the six maps and a common starting point for newer raiders learning extraction routes.

Loot here leans toward six Field Depots holding high tier gear, more than a hundred hidden Raider Caches that give off a ticking sound when nearby, and a heavy concentration of weapon cases, ammo crates, and med bags scattered through the power plant interior. ARC enemy spawns include Ticks, Pops, Wasps, Rocketeers, Surveyors, and Sentinels, with a Harvester boss encounter tied to specific events. Four main extraction points serve the map: the Central Swamp Lift, the Water Treatment Elevator, the Red Lakes Balcony Lift, and the North Complex Elevator, giving raiders a reasonable spread of exits regardless of where a raid ends.

Buried City

Buried City sits in a sand covered stretch of what was once a dense urban center, with narrow streets, collapsed plazas, and multi story buildings that reward players who know the interior layouts. Embark rates it High risk. The tight sightlines and stacked verticality make close range fights common, and Security Lockers requiring the Security Breach skill hide some of the map's best loot behind an extra step most casual raiders skip.

Extraction here runs through multiple routes rather than a small fixed set, spread across the district to reduce the odds of a single choke point getting camped. Field Crates tied to quests double as loot sources, and the map carries the same ARC patrol and turret placement logic as the other high risk zones, so clearing a path before making a run for an extract matters more here than almost anywhere else in the game.

Spaceport

The Spaceport, formally Acerra Spaceport, is themed around humanity's abandoned attempt to leave Earth behind during the Exodus program. Its open runways and launch gantries create long sightlines that favor ranged loadouts, while the interior terminal buildings flip that dynamic toward close quarters fighting. Risk rating: High.

Loot follows the now familiar pattern of Field Depots, hidden Raider Caches, and scattered containers, with the same ARC enemy roster of Ticks, Pops, Wasps, Rocketeers, Surveyors, and Sentinels, plus a Harvester boss tied to specific events. What sets the Spaceport apart is its scale: raiders spend more time in transit between points of interest here than on smaller maps, which raises both loot potential and the odds of running into a squad mid crossing.

Blue Gate

Blue Gate guards the entrance to a mountain range that once symbolized a defended, connected world before the ARC invasion. It carries a High risk rating, with a mix of outdoor mountain terrain and dense multi level facility interiors that reward players comfortable with vertical navigation. Ziplines and ladders link sections of the map that would otherwise require long ground routes, and both show up as fast options during a hot extraction.

The loot table matches the other High risk maps, and the facility sections hide some of the better Field Depot spawns in the game. Because Blue Gate blends open terrain with tight interiors in roughly equal measure, it tends to punish raiders who commit to one playstyle and never adjust.

Stella Montis

Stella Montis is the most dangerous map currently live, rated Extreme by Embark. It is carved into the northern mountains, a vast, well preserved facility that survived the First Wave in far better shape than the Rust Belt's more exposed locations. The interiors are cold, sterile, and heavily multi level, and the ARC presence includes some of the toughest enemy types in the game.

Because of the Extreme rating, Stella Montis rewards raiders who go in with a plan rather than improvising on the fly. Facility loot tends to run higher tier on average than the other maps, which is the trade off for the added danger, and the complex layout means memorizing at least one reliable extraction route before dropping in is close to mandatory.

Riven Tides

Riven Tides is the newest map, added in the Riven Tides update on April 28, 2026 alongside a new large ARC enemy and the Last Resort event. It is a coastal battleground on the western edge of the Rust Belt, built around an abandoned shoreline, a former Exodus port, and the ruined Panorama Azzurro hotel. Ocean driven map conditions shape encounters here in ways the inland maps do not attempt, and shifting tide mechanics reward raiders who track the environment as closely as they track enemy patrols.

Because it launched more recently than the other five maps, Riven Tides has had fewer balance passes, so expect Embark to keep adjusting loot density and extraction placement here faster than on the older battlegrounds.

ARC Enemy Types You Will Meet on Every Map

The six maps share a mostly consistent roster of ARC enemies, though the density and mix shift depending on risk rating. Ticks are small, fast, and usually the first thing a new raider learns to kill without wasting ammo. Pops are similar but explode on death, so distance matters more than raw damage. Wasps fly and harass from range, which makes them annoying in open terrain like the Spaceport's runways or Dam Battlegrounds' flooded lowlands. Rocketeers and Surveyors both threaten from a distance, the first with explosive ordnance and the second by spotting raiders for other ARC units, so breaking line of sight with a Surveyor early tends to prevent a fight from escalating.

Sentinels are heavier, slower, and hit harder, and they show up more often on the High and Extreme risk maps than on Dam Battlegrounds. Bastion units and Bombardiers add another tier of threat on top of that, mostly encountered on Buried City, Blue Gate, and Stella Montis, where the terrain gives them room to entrench. Turret placements in chokepoints add a static hazard layer, particularly noticeable in Buried City's narrow streets. The Harvester boss encounter, tied to specific in game events, can appear on Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, and the Spaceport, and it takes a coordinated squad to bring down safely rather than a solo push.

Loot Priorities: What to Grab First

Every map funnels loot into a handful of predictable categories: Field Depots for high tier gear, hidden Raider Caches that reward players who listen for the ticking sound, Security Lockers on maps like Buried City that need the Security Breach skill, and a steady spread of weapon cases, ammo crates, and med bags. Field Crates tied to active quests are worth grabbing even off the main loot path, since they double as both quest progress and usable inventory.

New raiders tend to overvalue container density and undervalue extraction planning. A raid that ends with a moderate haul and a clean extraction beats a raid that ends with a full inventory and a fight at the exit. Checking which extraction points are still open, and whether other squads have been spotted near them, should happen well before an inventory is full, not after.

Choosing the Right Map for Your Playstyle

Risk rating is the fastest filter. Dam Battlegrounds is the only Medium risk map currently live, which makes it the standard recommendation for anyone still learning extraction timing, ARC patrol patterns, or basic loadout management. Buried City, Spaceport, and Blue Gate all sit at High risk and differ mostly in terrain: Buried City and the Spaceport's terminal interiors favor close range fights, while the Spaceport's runways and Blue Gate's mountain sections favor longer engagements. Stella Montis stays reserved for raiders who already have a read on ARC enemy behavior and a specific loot goal in mind, since going in without a plan on an Extreme map tends to end raids early. Riven Tides sits somewhere between the High risk maps and Stella Montis in practice, since its newer mechanics have not been fully mapped by the community yet.

Extraction planning matters as much as map choice. Every map splits its exits across multiple zones specifically so raiders cannot camp a single choke point, and the fastest way to lose loot is committing to an extraction route before checking whether it is contested. Scouting toward an exit early in a raid, even before finishing a loot loop, tends to beat pushing for one more container and finding the extract camped.

Squad composition changes the calculus too. A trio that splits roles, one raider watching for ARC patrols, one clearing containers, one covering the extraction route, clears High risk maps faster and with less risk than three raiders looting independently. On Stella Montis and Riven Tides specifically, where either the enemy density or the map mechanics are still being learned by the wider community, coordinated squads consistently outperform solo raiders regardless of individual skill level.

Where Arc Raiders Fits Alongside Competitive Gaming

Arc Raiders is a PvPvE extraction shooter first, which means it does not run an organized esports circuit the way games like CS2, Valorant, League of Legends, and Dota 2 do. If competitive titles with structured tournaments and betting markets are more your speed, Flush runs an esports sportsbook covering those games at flush.com/esports/. If aim precision in traditional shooters interests you, Flush's blog also covers competitive fundamentals like eDPI tuning across Valorant, CS2, and League of Legends.

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How Map Rotation and Matchmaking Work

Arc Raiders lets players pick a specific map before queuing rather than dropping raiders into a random battleground, which is part of why understanding each map's risk rating matters so much. Queue times vary by map and time of day, and the newer, more popular Riven Tides tends to fill faster during peak hours than the older maps. Matchmaking groups raiders by map choice rather than skill rating, so a squad of experienced players and a squad of newcomers can end up in the same Stella Montis raid, which is another reason the Extreme risk maps punish undercooked loadouts more severely than a skill based system would.

Map conditions add another layer on top of the base risk rating. Weather events like the hurricane condition introduced during the Shrouded Sky update change visibility and movement across affected maps, and Embark has signaled more of these conditions arriving through 2026 rather than staying limited to one time events. Checking whether a map is running an active condition before queuing is worth the extra few seconds, since a hurricane on Dam Battlegrounds plays very differently than a clear day on the same map.

More Arc Raiders Coverage

Player counts and server uptime both move constantly for a game this new, so treat any single number as exactly that, a snapshot. The Arc Raiders player count tracker and the Arc Raiders server status guide both get refreshed on a regular schedule and link back to this map breakdown for anyone planning a specific raid.

Responsible Gambling

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Bottom Line

Six maps, six risk levels, one extraction goal every time: get out with more than you brought in. Dam Battlegrounds is the safe starting point, Stella Montis and Riven Tides reward raiders who already know what they are doing, and Buried City, Spaceport, and Blue Gate sit in between depending on whether close range or long sightlines suit a loadout better. Visit flush.com/ to explore the rest of the site between raid sessions, from the esports sportsbook to casino games and Originals.