Film

ARC Raiders Has The Most Annoying Quests I’ve Ever Played

25 February 2026

When new quests were added to ARC Raiders with the Shrouded Sky update, the game’s most annoying quirk reared its ugly head. As an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders‘ quests aren’t exactly the main focus, nor are they especially notable design-wise. They usually require you to visit a certain spot on a certain map, interact with some objects, and occasionally bring something back to Speranza.

For those of us keeping up with the game’s drip-fed narrative, they keep the story moving, and it’s nice to have some direction on a handful of raids—a goal that’s not just bolstering my ever-dwindling stash of junk. February’s Shrouded Sky update added five new quests, and while “Keeping An Eye Out” and “Stable Housing” aren’t anything to write home about, at least they’re not actively detrimental to enjoying the game like “Worth Your Salt” is.

ARC Raiders Has Once-Per-Raid Quest Objectives… For Some Reason

Two Raiders pointing guns at each other in the snow.

Since ARC Raiders‘ launch in late October last year, a few quests have had a bizarre barrier to completion. Take the early quest “Keeping the Memory,” for example; it’s the first time I ran into this issue. Celeste wants you to tidy up a memorial to those who were killed in ARC’s first wave of attacks, which took place before ARC Raiders‘ current ongoing narrative. To complete the quest, you have to find a helmet that’s tumbled into a bush and return it to its place on the memorial (which, I might add, is nothing more than a stick in the ground).

Said helmet seems to be treated like every other in-raid item in the game—that is, it’s a server-side object that can only be held and manipulated by one player at a time. If you go to complete “Keeping the Memory” and someone else has already placed the helmet back on its stick, too bad. You’ll have to try again in another raid.

The same song and dance is now occurring with “Worth Your Salt.” Celeste wants you to find a prototype battery, charge it, and leave it in a designated drop-off container. There are multiple batteries this time, since they pop out of a box you can inspect, but there’s only one spot to put a charged one in the drop-off container. It took me eight raids to finally complete the quest before someone else had gotten there.

For a couple of raids, it’s fine—I’ll just loot, try to extract, and come back another time. But it gets to a point where, if you want to complete the quest, you have to plan your whole run around it: minimal gear in case something goes wrong, Adrenaline Shots to make sure I’m the fastest in getting there, and a prayer for a fresh, 30-minute lobby. All because of an issue that doesn’t even make sense with ARC Raiders‘ diegesis.

Once-Per-Raid Quests Are Illusion-Breaking

Baron Husk ARC Raiders Promotional Image

The biggest issue here is that it’s simply not fun, but a close second is how these quests utterly crumble ARC Raiders‘ immersion. A healthy suspension of disbelief is always needed, especially in friendly solo lobbies where I regularly chat with strangers about their quests, but getting locked out of an objective undermines the narrative that surrounds my Raider’s actions.

In these quests’ fiction, Celeste is enlisting my help specifically, and other Raiders I happen to encounter are just that. It doesn’t make any sense that I’ve been given an objective, but there’s a chance someone who is ostensibly supposed to be a random scavenger (much like I am to them) has completed it first. I wouldn’t need to charge and deposit a prototype battery if someone else has already done it.

I understand this may not be a simple fix, and is likely a low priority, given ARC Raiders‘ constant battle with exploit and glitch abusers, but it is, anecdotally, something that frustrates many players. While trying to do “Worth Your Salt,” I ran into many other players who were equally exasperated by their repeated failed attempts. It’s not a good sign when you hear different versions of “this quest sucks so much” on the day it’s added to the game.

Changing how a few quests work is ultimately low on the laundry list of things developer Embark Studios likely has to do, but it could be consequential in the long-run. Quests are just one way players engage with ARC Raiders, but a few of them are so ridiculously annoying that they stand out among the rest that are passably interesting.