ARC Raiders Frigate Guide - Frozen Trail Update

ARC Raiders Frigate Guide - Frozen Trail Update Quick Summary:

• Frigate is a high-end cooperative raid activity that can appear on maps like Pendola Pass, Dam, and Spaceport when you queue for its map condition.
• You board it using the ARC platforms around the ship, then move through the Lower, Middle, and Upper Decks.
• The proper extraction requires you to sabotage Power Cores and Turbines, then lower the central platform out of the Frigate.
• The biggest rewards are ARC loot and Weapon Amplification materials, including 24 containers after the final platform descent.
• Bettina + Hullcracker/Jupiter, Grappling Hook, Barricades, lots of ammo, healing,s and Shield Rechargers make up the best loadout.

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How to Board Frigate in ARC Raiders

This is gonna be a very straight-to-the-point guide with no fluff, so let’s start. Frigate is an endgame raid that was released with the Frozen Trail update. It can appear on multiple maps, despite its point lore-wise being to guard the fallen Emperor. I’ve seen it on Dam and Spaceport, not counting the obvious Pendola Pass appearance. During this map condition (and yes, it doesn’t appear out of the blue, you have to queue for it specifically), a huge ARC ship will appear on the map of your choice. Once it appears, it’s gonna stay in one position for the rest of the raid. Here’s how to board the Frigate in ARC Raiders: 

1. When you see the Frigate, you’ll notice small ARC platforms appearing around it, mostly in the back part of the Frigate
2. Jump on any of them, and you’ll see a prompt telling you to disrupt it. Once you do that, small ARC drones will fly out and protect you from all incoming fire. 

Note that while you’re running toward the ARC platforms, you’ll be shot at with the Frigate’s gun, so there’s a chance it kills you at the beginning of this raid. Take a photocloak if you’re worried about that. Eventually, the platform takes you to the Frigate, and that’s when you can start the full raid. Run straight into the large vent shafts and continue on until you reach the lower wing.

Activating Elevator

The first thing you need to do after entering the lower wing is activate the elevator that takes you toward the Frigate’s middle section. Go through the vent shafts until you reach a gap that you can climb through. If you entered from the side shown in my screenshot, it’ll be on the top-left, while the Frigate’s symmetrical layout puts the same opening on your right if you came from the opposite direction. Behind it is a narrow walkway with the elevator platform in the middle. It kinda blends in with the ship’s hull, but it’s there. Here’s how to activate the Frigate elevator:

1. Climb through the gap: Follow the vent route until you reach the central walkway.
2. Find the two elevator buttons: There’s one button on each side of the platform.
3. Press both buttons simultaneously: Two Raiders need to interact with them at the same time. This raises the platform enough for at least one player to get on top.
4. Activate the upper button: The Raider who gets up first should press the button on top of the elevator to bring the rest of the squad up.
5. Skip the puzzle with traversal gear: If you brought a Grappling Hook or Snap Hook, you can simply use it to reach the upper level instead.

I highly recommend bringing a Grappling Hook anyway, so this is one of several places where it can save you time. Once everyone is up, continue forward until you reach what I’ve been calling the Hydra Arena.

ARC Raiders Frigate’s Middle Deck

For lack of a better name, I was just calling this place the Hydra Arena with my friends. It’s an indented circular section with three buttons around it, one directly ahead and two on the sides. The problem is that new turret ARCs called Hydras protect the area, and there isn’t much cover here. This is where Barricades become incredibly useful, as you can make your own cover instead of constantly running around trying to avoid three lines of fire. Your goal on the Middle Deck is to complete these steps:

1. Deal with the Hydras: Shoot the green weak points
2. Use Barricades for cover: Put them around the edges of the arena or between yourself and the Hydra you aren’t currently focusing on.
3. Activate the three buttons: There is one in front, and two other buttons are on the sides of the circular arena.
4. Destroy the exposed Power Core: Once the center of the arena opens, a Power Core will rise out of it. Shoot every green damageable section until it is destroyed.
5. Check that you destroyed all Power Cores: I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I believe that in order to leave the Frigate with the most profitable loot, you need to destroy all Power Cores. This isn’t reliable info, as the community is still figuring out how the Frigate works, but this is my recommendation. Break it just in case.
6. Shoot the yellow wall buttons: These release the climbing platforms leading toward the Upper Deck.
7. Loot the platforms on your way up: Each one can have lootable spots, so don’t miss out.

The Power Cores are really important here. Usually, they turn off some defense system of the Frigate, be it engine spewing flames, or just opening the doorways into the insides of the ship. It’s not explained what you’ll miss if you don’t destroy them, and finding out twenty minutes later that you left one intact somewhere below is really annoying. Luckily, even if you didn’t destroy this Power Core initially, you can shoot it from the Upper Deck.

ARC Raiders Frigate’s Upper Deck

The Upper Deck is where the Frigate gets really hard. It’s kind of a gauntlet. This area will flood you with Hydras, Rocketeers, Vaporizers, and other flying ARC while you’re trying to break Power Cores. It’s also where you’ll spend most of your Frigate run, so resource management becomes extremely important here. Here’s what you’ll be dealing with:

Things to break on Upper Deck	What to Do	Why you need to do that
Hydras	Destroy the Hydras positioned around the deck first	They cover parts of the area and need to be destroyed to move further safely
Large Power Cores	Shoot the exposed green sections until the Core breaks	Required for sabotaging the Frigate and eventually extracting
Flying ARC	Deal with Rocketeers and Vaporizers before they overwhelm you. Depending on the number of Raiders on the deck, you might just want to ignore them.	They will work as a resource drain, and that’s why it’s almost impossible to do this part with only one three-player squad

After destroying one of the side Hydras, go toward its side of the deck, and you’ll find a large walkway filled with fiery wind from the turbines. The smaller Power Cores along the walls have three breachable sections. Break them to expose the green weak points, then destroy them to shut down that section of the turbine. These smaller turbine Cores aren’t necessary for finishing the Frigate, so you can skip them if you’re almost out of ammo or the raid is quickly going out of hand. You usually want to do that to loot the cylinders containing ARC parts and Weapon Amplification materials, which is the main reason to raid the Frigate.

How to Extract from Frigate in ARC Raiders

Even though you can escape the Frigate the same way you got here, which is with ARC platforms, that’s the backup option without doing the raid the right way. Extracting the right way is harder, but it gives you way more loot. This is THE most important part of the raid. None of the stuff you looted matters if you can’t get out of the ship. All the other parts are quite easy to figure out by yourself, but this one can be confusing, though the process itself is quite straightforward. Your goal is to break Power Cores and Turbines on the Frigate upper deck, right next to the platform you’re gonna leave on. Here’s how to extract from the Frigate in ARC Raiders:

1. Locate the platform in the middle part of the Upper Deck. You can see the platform in the screenshot above.
2. Locate the yellow buttons on the walls. Shoot them, and this will open doors to the ship’s interior. Inside, you’ll find Hydras and more doors.
3. The doors in the ship’s interior will lead you to Turbines. You need to shoot the green halos that are similar to the ones on Power Cores in order to stop them. There are also yellow buttons that can be hidden on these Turbines. Sometimes, breaking one Turbine opens the way to the next Turbine behind it, and if it does, it needs to be destroyed as well. Repeat this until you clear all doors and Turbines in them.
4. Return to the platform and look to the sides of it. You’ll find doorways, highlighted in red. Go down, and you’ll find another Power Core that you need to break.
5. For the final step, you return to the platform once again. On four sides of this platform, you’ll find interactable cylinders in the floor that you’ll need to pry with your Raider tool. You’ll recognize them by an “Interact” prompt. Each time you interact with them, the platform will drop lower and lower until it finally detaches from the Frigate and starts going down

That’s the part where you jump on this platform, and it takes you to some place on the map. Be careful not to fall down. Use the grappling hook to secure your position. Once you land, a Vaporizer will spawn that you’ll need to kill quickly. I think this part is a bit of an overkill, cause you’ll waste almost all the ammo you have if it’s just three of you while destroying the Cores and Turbines. If you manage to kill the Vaporizer, you’ll be able to loot 24 containers, 12 on each wide side of the platform, that contain ARC loot and, what’s more important, weapon amplification loot, along with occasional furniture decoration blueprints for your Outpost. Now all you have to do is find the closest extraction point, return to Speranza, and get a ton of XP, money, and Reward Pass levels.

 

 

ARC Raiders Best Loadout for Frigate Raid

Of course, this article would be incomplete without loadout breakdowns. I guess it’s not a big surprise that since this area is so dense with ARCs, heavy ammo is a must. Frigate is packed with armored ARCs, so this isn’t the place to enter with two mags and high hopes. Fill your whole inventory with ammo for your guns of choice, healing items, shield rechargers, and defibs. Don’t forget that even though it’s kinda pointless to fight other squads on Frigate, there are some people who’ll try to do that, so don’t take weapons that are effective against ARCs only. With this in mind, here’s the best ARC Raiders loadout for the Frigate raid:

Loadout Slot	What I Recommend	Why
Main Weapon	Bettina	Heavy Ammo, good ARC penetration, full-auto, and very usable against Raiders
Secondary Weapon	Hullcracker/Jupiter	Excellent for chewing through armored ARC and saving your main weapon ammo
Alternative Weapons	Anvil/Renegade	Perfect replacements for Bettina if you don’t like how it shoots. Renegade is worse at damaging Power Cores and ARCs, but it’s also really good against Raiders
Traversal	Grappling Hook/Snap Hook	These let you skip parts of the elevator traversal and make moving around the Frigate much easier
Deployable	Barricades	Extremely useful throughout the raid, especially the middle deck and insides of the Frigate
Healing	Green or Blue Bandages	This is a long activity, and you get under fire all the time here
Shield Recovery	Multiple Shield Rechargers	Hydras, Rocketeers, and Vaporizers will constantly drain shields and also break them really fast. Try to invest in a new skill in the right branch of the skill tree that lets you repair your shields during the raid.
Squad Utility	Defibrillator	It’s a normal thing to drop one or two times during the raid, and it’s especially useful if you’re going in solo
Optional Utility	Photocloak	Good to hide from Vaporizer, who’s gonna stalk you during the last part of the raid

Bettina is my favorite choice for the raid as it does good damage to Raiders and ARCs alike. Hullcracker wouldn’t be my recommendation until recently, since its damage has been buffed. The most important thing is to bring lots and lots of ammo. I took ~400 for Bettina and ~150 for Hullcracker, and I ran dry by the raid’s end.

 

 

ARC Raiders Frigate Tips

Frigate doesn’t have hard-to-get mechanics as Destiny 2 raids had, but it’s not a cakewalk. It’s a test of how well you manage your resources and communicate with players. The entire raid constantly drains your ammo, shields, healing, and patience while ARC and other Raiders can interrupt you at almost any point. Most failed runs I’ve seen while researching for the article aren’t caused by confusion with mechanics. They happen because the team wastes all their resources. Here are the ARC Raiders Frigate tips I came up with while playing and observing others play:

• Bring a Full Squad: You can get onto the Frigate with fewer players, but a trio makes it much easier to communicate. Alternatively, get in with solos cause if you manage to find a few friendly players, there’s less risk of being shot in the back cause then the whole group will turn against the backstabber.
• Take a Grappling Hook: It lets you traverse the Frigate easier and can save you if you drop from the board. It’s also really useful in the end when you’re getting down on the platform. It might be the single most useful utility item for the entire activity.
• Bring Barricades: If Grappling or Snap Hook are useful utility, Barricades are a must. Throughout this whole raid, you’ll be constantly attacked and forced under fire by ARCs and sometimes other players. They’re far more efficient at keeping you alive than just healing items.
• Save Resources for the Upper Deck: Try to waste as little ammo as possible early in the raid. The early Frigate sections are relatively calm compared to what comes later.
• Kill Hydras Before Doing Mechanics: Trying to interact with buttons, breach Turbines, or loot while a Hydra is firing at you is just begging to get killed. Clear the threat first and then worry about the objective. This concerns other ARCs, but to a lesser degree.
• Loot While Moving Up: The platforms between decks have containers and smaller loot spots. Grab them on the way rather than assuming all the good loot is waiting at the very end.
• Keep Some Backpack Space: Amplification loot is the reason you came here. If you don’t have space for these items now, return to the loot spots later if you still have some time.
• Use the ARC Platforms as a Backup Escape: If the raid goes badly, you don’t need to do the sabotage extraction. Getting out alive with some loot is better than dying, cause the loadout you’ll bring with you isn’t gonna be cheap.

To sum up, Frigate is a collaborative raid. While YouTubers try to do it in groups of three, they regularly survive by the skin of their teeth. You don’t have to do it like that. You’re not farming content. Communicate with the rest of the raid and split your jobs. This way, everyone gets loot, and no one walks out empty-pocketed. It seems that this is much more of an emphasis in 2.0 now that the devs understand their community and players more. 

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