Pendola Pass is the frozen mountain map that arrived with the Frozen Trail update for ARC Raiders. It drops you into a snow-buried alpine settlement built around an Exodus-era observatory, with the wreck of a fallen Emperor looming over the village. A full night run across the map shows off most of what makes it different from the older Rust Belt locations: brutal weather, shifting loot values, a new extraction method, and a roster of fresh ARC machines.
Quick answer: Pendola Pass unlocks after 25 rounds played, sits at difficulty 3 of 5, and uses Ballistic Gondola extractions instead of the Tubes. Night Raid is a timed dark condition where loot quality climbs.
What Pendola Pass is
Pendola Pass sits in a summit basin and centers on the Cielo Sereno Observatory, a disused astronomy site that drew ARC attention after an Emperor collapsed on the mountain. The layout covers industrial rail infrastructure, steep terrain, and a cluster of stone alpine homes. Named zones include the Freight Terminal, Loading Platforms, Railyard, Commissary Supermarket, Almatera Station, Almatera Village, Old Town, the Fallen Emperor wreck, and the Deep-Space Telescope.
You reach it after playing 25 rounds. The map carries a difficulty rating of 3 of 5, which places it in the middle of the game’s maps rather than at the top end. Several of its locations run a low threat level, including the observatory and the Commissary Supermarket, both rated threat level 1.
Night Raid and what it changes
Night Raid is one of the map conditions that rotates onto Pendola Pass, alongside Redirection and the ARC Frigate. During a Night Raid the map runs dark, with the aurora lighting the sky, and loot quality rises across the board compared to a standard daytime round. That makes it a stronger window for hitting high-value rooms and chasing the map’s better containers.
The trade-off is visibility and pressure. Late in a run, a central warning announces that an ARC orbiter is inbound and the safe window is closing, giving a ten-minute return timer that later ticks down to a five-minute final call. From that point you are racing the clock to reach an extraction.
Flash Freeze weather
Pendola Pass runs a weather mechanic called Flash Freeze, a tougher version of the Cold Snap condition that is baked into the map itself. When it hits, temperatures drop, a frost vignette creeps in around the edges of the screen, visibility falls, and your health drains while you stay exposed. Blizzards arrive in waves, sometimes paired with red flares and sirens.
The counter is shelter. Stepping inside a building or a storm hut stops the cold from eating your health, so travel between points of interest becomes a series of short dashes between warm spaces. Thick ice can also block doors and routes; you clear it by shooting it, hitting it, or melting it with flame-based tools.
Dynamic loot zones
Certain points of interest change loot tier between matches. The map marks them with color-coded labels, so a zone tagged red is running high-value loot that round while a yellow tag means medium. In the night run, Old Town shows up as red while the Railyard area reads medium, which pushes the route toward whichever area is hot that match rather than a fixed loop.
Beyond raw materials and ammo, the map hands out blueprints and customization parts. A Winter Table Design blueprint pulled from an outpost chest unlocks craftable furniture back at your Speranza outpost, and Stencil Parts found in residential and commercial buildings let you apply weapon skin stencils at the workshop.
ARC machines you run into
The map mixes familiar flying drones with the heavier machines introduced in Frozen Trail. The three that show up most across a run are below.
| Machine | Type | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
 Wasp | Light aerial drone | Hovers near structures and fires tracking energy lasers |
 Hydra | Multi-limbed ground unit | Found inside wrecks such as the Fallen Emperor interior |
 Bully | Heavy tank-class walker | Machine guns, mortars, homing lasers and a flamethrower |
The Bully anchors the set-piece encounter: a hulking machine with multiple legs that traps a squad at a chokepoint using laser tracking, mortar salvos and a flamethrower at close range. Target its glowing knee joints, its weak points; sustained fire can sever individual legs, reducing its mobility until it stumbles. Defeating it awards Epic loot, including the Bully Fragmenter, a cluster grenade that breaks apart into multiple submunitions, and also unlocks the Bully’s codex entry.
Ballistic Gondola extraction
Pendola Pass sits beyond the reach of the Tube system that handles extraction on the older maps, so it uses Ballistic Gondolas instead. You activate a Transceiver terminal, which fires a cyan smoke beacon, then a gondola capsule lands with a short departure countdown. You have to get inside the pod and interact with its panel before it launches. The map’s transceivers include the Glacial, Northern, Reckless and Supermarket terminals.
A clean exit returns you to Speranza, confirmed by a “Returned Home Safely” message and the end-of-round journey screen tallying XP, Reward Points and progress on the Frozen Trail Pass. In the night run, a completed extraction logged 30,359 total XP and 515 Reward Points.
The gondola’s departure timer is short once the capsule lands, so reach the pad before you trigger it rather than calling it from a distance and sprinting through enemy fire.
How Pendola Pass compares to the other maps
Pendola Pass is the fourth map in unlock order and lands squarely in the middle of the difficulty range. Riven Tides holds the top rating at 5 of 5, while Dam Battlegrounds is the gentlest at 2 of 5. Here is where each map stands by difficulty and the rounds needed to open it.
| Map | Difficulty | Unlocks at rounds played |
|---|---|---|
 Spaceport | 3 of 5 | 12 |
| Blue Gate | 4 of 5 | 18 |
 Riven Tides | 5 of 5 | 20 |
 Stella Montis | 4 of 5 | 24 |
 Pendola Pass | 3 of 5 | 25 |
 Dam Battlegrounds | 2 of 5 | — |
 Buried City | 3 of 5 | — |
Despite its mid-tier difficulty, Pendola Pass requires more rounds played than any other map on the list, so it is one of the later destinations most players reach through normal progression.
Getting in without the unlock
The free-play weekend spans 09:00 UTC on October 8 through 08:00 UTC on October 12. New players can bypass the 25-round requirement by joining a teammate who has unlocked Pendola Pass, then choosing the map together. A solo player on a new account must still complete the usual progression to select it. For full details, visit the Embark Studios free weekend page.
Whether you arrive through a friend’s squad or your own grind, Pendola Pass asks for a different rhythm than the Rust Belt maps. You are reading the weather, chasing whichever zone turns red that round, and planning a gondola exit before the orbiter timer forces your hand. The night version simply raises both the rewards and the risk at once.
