Arc Raiders doesn’t do the classic extraction-shooter full wipe where everyone is thrown back to zero on the same day. Instead, it runs an optional reset system called the Expedition Project on a fixed 8‑week cadence. That means there is a wipe date on the calendar, but you only wipe if you choose to.
Arc Raiders first wipe date and Expedition timeline
The Expedition Project runs on repeating 8‑week cycles that start from launch.
| Phase | Dates (first cycle) | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Caravan prep | October 30 – December 14, 2025 | Level 20+ players build and stock their Expedition caravan. |
| Finalisation window | December 15 – December 20, 2025 | Eligible players choose whether to commit to the Expedition reset. |
| Departure day | December 21, 2025 | Committed caravans “depart” and those accounts are wiped. |
The key date most players care about is December 21, 2025 — that’s when the first wave of Expeditions actually fires and participating accounts get reset. If you don’t opt in during the December 15–20 window, nothing happens to your progression, and you simply roll into the next 8‑week cycle.
Each subsequent Expedition follows the same rough pattern: around 60 days of preparation, a one‑week decision window, and a single departure day. Miss a finalisation window, and your project progress is saved for the next cycle, but you won’t reset that round or receive its buffs.
How the Expedition Project unlocks and what it is
Expeditions sit inside a broader “Projects” system that lives on your Raider screen.
- Unlock level: The Expedition Project appears once your Raider reaches level 20.
- Theme: In fiction, you are building and provisioning a caravan to travel beyond the Rust Belt — a one‑way trip.
- Function: In practice, completing that caravan lets you voluntarily wipe your character at the end of the cycle, acting like a prestige reset.
There is no button to wipe on day one. You must reach level 20 and finish the Expedition Project stages during an active cycle before the reset option appears.
What you lose and what you keep when Arc Raiders wipes your account
Opting into an Expedition is a significant reset. It’s closer to starting a new character than a light seasonal tweak. When your caravan departs, Arc Raiders strips out most character‑tied progression but preserves long‑term account elements and cosmetics.
| Lost on Expedition | Kept after Expedition |
|---|---|
| Stash upgrade progress (stash size tiers) | Unlocked maps |
| All inventory items and loot | Unlocked workshop stations |
| Blueprints | Codex entries |
| Coins | Raider Tokens |
| Player level | Cred |
| Skill points (your current tree) | Raider Decks progress |
| Raider Den progress | Active leaderboards |
| Workshop upgrades and crafting capabilities | Trials |
| Quest progress | Cosmetics (earned or purchased) |
| Personal event progress | |
| Bonus skill points earned from past Expeditions | |
| Bonus stash slots earned from past Expeditions |
You go back to level 1 with an empty stash, no blueprints, and a fresh skill tree. But your account still “remembers” where you’ve been: map access, stations, Codex, premium currency, and cosmetics all survive. That lets a wiped account get moving again much faster than a brand‑new player.
Expedition‑specific bonuses — extra stash slots or bonus skill points tied to previous wipes — also persist across future resets, so long‑term Expedition players slowly accumulate permanent account perks.
Expedition rewards, buffs, and why anyone would wipe on purpose
On paper, the Expedition Project asks for a lot: you hand over a huge amount of materials, then sacrifice your entire build. It needs to give you something meaningful back.
There are two layers of payoff:
- Permanent, account‑wide unlocks earned once per completed Expedition: these can include things like extra stash slots or extra skill points that stay with your account even after future resets.
- Cycle‑long “buffs” active only during the next 8‑week Expedition window, with magnitude scaling over multiple completions up to a cap.
Those buffs are deliberately framed as quality‑of‑life rather than raw combat power. Examples include:
- Increased XP gain, letting you re‑level your character more quickly.
- Increased Scrappy material income.
- Cheaper or more generous weapon repairs.
- More stash space to smooth early‑cycle hoarding.
- Bonus skill points awarded based on the value of items in your stash when you depart.
The design intent is clear: a wiped player should never have a straight combat advantage over someone who chose not to reset. Expeditions are positioned as prestige, bragging rights, faster progression, and cosmetics — not as a way to become strictly stronger in gunfights than non‑wiping players.
How to start an Expedition Project
If you’re eyeing the December reset window or a later cycle, the prep work happens entirely in Speranza’s menus and in your raids. There’s no quest marker on the surface; you build your caravan by donating items.
Step 1: Reach level 20 on your current Raider. Before that, the Expedition Project option simply doesn’t appear.
Step 2: From the main menu, open the Raider tab and then select Projects. Here you’ll see “Expedition Project” listed once you qualify.
Step 3: Start the Expedition Project to create your caravan. This doesn’t wipe anything yet; it just unlocks the multi‑stage donation track.
Step 4: During raids over the 8‑week cycle, collect the materials needed for each stage and donate them to the project. Once handed in, they can’t be reclaimed, so treat this as a one‑way investment.
The caravan is built across five construction stages plus a final waiting phase. Each stage focuses on a different slice of the loot economy, from basic scrap through to high‑value kit.
All materials required to finish an Expedition Project
Finishing the Expedition Project is a significant grind. Across its stages, you’ll donate a wide spread of common and rare materials, plus an enormous amount of gear by value during the loading phase.
| Stage | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Stage 1 – Foundation |
150 × Metal Parts 200 × Rubber Parts 80 × ARC Alloy 15 × Steel Spring |
| Stage 2 – Core Systems |
35 × Durable Cloth 30 × Wires 30 × Electrical Components 5 × Cooling Fan |
| Stage 3 – Framework |
5 × Lightbulb 30 × Battery 20 × Sensors 1 × Exodus Module |
| Stage 4 – Outfitting |
5 × Humidifier 5 × Advanced Electrical Components 3 × Magnetic Accelerators 3 × Leaper Pulse Units |
| Stage 5 – Loading Phase |
250,000 coins worth of Combat items 100,000 coins worth of Survival items 180,000 coins worth of Provisions 300,000 coins worth of Materials |
| Stage 6 – Departure | No further donations; wait for the finalisation window and choose whether to reset. |
Those category names in the loading phase map to broad groups in your stash:
- Combat: guns, grenades, ammo, and attachments.
- Survival: shields, augments, medical items, tools.
- Provisions: trinkets, keys, “Nature” pickups, and other miscellaneous loot.
- Materials: crafting resources, recyclables, and raw components.
Once you’ve filled all five stages, Stage 6 is just a timer. You wait for the active cycle’s final week, then decide: depart and wipe, or hold your caravan over for the next window.
What “no mandatory wipes” really means for different players
The Expedition Project is explicitly framed as an experiment: it’s an attempt to capture the energy of wipe days without nuking everyone’s progress on a schedule.
In practice, it creates three broad player paths:
- Non‑wipers never touch Expeditions. Their account is effectively permanent; they keep accumulating gear, blueprints, and stash upgrades across months.
- Occasional wipers complete a project and reset once in a while when they get bored or hit “done everything” territory, banking a few permanent account buffs along the way.
- Serial wipers treat Expeditions like prestige seasons, resetting almost every cycle to chase cosmetics, higher‑tier buffs, and the fresh progression curve.
Because wipes are optional, late‑joining players aren’t guaranteed a global “fresh start” environment, and veteran players can stay permanently stacked if they want to. That’s the main trade‑off versus classic Tarkov‑style seasonal wipes, which hard‑reset everyone to the same starting line.
At the same time, the Expedition schedule still creates mini wipe days. Anyone who does opt in will be resetting within the same week, which should concentrate a healthy population of scrappy, low‑gear lobbies in the days after each departure date.
If you care about a clean slate and prestige cosmetics, the December 15–21, 2025 window is the first real decision point. If you’d rather keep your stash and ignore the whole experiment, you can do that indefinitely — the Expedition Project sits there, waiting, while you keep running raids at your own pace.
