The Leaper Pulse Unit sits in an odd place in ARC Raiders’ loot economy. It is a high-value, epic-tier ARC component, a key material for late base upgrades, and also one of the most punishing throwables in the game. Deciding whether to keep it, recycle it, or “yeet” it at another squad is a real choice, not a flavor detail.
Leaper Pulse Unit core stats and properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Item type | Epic, recyclable material |
| Can be thrown | Yes – creates a small, violent singularity |
| Damage | 100 |
| Blast radius | 10 m |
| Weight | 1.0 |
| Max stack size | 3 |
| Sell price | 5,000 coins |
| Source | Drops from Leapers (Bison ARC machines) |
| Category | Can be found in ARC loot |
In practical terms, the Pulse Unit is a hybrid between a quest material, a crafting resource, and a one-shot pulse grenade. Thrown correctly, it detonates with a wide-area singularity effect that pulls players into its center and dumps a large chunk of damage through shields.
How to get a Leaper Pulse Unit
Leaper Pulse Units drop from Leapers, the large spider-like ARC machines that patrol the Rust Belt. Leapers were previously known as Bison and are treated as roaming mini-bosses: high health, thick ARC armor, and a small move set built entirely around deleting you if you misstep.
There are two reliable Leaper spawns on Dam Battlegrounds that matter for the Into the Fray quest and for farming Pulse Units:
| Map | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dam Battlegrounds | East of Hydroponic Dome Complex | Leaper can be kited toward Dome doorways for safe fighting angles. |
| Dam Battlegrounds | Near Water Treatment Control elevator | Often patrols the area; nearby Field Depot and electrical substation buildings are key for “cheese” methods. |
Any Leaper kill can drop a Pulse Unit, but if you are working on Into the Fray, you specifically need to loot the destroyed “eye” assembly after the machine dies. That eye is the component that yields the Leaper Pulse Unit; grab it before other teams converge on the noise.
Once you have one in your backpack, move it into your Safe Pocket as soon as there is a pause in the action. Safe Pockets protect key items on death, which matters when a single component represents a significant chunk of your match’s value.
Recommended loadout for hunting Leapers
Leapers are vulnerable to a small set of very specific tools. The consistent pattern is heavy ammo and fire damage, ideally used from a protected position.
| Slot | Recommended gear | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Primary weapon | Ferro or Anvil | Both fire Heavy Ammo and have strong ARC armor penetration, crucial for chewing through Leaper plating. |
| Secondary weapon | Any solid mid–long range gun (e.g., Arpeggio, Hullcracker) | Cleans up exposed weak points once armor is stripped and lets you keep pressure when you need to reload your heavy. |
| Utility | Blaze Grenades (at least three) | Fire is a primary weakness; stacking burn uptime on the eye dramatically shortens the fight. |
| Ammunition | ~1 stack of Heavy Ammo (around 80 rounds) | Enough to repeatedly target the eye or legs from safety until the machine collapses. |
Any higher-tier variant that keeps these fundamentals—heavy ARC penetration plus repeatable fire damage—will only speed things up. What matters more than the exact weapon roll is having a plan for where you will stand and how you will break armor.
Leaper attack patterns and why positioning matters
Leapers are defined by two things: range and area denial.
- Long-range jump slam: The machine jumps from well outside normal engagement distance and lands on your last known position. If it connects cleanly, it can one-shot or leave you in a revive state.
- EMP surge: A close-range electrical pulse that punishes players who try to “hug” the legs in the open for too long.
They also layer in leg swipes and general body checks, but those two attacks are what make fighting them in the open a bad idea for solo players. The safest approach is to aggro a Leaper and then fight it from a doorway or window it cannot path through.
On Dam Battlegrounds, there are two especially useful setups:
- The Domes themselves, if the spawn is near the Hydroponic Dome Complex.
- A small building in the electrical substation south of the Water Treatment elevator; from its doorway, you can see the elevator and usually the patrolling Leaper.
In both cases, you pull the Leaper’s attention with a shot to the eye, then stay just inside the doorway. The machine will spam its jumps and melee into the wall instead of landing clean hits, giving you room to pick it apart.
Two practical solo methods for destroying a Leaper
Method 1: Blaze and eye-focus “cheese”
This approach leans on fire damage and a safe funnel.
- Locate a Leaper at one of the Dam Battlegrounds spawn zones.
- Move into a doorway or cramped building where the machine cannot fully enter.
- Use a heavy-weapon shot (Ferro or Anvil) to tag the eye and lock aggro.
- Throw a Blaze Grenade at the eye so the burn applies directly to the weak spot.
- While the Leaper burns, keep shooting the eye with Heavy Ammo from your cover.
- When the fire goes out, throw another Blaze and repeat.
Under sustained burn and heavy fire, the eye assembly eventually detonates and the Leaper collapses. Watch for retreat behavior mid-fight: if the machine pulls back, chase cautiously, maintaining line of sight for the eye and staying alert for sudden jump slams.
Once the body hits the ground, run straight to the destroyed eye module and loot it first. That is where the Leaper Pulse Unit sits, and other players will often push on the sound of the explosion.
Method 2: Leg-breaking from the substation building
The “leg cheese” method is more methodical but works well for solo players with a steady trigger finger and a single heavy pistol or revolver.
- Load into Dam Battlegrounds and head south to the electrical substation, just below the Water Treatment elevator.
- Enter the small building that faces the elevator.
- Spot the Leaper that usually patrols the elevator area and tag it with a Heavy Ammo shot to draw aggro.
- Once it is focused on you, position yourself inside the doorway or a window where its jumps and swipes cannot make full contact.
- Target the upper legs—around the thigh region—and start stripping armor. You will see:
- Outer armor plates
- Insulation or inner protective layers
- A thicker structural segment
- Finally, a thin black pipe-like element
- Keep firing Heavy Ammo until that thin inner piece snaps and the leg falls off.
- Repeat the process on the remaining legs until the machine takes enough structural damage to explode.
Even with one or more legs gone, the Leaper remains dangerous; it will still attempt leaps and surges. Staying just inside the building and sidestepping each telegraphed jump keeps the risk under control while you work through your Heavy Ammo stack.
Using the Leaper Pulse Unit as a throwable
Once you pull a Pulse Unit home, the temptation is to stash it forever as a trophy. That ignores one of its most important roles: it is a throwable singularity device with a very large effective radius and serious shield damage.
To use one:
- Slot the Leaper Pulse Unit into a quick-use or throwable slot in your loadout.
- In a match, select it from the quick menu just like a grenade.
- Throw it at your target area; it travels like a heavy grenade and will drop if underthrown.
- After a short fuse, it triggers a violent pulse that drags nearby players toward the center and applies significant damage within its ~10 m radius.
The singularity effect is especially punishing when enemies are caught in the open. With no immediate hard cover, players with blue or green shields can see massive chunks of their protection shredded in one detonation.
There is a trade-off, though. The fuse is not instant. Indoors, that delay makes it possible for an alert squad to break line of sight by ducking behind corners or retreating through doorways. Outside—where escape routes are flatter and more predictable—the combination of pull and blast radius is much harder to outrun.
Typical high-value situations for throwing a Pulse Unit include:
- Dropping it on a squad crossing open ground toward an extraction point.
- Landing it in the middle of a team locked into a fight with ARC drones, when their attention is split.
- Breaking a dug-in position at medium range when other throwables are on cooldown.
Note: after detonation, you can pick up what is left, but it becomes a broken Pulse Unit with negligible value. Treat each throw as a true one-off play.
Crafting, base upgrades, and recycling
Keeping Pulse Units for your workshop is not just hoarding behavior. Several late-stage projects and upgrades demand multiple Units, and those checks can bottleneck progression if you scrap or sell every one you find.
Project and workshop upgrade use
| Use case | Requirement | Upgrades |
|---|---|---|
| Outitting → Load Stage project | 3× Leaper Pulse Unit 5× Humidifier 5× Advanced Electrical Components 3× Magnetic Accelerator |
Progresses Outitting from step 4/6 to Load Stage step 5/6. |
| Utility Station upgrade | 4× Leaper Pulse Unit 3× Fried Motherboard 5× Advanced Electrical Components |
Upgrades Utility Station 2 to Utility Station 3. |
These projects feed directly into your crafting ecosystem. Utility Station 3 unlocks better access to utility items, while pushing Outfitting along its track boosts what you can carry and build between raids. Burning your first few Pulse Units as throwables can delay these upgrades by multiple raids’ worth of farming.
Recycling vs. salvaging a Leaper Pulse Unit
For players who are not ready to commit Units to high-tier projects, recycling offers a steady stream of advanced components.
| Action | Output |
|---|---|
| Recycle Leaper Pulse Unit | 3× ARC Alloy 2× Advanced Mechanical Components |
| Salvage Leaper Pulse Unit | 2× Mechanical Components |
Recycling is clearly the more lucrative option if you are chasing mid-to-late game crafting recipes. ARC Alloy and Advanced Mechanical Components sit further up the material chain and are harder to come by in bulk. Salvaging into basic Mechanical Components only makes sense if your current bottleneck is low-level recipes and you do not need the higher-grade parts yet.
The 5,000-coin sell value is another lever. In early progression, that payout can represent several ordinary raids’ worth of loot, particularly if you go in light. Later, the material value often eclipses the coin return, especially once you are regularly upgrading stations and building purple-tier gear.
Used well, the Leaper Pulse Unit forces interesting decisions. It is a get-out-of-jail card in combat, a backbone component for meaningful workshop upgrades, and a compact bundle of rare materials if you push it through the recycler. The tension is intentional: every time you pull one out of a Leaper’s ruined eye, you are deciding what kind of raider you want to be—careful builder, opportunistic trader, or the type who will burn a small fortune just to rip another squad into a singularity.
