Arc Raiders patch notes mean looting is a little more difficult now

Security lockers are a little less secure

The Arc Raiders patch notes are here for the Cold Snap December update, and whew, there is a lot to talk about. Aside from the introduction of a snowy map condition, a new event, project, cosmetics, and quests, there are balance changes and bug fixes out the wazoo, and a few of them will make players very happy indeed.

Kicking things off is arguably the most impactful change in the entire update for high-level players: "Security lockers are now dynamically spawned across all maps instead of being statically placed."

Security lockers are those locked containers that you need the Security Breach skill to open, which can only be acquired by investing a minimum of 36 skill points into the survival skill tree. Security lockers were considered overpowered for the first few weeks of the game, and even though they eventually got a loot pool nerf, the skill was still worth grabbing.

Now, however, it's received another nerf. Security lockers will no longer be in the same place every round. On one hand, this ruins the loot routes for raiders who had them planned out, but on the other, it means loot is considerably more random, and players will need to engage more with the rest of the map, rather than playing with tunnel vision.

As for the other big changes, the Aphelion blueprint can now be found on Stella Montis, rather than only by killing the Matriarch. This is great as it makes the blueprint more accessible, but unfortunately, crafting the weapon still requires a Matriarch Reactor.

It's also good news for folks who wish they'd specced into a different skill tree but haven't completed the expedition: you can finally reset your skill tree. It costs 2,000 per skill point spent, and you cannot reset individual skills, only the entire tree, but that's a reasonable cost to be able to try again.

You may have caught our story about Locked Gate, the Blue Gate map condition that only showed up for an hour in-game, never to be seen again. Well, my prediction was correct: Locked Gate has returned alongside the Cold Snap update. It hasn't shown up in-game yet at the time of writing, so the jury's still out on whether the event steps are identical, but chances are, they just needed to fix the missing loot behind the gate.

PC players should rejoice, too. You can finally toggle aiming down the sights, rather than having to hold down the button. A huge win for accessibility and those of us who simply prefer a toggle. Also, if you're tired of the Rattler being the worst gun in the game… well, you're out of luck because it likely still holds that title, but it does have 12 bullets per magazine instead of 10 now.

These are just the highlights for what is an extremely chunky patch, so make sure you read up on the full list of changes before going topside again. In the meantime, also check out how Arc Raiders' matchmaking takes into account your playstyle, so if you're only finding hostile players… it may be your own fault.