Doings are afoot in the retrofuture scrapmetal world of Arc Raiders. Developers Embark have announced that a major new update called North Line will roll out tomorrow, 13th November at 1.30am PT, 4.30am ET, 9.30am GMT and 10.30am CET. It’ll add Stella Montis, a region beyond the Rust Belt that is described as “cold, pristine, and filled with the remnants of humanity’s lost ambitions.” I am picturing a landscape awash with Betamax cassettes, Bored Apes and Soviet space shuttles, where Raiders pick through old branches of Toys R Us.

You won’t just be able to waltz across the lintel into Stella Montis tomorrow, mind. You’ll need to earn access by means of a new community event, Breaking New Ground, which is about restoring tunnels to the new region by earning a special events currency, Merits. “The release timing of Stella Montis will be set by community progress, revealing the next frontier and triggering the “Staking Our Claim” Phase II, a new progression track with rewards to earn and challenges to complete,” explains the press release. “This new track will be available for a limited time, running until December.”

The devs are also adding a couple of new ARC foes – the Matriarch, which is apparently even more formidable than the Queen – and the Shredder, which only appears in Stella Montis, and is built for close quarters combat. It sounds rather knifey. Players will go up against them armed with an “Energy Burst” battle rifle, some new mines – that’s “Impulse”, “Timed” and “Gas Jump”, the latter of which sounds like a platforming tool – and some fresh playstyles, “Lone Wolf and “Trailblazer”. I’m not clear what these playstyles are but I don’t think you’ll get to be an actual wolf. The ARCs have melted down all the wolves for biofuel, I suspect. Still, there’s always WolfQuest.

In a bid to maximise the good vibes around North Line’s launch, Embark are also taking an axe to the game’s microtransaction pricing. “We’ve reviewed our prices and made adjustments to lower prices where applicable,” explains a new FAQ on the official site. The prices will be update alongside the update’s launch.

“For any Raider who has already made a purchase on the old pricing, we’ll compensate you for the difference,” the developers add. “These Raider Tokens will be refunded back into your account automatically in the coming week.”

These concessions accompany a note that Embark will shortly introduce paid premium Raider decks that focus on “cosmetics and convenience”, with no “pay-to-win” elements. So this is mollifying the people unhappy about microtransaction pricing while introducing a few more microtransactables with their other hand.

Last and leastly, Embark say they have “silently tested and enabled Duo prioritized matchmaking, beginning earlier this week.” To be clear, duo here means two-player. “Duo matchmaking will work like this: first, we prioritize Solos and Squads to play separately,” the devs explain. “After that, we prioritize Duos to play with other Duos, and for Trios to play with Trios.”

Arc Raiders continues to be the subject of scorn regarding its usage of AI-generated voices. There was another social media blowout yesterday and I have been working on a short op ed, because (hint hint) only op eds are allowed to be political. There is a non-zero chance I will eventually decide that it’s rubbish and bin it off.

In the meantime, Samuel Horti addressed the game’s generative AI usage in our Arc Raiders review, commenting that Embark’s research projects around generating gun models “could well change how I feel about a game where the presence of AI voices already makes me feel slightly icky about recommending it.”