Arc Raiders patch nerfs two of the game’s best items

Arc Raiders is celebrating a huge milestone. Developer Embark Studios initially planned to celebrate surpassing 10 million sales, but that figure was blown out of the water, so in celebration of 12 million copies sold, everyone’s getting the Gilded Pickaxe Raider Tool. It’s now available for all players who logged in between launch and Tuesday, Jan. 13, but the free reward is balanced out by some bigger news from the patch: two of the game’s best weapons have been nerfed.

First up is the Kettle, which, despite being just a semi-automatic pistol, is incredibly strong due to its fire rate. However, players have been abusing that by assigning a macro to their fire key, meaning the Kettle could be fired at a much faster rate than would be possible naturally. So as a result, Embark has reduced its fire rate from 600 rounds per minute to 450, which in theory should only prevent players from using third-party macros, while allowing legitimate players to continue firing it as quickly as they were prior.

Alongside the Kettle, the Trigger ‘Nade has also been nerfed. It’s by far the most popular offensive grenade in the game, not just due to its damage, but also because players could throw one then immediately detonate it in midair.

“This nerf aims to make it less usable as a ‘trigger-in-air’ grenade, whilst keeping its usefulness as a sticky bomb,” reads the official patch notes. “Damage falloff has been rebalanced to concentrate the damage closer to the center of the explosion, and deal less damage further away.”

The delay between pressing the trigger and the grenade detonating has also been more than doubled, going from 0.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds, which gives players on the receiving end “more time to react,” while the user has a harder time nailing the detonation moment in mid-air.

Finally, Stella Montis has undergone some lighting changes to make it darker, so “flashlights and listening” are more important, and a key card exploit that allowed players to keep room keys after using them has been fixed.

Want more Arc Raiders? Check out how the game looks in first-person courtesy of a Reddit user, and read about how Embark’s huge success is the catalyst for an extraction shooter onslaught in 2026.