Embark Studios has revealed its reasoning behind considerably buffing up the Tactical Mk. 3 (Healing) augment. In the notes for its recent update, the studio had said that the Cloud of Renewal effect from the augment had been changed to become an AoE effect, with its healing raised from 20 to 45, and its cooldown going up from 30 seconds to 45 seconds.
Buried in the patch notes was a developer note where the studio confirmed that it wanted to focus on underperforming augments and bring them up to the standards of the more popular ones. This update focused on Tactical Mk. 3 (Healing) and a small buff to Combat Mk. 3 (Flanking). We will likely see more changes made to augments in the future, depending on how the player base uses them.
“As mentioned in the patch notes for Patch 1.26, we continue to focus our sights on underperforming Augments,” wrote the studio. “In this update, we are making the Tactical Mk. 3 (Healing) Augment offers more utility in line with its place as a support-focused Augment. Now you can also heal your allies (and your enemies, if you’re not careful) after being revived. We also increased the survivability potential of the Combat Mk. 3 (Flanking) to make it more viable as a flanking combat Augment.”
The studio has been taking steps to boost underutilized tools rather than bring in nerfs for those that might be considered popular. This decision has likely made the player base quite happy, since it means that the popular Survivor augment hasn’t seen any changes made to it, at least for now.
The same update also brought in a brand new weapon for players to use—the Rascal. The weapon is a new sidearm, and Embark Studios has said that it makes for a great anti-ARC weapon for players who don’t want to waste one of their larger slots to carry a Hullcracker.
The update also introduced a brand new faction for players to interact with—the Nomadic Envoys. Part of the new faction is the trader, Ermal, who has a variety of items on a weekly rotation up for sale, including cosmetics, blueprints, and Raider Tokens, among other things. The arrival of the Nomadic Envoys also marks a continuation of the story that ARC Raiders has been telling in subtle ways through NPC interactions and updates.
In the meantime, Nexon revealed during its recent earnings report that ARC Raiders has managed to sell 4.6 million copies in the last quarter, with the extraction shooter’s lifetime sales sitting at more than 16 million.
“Extraordinary worldwide sales have made ARC Raiders the most successful new product release in company history, and demonstrated that Nexon can deliver games at scale across global markets,” said the company. “Six months after the launch, and driven by a steady stream of content updates, ARC Raiders surpassed 16 million unit sales worldwide and consistently ranked among the top games on Steam’s most-played chart.”
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out how the studio plans to move its update cadence to releasing two major updates every year.