I chose to do the wipe. Then I spent two weeks regretting it.

The decision made sense at the time.

The Expedition 3 window was open, the construction of the caravan was finished, the permanent skill points were waiting. Five extra skill points in the new Raider — that's real, meaningful progression that lasts forever. I had read the guides, I understood the deal. You lose your stash, workshop upgrades, blueprints. You start from scratch. You become stronger in ways that accumulate with each future cycle.

My name is Riven. I've been playing ARC Raiders since early access, and I hit the Enlistment button on April 29 knowing exactly what I was leaving behind.

What I wasn't prepared to face was what the next two weeks would feel like.

What “starting from scratch” really means

I showed up in Speranza with basic weapons, a Light Shield, and that particular confidence that comes from having been through this before. I knew the maps. He knew the extraction routes. He knew which Dynamic Events were worth the risk and which were a trap for under-equipped Raiders. The skill points from the previous Expedition were in my tree. He was not a new player.

But my loadout said the opposite.

The library of plans he had spent months building — gone. The Anvil I had been crafting every game to have consistent damage. The augment Looting Mk.3 (Survivor) that gave me the extra safe pocket on which I had built my entire extraction strategy. Both of them, gone along with everything else. The knowledge of how to get them was still there. The plans themselves, no.

And here's the part that specifically hurts: the players I shared zones with hadn't wiped. They had no reason to do so. The Expedition is voluntary, and many experienced Raiders look at the permanent buff numbers, evaluate whether the blueprint reset is worth it, and decide that the trade is not worth it. Those players ran with their favorite loadouts, the ones they had spent weeks building.

I was trying to mine enough materials to unlock a workshop station while a fully equipped Raider cleared an area I used to farm with no problems.

The gap is real

I want to be precise about what the loadout difference actually feels like in ARC Raiders, because it's different than other extraction games.

In Tarkov, everyone wipes together. The reset is universal. In ARC Raiders, the wipe is personal and voluntary — which means that after the Expedition you are not in a fresh lobby with other characters who have just started. You're in the same areas as players who have been building up their blueprint library for months and simply decided not to reset. The mechanical advantage they have is real. Better weapon blueprints mean better crafted weapons. Better augment blueprints mean better build options — things like extra safe pockets, faster healing, expanded loadout slots. You're not just behind in gear — you're behind in the fundamental crafting access that determines what gear you can even build.

That's the part that most Expedition guides underestimate: ARC Raiders doesn't reset everyone at once. Your Expedition reset is personal, so your loss of blueprints occurs within an economy where other players may have accumulated craftable access for months. You chose to do the wipe. They didn't have to do it.

Knowing that in theory and experiencing it two weeks after the wipe while someone with the Combat Mk.3 (Flanking) augment was clearing an area that I was trying to farm with starting equipment were two completely different things.

The decision I should have made sooner

By the second week I was more tired of the gap than enjoying the rebuilding loop. The skill points were fine. The grinding of plans, no. Especially since I wasn't farming toward something unknown — I was farming toward things I'd already unlocked once, trying to retrieve specific recipes I knew I wanted, through the same RNG that had already made them frustrating the first time.

I would have done about twenty sessions since the wipe at that time. No Anvil plan. The Looting Mk.3 (Survivor) that required Security Containers was also not showing up — the drop rate felt brutal, and the correct containers were also limited by the timing of the events.

A squadmate mentioned that he had gotten a couple of blueprints through LepreStore after his own previous wipe. Not the entire library — just the specific ones I knew I needed immediately, recipes that were rare drops or depended on events I couldn't time well. He said that reduced the frustrating part of post-wipe recovery from weeks to days.

What worried me most was access to the account. It turned out that that wasn't part of the process at all.

The way it works makes sense once you understand how the game handles blueprints — they're physical objects, so delivery is an in-raid exchange. A booster who already has the blueprint joins a group with you, drops it on the ground in a quiet part of the map, you pick it up and put it in your safe pocket, and then you extract. Back in Speranza, press “Learn and Consume” and the recipe is permanently unlocked. No login, no password, no account access — just a standard loot drop between two players.

The only thing I had to do was not die before mining, which honestly felt appropriate for a mining game. I'm simplifying the details, but that was the basic sequence.

Two specific plans. Almost two weeks of failed farming compressed into a single in-game trade.

The next session felt different. Not dramatically — I still had to farm materials, I still had to play carefully, I still had to rebuild the workshop stations that the wipe had reset. Access to the plans does not replace any of that. But I was using the settings I had actually chosen instead of making do with what the RNG had offered me up to that point. That distinction matters more than it seems when you've been playing around a gap in your own loadout for two weeks.

If the wipe was worth it

Honestly, yes. Permanent skill points matter. Expedition's system is well designed for what it's trying to do — give dedicated players a prestige loop without invalidating the experience for those who don't want to restart.

But if you're going to wipe, go in with a plan for the gap. Specifically: know which two or three blueprints your build really depends on before pressing Enlistment, because those are the ones that will cost you the most time to recover through normal farming. The rebuild loop is genuinely enjoyable the first week when everything feels fresh. By the second week, when you're still doing the same Security Container routes waiting for a drop you already got once, patience wears thin.

The wipe gave me the Expedition buff I wanted. What cost me two weeks was not having a blueprint recovery plan.

If you already know which planes your build depends on, use aARC Raiders blueprint serviceIt made more sense than repeating weeks of RNG farming for things I'd already gotten once. For me, LepreStore solved exactly that problem.