The Cold Snap update in Arc Raiders changes the way every match feels, and not just because shots hurt more or less. The weather itself is now part of the fight, and if you ignore it, you are done. When you drop into the snow, visibility drops fast, movement feels heavier, and if you wander about like it is a regular lobby, you will freeze up, slow down, and get punished by a squad that actually planned their path and spent some time farming ARC Raiders Coins along the way.

Safe Zones As Rotations

Safe zones are where a lot of players mess up. Newer squads treat bunkers or intact ruins like they are home base and just sit there. That is how you get wrapped on from two sides and wiped. You want to treat these spots as pit stops, not camps. Get in, warm up, sort your next move, then get out. While you are inside, pay attention to sound. Snow crunch has its own rhythm, and you can often hear a team slogging past before they realise you are close. It is tempting to sit tight and hope they walk away, but you are better off using that audio to decide whether you rotate early or set an ambush on the exit you know they will take.

High Risk Loot Routes

Loot is still stacked around industrial zones and crashed machinery, but the risk there went up a lot. You do not have time to stand in the open, comparing stats on every gun like you are in a menu screen. Your body temp is dropping, and you are basically advertising yourself to anyone watching those obvious loot spawns. The cleaner way to play is to send one teammate on overwatch while one or two grab what they can reach fast. Call out lines of sight, move in short bursts, and accept that you will sometimes leave items behind. Greed kills more squads in Cold Snap than bad aim ever will.

Footprints, Ambushes And Heat

The snow turning into a tracking system is the big meta shift. You are leaving a record of everywhere you go, so are they. If you see a line of fresh prints cutting across a valley, do not just follow like a trail of breadcrumbs. Swing wide, get height on a ridge or a second floor, and wait until the enemy commits to the open before you shoot. You are not just fighting them, you are fighting the map for them. Heat sources sit at the centre of that. They keep you alive, but they also pull desperate players into predictable paths. Dropping a heat source near a doorway, a choke, or just off the route to a safe zone turns that spot into a kill box. Freezing players run to the glow without thinking, and if your team is already lined up with good angles and maybe a few extra ARC Raiders Coins for sale invested in gear, the fight is usually over before they even scope in.