ARC Raiders Frigate Loot Guide: Frigate Inductor, Diagnostic Node, and Cargo Pod

If your Research Station is stuck one step short of Level 4, the missing piece is the Inductor, and no locker or container on a normal map will give it to you. The Frigate Inductor only comes from Frigate loot among scarce ARC Raiders Materials: the containers built into the ARC Frigate during its map condition. You do not need to finish the cargo run for one to drop. The round hatches on the hull, wings, and walkways can roll it just as well as anything deeper in the ship. Put it into your Safe Pocket the moment it lands in inventory.

What Is the ARC Frigate

The ARC Frigate is a map condition added in the Frozen Trail 2.0 update. It is an ARC Operation: a huge armed ARC ship hovers over the map and attacks anything it reads as resistance. You cannot shoot it down. You board it and take its loot.

The condition card sets four rules for the raid:

• No Free Loadout, so you drop in with your own kit.
• No active locked doors, so keys do nothing this raid.
• Overall loot value on the map is decreased.
• No active Raider Hatches, so you leave through a normal extraction point.

The ground also plays differently. ARC Turbines do not spawn, surface ARC is reduced, and the usual loot rooms are disabled. Most of the map's value now sits on the ship, plus whatever fallen raiders near it were carrying.

The Frigate condition appears on Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, Blue Gate, Riven Tides, and Pendola Pass. It does not appear on Stella Montis. It moves between those maps on an hourly rotation, shows as a tag under the map name on the deployment screen, and the live schedule sits on the official map conditions page. Queue the tagged map as soon as you see it, since late joins into a Frigate raid are cut off early.

How to Get on the Frigate

ARC Reclaimers, the smaller drones the Frigate sends out, dock under its stern. Wait for one to sink low, step on top, and hold Disrupt for about 3 seconds. The Reclaimer carries you up to the rear boarding area. A Grappling Hook or Snap Hook gets you onto the hull without waiting for a Reclaimer, and it also skips the two-player lift inside.

Do not stand around on the ground below the ship. A cannon in the Frigate's belly shells players standing in the open, and its autocannon attack is telegraphed by an audio cue and blue lasers. When you hear it, move and break line of sight. Leave the same way you came: ride a Reclaimer down rather than jumping off the hull.

Frigate Loot Pool: What the Containers Hold

Frigate loot sits in containers that come in versions that open freely and versions you have to breach. All of them share one pool of eleven items: Amplification Modules Mk. I through Mk. V, the Inductor, Diagnostic Node, Fluted Rotor Core, Pneumatic Actuator, Pressure Regulator, and Propellant Valve Assembly. With the A Little Extra skill, each breach also gives you Metal Brackets on top of the loot.

The three Epic parts stack to 3 and weigh 0.5 kg each. Propellant Valve Assembly is the fourth amplified weapon part in the pool. Every roll is random: no hatch always holds an Inductor or a high Mk. module. Amplification Modules also drop from the fallen Emperor on Pendola Pass, so that map is not Frigate-only for modules.

Since the Store Update 2.1.0 patch, Frigate hatches deal burning damage over time when they open. Have healing ready and step back from a hatch after you breach it.

How to Get Frigate Inductor

The Frigate Inductor is a Legendary Topside Material with a single craft job. The Research Station Level 4 upgrade takes 1 Frigate Inductor, 3 Thermal Shakers, and 3 ARC Data Modules. Research Station Level 4, together with Gunsmith Level 4, unlocks Weapon Amplification.

To get one, board the Frigate and open as many containers as you can reach safely. The round Breach and Search hatches along the outer hull, the rear wings, and the upper walkways are all in play. None of them need the power cores or the cargo run done first. You do not have to fight every ARC on board either; Rocketeers, Vaporizers, and Hydras guard the ship, but only the ones in your path matter.

It stacks to 1 and weighs 0.5 kg, so it barely touches your inventory. Selling it pays 7,000, and recycling returns 2 Advanced ARC Powercells and 2 ARC Circuitry. Selling or recycling it before the upgrade is built means waiting on another random roll for the next one. Move it into the Safe Pocket before you push deeper or drop off the ship.

Frigate Diagnostic Node: What It Actually Does

The name sends players looking for a panel to activate, but the Frigate Diagnostic Node is not a puzzle step. It is a Legendary research item from the same container pool as the Inductor. Its description reads: "Found in the trail of ARC Frigates, the electromagnetic signatures of these nodes turn out to be partially decipherable."

Study it at the Research Station in your Outpost for 1,000 Research Points, or sell it for 3,000. It has no crafting or quest use. Picking one up does not unlock anything on the ship or change your Inductor odds.

How to Do the Frigate Cargo Pod Run

The "Frigate puzzle" is the cargo run. You shut down the ship's power cores until it releases a cargo pod full of compartments. The central core needs three raiders holding controls at the same time, so a full squad of three is the real requirement.

1. Board the Frigate by Reclaimer or hook.
2. Take the lift: two raiders hold Move Up on its two side controls. Shoot the single weak point on each sealed panel to open the rooms.
3. Destroy the outer power cores in any order. Each one sits behind a rotating ring of shields, so shoot the shields first. Some cores can also be breached by hand, but taking damage interrupts the breach.
4. Watch the hazards around them. Cores near the fire rooms keep the fire running until their shields break. Heat vents beside the outer cores burst into fire on a timer, so do not stand on them.
5. In the Hydra Arena, clear the Hydras first. Then all three raiders hold Move Up on the three controls around the central core. When it rises, shoot its shields; they cannot be breached by hand.
6. The hull gate opens. Drop into the cargo hall.
7. Shoot the yellow weak points on the fore doors to reach the side halls. In the fan tunnel, acid covers the middle until you shoot the weak points on the fans.
8. Open the cargo latches. Each latch core has shields: shoot them, then two raiders breach the latch together.
9. Drop into the red-lit shaft and break the shields on the cargo gate core. Then two raiders work the ratchet handles at either end of the pod, together, until it releases.
10. Ride the pod down on top. Loot its compartments on both sides while ARC waves land around you.

On the Top Deck, wind gusts push raiders toward an incendiary trap. Destroying the power cores on a side shuts off the wind for that side.

Hull search and the full pod run pull from the same Frigate loot pool—including the Epic parts that feed ARC Raiders BluePrints for amplified weapon crafting—but the costs are not the same. A solo or duo Snap Hook run can board, clear the first deck and underside ports, and extract in a short slice of the raid clock with lower fight risk; the tradeoff is fewer container rolls and no pod compartments. A full cargo pod run needs three players at the central core, eats most of the raid, and ends in a Hydra fight plus ARC waves at the landing site; the tradeoff is many more rolls from the same pool in one boarding. Pick the short hull path when you only need an Inductor or Diagnostic Node roll. Bring a squad when you want the pod's extra containers and can spend the clock and the fight.

Common Frigate Mistakes

• Packing keys or planning a Raider Hatch exit. Neither works under this condition.
• Queuing late. Late joins are cut off early, so pick the tagged map at the start of the rotation slot.
• Standing in the open below the hull while the cannon is firing.
• Standing at the pod's landing point. The 2.1.0 patch limited crushing to the landing point and riders inside, so ride on top, not beside it.
• Hunting for a "Diagnostic Node puzzle". The node is loot, not a step.
• Leaving a Frigate Inductor or a high Mk. module in your backpack instead of the Safe Pocket.
• Looting the pod until the ARC waves pin you down with no time left to reach extraction.
• Jumping off the hull to leave instead of riding a Reclaimer down.
• Committing a solo player to the central core. Without three raiders on the controls, the pod never opens, and the clock is spent for nothing.

The U4GM Team