If you have been spending late nights in ARC Raiders during the Cold Snap event, you have probably noticed that new progression bar sitting at the top of your screen, quietly nagging you between fights and loot runs, and it quickly becomes a big part of why you log in, especially once you realise it ties straight into valuable ARC Raiders Items that feel worth chasing.
How Merit Actually Works
The whole thing is built around Merit, which sounds like some serious military ranking system, but in practice it is just rep that proves you have been grinding. The game simply turns your XP into Merit, so you do not need some ultra-specific playstyle to move the bar. You get XP from almost everything: clearing out ARC machines, opening containers, dragging scrap back to base, even the boring stuff like harvesting resources in the snow. You will notice that safe extractions with a full backpack give you a big spike of XP, so it is usually better to slow down, avoid dumb fights, and get out alive instead of trying to be a hero in every encounter.
Why The Reward Track Feels Worth It
The Flickering Flames track runs through 25 levels, and the early bits are fine but nothing wild, which is pretty normal for an event track, but once you start pushing into the middle and higher tiers, the loot begins to feel like a real payoff. Around 600 Merit you unlock the Hi-Tech Hiker Outfit that fits the frozen map really well, and that is usually the first point where people go "ok, now I am invested." Further on, there are useful pieces like Raider Tokens and the Yellow Camo colour that somehow works with more gear sets than you would expect, plus the Check Compass emote at 3,000 Merit that is perfect for messing about with your squad between drops. The big chase item, though, is the Space Wrench skin at 15,000 Merit, and once someone in your group shows up with it, it kind of becomes the unofficial badge that they sweated this event.
Playing Smart For Faster Merit
If you want to move up the track faster, the trick is not just "kill more stuff," even though wiping out machine-heavy zones does help a lot. You will get more out of each run by mixing in careful looting with your fights, hitting containers along routes you already travel, and not skipping easy resource spots on the way to objectives. Players who stay alive, cash out often, and avoid losing full inventories to greedy pushes usually see their Merit totals climb quicker than the ones who just chase gunfights. Think of it as treating every raid like a little project: grab what you can, avoid unnecessary risk, and know when to hit extraction instead of taking one more fight because someone on voice says "we've got time."
Making Candleberries Work For You
Candleberries are where a lot of people stumble, because you need them for seasonal projects but they only show up in bushes and forested spots during proper Cold Snap weather, which means wandering around half-blind in the snow hoping the RNG likes you, and that gets old fast if you are short on time. A nicer workaround is to use the reward track itself as your supply line, since there are Candleberry bundles baked into several tiers between 1,200 and 2,400 Merit, so pushing those levels can be faster than endlessly combing the map. If you balance your runs between fights and looting, keep an eye on weather cycles, and focus on surviving with what you have already picked up instead of going back for "just one more chest," you will hit level 25 and stack enough resources to kit out some cheap Raiders weapons long before the snow finally clears.
