Cold Snap didn't just dust the Rust Belt with snow, it turned every open stretch into a timer you can actually feel. If you've been chaining raids, you've seen it: the shiver, the hand rub, the little "I'm fine" lie you tell yourself while you sprint for a doorway. I started treating warmth like ammo. If I'm low, I don't "one more crate" it—I rotate inside, reset, then go again. And yeah, if you're short on supplies or you just don't have the hours, I get why people look at ARC Raiders Items and think, "That'd save my weekend."

Play The Weather, Not The Loot

The biggest adjustment is accepting that the map is trying to punish greed. Frostbite stacks fast, and it's sneaky because you're usually mid-fight when it starts biting. My rule's simple: pick fights where the walls help you. Indoors means your gear stops frosting up, your sightlines shrink, and third-parties can't beam you from half a field away. You don't need to full-send every time, either. Dip in, take a clean angle, back out, warm up, re-peek. It feels slower, but you'll come out with more stuff and fewer "why did I do that?" deaths.

Flickering Flames: The Real Math

Flickering Flames looks intimidating on paper, but it's mostly about pacing. To clear all five stages you're aiming for 260 Candleberries. The track hands you a big chunk—around 180—just from earning XP, so don't panic-farm from zero. When you do need berries, the Dam Battlegrounds has been the most consistent for me. Run a tight loop around the Hydroponic Dome and the Scrapyard, keep your head on a swivel, and you'll regularly snag 30–40 per trip. The bushes are bright red, hard to miss, and that's the trap—other players see them too, so don't stand still harvesting like you're gardening.

Junk Gates That Waste Your Time

Most people stall out not on berries, but on the weird "donation" items. Stage 1 feels fine, then Stage 2 smacks you with Industrial Batteries and suddenly you're checking every locker like it owes you money. Skip that. Hit the Spaceport east trench where the spawns are reliable and get in, get out. Later, Stage 5 asks for Mushrooms, and they're not hiding in tidy rooms. You want felled trees and rotting logs near riverbanks, especially around the Bastion area. It's dull, it's muddy, and it works. Do that and you're on track for the Snap Hook and the Snowglobe Charm without turning the event into a second job.

The rewards make the grind feel less painful once you're rolling—Tier 25's Space Wrench is ridiculous, and the Hi-Tech Hiker outfit actually looks like something you'd wear on purpose. Still, the calendar's tight and raids don't always go your way. If you're one stage short and staring at a shopping list of Candle Holders, Film Reels, and whatever else the event decides you "need," it's not wild to fast-track the missing pieces and lock in the cosmetics while you can, especially if you've already done the hard part. A lot of players handle that by grabbing what they're missing through ARC Raiders BluePrint and then spending the rest of their time actually playing raids instead of counting bushes.