ARC Raiders Divided Quest: Four Recordings, One Very Cold Mountain
I lost a full kit to the infamous ARC Raiders Divided quest. Not to a raider, not to a Bully – to a door. Froze solid, I had nothing on me that could melt it, and by the time I’d worked out an alternative route, the Flash Freeze had already started chewing through my health bar. So let’s save you that. The Divided quest is genuinely one of the easier objectives in Frozen Trail, but Pendola Pass doesn’t care how easy your quest is. The mountain kills you anyway.
Here’s everything: where all four Nomad recordings sit, the one piece of equipment that stops the run going sideways, what you actually get paid, and what the recordings are even about.
Three Things That Waste a Run Before You Start
Most of the frustration people report with this quest comes down to the same handful of mistakes. Get these sorted and the rest is a walk.
You don’t need to extract with anything. Divided has no quest item. You interact with four recordings, the tracker registers them, done. That means a Free Loadout is completely viable – go in cheap, listen to some tapes, leave. Unless you’ve got other objectives running, there’s no reason to risk good gear.
You do need something that breaks ice. The Dispatch Tower entrance is very often sealed behind a wall of ice. A Flame Spray handles it, and your Raider Tool or a melee swing will break through too. Bring one of the three. This is the single most common reason people bounce off this quest.
It doesn’t have to be one raid. Progress carries between deployments. If you grab two recordings and a squad rolls up on you, leave. The tracker remembers. And if PvE mode is running, the whole thing works there too, which is the stress-free way to do it.
Where Divided Sits in the Nomad Story
Divided comes from the Nomadic Envoy – most guides and the Steam community quest list name him as Cassio – and it closes out his questline, which arrived with Frozen Trail.
It isn’t a starting quest. You need a decent chunk of the Pendola Pass chain behind you first, most immediately Ruins and Reverberations from Celeste. Trackers list a broader set of prerequisites across the mountain’s vendors: Picking Up The Pieces, Clearer Skies, Trash Into Treasure and Off The Radar from Shani, Clean Hands and Taking Stock from Ermal, plus Exploring Pendola Pass and Wires Crossed from Celeste.
In practice, if you’ve been working through Pendola Pass normally, Divided appears when it appears. Nothing follows it – this is the end of that thread.
The framing is grim, and it’s the best-written part. Speranza has worked out what happened at Pendola Pass. The Emperor that fell on this mountain cost the Nomads badly, and Speranza’s people didn’t escape the fallout either. You’re not retrieving loot here. You’re going through the last things a scattered community recorded before everything came apart.
ARC Raiders Divided Quest Route Across Pendola Pass
Four recordings, and you can grab them in any order. That matters more than it sounds, because Pendola Pass spawns are spread across a huge map, and forcing a fixed route from the wrong corner wastes minutes you’ll want for the gondola.
| # | Location | Map Position | Where Exactly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Loading Platforms | East, just below the Railyard | Upper level, inside the western control booth |
| 2 | Weather Station | North, beside the Railyard and below Cielo Sereno Observatory | Single building, on the desk near the entrance |
| 3 | Dispatch Tower | North, directly above Almatera Station | Top floor via zipline, on an office desk between two control stations |
| 4 | Almatera Station | South of the Dispatch Tower | Behind the long reception desk, between two computers |
The clean route if you spawn south or east: Loading Platforms, then north to the Weather Station, then northwest to the Dispatch Tower, then drop south into Almatera Station. That path also happens to run through decent loot and ends near reasonable extraction options.
Spawn in the north instead? Flip it. Dispatch Tower and Almatera Station first, then work east and south. There’s no bonus for order.
Stop One: Loading Platforms
This is the one Polygon’s guide flagged as the hardest of the four, and having searched it the long way round, that’s fair. The Loading Platforms sprawl.
Head to the east side of the map, just below the Railyard, and make for the middle of the area. You’re looking for an upper level with two booths on it and stairs running up to them. Take the stairs to the western booth – that’s where the recording sits.
The area is open and overlooked from several angles, so this is the stop where you’re most likely to catch a bullet. Listen before you climb.
Stop Two: Weather Station
Easiest of the four by a distance.
Travel north toward the Weather Station, which sits next to the Railyard and below the Cielo Sereno Observatory. Some guides locate it relative to the Controlled Receiving Facility to the west – either landmark gets you there.
There’s one building. Go inside. The recording is on a desk near the entrance. You’ll be in and out in fifteen seconds.
Worth knowing: the Weather Station is also a Flash Freeze shelter, so if the storm hits while you’re nearby, that building is doing double duty.
Stop Three: Dispatch Tower, and the Ice Problem
Northwest, directly north of Almatera Station. This is the stop that ruins runs.
More often than not, the entrance is sealed behind ice. Melt it with a Flame Spray, break it with your Raider Tool, or swing a melee weapon at it. If you brought nothing that works, you’re hunting for a second entrance in a snowstorm, and that’s exactly the situation I described at the top.
Once you’re in, take the zipline all the way to the top floor, go through the door, and the recording is waiting on an office desk between two control stations.
The vertical layout here is a blessing and a curse. You’re safe from most ground traffic while you’re up top, but you’re also committed – there’s only one sensible way down, and anybody who followed you in knows it.
Stop Four: Almatera Station
Head south from the Dispatch Tower. Almatera Station is large, but the recording is in a predictable spot.
Make for the main room, roughly central and slightly west on the map. Find the long reception desk and go around to the back of it. The recording sits between two computers.
One useful landmark: it’s right beside the locked door that needs the train station key. If you already know that room from looting runs, you’re standing in the right place.
Interact, check your tracker shows four of four, and get moving.
Getting Out: The Gondola Is Not a Hatch
Pendola Pass doesn’t connect to the Tube network – it’s too high. You arrive by Ballistic Gondola and you leave the same way, and it behaves nothing like a normal extract.
The countdown starts the moment anyone begins climbing into the pod. If you’re running with a squad, regroup first. One person jumping in early has stranded a lot of teams.
Flash Freeze Will Kill You Faster Than Any Raider
This is the mechanic that defines Pendola Pass, and new players consistently underestimate it.
Flash Freeze is a built-in weather event, a much harsher version of the Cold Snap condition from earlier maps. When it rolls in, standing outside drains you steadily, and it runs for roughly three minutes based on playtesting reports. You need to be indoors.
Named shelters across the map:
- East – Controlled Receiving Facility, Railyard.
- North – Frozen River, Researcher Lodgings, Dispatch Tower.
- Northeast – Cielo Sereno Observatory.
- Central – Commissary Supermarket.
- Southeast – Freight Terminal.
- West – Old Town.
Two things people get wrong here. First, standing next to a fire or a burner does not warm you – it has to be actual shelter. Second, shelters aren’t safe. They’re the most contested real estate on the map during a storm, and you should expect company at close range.
Flash Freeze can also seal doors behind ice, which is a second reason to carry something that melts it. Getting locked out of a shelter during a storm is how runs end.
Avalanche shelters dotted around the map hold loot, which also means they pull raiders. The huts can drop the Mountaineer Detector, and they’re always present somewhere on the map.
The New ARC Up Here
Frozen Trail added three machines, and the mountain is crawling with them because the Emperor’s collapse triggered a heavier ARC response across the whole region.
Bully is the one you’ll notice. Heavy, four-legged, charges fast, and attacks with incendiary shotgun rounds and grenades. In a confined station interior that combination is brutal.
Skulker and Hydra round out the trio. Neither is as immediately loud as a Bully, but all three mean the old Rust Belt instincts don’t fully transfer.
There’s also Redirection, a condition exclusive to this map. A Transmitter pulls Harvester payloads away from the Collector and toward wherever you’re standing. It’s lucrative and it’s a beacon – it draws ARC and rival squads simultaneously. Since Store Update 2.2.0, ARC actively react when someone activates a transceiver. Don’t start one mid-quest unless you’re prepared to hold that ground.
What Divided Actually Pays Out
| Reward | Quantity | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | 2,500 XP | Currency |
| Durable Cloth | 2 | Refined Material |
| Magnet | 2 | Topside Material |
| Music Box | 1 | Trinket |
| Rusted Gear | 1 | Recyclable |
The 2,500 XP is the real reward. The materials are fine – Durable Cloth and Magnets are genuinely handy for crafting and you’ll find a home for both – but nobody’s running this quest for a Rusted Gear.
So is it worth doing? Yes, but for the right reasons. The XP is solid for the effort involved, it closes a questline, and the route happens to drag you across four distinct zones of the biggest map in the game. If you’re learning Pendola Pass, Divided is an excellent excuse to tour it with purpose instead of wandering.
Just don’t bring your best kit to collect a trinket.
What the Recordings Actually Say
I want to flag this because it’s easy to blow past four interact prompts and miss the point entirely.
The Nomads on Pendola Pass were a community, and the recordings catch them in the middle of fracturing. The quest title isn’t decorative. Listening to all four in route order tells a different story than scattering them across three raids, which is a quiet argument for doing it in one go if your nerves allow.
Embark has always been good at this – environmental storytelling that doesn’t stop the game to deliver itself. Frozen Trail added 22 new quests and this is one of the ones that sticks.
Quick Tips Before You Deploy
- Pack a Flame Spray or keep your Raider Tool handy. The ice is not optional.
- Run a Free Loadout if Divided is your only objective. There’s nothing to extract and nothing to protect.
- Check the tracker after every interact. A recording that didn’t register is a wasted return trip.
- Watch the sky. If a Flash Freeze is building, get to the nearest shelter from the list above rather than pushing to the next objective.
- Regroup before the gondola. One teammate climbing in starts the clock for everyone.
Where This Fits in Frozen Trail
Divided is small by design. It’s a four-stop errand in an update that also brought the Fallen Emperor as endgame content, a fifth weapon tier in Amplified Weapons, the Outpost, a rebuilt skill tree and a Reward Pass that replaced Raider Decks and Cred entirely.
If you’re still working through Pendola Pass, the useful sequencing is this: get your 25 rounds in to open the map, clear the vendor questlines including this one while learning the terrain, bank your Reward Pass levels – the free track hands out Pendola Pass keys at 36, 42, 48 and 53 – and then start thinking about the Fallen Emperor, which needs an Emperor Gateway Conduit crafted from three ARC couplers.
Divided is a stepping stone. But it’s a cheap one, and it pays.
FAQ
Where do I get the Divided quest?
From the Nomadic Envoy in Speranza, after completing Ruins and Reverberations and a good portion of the Pendola Pass vendor chain.
Do I need to bring anything for Divided?
Nothing quest-specific. A Free Loadout works fine, though you should carry a Flame Spray or your Raider Tool for the ice at the Dispatch Tower.
Can I complete Divided across multiple raids?
Yes. Each recording registers permanently as soon as you interact with it, so you can split the four objectives across as many deployments as you need.
Can I do Divided in PvE mode?
Yes, if PvE is currently available. It’s the lowest-stress way to finish it.
Which recording is hardest to find?
The Loading Platforms one. The area is large and the recording sits in the western control booth on the upper level, which is easy to miss if you search the ground floor first.
Why can’t I get into the Dispatch Tower?
The entrance is frozen over. Melt the ice with a Flame Spray, or break it with your Raider Tool or a melee weapon.
What are the Divided quest rewards?
2,500 XP, two Durable Cloth, two Magnets, one Music Box and one Rusted Gear.
Last Word Before the Gondola
Divided is a thirty-minute job that becomes a two-hour job the moment you forget about the ice. Pack for the door, not the fight.
Take the route that matches your spawn, interact with all four, double-check the tracker, and ride the pod home. Then go and actually listen to the recordings in your quest log. The mountain’s story is better than the loot it hands you.
If this kept your kit off the snow, send it onward – share it, bookmark it, drop it in the squad chat before the next drop. And if you’ve got a creative or commercial project worth going Topside for, the Lizet Manski team is always listening on an open channel.