Arc Raiders sure is doing a lot of things right — a fantastic community, emergent gameplay, incredibly impressive enemy AI, and a gameplay loop that's impossible not to get addicted to. At the same time, Embark Studios are doing a stand-up job at spoiling the player base with constant updates, with a major one that rolled around right near the end of the second week.

In Arc Raiders, outside of the main four maps available at launch, a new, fifth map just came at the end of the game's first fortnight. The Stella Montis map is now here, and it is a glorious mess. There's no other way to describe it, honestly. Arc Raiders' first PvP-focused, indoor-only map where every run includes running into or making at least a dozen corpses, Stella Montis has... a lot going on, to say the least.

Stella Montis is Arc Raiders' first fully-indoor map

No mountains or forests to hide in, I'm afraid

One of the games' strongest suits is its map diversity. Dam Battlegrounds is a sprawling swamp and lakeside area with an industrial complex. Buried City is, well, a completely buried city. And then Spaceport and The Blue Gate are just gorgeous landscapes that are breathtaking to be in. So, with Stella Montis, Embark did something different — they made it indoor-only.

The new Stella Montis map is a series of underground tunnels and facilities intersecting at separate levels of verticality, with an underground line of subway stations to boot. This map introduces a new type of indoor ARC enemy, the Shredder, but its highlight is clearly the design here. I think the closest comparison I can make here is the Factory map from Tarkov, which was surprisingly PvP focused with its tight corridors and snug rooms. That's the same architecture involved here in Stella Montis, and, consequentially, we also get pretty much the same level of PvP engagements, if not more.

It is absolutely built for PvP

Even solo lobbies are filled with bloodlust in Stella Montis

It's not surprising at all that a map that's only got tight corridors and dark halls and atriums, is rife with players engaging in PvP at every corner. Heck, Arc Raiders is inarguably one of the most peaceful communities out there, with a significant chunk of the player base outright refusing to shoot at other players instead of the mechanized ARC enemies, but here in Stella Montis? Even the most pacifist of players seem to have turned to the dark side, even in solo lobbies where, in any other map, you'd see people running into each other, becoming friendly, and helping each other out by the dozens.

Here in Stella Montis, however, it's rather easy to see or hear someone coming. After all, we're talking about metal walkways and hard floors in an indoor environment. Considering just how fantastic Arc Raiders' audio design is, it's impossible not to be anywhere in Stella Montis without being able to hear a fight down the hallway, or someone breaching a container five doors away. You can even hear players walking in perma-crouch, and when you're so hyper-aware of other players' presence around you, it's easy to have a trigger finger layered with butter.

The new map comes with a new enemy

The humble Shredder earns its name

On any other map, the mechanized ARC enemies are a clear threat in many shapes and forms. There's the Leaper, the Rocketeer, the Bastion, and the Bombardier — gigantic machines that won't take more than a couple of seconds to absolutely decimate you if they spot you. Heck, even the smaller Wasps and Hornets — airborne patrolling drones — become a threat if you're not ready for them. Inside buildings and complexes, however, the threat is much less severe, with tiny mechanized spiders called Ticks and Fireballs that roll around and explode around you.

Stella Montis, however, changes that completely. Enter, the humble Shredder. A levitating R2D2-like machine that slowly chases you and shoots four humongous waves of shrapnel that tear you and your team apart, the Shredder is simply not to be trifled with. After losing my entire loot because of a Shredder more times than I'd care to admit, I just took down my first one, and it took all the grenades I was carrying, and then some.

The best part, however, is that the Shredder seemingly doesn't have a weak spot like the rest of the ARC (it does, but I'm not spoiling it for you). That's what makes running away the only viable option, until you realize that you may have dodged the Shredder, but ran into another raider's bullets as a result. Or when a Shredder decides to third-party a PvP battle, the gameplay becomes incredibly emergent, because the two players either decide to team up, or run away.

Heck, I got shot down by a player who chose to ignore the Shredder coming at us, only to then be taken down by the machine while they tried to knock me out. Lose-lose, buddy. And all of this is before the extra number of drones flying inside, the increase Ticks, Fireballs and Pops, all of which are now much bigger threats because you don't really have a lot of space to navigate and dodge into.

The Stella Montis mess is glorious, but not always

Technical issues are rampant and clear as day here

It isn't all smooth sailing here in Arc Raiders' new map, though. It isn't even the PvP that players are complaining about, although, to be fair, a large chunk of the playerbase is doing that as well. Instead, the new map is infested with problems on the technical and design side. De-sync issues have plagued Arc Raiders since launch — sometimes, you'll be hidden in a corner while still getting shot at because the server decided you were visible. Now, in the other maps, this wasn't a deal-breaker, since PvP encounters are few and far between. But in Stella Montis, where every room opens up into a new battle, it's certainly turning a lot of players sour.

Add to that the fact that the map is pretty small, while still having the same number of player spawns, and you have an absolute train wreck where, on more than one occasion, you'll end up spawning right in the middle of a firefight. That has happened to me twice — loading into Stella Montis with a packed inventory to engage in PvP, only to be caught right in the crossfire of two warring players, and losing all my stuff without even having had the time to breathe or aim.

To fix this, I'm hoping the devs either decrease the player count per Stella Montis server, or make the spawns a lot farther away. The latter might prove tough, but regardless, this is an issue that requires fixing.

Arc Raiders' roadmap is already delivering

And Stella Montis is proof of it

Two weeks is all it took for Embark to drop a brand-new map, tie it into a community event, and then crank up that event's difficulty once players blazed through it faster than expected. That alone is rather telling of the fact that the roadmap of the game is more momentum, less lip service. Stella Montis, for all its chaos, is the clearest sign of what Arc Raiders can be: fast, reactive, alive.

This is a pressure cooker of a map, honestly. Trust evaporates under flickering lights and echoing footsteps, and there are very rare moments of camaraderie here. This only makes the feeling of striking up a truce feel even more like an achievement — like discovering a quiet corner in a warzone and walking out with a new ally instead of another enemy.

Embark is building something with heart, soul, and teeth

Stella Montis is messy, loud, unfair, and unforgettable. It's exactly the kind of shake-up that Arc Raiders needed this early into its lifecycle. It amplifies the best parts of the game's tension and tests the limits of its community spirit.

Sure, it isn't perfect, but it's proof that Embark is building something with heart, soul, and teeth. If this is how Arc Raiders evolves even before month one is over, I can't wait to see what month six or twelve hold for us.