January 2026's been a proper eye-opener for ARC Raiders. I logged in for "one quick run" during Cold Snap and, of course, it turned into a whole night of chasing blueprints, freezing my stamina bar to dust, and limping to extraction with pockets full of panic. When I finally took a breather, I threw on TheBurntPeanut's Team Leader Chronicles and ended up watching the Gingy + Ja'Marr Chase session like it was a playoff game. If you're trying to keep up with the post-wipe economy, you'll see why some folks just purchase Arc Raiders coins to get a baseline kit and actually play the event instead of scraping metal for hours.

The clip everyone keeps replaying

The moment that's everywhere is so simple it hurts. Chase pushes a building, gets absolutely deleted, and suddenly he's bargaining like his life depends on it—because in ARC Raiders, it kinda does. He's downed, bleeding out, and he starts offering Bengals season tickets for a revive. Not even joking. That's the magic of this game: it flips your brain. You're not thinking about aim labs or kill counts. You're thinking, "I've got good loot and the timer's ticking, please don't let this be how it ends." It's funny, sure, but it's also the most honest thing you can do in a high-stakes extraction fight.

What their squad did that actually worked

Past the laughs, the teamwork was the real lesson. They weren't sprinting at every gunshot like it's a highlight reel. They played time, space, and noise. The smartest bit was how they used ARC machines—especially Harvesters—as moving problems for anyone chasing them. You pull aggro, you rotate wide, and suddenly the other team's stuck choosing between PvP pressure and a PvE blender. I tried copying it with my duo: we dragged a machine across a choke, doubled back through a side lane, and heard the fight behind us get messy fast. It's risky, but when it lands, it buys you the one thing you never have enough of in Cold Snap: seconds.

Cold Snap loadouts and the economy reality

Their gear choices were also on point for the freeze mechanics. Pure DPS looks great on paper until your stamina's gone and you're waddling in the open. Gingy played more like an anchor—smokes, meds, and pacing—while Chase took the aggressive flanks with a Kettle Rifle, popping in and out to force bad angles. It's a reminder people forget after a wipe: roles matter. If everybody tries to be the star, nobody resets the fight, nobody covers the retreat, and you all lose the kit you can't afford to replace.

What I'm taking into my next raids

I'm going back in with two priorities: make the environment do work for me, and stop treating every engagement like it's mandatory. If your stash is thin, you need consistency more than hero plays, and that might mean building a cheap, repeatable setup before you chase "perfect" guns. A lot of players I know use marketplaces to speed that up, and it's easy to see the appeal when Cold Snap keeps draining your resources; if you do go that route, u4gm is one of the names that comes up for grabbing currency or items so you can focus on clean rotations and smarter extractions instead of endless rebuild runs.