Inside the event menu, you'll see the community progress, the material donation panel, and how many Merits you've earned so far. From here, you can repeatedly donate materials in order to ARC Raiders Coins help fund the construction project tied to Stella Montis.
The interface is straightforward and easy to follow, and you can contribute as many times as you want-provided you have the materials.
What Materials Can You Donate
Each contribution consists of a batch of five materials, and the game accepts a range of common crafting resources:
Metal Parts
Fabric
Plastic Parts
Rubber Parts
Chemicals
These are all items players normally gather while scavenging, looting containers, dismantling ARCR Items, or clearing zones of ARC activity. Since they are everyday materials needed for crafting and upgrading, you likely already have a healthy supply lying in your stash.
There's no preferred material or weighted contribution-five of anything counts as a valid donation, regardless of rarity or in-game value. That means players can donate whatever they're comfortable parting with. If you're overloaded with Metal Parts, go with those. If you'd rather use chemicals you aren't planning to craft with, that works too.
How Contributions Help Unlock Stella Montis
For every batch of materials you donate, the global community project advances. This means your individual contribution-no matter how small-helps every ARC Raider worldwide move closer to unlocking the new map.
The progress is shared across the entire player base, not tracked separately per account. Once the collective goal is reached, Stella Montis will unlock for everyone during the next event phase.
This structure is a clever way for ARC Raiders to bring its community together, rewarding everyone for participation and encouraging cooperation even outside traditional gameplay.
How to Earn Merits
For now, donating materials is the only way to earn Merits in the Breaking New Ground event. Merits act as your personal contribution reward currency, and the system tracks how many you've accumulated over the course of the event.
A few key points:
You earn Merits only by donating materials.
The maximum amount you can currently earn is 900 Merits.
You cannot earn Merits through missions, kills, exploration, or any other activity at this time.
This means that your best-and only-strategy is to keep gathering materials during regular gameplay and donate them whenever you return to base.
What Merits Are Used For
Merits aren't immediately spendable during the initial phase of Breaking New Ground. Think of them as early investment tokens. Once the community finishes unlocking Stella Montis, the next event phase will introduce rewards that you can claim using the Merits you've stockpiled.
Although the full reward list hasn't been revealed yet, the event page confirms that Merits will be essential for:
Exclusive event cosmetics
Potential consumables or boosters
Items tied to the Stella Montis rollout
Additional limited-time offerings
The developers will release more information about cheap ARCR Coins the reward phase once the community completes the construction progress. Until then, your priority is simply earning and saving as many Merits as possible.