ARC Raiders Grappling Hook: blueprint, crafting recipe and how it works

The Grappling Hook landed with Frozen Trail 2.0 on 8 October, and it’s the first gadget in ARC Raiders that made me look at a rooftop and think, fine, that’s mine now. It’s an Uncommon Quick Use item, so it takes a Quick Use slot and leaves both weapon slots alone. About time we got a way up that isn’t a ladder with some prick camping the top of it.

Get one before you craft anything

Skip the blueprint chase for a minute. Level 6 on the free Reward Pass track gives you two ready-made Grappling Hooks, which is plenty to find out whether swinging off buildings is for you before you burn a single Rope. If it isn’t your thing, congrats, you just saved yourself a Cable Stripper hunt. The blueprint sits at level 12 on that same track.

Every way to get the blueprint

• Reward Pass, level 12. Free track, so Premium isn’t needed. Only one Reward Pass can be active at a time, which means Frozen Trail has to be the one you’re levelling. (The Premium track is where the Weapon Stencils live, and our Stencils guide covers every one of them.)
• Research Station. Research Station 1 unlocks it for 2,000 Research Points and 10 Rope, once your Outpost is up and running.
• Loot. Weapon Cases and Raider Caches can drop it. There’s no fixed spawn, and Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storms are the raids that make the loot better. A blueprint you find has to be learned at Speranza with Learn and Consume, which eats that copy.
• Traders. The Nomadic Envoys sell the hook itself, not the blueprint.

My order is the Reward Pass first, because it’s free and guaranteed. The Research Station is a fair backup if you’re drowning in Rope, but paying 2,000 Research Points and 10 Rope for something the pass gives away is a mug’s game. Hunting it in loot is worse. There’s no fixed spawn, so you’re just cracking open Weapon Cases and hoping, which is how I play half this game anyway.

Crafting it

Station: Utility Station, Level 1. Rope turns up in commercial and residential areas, and Celeste will sell it to you for 10 Assorted Seeds a piece. The Cable Stripper is the one you’ll actually hunt for, and it comes out of mechanical and industrial loot, so go poke around the buildings that look like they smell of oil. Recycle a used hook and you get 1 Rope and 1 Cable Stripper back, so spares cost less than they look.

How it works

You fire it at nearly any surface and the anchor point becomes a pivot. From there you climb toward it, lower yourself down it or swing around it. It’s a rope with pendulum physics, not a zip-to-point reel, so you’re the one steering, and if you steer like me you’ll meet a lot of walls. The Legendary Snap Hook is the one that reels you in on its own.

Everything you do on the rope drains stamina, so a long swing on a half-empty bar ends in a heap at the bottom of the wall. You can throw it again mid-air with no cooldown and no limit on throws, and that’s what lets you chain one swing into the next. Climbing a building is about as quick as climbing a ladder, which sounds less impressive than it feels.

Two things will piss you off. The rope snags on balconies (fucking balconies), and it’s dead easy to miss the ledge at the top of a climb and slide back down. I wouldn’t try either with a squad shooting at my feet.

Same patch, Embark nerfed the Snap Hook. Range dropped from 20m to 18m, the durability cost per use doubled from 2% to 4% and the power cost went from 50 to 60. The Snap Hook is a short-burst tool now, which leaves the Grappling Hook as the one for real traversal. That matters on Pendola Pass, the new frozen mountain settlement, because it’s built with far more vertical space than anything before it. That map wants you off the ground.

Is it worth building around?

Yes. It costs three cheap items and buys you high ground, a way out of a bad fight, and a window to climb into instead of the door everyone’s watching. The catch is stamina. Dangling on a rope with an empty bar while someone lines you up is a shit way to go, so look at the bar before you commit to a long gap, and learn which walls the hook likes on a quiet map before you try it with a full bag. If Frozen Trail has you wanting more, the Frigate is the other big thing it added.

Quick answers

Do I need the Premium Pass?

No. Level 6 (two hooks) and level 12 (the blueprint) are both on the free track, so nobody paywalled the fun bit.

Can I just buy one?

Yes, from the Nomadic Envoys in the Traders menu. The blueprint isn’t for sale there.

Is there a limit on throws?

No. Stamina is the only limit. More ARC Raiders guides are on our ARC Raiders hub.