If you have been grinding the Flickering Flames event in Arc Raiders for a while, you have probably already noticed that hiding in the tunnels is not enough any more and that you really need to be pushing topside if you want steady ARC Raiders Coins and decent loot from this thing. The whole structure of the event lives and dies on how many Merits you can stack in a run, and the number you are aiming at is 600 Merits for each payout cycle, which then spits out cosmetic rewards like the High-tech Hiker outfit, Raider Tokens for later purchases, and a mix of fresh emotes that make your character feel a bit less like a mute mannequin.
Understanding The Merit Loop
A lot of players just sprint around, grab whatever shines, and then wonder why their event progress feels slow or random, but the game is quietly running a resource commitment system behind all that action. You basically "donate" scavenged junk to climb through the Flickering Flames stages, and some of the items it asks for are the stuff you would usually ignore or leave on the ground when you are in a hurry. The real pain point right now is Candleberries, because nearly everyone in public lobbies is short on them and you can hear people complaining about it in voice chat every other match.
How To Farm Candleberries Properly
If Candleberries are where your progress stalls, you do not fix it by doing more of the same random drops in whatever weather the game throws at you, you fix it by timing your deployments for Cold Snap conditions. That weather pattern seems to crank up the berry spawns, so you want to queue during those windows, then slow down a bit and really scan bushes and low foliage instead of just bee-lining from fight to fight. The berries are bright red so they should pop, but when bullets start flying and you are sliding into cover, it is way too easy for them to blend into the background and you end up leaving half your potential progress sitting in the grass.
Event Stages And What They Actually Want
All that scavenging feeds into five Flickering Flames stages, each one asking for a different grab-bag of stuff, and it makes sense to mentally group them while you loot so you are not constantly checking menus. Candlelight is your opener and that one cares about Empty Wine Bottles, Plastic Parts, and Durable Cloth, which are not glamorous but show up a lot if you search interiors properly. Decorations comes next and wants Candle Holders, Light Bulbs, and Industrial Batteries, so scrap piles and power-related areas suddenly get more interesting. Presents is where the tone shifts a bit because the checklist moves over to Snap Blast Grenades, Duct Tape, and Film Reels, which means you start sacrificing tools you might normally keep for fights, so you have to decide what you are willing to give up in each raid.
Meals Stage, Long Event Window, And Pacing
The last stretch of the project goes through Beverages and then Meals, and Meals is the one that always makes people double-take because the request list of Mushrooms, Frying Pans, and Music Albums feels more like you are stocking a weird campfire party than supporting a resistance cell, but it is still worth planning your routes around places where those items spawn regularly. Through every part of the event, do not get casual about Candleberries, because you are going to need them the whole way and they are so often the thing that blocks your next tier reward even when everything else looks good, so just train yourself to grab them on instinct. The nice part is that the event runs all the way until 13 January 2026, which gives you a huge window to pace yourself, line up your raids with Cold Snap weather, and build a habit of banking Merits at 600 so you steadily unlock cosmetics, emotes, and whatever you are planning to buy with cheap ARC Raiders Coins in RSVSR.
