The Arc Raiders Shoring Up Defenses quest dropped with the Riven Tides update, and I burned through three raids before I figured out why my “board up the window” objective wouldn’t tick off. If you’re hitting the same wall, this guide pulls together everything I wish someone had told me before I queued up.
Here’s what I’m covering:
- All four objectives and the smartest order to knock them out
- Where the Stacking Yard crane structure actually is (it’s not where the marker pin makes it look)
- The Hotel Panorama Azzurro window that always works
- What to bring in your loadout so you don’t waste a raid
- Rewards Apollo hands you and whether they’re worth the grind
Let me save you the headache.
Table of Contents
What Apollo Hands You and Why This Quest Matters
Shoring Up Defenses is one of the three opening Apollo quests in the Riven Tides update, and it’s basically your tutorial for the new map. The second you accept it, Apollo slides you a Dockmaster’s Detector — a one-time gadget you’ll use later for the Beachcombing condition to dig up buried loot. That alone makes accepting the quest worth it, even if you don’t grind it out right away.
The four objectives are:
- Destroy 5 Wasps
- Destroy 3 Fireflies
- Use 1 ARC Alloy to reinforce the Raider structure on top of any Stacking Yard crane
- Board up the shuttered windows in the hotel
You can finish all four in any order, across as many raids as you want. You don’t need to one-and-done it. That’s the single biggest piece of info that took stress off my back — if you die with three out of four checked, you keep the progress.
My Loadout Before Loading Into Riven Tides
Riven Tides is no joke. It’s a red zone in places, swarming with Pops, Fireballs, Turrets, and the new aerial threats you’re hunting. Going in undergunned means you’ll be feeding loot to other raiders within five minutes.
Here’s what I run for this specific quest:
- A Hullcracker or anything with armor-pen — Wasps and Fireflies have armored thrusters. Hullcracker can one-shot a Wasp if you tag the motor cleanly.
- A backup automatic weapon for ground threats and PvP encounters
- One ARC Alloy in your safe pocket — this is the part that screwed me on raid one. If you don’t have a safe pocket augment, you risk losing the alloy on death and needing to source another before re-entering. The alloy gets consumed only when you actually reinforce the crane structure, so until then it’s just a target on your back.
- Ferro rounds or grenades for the bigger Fireflies
- A med kit and bandages — you will get hit climbing the crane, the top is a sniper sightline
A budget version: skip the safe pocket and just plan to loot an ARC Alloy off a Wasp during the raid. They drop it pretty often, so it’s a decent gamble.
Wasps and Fireflies: Where I Stack Kills Fast
The first two objectives sound annoying but they’re honestly the easiest part. Wasps spawn pretty much everywhere in the Rust Belt — Dam Battlegrounds, Buried City, Spaceport, and obviously Riven Tides itself. Fireflies show up on every map except Stella Montis. So if you’re already doing other quests, your kill counter is ticking up in the background.
That said, I had the best luck stacking both at the Stacking Yard on Riven Tides. Drone patrols loop through there constantly, and you can usually grab three or four kills in one engagement. Bonus: you’re already at the spot for objective three, so it’s efficient.
A few combat notes I picked up the hard way:
- Wasps die fast if you tag the motor cluster on their wings. Don’t waste rounds on the body.
- Fireflies hit harder, fly slower, and have a flamethrower-style attack. Aim for the rear thrusters to drop them, then finish them off. If they extend the yellow canister to hit you with fire, that thing is a weak point — pop it.
- Don’t fight Fireflies in tight spaces. The flame radius is bigger than it looks and I’ve burned to death twice trying to corner one in a building.
The Stacking Yard Crane Repair (Eastern Side)
This is where the Dockmaster’s Detector starts paying for itself, but you don’t strictly need it.
Head to the Stacking Yard on the eastern side of Riven Tides — it’s a huge, hard-to-miss POI with three massive cranes. Any of the three works. I went for the westernmost one because it had the easiest zipline access from below.
To reach the top:
- Use the ladders and stairs attached to the crane’s midsection
- Or grab the zipline from a nearby building if your crane has one
- Watch your back climbing — the structure is exposed and other raiders love camping the cranes
Once you’re up top, walk toward the gray (non-red) horizontal beams that stick out toward the shore. Right where the gray meets the red painted section, you’ll see a janky little tent-shelter propped up with metal poles and a sheet of tin. It looks like garbage someone slapped together — that’s the right thing.
Walk up to one of the support poles and hit interact. The prompt will burn your ARC Alloy and reinforce the structure. Done.
I learned this the hard way: the prompt only fires if you’re carrying the alloy. I climbed three different cranes thinking the structures were broken because nothing was popping up, then realized I’d left my alloy in the stash. Don’t be me.
Hotel Panorama Azzurro and the Room 213 Trick
Now for the part that made me lose my mind for an entire afternoon.
The final objective sends you to Hotel Panorama Azzurro on the western side of the map. Inside, you’ll see a bunch of guest rooms with numbers above the doors and red metal shutters on a lot of the windows. The quest just says “board up the shuttered windows in the hotel,” which makes you think any of them will work.
They will not.
I tried interacting with shutters in rooms 207, 211, multiple rooms on the third floor, and the windows that were obviously busted on the ocean side. Nothing. I even ran into another raider doing the same quest, and we figured it out together: the only window the game reliably lets us interact with is the one in room 213.
Most rooms on the second floor need a key to open. Room 213 is already unlocked. Walk in, head to the back wall, and the prompt to board up the window will be right there. Hit interact, wooden planks slap over the shutter, and you’re done.
A couple things worth flagging:
- Some players report different windows working for them on different floors. The community consensus right now is that 213 is the most consistent.
- The hotel is a red zone packed with Pops, Fireballs, and Turrets. Clear the lobby before you push upstairs or you’ll get sandwiched.
- There are ziplines on the east side of the building that let you skip the lobby entirely — scale up and circle the balcony to find shutter prompts from the outside.
If 213 isn’t working for you, try the rooms with intact red shutters facing the shoreline on the second floor before giving up. The interaction zone can be finicky.
What I Got Wrong About the ARC Alloy
This deserves its own section because I keep seeing the same confusion in chats.
The ARC Alloy you bring in is a fairly common drop — Wasps and Fireflies cough them up regularly, and they’re used for workbench upgrades elsewhere in the game. So the panic about needing to “save up” for this quest is overblown. If you’ve been playing for more than a few hours you almost certainly have one in your stash already.
But here’s the trap: if you die before reinforcing the crane, you lose the alloy. The game doesn’t refund it. So if you’re running this quest cold, the smart move is:
- Drop into Riven Tides without the alloy
- Kill a Wasp or two, loot an alloy off them
- Immediately head to the Stacking Yard
- Reinforce the crane while the alloy is fresh in your inventory
That way you skip the safe pocket requirement entirely and you’re not bleeding stash materials if a raider gets the drop on you.
Rewards You Get for Completing Shoring Up Defenses
Once all four objectives are checked off, extract back to Speranza and turn the quest in to Apollo. You’ll walk away with:
- 3 Barricade Kits
- 3 Lure Grenade Traps
- 6 Seeker Grenades
Plus the Merits/XP that count toward the Last Resort event progression. Honestly, the Seeker Grenades alone make this quest worth doing — they’re brutal in PvP and they make later Riven Tides defensive content way more manageable. The Barricade Kits also chain into the next round of Apollo quests, so you’re setting yourself up for the rest of the questline.
Why I’d Knock This Out Even If You Don’t Need the Loot
Beyond the rewards, Shoring Up Defenses is basically Apollo’s way of teaching you the new map. By the time you finish, you’ll know:
- Where the Stacking Yard sits and how to climb the cranes
- The layout of Hotel Panorama Azzurro (which is going to come up in every future Riven Tides quest)
- How Wasps and Fireflies behave so they stop blindsiding you
- Which red zones are worth the risk
That alone has saved me probably five or six raids’ worth of dumb deaths. So even if Seeker Grenades aren’t your thing, knock this one out early.
FAQs
Can I do Shoring Up Defenses across multiple raids?
Yep. None of the four objectives are tied to a single run. I personally died on raid one with three of the four done, came back the next raid, finished the last one in five minutes, and turned it in. Just don’t expect the ARC Alloy to be refunded if you die carrying it.
Why can’t I interact with the windows in the hotel?
This is the most-asked question I’ve seen, and the answer is annoyingly specific: most shuttered windows look interactable but aren’t. Go to room 213 on the second floor of Hotel Panorama Azzurro. The door is unlocked, and the window at the back of the room reliably triggers the prompt.
Do I have to kill the Wasps and Fireflies on Riven Tides specifically?
No. Wasps spawn on basically every map, and Fireflies show up everywhere except Stella Montis. So if you’re already grinding other quests on Buried City or Dam Battlegrounds, your kill count is ticking up automatically.
What’s the best weapon for taking down flying ARCs in this quest?
A Hullcracker if you can land headshots on the wing motors — Wasps go down in one tap. For Fireflies, anything with decent armor penetration works as long as you target the rear thrusters. Don’t waste your high-end rounds on the chassis, it just eats ammo.
Where exactly on the crane is the Raider structure?
At the very top of any Stacking Yard crane, walk along the gray (non-red painted) horizontal beam toward the shore. Where the gray meets the red, you’ll see a small tent-like shelter made of metal poles and a tin sheet. Interact with one of the support poles to consume the ARC Alloy.
What if I lose my ARC Alloy before reaching the crane?
Loot one off a Wasp or Firefly during the raid — they drop them often enough that you’ll usually get one within two or three kills. If not, extract, grab another from your stash, and try again next raid.
Are the rewards worth doing this quest right now?
Absolutely. Six Seeker Grenades and three Barricade Kits are genuinely strong utility items, and they feed into the next batch of Riven Tides defensive quests. Plus you get the Dockmaster’s Detector just for accepting it, which unlocks the Beachcombing buried-loot mechanic.
Do I need a safe pocket augment for the ARC Alloy?
Not strictly. It’s a nice-to-have if you want to bring an alloy in from your stash, but the easier play is to just kill a Wasp on the map and loot one fresh, then head straight to the crane. Skip the augment slot and use it for something more useful.
Closing the Quest Out
That’s the full Arc Raiders Shoring Up Defenses run from my own raids. The whole thing took me about 90 minutes once I stopped wasting time on the wrong hotel windows, and now I’m rolling through the next Riven Tides quests with a stack of Seeker Grenades I didn’t have before.
If you remember nothing else: room 213, eastern Stacking Yard cranes, loot your alloy off a Wasp, and don’t die with it in your pocket. That’s the whole quest in one breath.
Good luck out there, raider.