The Rust Belt used to be rough but readable. Then the Cold Snap rolled in mid-December and everything got meaner. Wind pushes you off lines, whiteouts wipe your sight picture, and the clock isn't just enemy patrols anymore, it's your body temp. You'll feel it fast: stalls get punished. If your plan is "hold the angle and farm," you're gonna freeze while doing it. I keep my loadout tight, my routes short, and my priorities simple. If it glows yellow, I'm already moving. And when I'm planning a run, I'll usually check what's worth hauling under ARC Raiders Items so the risk actually matches the payout.
1) Swarmers: stop donating ammo to the ceiling
Ticks and Pops aren't scary, they're expensive if you let them be. People dump mags into them because panic's loud and muscle memory's real. Don't. The Raider Tool does the job. One clean swing, quiet, and you keep your good rounds for things that matter. Indoors is where you want to be anyway, so look up and sweep corners like you mean it. If the room starts to boil over, fire solves it. A Blaze Grenade can chain through a cluster and reset the whole mess before you're stuck reloading in a doorway. Same deal with Leapers: they're brutal until they're burning. Light 'em up, they flinch, and that's your window to finish the soft underside instead of trading health for pride.
2) Flyers: don't shoot the face, break the engine
The new weather makes Flyers feel ten times worse because you lose tracking for half a second and they're gone. Wasps and Hornets are plated up front, so shooting "center mass" is just you paying a tax. Wait for the hover or the bank, then put rounds into the rear thrusters. Two or three solid hits and they drop like a bad habit. If you've got heavy AP or a Hullcracker, sure, you can brute force it, but most runs you won't. And if a Snitch shows up, that's the one you delete first. Hit the bottom plating or those wiper blades right away. Let it finish a scan and you've just turned a quick loot grab into a long, freezing brawl you didn't budget for.
3) Big targets: strip armor, loop the stagger, leave fast
Bastions and Queens aren't "hard," they're time sinks, and time is what the Cold Snap steals. You need coordination, even with randoms. Call targets, keep it clean. For Bastions, chew the knees or the back cylinders until the armor gives, then pile damage on the exposed bits. For Queens, play the stagger loop: crack the leg joints, drop her, then dump everything into the core before she resets the fight. Explosives help a lot, not for style, just control. The real win is knowing when to stop. Sometimes the smartest play is grabbing what you've got, heading for extract, and coming back better geared, whether you grind it out or decide to buy ARC Raiders gear so the next Queen isn't a 12-minute snowstorm death march.