It's a rolling release distro. It continuously changes. So sometimes there are changes that can't be resolved just by updating packages.
During the past year, there were half a dozen changes that required running an additional terminal command before an update. https://archlinux.org/news/ mentions when that is the case, and there's also several ways to get a warning before you update.
On the other hand, you never have to do an upgrade from one release version to the next (which has never once worked for me on Ubuntu LTS).
Huh. I've been running Arch for over 7 years and I don't think I've ever run an additional command before updating. Simply just updating has worked for me.
I broke it the same way years ago! And now I haven't updated openSUSE Tumbleweed in 4 months and I know I won't have any issues when I do, there's no rush!
The worst I did, a computer without turning it on and not being updated for 2 years. Long long ago. I think I even got a huge change, don't remember if it was a big kernel version or the change to systemd. It basically just worked and there was a single thing I had to do that was in the news page.
Last bug I had was a power management daemon bug in kde and it was fixed the next day. It was also a desktop so only brightness control was broken (whoop-de-do
My brightness didn't work on a desktop).
Not to bad after 6 months from when I first switched from Windows.
I‘m having (minor) trouble with updating my machine about every year or two. That’s exactly the same experience I had with Ubuntu, when installing a major upgrade every 1-2 years. The only difference is, that with Ubuntu I had 20 broken packages and no clue what to do. Now I have trouble with one or two packages and the solution can be found right on the homepage of my Distro.
The only thing that breaks my workflow with every update is Gnome. But there’s a simple solution for that: Don’t use Gnome.
I keep meaning to set up timemachine but just roll the dice every few weeks. I think it bit me once and it was only for the weirdo wifi driver I needed and installed the lazy way.
The blog is probably smart to check if you see anything weird in pamac but otherwise I've either been very lucky or things have been pretty stable.