Last updated: 11 September 2026

ARC Raiders Loot Guide What to Keep and What to Sell

Not every item you pick up in ARC Raiders is worth the backpack slot or the extraction risk. Some items define your long-term progression and should be extracted on every run without exception; others are worth recycling for materials rather than carrying out whole. Knowing the difference is how experienced Raiders maintain a consistent economy and steadily unlock better gear — without relying on perfect runs to get ahead.

01Item Rarity Tiers

Every item in ARC Raiders belongs to one of five rarity tiers. Rarity affects an item's base value, crafting usefulness, and how commonly it appears in each zone type:

• Common — Found everywhere, including White zones. Low sell value, modest crafting yield on recycling. Useful early-game for filling basic crafting recipes.
• Uncommon — More concentrated in Orange zones. Noticeably better recycling output and moderate sell value. Worth extracting when backpack space allows.
• Rare — Primarily from Orange and Red zones. Good sell value and useful in mid-tier crafting recipes. A backpack full of Rare items is a solid run.
• Epic — Found in Red zones and secret rooms. High sell value and a key ingredient in advanced weapon and equipment crafting. Always extract these.
• Legendary — Mostly found from destroying named ARC bosses (the Queen and similar heavy units) and in Red zone secret areas. Extremely high sell value and often the only source of top-tier crafting materials and weapon Blueprints. Immediately place any Legendary item into your Safe Pocket when you pick it up.

02Items to Always Extract

These items should go into your backpack — or Safe Pocket — the moment you find them, regardless of what else you are carrying:

• Blueprints — The core of all long-term progression. Blueprints unlock the ability to craft weapons, tools, gadgets, and consumables at your workbenches. A Blueprint for a weapon you do not yet own is irreplaceable until you find another copy, and some are extremely rare. Always extract Blueprints; never recycle or drop them.
• ARC Powercells — Used in shield recharge crafting and advanced tech recipes. One of the two most important crafting materials for combat readiness alongside Gun Parts. Keep every Powercell you find.
• Gun Parts — Required for weapon repair. Weapon durability degrades with every use, and a weapon that runs out of durability in a Red zone fight is a death sentence. Keep a supply of Gun Parts in your base to maintain your primary and secondary weapons.
• Access Keys and Raider Hatch Keys — Access Keys unlock specific locked rooms on maps, and those rooms almost always contain Rare or better loot. Raider Hatch Keys provide silent extraction. Both belong in your Safe Pocket if you cannot use them in the current run.
• Weapon Mods (especially Silencers) — Silencers are among the most impactful items in ARC Raiders for noise management and enemy avoidance. Before you've unlocked the ability to craft your own at the Gunsmith bench, finding one in a raid is a major find worth protecting.
• Magnetic Accelerator and Queen Reactor — Rare materials used in elite weapon and equipment crafting. These drop infrequently and cannot be consistently farmed. Extract them whenever found.

03Best Loot Locations by Zone

Where you find the best loot depends on which zone you are willing to enter and what risks you can handle:

• White zones — Accessible containers and loose items. Common and occasional Uncommon items. Useful for collecting basic crafting materials (scrap, components) without risking good gear.
• Orange zones — Patrolled storage areas, medium-security buildings. Uncommon and Rare drops. The sweet spot for mid-game loot runs — enough risk to yield real returns without requiring top-tier weapons.
• Red zones and Red POIs (Points of Interest) — The highest loot concentration in the game. Epic and Legendary items, Blueprints, and rare crafting materials appear here. Access to some Red zone rooms requires Keys found elsewhere on the map.
• Secret rooms — Found in both Orange and Red zones, accessible with specific Access Keys. Almost always yield above-average loot for their zone tier. Learning where secret rooms are on each map is a significant advantage.
• Exodus-tagged points of interest — Not a separate zone tier, but specific high-tech locations tied to Earth's pre-ARC Exodus program, found on maps like Spaceport and Stella Montis. These POIs are a reliable source of Exodus-flagged crafting components such as Magnetic Accelerators. Enter only with reliable weapons, a planned extraction route, and a Raider Hatch Key in your Safe Pocket.

Couriers — flying ARC machines that ferry supplies between sites — are worth breaching when you find one. They drop a mix of ARC crafting components: power cells, ARC Alloy, Circuitry, Motion Cores, and occasionally rarer parts like Sentinel Firing Cores. It's a useful materials source, but don't expect a guaranteed rare or Legendary drop every time. As of Update 1.36.0, ARC Turbine parts specifically no longer drop from Couriers.

That same Update 1.36.0 significantly increased the value of loot dropped by ARC Turbines, and turbines are now the source for Turbine parts instead of Couriers. Expect other Raiders to contest Turbine kills — plan your approach accordingly and have an extraction route ready.

04Items to Recycle or Sell

Some items are better recycled at your Speranza base than carried out as whole units. Recycling at Speranza consistently yields more raw materials than field-salvaging the same item mid-raid:

• Duplicate weapon mods — Once you have enough of a mod type, extras yield more value as recycled materials than as inventory items.
• Common junk components — Power Cables, Polluted Air Filters, and similar low-value Common items offer a poor loot-per-slot ratio. Recycle them at Speranza for the material output rather than filling your backpack.
• Trinkets and collectables (e.g., the Epic-tier Lance's Mixtape, which sells for 10,000 credits and has no quest or crafting use) — pure cash items. Extract these and sell them outright at Speranza for credit income.
• Excess basic materials when your base stockpile is already at cap for that type — recycling for alternate materials may be more useful than holding duplicates.

General rule: if an item cannot be used in a crafting recipe you care about and has no immediate sell value, recycle it at base rather than field-salvaging. The Speranza recycle bench gives a better return.

05Managing a Full Backpack

A full backpack creates two problems: you cannot pick up new items, and carrying too much weight reduces your stamina regeneration during sprinting, slowing your movement and making extraction runs harder.

When your backpack fills up mid-raid, apply this priority filter to decide what to drop:

1. Keep anything in the 'always extract' category above — Blueprints, Powercells, Gun Parts, Keys, rare weapon mods.
2. Keep your highest-rarity items — prefer Rare over Uncommon if you must choose.
3. Drop Common items first, then the lowest-value Uncommons if you still need space.
4. Consider field-recycling bulk Common materials to open slots for better items found later in the same run — accept the lower material return as a cost of carrying better loot home.

If you are in a Red zone with a full backpack of Epic or better items, that is often a strong signal to head for extraction rather than push further.

06Snap Hook: Special Mention

The Snap Hook is a traversal gadget — not a weapon or crafting material — but it deserves a mention in any loot guide because new Raiders frequently overlook it. The Snap Hook enables 20-metre grapple shots that dramatically change movement options for reaching high vantage points, traversing across building exteriors, or escaping a pursuit rapidly.

If you find a Snap Hook Blueprint, extract it and craft it as soon as possible. The mobility advantage in both looting and extraction scenarios is significant enough that it functions as a game-changer for how you navigate maps.