ARC Raiders Crafting and Workbench Progression Guide

Crafting in ARC Raiders is a weird bottleneck. You can raid for twenty hours and still be stuck on starter guns, all because your benches are two tiers behind and you keep recycling the wrong junk. The whole system lives in Speranza, it runs on materials you haul out of raids, and the costs ramp up hard once you hit the second tier of any station. Here's how the progression actually flows, what to upgrade first, and where to get the parts each bench is starving for.

One thing worth getting straight early: dying topside loses whatever's in your bag. Crafting mats included. So a lot of "efficient crafting" is really just smart raid planning, because a death with eight Wasp Drivers in the pack sets you back a full evening.

Unlocking Workbenches at Speranza

Your workshop starts small. You get a basic workbench after your first round, and it costs nothing. That free bench covers the starter weapons (Ferro, Hairpin, Kettle, Rattler, Stitcher), every ammo type, bandages, shield rechargers, and the Mk. 1 shields. That's genuinely enough to raid on for a while, so don't panic about upgrading on day one.

Past that, there are six more stations, and each one tops out at level 3:

• Gunsmith for weapons and attachments
• Gear Bench for backpacks, shields, and armor pieces
• Medical Lab for meds, from bandages up to Vita items
• Explosives Station for grenades and mines
• Utility Station for gadgets like the Zipline, Snap Hook, and cloaks
• Refiner for turning raw junk into components like Gun Parts and ARC Circuitry

The Refiner is the sleeper here. It's the only station that makes other stations cheaper to feed, because it converts common field junk into the exact components the higher tiers want.

What each tier costs

Here's the full upgrade bill per station, straight from the wiki numbers. Level 1 for the Gunsmith means building past the free default bench, which most guides list at 20 Metal Parts and 30 Rubber Parts.

| Station | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | |---|---|---|---| | Gunsmith | 20 Metal Parts, 30 Rubber Parts | 3 Rusted Tools, 5 Mechanical Components, 8 Wasp Drivers | 3 Rusted Gear, 5 Adv. Mechanical Components, 4 Sentinel Firing Cores | | Gear Bench | 25 Plastic Parts, 30 Fabric | 3 Power Cables, 5 Electrical Components, 5 Hornet Drivers | 3 Industrial Batteries, 5 Adv. Electrical Components, 6 Bastion Cells | | Medical Lab | 50 Fabric, 6 ARC Alloy | 2 Cracked Bioscanners, 5 Durable Cloth, 8 Tick Pods | 3 Rusted Shut Medical Kits, 8 Antiseptic, 5 Surveyor Vaults | | Explosives | 50 Chemicals, 6 ARC Alloy | 3 Synthesized Fuel, 5 Crude Explosives, 5 Pop Triggers | 3 Lab Reagents, 5 Explosive Compound, 3 Rocketeer Drivers | | Utility | 50 Plastic Parts, 6 ARC Alloy | 2 Damaged Heat Sinks, 5 Electrical Components, 6 Snitch Scanners | 3 Fried Motherboards, 5 Adv. Electrical Components, 4 Leapers | | Refiner | 60 Metal Parts, 5 ARC Powercells | 3 Toasters, 5 ARC Motion Cores, 8 Fireball Burners | 3 Motors, 10 ARC Circuitry, 6 Bombardier Cells |

Look at those level 2 and 3 columns for a second. The tier-one costs are just bulk basics you'll trip over in every raid. Tier two and three want named machine parts, and that's where the grind lives.

What order to build in

For most raiders the answer is Gunsmith first, Refiner second, then whatever your playstyle leans on. A level 2 Gunsmith unlocks attachment crafting plus more guns, and attachments are the cheapest meaningful power spike in the game. The Refiner after that starts paying for itself by converting junk stacks into Gun Parts and components instead of you selling them for coins.

Squads can split this up. If you play with the same people regularly, having one person rush Medical Lab while another does Explosives covers the whole team cheaper than everyone building everything.

Priority Blueprints Worth Crafting Early

Blueprints are how you unlock the good recipes. A blueprint is a physical item you have to carry out of the raid, and once you're back in Speranza you select it and hit "Learn and Consume". It's gone after that, but the recipe is yours forever. Already-learned ones show a checkmark on the icon, and duplicates can be sold to a vendor for a flat 5,000 coins, which is a nice consolation prize when the loot gods hate you.

Some blueprints also come from quests, trials, and projects, so check your quest rewards before you go hunting a recipe the hard way. The Burletta, for example, comes from the Industrial Espionage quest rather than containers.

Where each type spawns

The loot pools mostly follow the container type, which makes targeted hunting pretty reliable:

• Weapon and gun part blueprints come out of Raider Containers (but not Medical Bags)
• Attachment mods come out of Residential Containers
• Explosives recipes come out of Industrial Containers
• Medical recipes come out of Medical Containers
• Augment blueprints come out of Security Containers, rarely Medical ones
• Utility recipes come out of Electrical Containers

Rare and epic blueprints drop way more often during x2 major map conditions, so if a storm or special event is rolling and you need a specific epic recipe, that's your window. ARC Surveyors can also drop blueprints, and those can be worth chasing mid-raid if the kill is convenient.

What to actually learn first

Spend your early blueprints on things you'll use every single raid, not flashy epics you can't craft yet. The order that pays off fastest:

1. Ammo-related weapon recipes for the gun you actually run. Being able to rebuild your main gun after a bad death keeps you out of the vendor's price-gouging hands.
2. Attachment tiers on Residential loot. Extended mags, the Compensator, the Silencer. Extended Light Mag or Medium Mag alone changes how a fight plays out, since reload timing gets you killed more than raw damage does early on.
3. The Zipline and utility picks once your Utility Station hits level 2. Zipline opens up extraction routes and lets you skip dangerous ground entirely. Kind of a pain to learn late, so grab the blueprint when you see it.
4. Defibrillator and Sterilized Bandage once Medical Lab is rolling. Team revives without the downed player bleeding out your med supply are huge.

One catch with the top-tier attachment recipes: most tier 3 mods only spawn during specific map conditions like Electromagnetic Storm, Night Raid, or Locked Gate. If you're missing those, that's why. They're tied to specific map conditions, not just rare.

A note on tier-3 weapon recipes while we're here. The big pool at Gunsmith 3 includes the Aphelion, Jupiter, Bettina, Bobcat, Tempest, Vulcano, Renegade, and friends, but those crafts still need the bench at max plus hard-to-get parts. Don't burn a week hunting a Tempest blueprint when your bench is still tier one. The Anvil is the realistic first big weapon upgrade for most players, and it's available way earlier.

Scrap and Component Farming Routes

Materials come from three places: containers in the world, dead ARC machines, and recycling junk at base. A good farming loop hits all three.

Dam Battlegrounds for basics

Dam is the starter farming map and honestly stays useful forever. The community route runs roughly like this:

Formicai Outpost → Water Tower → Hydroponic Domes → Electrical Substation → extract at Raider's Hatch.

That's an 8 to 12 minute loop depending on how much you fight. The Hydroponic Domes are the anchor, with very high container density and a solid shot at Mechanical parts and Rusted Tools. The Water Tower tends toward mechanical loot too, and Formicai is a small stop close to the hatch that's good for topping off Rusted Tools on your way out. If the raid goes sideways, you can bail at almost any point in the route and still keep most of what you grabbed.

Machine hunting for named parts

All those named components in the tier 2 and 3 upgrade costs, Wasp Drivers, Hornet Drivers, Snitch Scanners, Rocketeer Drivers, and so on, come off the machines they're named after. Kill the machine, loot the wreck. For the fliers, aim at the thrusters: the Wasp's and the Hornet's back thrusters knock them off balance and down they come, spraying bullets on the way, so keep some distance while they fall.

Practically, this means you should be shooting machines on purpose, not just when they block a door. A single raid where you pop four or five Wasps can cover your entire Gunsmith 2 bill. The Trifecta quest from Shani actually walks you through killing Wasps, Hornets, and Snitches for their parts, so it doubles as driver-farming practice if you haven't done it yet.

Recycling rules

Recycling has one rule that matters more than everything else: do it in Speranza, not topside. Scrapping items mid-raid only returns half the materials. It's an emergency bag-space tool, nothing more. Haul the junk home and get the full yield.

Good recycling targets off common loot:

| Item | Breaks into | |---|---| | Candle Holder | 8 Metal Parts | | Rusted Bolts | 8 Metal Parts | | Tattered Clothes | 11 Fabric | | Crumpled Plastic Bottle | 4 Plastic Parts |

Broken electronics and damaged ARC components are also worth recycling for Wires, Electrical Components, and ARC Alloy. Trinkets are the exception, they're coin-only, so sell those instead of feeding them to the Refiner.

Scrappy, your weird passive income

Scrappy the rooster lives in the workshop and collects materials while you raid. He brings back Metal Parts, Fabric, Plastic Parts, Chemicals, Rubber Parts, and seeds. His take scales with how long you stayed in the round and whether you extracted: over 15 minutes with a successful extract roughly doubles what a quick unextracted run gets you. Two things people miss: he stops collecting after five rounds until you physically collect from him, and he can be upgraded with stuff like a Dog Collar, fruit, and a Cat Bed, which bumps his haul at every time threshold. Cheap upgrade, free materials forever. Do it early.

Upgrading Weapons and Gear Efficiently

The trap here is crafting gear you'll replace in three days. Don't do it.

Your starter weapons carry you further than you'd think. The Kettle and Stitcher are both legitimately good, and the Stitcher is arguably the best common-tier automatic in the game, with a fire rate that handles both ARC chaff and players early on. The Anvil is the first real weapon upgrade worth crafting once heavy ammo stops being a fantasy for you. From there, the top-shelf pool includes the Tempest, Bobcat, Venator, Renegade, and Vulcano, with the Bettina shining when a raid is more machine-heavy than PvP-heavy.

So the efficient path looks like this:

Craft attachments before guns

A Kettle with an extended mag and a compensator beats a stock rare gun you can't afford to feed. Attachments are cheap, they transfer between raids since they're crafted not found, and the Gunsmith tier that unlocks them costs far less than chasing epic weapon recipes. Get the bench to attachment tier, learn a handful of mod blueprints from Residential Containers, and kit out the guns you already like.

Match gear bench tiers to your backpack, not your dreams

Gear Bench tier 1 gets you the Mk. 1 Combat, Looting, and Tactical bags plus Medium and Light Shields. Tier 2 unlocks the Mk. 2 versions and the Heavy Shield. Tier 3 is where it gets interesting, because the Mk. 3 bags split into variants, Aggressive or Flanking Combat, Safekeeper or Survivor Looting, Defensive or Healing or Revival or Smoke Tactical. Those variants come from Security and Medical containers as blueprints, on Stella Montis and The Blue Gate mostly.

The Looting Mk. 3 variants are the usual first pick since more bag space compounds into more materials per raid, which feeds every other bench. But a Healing or Revival Tactical bag is the squad-support pick if you play in a team.

Buy vs. craft

Vendors sell gear for coins, and sometimes that's the better deal. If you need one specific gun right now and you're rich on coins, buying beats burning rare components you'll want for a station upgrade later. The reverse is also true: never buy common junk you can craft from stash leftovers. A rough rule, coins buy convenience, materials buy progression. Spend coins when it saves time, spend materials when it saves coins.

Stockpiling Materials for Late-Game Crafts

Once your benches are ticking upward, hoarding becomes the whole game. Late-game crafts eat components that are annoying to get and that you'll be tempted to dump early.

The never-recycle list

These are all station upgrade materials. Breaking them down or selling them is how people end up farming the same part twice:

• Rusted Gears, Rusted Tools, Motors, Industrial Batteries
• Laboratory Reagents, Explosive Compound
• Advanced Mechanical and Electrical Components
• Every named machine part: Sentinel Firing Cores, Bastion Cells, Bombardier Cells, Leapers, Surveyor Vaults
• ARC Circuitry, ARC Motion Cores, ARC Powercells

The Refiner level 3 bill alone is 3 Motors, 10 ARC Circuitry, and 6 Bombardier Cells. Bombardier Cells come off Bombardiers, which are not a casual fight, so those stack up slowly. Same story with Sentinel Firing Cores for Gunsmith 3. If it has a machine's name in it, it belongs in the stash, not the recycler.

Where the endgame mats live

The harder maps own the good stuff. Spaceport's hangars and keycard rooms drop rare blueprints and mechanical loot, but the ARC presence is heavy and geared players swarm it, so bring a squad or a plan. Buried City has a barricaded sixth-floor room in the Space Travel Building that reliably drops Complex Gun Parts, plus underground passages full of caches and the risk of getting lost with no map. Bring glow sticks. Blue Gate is the real endgame spot, with runs through Reinforced Reception and the Portal Chamber yielding the best loot in about five minutes when uncontested. The catch is extreme risk, elite machines like the Matriarch, and every geared player on the server having the same idea.

For the recipes tied to special map conditions, remember that tier 3 attachment blueprints and several epic weapon recipes only spawn during Electromagnetic Storm, Night Raid, Locked Gate, or Hurricane conditions. Night Raids also pay out better materials generally, so if you're comfortable in the dark, those are your stockpile runs.

A simple stash routine

Every time you're back in Speranza, run the same loop. Collect from Scrappy. Recycle the junk pile at full yield. Check new blueprints and learn anything you'll use. Sort upgrade materials into the stash instead of letting them rot in your bag, where a bad raid can eat them. Then sell trinkets and duplicate blueprints for coin, and spend that coin on the one material you're shortest on rather than hoarding cash for no reason.

Keep at least one full loadout's worth of crafted backups in the stash too, a gun you like with attachments, a bag, a shield, some meds. Losing a kit hurts a lot less when the replacement is already sitting at home, and it keeps you out of the starter-weapon gutter while you rebuild.

The whole crafting economy rewards patience more than aggression. Five boring extracted Dam runs beat one heroic death in Blue Gate with a bag full of Bombardier Cells, every single time.