ARC Raiders Recycling Cheat Sheet: What to Scrap, What to Keep & Farming Spots

The recycler at Speranza sits in the crafting wing near the trader stalls. You load loot items into it, press the button, and it breaks them down into one of six base components. Each item in the game has a fixed yield type and a fixed output amount. There is no randomness to recycling. A Rusted Gear will always produce the same material every single time.

The recycler accepts salvageable items, junk, organic matter, and certain ARC machine parts. It does not accept weapons, armor, augments, or consumables. If you are trying to get rid of duplicate weapons, your only option is selling them to a trader or leaving them in your stash.

Processing is instant. There is no queue timer or waiting period. You can dump your entire haul into the recycler and get the breakdown immediately, which makes post-raid inventory management fast as long as you already know what goes in and what stays out.

Every recyclable item converts into one of six base materials. Knowing which material feeds which crafting tree determines how you should prioritize your inventory during a raid.

Metal Parts and Electrical Components should be your early priorities. Weapons require Metal Parts for every frame, and augments eat through Electrical Components quickly once you start experimenting with loadouts. Biological Matter and Chemicals become more relevant later when you are crafting advanced consumables and grenade types. Use the interactive recycling table to filter by yield type and find exactly which items produce the material you need.

The safest items to recycle are common household junk and environmental debris. These items have no trader quest requirements, no blueprint connections, and exist purely as recycler fodder. If you see these in a locker or container, grab them if you have the space.

Always safe to scrap: Rusted Bolts, Broken Flashlights, Burnt Out Candles, Rubber Ducks, Alarm Clocks, Camera Lenses, Coffee Pots, Tattered Clothes, Duct Tape, Blue Light Sticks, Painted Boxes, Bloated Tuna Cans, Expired Pasta, and Broken Handcuffs.

These items cycle through your inventory fast. Grab them, bring them back, dump them in the recycler. None of them appear in any current trader task or quest requirement. The only consideration is whether the inventory slot is worth more to you than the yield. A single Rubber Duck produces less material than an Arc Powercell, so if space is tight, be selective about which junk you grab.

Requested by the tech trader early in their reputation chain. The task asks for a specific quantity, and scrapping even one means another raid to find a replacement. Arc Circuitry drops from ARC machine loot and from certain high-tier containers in the industrial zone.

Required for the weapons trader reputation line. These only drop from Bastion-type enemies, which means you cannot just grab them from a random locker. If you have Bastion Parts in your stash, do not recycle them until you confirm you have completed the relevant task. Check our Bastion kill guide for farming locations.

Appear in at least one mid-tier trader task. They look like generic scrap but the trader specifically requests them. The name does not immediately suggest "quest item," which is why so many raiders accidentally scrap them.

Requested by the provisions trader. These organic items feel like low-value recyclables, and players often dump them without checking. The provisions trader chain is worth completing for the stim recipes it unlocks.

The safest habit: Open your quest log and search for "bring" or "deliver" objectives before every recycling session. If a trader is asking for a specific item, move it to a separate stash tab. This two-second check will save you an entire raid's worth of re-farming time.

ARC machine components like Advanced Arc Powercells and Arc Performance Steel also appear in higher-tier crafting recipes. Before you recycle these, check whether any of your unlocked blueprints require them as direct ingredients. Some advanced weapon blueprints use ARC components as-is rather than their recycled base materials.

Not all areas of the Rust Belt are equal when it comes to scrap density. Some zones pack more lootable containers into a tighter area, meaning faster recycler runs with less travel time and less exposure to hostile ARC patrols.

The warehouses in Greenfield contain the highest concentration of lootable containers in a single area. During Calm conditions, you can clear four warehouses in under eight minutes and extract with a full inventory of recyclable items. This is the fastest scrap-per-minute run in the current build. Stick to the ground floor containers first, then sweep the upper catwalks if the ARC patrol timer allows it.

The residential apartments in the north sector have a high ratio of household junk. You will find Alarm Clocks, Broken Flashlights, Coffee Pots, and other common recyclables in nearly every room. The ARC machine density here is lower than in industrial zones, making it a good option for solo raiders or those running light loadouts. The downside is that containers are spread across multiple floors and buildings, so it takes longer to fill your inventory.

The go-to spot for Metal Parts and Electrical Components specifically. Rusted Gears, Wires, Fried Motherboards, and Industrial Batteries spawn here at higher rates than anywhere else. The area is open, so you are exposed to ARC aerial patrols. Bring a weapon with decent range and keep moving between the car stacks and shipping containers. During Storm conditions, visibility drops but so does ARC detection range, making this farmable if you are careful. See our weapon tier list for ranged options.

The tunnels near the Speranza outskirts offer a safer farming route with moderate loot density. Containers here tend to drop Chemicals and Biological Matter more often than other zones. The tunnel system has fewer ARC patrols, but the corridors are narrow. If you run into another raider squad, extraction can get messy. Best used during off-peak hours or when you specifically need Chemical yields.

Blueprints cannot be recycled. The recycler will not accept them. But that does not mean you should discard them either.

Duplicate blueprints currently have no direct use in the crafting system. You only need one copy of a blueprint to unlock the item in your crafting menu permanently. The blueprints database tracks all 95 currently available blueprints and their drop locations.

That said, Embark Studios has hinted at future systems that may give duplicate blueprints value. Past developer updates on Steam have mentioned blueprint trading and blueprint-based progression as potential features. Holding extras costs you nothing since they do not take up inventory slots in your stash. If a future update adds blueprint trading, the players sitting on a stack of rare weapon blueprints will have a serious advantage.

Your inventory has limited slots. Every item you pick up is a decision about what you are willing to leave behind. Build your mastery skills toward inventory capacity perks to bring back more per run.