ARC Raiders – Workshop Upgrades Guide (What To Prioritize First & Farm Spots)

Upgrading your Workshop is essential to advance in ARC Raiders, but it can be tricky to know which upgrades to focus on and where to find the necessary resources.

Honestly, upgrading everything in this game is a serious undertaking! You need to collect so many materials – tons of different kinds, and a huge amount of each one. It’s definitely a grind, and it takes a while to get everything maxed out, but I’m determined to do it!

Thankfully, our guide will help you with all of this!

Workshop Upgrades Guide | ARC Raiders

What Materials You Need

We’ve created a helpful chart to show you exactly what materials you need to upgrade each station in the Workshop. Keeping track of everything can be tricky, so think of this as a convenient checklist!

Here’s the full table of every upgrade and the required materials:

Workshop Station	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3
Gunsmith	Metal Parts x20 Rubber Parts x30	Rusted Tools x3 Mechanical Components x5 Wasp Driver x8	Rusted Gear x3 Advanced Mechanical Components x5 Sentinel Firing Core x4
Gear Bench	Plastic Parts x25 Fabric x30	Power Cable x3 Electrical Components x5 Hornet Driver x5	Industrial Battery x3 Advanced Electrical Components x5 Bastion Cell x6
Medical Lab	Fabric x50 ARC Alloy x6	Cracked Bioscanner x2 Durable Cloth x5 Tick Pod x8	Rusted Shut Medical Kit x3 Antiseptic x8 Surveyor Vault x5
Explosives Station	Chemical x50 ARC Alloy x6	Synthesized Fuel x3 Crude Explosives x5 Pop Trigger x5	Laboratory Reagents x3 Explosive Compound x5 Rocketeer Driver x3
Utility Station	Plastic Parts x50 ARC Alloy x6	Damaged Heat Sink x2 Electrical Components x5 Snitch Scanner x6	Fried Motherboard x3 Advanced Electrical Components x5 Leaper Pulse Unit x4
Refiner	Metal Parts x60 ARC Powercell	Toaster x3 ARC Motion Core x5 Fireball Burner x8	Motor x3 ARC Circuitry x10 Bombardier Cell x6

Wow, upgrading everything takes a lot of collecting! So, what’s the best way to prioritize those upgrades for an easier experience? Let’s find out!

Which Benches to Prioritize

Okay, so first things first, you need to get the Refiner going. Seriously, it’s a game-changer because it lets you make the stuff you need to improve all your other stations. It’s like the foundation for everything else!

Try to reach Level 2 quickly, and then aim for Level 3 when you can. This will help you get better materials without having to depend on chance.

Next, prioritize either upgrading your Gunsmith or your Gear Bench. If you’ve collected many weapon blueprints, focus on the Gunsmith. If not, the Gear Bench will be more helpful.

If you can’t quite decide what to focus on at the beginning, the Gear Bench is a great option. It lets you create Shields and Augments, which are always useful throughout the game!

Fortunately, the Gunsmith and Gear Bench don’t require many of the same crafting materials. This means you can improve both at the same time, as long as you have enough resources.

Next, we suggest upgrading both the Explosives Station and Utility Station to Level 2. These upgrades provide useful tools, but the benefits of upgrading them further to Level 3 aren’t significant enough to prioritize. You can focus on Level 2 for now and upgrade to Level 3 later when you have extra materials.

The Medical Lab should be your last priority. However, upgrading it to Level 3 is well worth the effort! It unlocks the Vita Spray, the most powerful healing item in the game.

Okay, so getting the final upgrade for my Medical Lab is a pain. It needs five Surveyor Vaults, and those only drop from Surveyors – and those guys are super rare enemies. To make things worse, you usually only get one Vault per Surveyor you take down, so it’s gonna take a lot of grinding!

Okay, so the Medical Lab is definitely useful to max out eventually, but honestly, don’t make it your top priority. I usually just upgrade it whenever I have the resources, but I focus on everything else first. It’s good to have, but not game-breaking if it’s a little behind.

Material Farm Spots

Let’s organize the best places to farm into categories based on the area type and the loot you can find there. We’ll use groups like residential areas, medical facilities, and commercial districts – basically, the same categories the game already uses.

Remember to destroy and loot any ARCs you find in these areas. Doing so while gathering other resources should provide you with enough of the materials unique to ARCs.

If you need help with the ARCs, we recommend looking at our guide detailing every ARC type.

Residential

If you’re looking for residential supplies, we suggest checking the buildings in the southeastern area of the Buried City, near Santa Maria Houses, Red Tower, and Plaza Rosa. You can also find medical and commercial items in the same location.

Plaza Rosa is really convenient because there’s a metro station right there! This makes it easy to quickly escape after gathering supplies.

In here, you can find the following materials mainly:

Chemicals
Durable Cloth
Fabric
Plastic Parts
Power Cables
Toasters

A Bastion often patrols the area around Plaza Rosa. The rooftops provide a good vantage point to take it down, making it a reliable place to find Bastion Cells.

You can often find Bombardiers around the Santa Maria Houses too. Hide inside the buildings and keep shooting at the Bombardier until you defeat it and collect its Bombardier Cells.

This location is also a great place to find Dog Collars, Very Comfortable Pillows, and Cat Beds. You’ll need these items if you want to fully upgrade Scrappy, which is highly recommended.

Mechanical and Industrial

We’re now combining Mechanical and Industrial loot. You’ll often find both types of items together in the underground area of the Blue Gate map, which is most easily accessed from the Outer Gates location.

Okay, so this tunnel is awesome! It’s packed with cars and containers you can smash open and loot. Seriously, every single one has a good chance of giving you the materials I need – it’s a great spot for farming!

Here are the main materials you can get in this spot:

Industrial Battery
Mechanical Components
Metal Parts
Motors
Rubber Parts
Rusted Gear
Rusted Tools

Medical

If you’re looking for medical supplies, we suggest checking the Hospital building on the Buried City map. As you’d expect, a hospital is a great place to find everything you need to heal up! Here’s a rundown of the main types of supplies you can find there:

Cracked Bioscanners
Rusted Shut Medical Kits
Laboratory Reagents
Fabric
Chemicals
Durable Cloth
Antiseptic

Because this is an indoor farm, you can also find Ticks and Fireballs here. You’ll need to defeat them to collect valuable materials, and this location is a great place to do so!

Technological and Electrical

Let’s move on to finding tech and electrical items. These are often located together, and we suggest checking the Water Treatment Control area and the buildings to the east of it on the Dam Battlegrounds map.

Here’s a quick list of the loot you can find at this spot:

Damaged Heat Sinks
Fried Motherboards
Power Cables
Electrical Components
Metal Parts
Plastic Parts

Important ARC Parts

Finally, let’s discuss materials you can only get by defeating ARCs. Some, like ARC Alloys and Wasp Drivers, are fairly common, but others take more dedicated effort to acquire.

We’ve already discussed some common farm locations, so this part will highlight the most important ones we haven’t covered yet.

Rocketeer Drivers

Let’s start with Rocketeer Drivers. This is a simple farm – you don’t even need to fight Rocketeers! Just collect the broken ARCs around the Old Battleground and Red Lakes areas in the Dam Battlegrounds map.

Occasionally, a Husk Graveyard event appears on any of the maps. During these events, many damaged ARCs – usually Rocketeers – will appear across the map. Be sure to watch out for them!

Sentinel Firing Cores

There are two effective locations for Sentinel Firing Cores on the Dam Battlegrounds map. The first is in the north, slightly above The Breach.

You can also find a supply drop at the Research & Administration building, which is located near the center of the map. A Sentinel enemy might appear near the top of the building, close to the stairs on the eastern side.

Surveyor Vault

As you may know, finding Surveyors can be difficult! However, the area near the West Container Yard on the Spaceport map appears to be a good place to look.

Surveyors are constantly on the move, making them very difficult to consistently farm. Plus, they typically only drop one Surveyor Vault each time.

To locate them, watch for blue beams of light pointing upwards. These are typically emitted by Surveyors as they scan the area around them.

Leaper Pulse Unit

On the Dam Battlegrounds map, the Red Lakes Balcony is generally the best place to find Leapers. They often patrol that area, so you can usually spot one or two there.

The standard approach still works, naturally. Guide the creature close to small structures, then take cover inside and shoot at it until it’s defeated.

Alright, so I’ve got everything covered for upgrading stuff in ARC Raiders! I know exactly what materials you need for all the Workshop upgrades, what you should focus on getting first, and the best places to farm them. Let’s get building!

2025-11-09 07:09