What to Keep, Sell, and Recycle in ARC Raiders

Even if you’re a long-time player, there’s no denying that organizing your loot can be a nightmare. Some things you’ll need sooner, some later, but the inventory space runs out extremely quickly. Keeping track of all the items in your inventory is tough. As avid players ourselves, we’ve decided to create and organize an ARC Raiders loot cheat sheet. It’s a list of items you can safely recycle or sell, as well as what you’d want to hold on to. We’ll tell you what loot you’ll need for the Expedition, and what items you want to recycle to get the most materials. We will not talk about Workshop bench upgrades in detail, as we have a separate ARC Raiders Workshop Upgrade Guide. Be sure to check it out!

If you need to get some of the materials mentioned in this article, be sure to check out our ARC Raiders Materials!

Read our other ARC Raiders guides:

• Blueprint Farming Guide
• Crafting Guide
• Best Loot Guide

What Loot to Keep in ARC Raiders

We’ll start off discussing what loot to keep in ARC Raiders. You usually want to hold these items due to them being used in upgrades, crafting, or for the Expedition. Some of this loot can be pretty difficult to find, even if it’s not marked as a high-rarity item. Examples of such loot include Rusted Gears, Industrial Batteries, Rusted Shut Medical Kit, Motor, Laboratory Reagents, etc. You can add any of the Nature loot to this category as well. Check out this ARC Raiders best loot to keep list:

The list of items to keep is huge, as most loot you get in the game is needed for something. That’s why we recommend taking things at a slower pace. Don’t gather something that you don’t need at the moment. The exceptions are any Fruits, Mushrooms, Motors, Cooling Coils, Laboratory Reagents, Rusted Gears, Industrial Batteries, and Surveyor Vaults. They’re quite rare, even if farmed on purpose, so don’t miss out on them. Be sure to reserve some space in your inventory for these items.

ARC Raiders Recyclables List

One interesting thing is that not every recyclable item is worth recycling. Some of them are more useful when sold. If we take recycling in a vacuum, without considering that you can use the output from recycling, you always lose value. The rule is especially true for high-rarity recyclables. You typically lose 30-60% of the item's value when breaking it down into components. That makes some items, like Ion Sputter, worth selling outright, even though they give Exodus Modules upon recycling. 

Another critical point is that it’s always recommended to recycle items in Speranza. If you decide to recycle an item in a raid (called “salvaging” in the game), you will miss out on some parts. For instance, Ruined Accordion grants 3x Steel Springs, making it the highest Steel Spring source. If you salvage it during the raid, you’ll only get Rubber Parts. To understand which loot can be broken down safely, look at this ARC Raiders recyclables list:

These are the only safe items to recycle in ARC Raiders. Some of them provide good value, but most are used to obtain much-needed common and uncommon materials. They aren’t needed in any crafting recipes or quests. Most of the time, when recycling other materials, you’ll be presented with a choice about whether it’s worth doing at the moment. The more you play, the more you will start to understand which materials you want to recycle and which you shouldn’t. Don’t forget that you can recycle almost any item, except for valuables, marked with a diamond icon. Recycle unwanted weapons, augments, rare materials that you know won’t be useful for your playstyle, etc.

What to Sell in ARC Raiders

This part will not have a list of items. Instead, let us explain how to determine what to sell in ARC Raiders. Except for Trinkets, which are created to be sold, most items in the game aren’t really expensive. When broken down into components, they lose even more value. Upgraded weapons, augments, and shields are all worth a nice penny, but you generally want to hold on to them, or at least recycle, since they provide useful materials for your other equipment. You need to know one thing. Only sell the items you know you won’t need soon. In the beginning, it can be hard to identify them, since you don’t know the game that well. You can check the list of safe-to-recycle items we’ve provided above. The more you play, the more you will understand what items can be sold.

Let’s take a Magnetic Accelerator as an example. It’s an Epic refined material required to craft all legendary weapons and a Hullcracker. While they’re extremely useful, they’re essential only for one thing - killing Matriarchs and Queens. Hullcracker can be used to kill normal boss ARCs as well, but you get what we’re trying to say here. Don’t hold on to them if you know that you’re not planning on killing the event bosses soon. Unless you have a squad you’ve agreed on going for the next big boss, or you’re planning to farm Trials points, it’s better to sell it. It costs 5,500 Coins, which better be spent on something you’d need right now. Increasing the inventory space, for instance, or buying shield rechargers if you’ve run out of ARC Batteries. 

Don’t keep the item in your inventory only because it’s of higher rarity. If you find no use for it at the moment, sell it. And when you need it, you can simply go to Stella Montis and farm these Magnetic Accelerators there. They spawn like crazy in Assembly Workshops. This game punishes hoarding hard, and sooner or later, you’ll find yourself with a full inventory. As strange as it sounds, most Epic materials aren’t that useful for normal or even event maps. Uncommon and Rare materials will bring you much more use than Complex Gun Parts or Magnetrons.

Conclusion

It’s hard to keep in mind everything you need to maximize the efficiency of your gameplay. There will be times when you sell or recycle something you’ll need later, but now that’s not a big problem. Use this ARC Raiders crafting materials guide, and soon, you’ll find yourself knowing what to do with the purple item you just got from a random box, without the need to use the lists.

F.A.Q