ARC Raiders Crafting Guide: Workshop Stations and Recipes

Every ARC Raiders crafting guide starts in the same room: your Workshop. Every recipe runs through one of its stations, each station levels up with materials you bring home, and blueprints unlock the better items on top of that. Traders sell gear, but none of them crafts for you or gates a recipe behind a relationship level. Once that clicks, the loot decisions get a lot simpler.

Updated 2026-10-28: Live Update 2.3.0 (October 27) changes no recipes or station costs, but two items you can field-craft got better: Flame Spray now deals 13 damage per second (up from 10) and drains durability half as fast, and Adrenaline Shot works even at max stamina.

Image: Workshop, ARC Raiders Wiki (arcraiders.wiki), uploaded by Dread. Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

How crafting works in ARC Raiders

You start with the Workbench, a free bench that covers basic weapons and most ammo types, plus Scrappy, the rooster who brings back basic materials while you're out Topside. Every other station has to be built and upgraded with materials, and each new level adds recipes. Some items also need their blueprint learned on top of the station level, so the rule is: station level decides what you can build, blueprints decide which of the better items are on your list.

Two things trip new players up:

• Recycling only works at home. You can recycle almost any item into basic materials, but only in Speranza. Inside a raid you can salvage instead, which gives you fewer or lower-quality materials. A Ferro I, for example, recycles into 2 Metal Parts and 1 Rubber Part but salvages into only the metal.
• Scrappy needs you to play. He brings Metal Parts, Fabric, Plastic Parts, Chemicals, Rubber Parts and Assorted Seeds, but nothing unless you spend at least a minute in a round, and he fills up after five rounds. Empty his box between sessions or the free materials stop.

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The eight Workshop stations

Frozen Trail added the Research Station, which only opens once you unlock the Outpost. Here's what each station is for and what its first level costs.

Higher levels stop asking for basics and start asking for ARC parts: the Gunsmith's second level wants 8 Wasp Drivers, its third wants Sentinel Firing Cores. Our workshop upgrade items guide lists every level's full cost and which ARC drops each part.

The Ferro: your first craft

The Ferro is a break-action battle rifle on Heavy Ammo, and it's on the free Workbench from day one. The recipe is 5 Metal Parts and 2 Rubber Parts, at the Workbench or Gunsmith 1, no blueprint needed. You'll also see it in some Free Loadouts.

Image: Workbench level 1, ARC Raiders Wiki (arcraiders.wiki). Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

Upgrades are cheap and all happen at Gunsmith 1, so it's the first thing worth building past the Workbench:

The reload is the Ferro's weak spot, so a Ferro IV is a very different gun from the one you craft first. Our weapons tier list covers where it sits against the rest.

Blueprints: how better recipes unlock

Blueprints are items. You find one, extract with it, then pick "Learn and Consume" in Speranza. It disappears and the recipe is yours, provided the matching station is high enough. A learned blueprint shows a tick on its icon, so duplicates are easy to spot and sell.

Where they come from depends on the item type:

• Weapons and gun parts: Raider Containers (the Tempest is the exception)
• Explosives: Industrial Containers
• Medical items: Medical Containers
• Augments: Security Containers, rarely Medical Containers
• Utilities: Electrical Containers

Some blueprints are tied to one map or map condition (the Aphelion and Deadline drop on Stella Montis), some come from quests and Trials, and ARC Surveyors can drop them too. Blueprints for rare and epic items show up more often during x2 Major Map Conditions, which makes those the rounds to loot hard. Every blueprint sells for 5,000, so a duplicate is never worthless. The Stella Montis guide lists that map's blueprint pool, and our blueprints guide lists which ones the Research Station can make and which you still have to loot.

GODEEPER: What to recycle, sell or keep once your stash fills up. ARC Raiders Loot Guide →

Crafting during a raid

You can craft Topside, but only through skills. In-round Crafting is the first node of the Survival branch, and it lets you field-craft the Flame Spray, Shaker, Li'l Smoke Grenade, Light Impact Grenade, Fruit Mix, Shield Recharger, Adrenaline Shot, Agave Juice and Bandage. A Bandage is 5 Fabric either way. Live Update 2.3.0 made two of these worth more: Flame Spray damage went "to 13/s (from 10/s)" with durability drain cut by 50%, and Adrenaline Shot can now be used at max stamina, though a second shot only refreshes the duration instead of stacking.

Traveling Tinkerer, further down the same branch, adds the Noisemaker, four grenade traps (Blaze, Smoke, Lure and Gas), the Herbal Bandage and the Raider Hatch Key. It also unlocks the grenade traps at your home Workbench. Our skill tree tier list covers whether those points are worth it for your build.

The Raider Hatch Key recipe

If you learn one field recipe, make it this one. With Traveling Tinkerer, a Raider Hatch Key costs 1 Advanced Electrical Components and 3 Sensors, made at Utility Station 2 or straight from your inventory. Shani sells two a day if you'd rather buy. The key is single-use and opens a Raider Hatch, the quiet exit with no shutdown timer; our extraction guide explains when it's worth burning one.

The Refiner, the Outpost and Amplified weapons

The Refiner is the station that turns basics into components. At level 1 it makes Mechanical Components, Electrical Components, Durable Cloth and Crude Explosives, the exact parts that the second level of the Gunsmith, Gear Bench, Utility Station, Medical Lab and Explosives Station ask for. At level 2 it adds the gun parts, ARC Circuitry and Advanced components.

Image: Refiner level 2, ARC Raiders Wiki (arcraiders.wiki). Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

Frozen Trail added the top of the tree. Embark's notes say the Outpost is unlocked by completing a project, and that unlocking it opens the Research Station. Research Station levels can't go past your Outpost level. To amplify a weapon you need both the Gunsmith and the Research Station at level 4. Amplification can't be reverted, and amplified weapons get more max durability (+70, or +100 on legendaries). Our Outpost guide walks through the unlock project.

Image: Research Station level 1, ARC Raiders Wiki (arcraiders.wiki). Game art is the property of Embark Studios.

What we'd craft first

1. The Ferro, at the Workbench. No station to build, and Metal Parts and Rubber Parts are both on Scrappy's delivery list.
2. Gunsmith 1. Twenty Metal Parts and thirty Rubber Parts buy you all three Ferro upgrades and the first tier of weapon mods. Some of its weapons, like the Anvil, still need their blueprint.
3. Refiner 1. Sixty Metal Parts is a lot early on, but five other stations want its components for their second level, so we'd rather build it than hunt components in containers.
4. Gear Bench or Medical Lab next, depending on whether you die to Raiders (shields and augments) or to attrition (healing).
5. Utility Station 2 plus Traveling Tinkerer once you're regularly carrying loot worth protecting. That's when Hatch Keys pay off.

Skip the trap of leveling one station to the top before the others reach level 1. The first level of each bench is cheap basics, and the higher ones are gated by ARC parts you'll collect slowly anyway.

One thing you don't need to plan around right now: Expeditions, which reset your Workshop and learned blueprints, are paused while Embark reworks them, according to the wiki.

How we checked this

We rebuilt this guide on October 14, 2026 from the ARC Raiders Wiki pages for the Workshop, Blueprints, Skills, Ferro, Raider Hatch Key, Amplification, Outpost, Loot and Expedition, and from Embark's Frozen Trail 2.0 patch notes. We haven't played these recipes ourselves; every cost and station level here comes from those pages, and the full source list is in our notes for this article.

Related Reading

• ARC Raiders Workshop Upgrade Items: Every Station Cost: full material lists for every station level.
• ARC Raiders Outpost Guide: unlocking the Outpost and the Research Station.
• ARC Raiders Quests in Order: All 117 and the 8 Blueprints: the eight quests that pay a blueprint, from Lure Grenade to Hullcracker.
• ARC Raiders Extraction Guide: when a Raider Hatch Key is worth spending.
• ARC Raiders Beginner Guide: the basics before your first Workshop upgrade.

References

• Workshop, ARC Raiders Wiki: stations, level costs and crafts
• Blueprints, ARC Raiders Wiki: learning, sources and sale value
• Raider Hatch Key, ARC Raiders Wiki: recipe and sources
• Frozen Trail 2.0 update notes, Embark Studios: Outpost and Research Station
• Live Update 2.3.0, Embark Studios: Flame Spray and Adrenaline Shot changes, accessed 2026-10-28
• ARC Raiders on Steam