Where to find Rusted Gears in Arc Raiders

Looking for Rusted Gears in Arc Raiders? It's always the case in extraction shooters like Arc Raiders that just when you need an item the most, that's when it becomes utterly impossible to find. A lot of players right now are likely to be searching for the same thing across all four maps: the fabled Rusted Gear.

These blue-tier rare loot items look and sound fairly useless in the grand scheme of Arc Raiders loot, but Rusted Gears are the bottleneck many players have already run into when upgrading their gear. You need 3 Rusted Gears to upgrade your Gunsmith to the highest level, which is what allows you to craft the very top-tier weapons for your future raids. It's no wonder they're such a hot topic right now.

If you want to get hold of Rusted Gears before anyone else in Arc Raiders, you need to know where to look. In this guide, we'll reveal exactly where to find Rusted Gears across all four maps, including the very best farming spot on The Blue Gate.

Why do you need Rusted Gears in Arc Raiders?

Rusted Gears are rare loot items in Arc Raiders which are generally found in Industrial areas. You need 3 Rusted Gears to upgrade your Gunsmith workshop bench to Level 3. Besides this, they are only useful for recycling or selling.

The full list of materials you need to upgrade your Gunsmith to Level 3 is:

• 3x Rusted Gear
• 5x Advanced Mechanical Components
• 4x Sentinel Firing Core

Upgrading your Gunsmith allows you to craft the very best guns in Arc Raiders, provided you have unlocked the Blueprints for them. So it's extremely important to try and gather at least 3 Rusted Gears early on in Arc Raiders.

The tricky part is that Rusted Gears are quite rare loot drops, and you also need to live long enough to extract with them once you've finally found one. To help speed up the process of acquiring those 3 Rusted Gears, read on for our top tips on how to get Rusted Gears.

Where to find Rusted Gears in Arc Raiders

The very best place to farm Rusted Gears in Arc Raiders is the Checkpoint and Underpass below ground on the Blue Gate map. It's a phenomenal place to find them because Rusted Gears are most commonly found by breaching cars and trucks - and the Checkpoint and Underpass regions have by far the highest density of lootable cars on any map. What's more, Checkpoint itself is a very high-tier loot zone, which means there's a higher than average chance of Rusted Gears spawning in place of their lesser kin, Rusted Tools.

Here's the exact location you should search on The Blue Gate:

The best strategy for looting Rusted Gears is to enter the Blue Gate solo (preferably during a Night Raid to increase your chances of finding higher loot), and beeline straight to the Checkpoint. This is a dangerous area, often patrolled by numerous Wasps and Hornets - and sometimes you will also see a Bastion patrolling the road as well. So keep your head down, and slowly make your way from vehicle to vehicle, breaching any compartment you can find. You'll know if a car is lootable because it will have an intact hood/bonnet that you can breach open. These are the compartments that can contain Rusted Gears.

From the centre of Checkpoint, follow the trail of cars along the road to the northeast, and you'll eventually make your way into the Underpass tunnel underground. This area is slightly less dangerous in terms of ARC presence, but - particularly in solos - you have a high chance of running into other players making their way through the vehicles down here in search of their own Rusted Gears. Whether you use diplomacy or violence is up to you.

The tunnels down here sprawl outwards into the Underpass - a massive underground section of Blue Gate, covering much of the northeast section of the map. You'll find plenty more cars in these tunnels; you could spend a full 30-minute match down here and not run out of cars to check. But you should always keep an eye on the round timer. It's not enough simply to find the Rusted Gears - you also need to extract with them.

Whether or not you use a free loadout is up to you. The benefit is that you won't lose any gear if you fail to extract - and since you'll likely be spending several rounds searching for Rusted Gears even with this farming strategy, taking a free loadout is a massive weight off your mind as you loot. The downside is that free loadouts have no safe pockets, so once you do find a Rusted Gear, you'll need to extract with it, or it's lost forever.

Rusted Gears are hard to come by, so if you don't have a safe pocket, you should consider extracting the moment you find one. Don't stick around to push your luck - it's highly unlikely that you'll find more than one Rusted Gear per round. Aim to collect them piecemeal, and prioritise safety while searching for them.

Best Rusted Gear locations on each map

Besides the Checkpoint and Underpass in Blue Gate, there are plenty of other lesser areas in Arc Raiders where you can find a Rusted Gear for your Gunsmith upgrade. All these locations have several nearby cars and other vehicles which you can breach to try and find Rusted Gears, so you can search for what you need on any map you like.

Here are the best Rusted Gear farming spots on each map:

• Dam Battlegrounds: Scrap Yard, Ruby Residence
• Buried City: Highway, Grandioso Apartments Car Park, Library Car Park
• Spaceport: Security Checkpoint, Staff Parking, Arrival Building Car Park
• Blue Gate: Checkpoint, Underpass

To maximise your chances of finding Rusted Gears, head to the above areas during a Night Raid. The loot during a Night Raid is generally more valuable, and you have an increased chance of finding Rare-tier and Epic-tier items from any container you open.

That wraps up this primer on how to get Rusted Gears fast in Arc Raiders. With a bit of luck, you'll soon have all 3 Rusted Gears you need to upgrade your Gunsmith and craft all the top-tier weapons you can handle. Until then, why not check out our guide on all the Arc Raiders Field Depot locations for a good chance at finding better guns early on? You can also speed up your crafting by consulting our guide on how to get Scrappy to max level.