Film Reels look like throwaway junk in Arc Raiders, but they now sit at the center of multiple objectives, from Apollo’s Movie Night questline to the seasonal Flickering Flames event. Because they’re tagged as rare trinkets and tied to specific loot types, you can easily run dozens of raids without ever seeing one if you search in the wrong places.
What Film Reels are in Arc Raiders
Film Reel is a Rare Trinket item. It has:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Item type | Trinket |
| Rarity | Rare |
| Loot tags | Residential, Old World |
| Weight | 0.2 |
| Stack size | 3 |
| Sell price | 2,000 Coins |
Film Reels cannot be crafted or refined from other junk. They only drop from scavenging containers topside. Outside of events and quests, their main purpose is to be sold for coins or held as high-value stash filler for Expedition Project turn-ins.
Historically, Film Reels were also used in test-phase quests together with Faded Photographs, and they now appear again in the Cold Snap / Flickering Flames seasonal track.
How Film Reel loot spawns work
Arc Raiders assigns every non-Arc item a location type such as Residential, Old World, Medical, Industrial, or Nature. Maps are broken up into zones that carry one or more of these tags. Items then have a chance to appear in any container inside a zone whose tags match the item’s.
Film Reel is tagged Residential and Old World. That means it can only show up in containers located in Residential or Old World loot zones: drawers in apartments, lockers in older civic buildings, cabinets in town halls, that kind of space. Opening containers in, for example, a pure Industrial or Arc zone will never produce a Film Reel.
Within the right zone, Film Reels still follow normal rarity rules. They are rare trinkets, so they’re not guaranteed even if you’re in the correct type of building. To maximize your odds, you want zones that both match the tags and pack a lot of small containers into a tight footprint.
Best maps and POIs to find Film Reels
Several maps include Residential and Old World zones, but a few stand out for Film Reel farming because of density and layout.
Buried City Film Reel locations
Buried City is one of the strongest options for Film Reels. The southern half of the map is effectively a continuous sprawl of apartments, small homes, and decayed civic buildings that all roll Residential or Old World loot.
Key Residential POIs in Buried City:
- Grandioso Apartments – A tall residential block with many individual apartments, each full of drawers, cabinets, and suitcases.
- Santa Maria Houses (also referred to as Saint Maria Houses) – A cluster of smaller homes with concentrated container density.
- Galleria and Red Tower – Additional Residential-tagged buildings with mixed apartments and interior rooms.
Important Old World structures in Buried City:
- Town Hall – An Old World civic building with locked rooms and high-value loot. A reported Film Reel hotspot, but it usually requires a Buried City Town Hall Key or the Buried City Residential Master Key to fully clear.
- Library – Another Old World POI with bookshelves and cabinets that can roll rare trinkets.
A Buried City Film Reel run often looks like this:
Dam Battlegrounds Film Reel locations
Dam Battlegrounds has fewer qualifying zones and no Old World tag, but its Residential pockets are compact and easy to cover, which makes it attractive if you prefer lower conflict routes.
Residential POIs on Dam Battlegrounds:
- Pale Apartments – A small apartment block with stacked residences.
- Ruby Residence – Another compact residential cluster, often overlooked by other players.
- Pattern House – A Residential structure with a mix of apartments and utility rooms.
These locations are slightly off the main combat routes, so you can usually loot them without heavy PvP pressure. To lean into that:
Several players also report finding Film Reels in locked rooms around the Dam Battlegrounds’ hospital area and admin/research buildings. Those structures can roll Residential-type loot when they overlap older infrastructure, so they’re worth checking if you’re already holding the relevant keys.
Blue Gate Film Reel locations
Blue Gate offers one of the single best Film Reel farms in the game thanks to a dense, cleanly tagged Residential hub.
Key POIs on Blue Gate:
- Village (Residential) – The standout location for Film Reels, essentially a pure Residential zone.
- Raider’s Refuge (Residential) – Another Residential site in the same general region.
- Ruined Homestead (Old World) – A southern Old World site with older structures and cabinets.
- Ancient Fort (Old World) – A fortified Old World location with interior rooms.
Village in particular is extremely efficient:
- It is focused almost entirely on Residential loot, so nearly every interior container has a chance to roll trinkets like Film Reel.
- It packs many apartments into a tight footprint, with multiple floors and rooftops per building.
To get the most from a Village run:
Raider’s Refuge, Ruined Homestead, and Ancient Fort are useful secondary stops if you either spawn closer to them or finish Village and still want more Residential/Old World loot before extraction.
Other maps and edge cases
Beyond the big three maps above, Film Reels can technically appear in any map that hosts Residential or Old World loot zones, but efficiency drops off quickly if those tags are sparse.
- Stella Montis – Contains at least one Old World-style site (Cultural Archives). This area can drop Film Reels but is not as efficient as Buried City or Blue Gate.
- Spaceport – Lacks Residential and Old World loot zones entirely, so it is effectively a dead map for Film Reels. Do not farm here if you specifically want them.
Which containers to open for Film Reels
Within qualifying zones, container type matters. Film Reels most often sit in smaller household storage rather than industrial-grade crates.
Focus your time on:
- Drawers and dressers – Bedroom furniture, side tables, and office drawers.
- Lockers – Especially in older apartment complexes or civic buildings that still count as Residential.
- Cabinets and cupboards – Kitchen cabinets, bathroom cupboards, archivist cabinets in Old World town halls or libraries.
- Suitcases and boxes – Portable containers tucked under beds, in closets, or in attics.
Large wooden crates, metal supply chests, and Arc containers are low priority when you’re targeting trinkets. They may still drop them, but their loot tables skew toward materials and equipment.
How many Film Reels you need and what to do with them
Flickering Flames / Candleberry Banquet Project
During the Cold Snap update’s Flickering Flames event, Film Reels are used in the Candleberry Banquet Project, Stage 3. Completing this stage requires:
- 1× Film Reel
- 5× Snap Blast Grenade
- 10× Duct Tape
- 2× Candleberries
Film Reel is the only item in that list that cannot be crafted or bought, and nothing recycles into it, so you must loot it topside. Some event variants, or related seasonal objectives, may ask for two Film Reels; plan to keep more than one in your stash if you’re actively working through the event track.
Movie Night and other quests
Apollo’s Movie Night questline previously used Film Reel alongside items like Camera Lens and Electrical Components. That quest expects you to bring Film Reel back from topside rather than crafting or purchasing it.
There is also a history of test-phase or limited quests (for example TT1/TT2 tasks) that consumed Film Reels together with Faded Photographs. Those are not part of current live progression but may reappear in future rotations, so hoarding extra Film Reels is a low-risk move if you have stash space.
Coins and Expedition Projects
Outside of direct quest or project requirements, Film Reel is simply a valuable trinket.
- Selling one yields 2,000 Coins, a high rate for a 0.2-weight item.
- Stashing expensive trinkets like Film Reels raises the total value of items you can sacrifice into Expedition Projects, which in turn boosts the skill points you earn from those projects.
If you are short on Coins today and not currently gated by an event step, selling a Film Reel is efficient. If you’re stable on currency, parking it in stash and feeding it into Expedition Projects later is usually the better long-term play.
Practical farming routes for Film Reels
To make the search less random, it helps to approach Film Reels with short, repeatable routes rather than wandering the map.
Residential-heavy Buried City loop
Low-conflict Dam Battlegrounds route
Village sprint on Blue Gate
Film Reels sit at an awkward intersection of rarity and specificity: they only drop in certain zones, only from particular container types, and are not backed up by crafting recipes. Once you route through Buried City’s southern Residential belt or Blue Gate’s Village a few times, though, they start to feel much less mythical. The critical thing is simple: stay in Residential and Old World interiors, open every drawer and cabinet you see, and avoid burning raids in maps that can’t roll the right loot tags.
