In Arc Raiders, the Frying Pan starts out as background clutter — a metal prop you grab for cash or scrap — until the Cold Snap update and the Candleberry Banquet Project quietly turned it into one of the most contested kitchen items on Topside.
What the Frying Pan is and why it matters
The Frying Pan is a Rare-tier recyclable item. It isn’t a weapon, and it doesn’t slot into any current crafting recipes or bench upgrades. It sits in the same bucket as things like Garlic Press or Bicycle Pump: household junk that breaks down into core materials.
For the Frying Pan specifically:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Item type | Recyclable (Rare) |
| Category | Residential loot |
| Weight | 2 |
| Stack size | 3 |
| Sell price | 640 coins |
| Recycling yield | 8× Metal Parts (4× if salvaged) |
Cold Snap changes that calculus. The new Candleberry Banquet Project asks for two Frying Pans during its fifth step, which is why players who have been casually selling or recycling them suddenly find themselves digging through every kitchen drawer on the map.
Outside that project, the pan’s only uses are selling it for coins or breaking it down into Metal Parts. There is no quest that consumes it permanently beyond the Candleberry Banquet requirement, and it isn’t tied to Scrappy upgrades or workbench tiers.
Where the Frying Pan spawns in Arc Raiders
The Frying Pan only comes from scavenging in Residential loot zones. That tag is the key. If an area isn’t marked Residential on the in-game map, it will not roll the Frying Pan in its ground loot pool.
Residential zones are the lived-in spaces on each map: apartment blocks, suburbs, farmhouses, and villages. Typical examples include:
- Grandioso Apartments in Buried City
- Santa Maria Houses in Buried City
- Farmlands in Blue Gate
- Village in Blue Gate
- Pale Apartments in Dam Battlegrounds (northwest of the Water Treatment Control Plant)
These are not the only places it can appear, but they show the pattern: any named POI tagged Residential can roll a Frying Pan, with the actual spawn point usually being a room, kitchen, cabinet, or drawer inside those structures.
How to reliably farm Frying Pans
Because the Frying Pan is Rare and shares its loot table with a long list of other household items, it won’t show up every run. Treat it like you would any rare ground loot: pick a high-density area, create a loop, and clear it thoroughly.
Step 1: Pick a Residential-heavy route. In Buried City, chaining Grandioso Apartments and Santa Maria Houses in a single raid is efficient. In Blue Gate, link the Farmlands and Village. On Dam Battlegrounds, route through Pale Apartments and the surrounding buildings.
Step 2: Once inside a Residential POI, clear interiors first. Check kitchens, pantries, and side rooms before rooftops or streets. Pans tend to sit in drawers, on counters, in low cabinets, or on the floor near other cookware.
Step 3: Open every searchable container. That includes drawers, cupboards, lockers, and breachable containers. Ground loot spawns are random within the Residential pool, so more rolls per raid directly translate into more chances at a pan.
Step 4: Prioritize extraction once you find one. As soon as you pick up a Frying Pan, move it into a safe pocket if you have the space. That protects it from a raid death, which matters when you’re chasing two copies for Candleberry Banquet.
Step 5: Combine pan hunting with other objectives. Cold Snap sprinkles new quests and puzzles across those same zones, so stack a Candleberry Banquet step, a side quest, and general farming on the same route to avoid burnout.
Expect several raids before you see your first Frying Pan if your luck is cold. That’s normal for Rare ground loot in Arc Raiders. The important part is sticking to Residential tags and not wasting time in industrial or military-only zones when you specifically want this item.
Using Frying Pans for Candleberry Banquet
The Cold Snap update introduces the Candleberry Banquet Project as a multi-step, time-limited progression chain. One of those stages requires two Frying Pans. There’s no shortcut: you must physically loot and extract them from Topside.
Because the project is structured around value turn-ins and specific item checklists, you should treat Frying Pans as “quest-critical” until both copies are safely banked. After that, any extra pans can revert to being scrap or coin fodder.
Practical approach:
- Hold on to the first two Frying Pans you find; do not recycle or sell them.
- Complete the relevant Candleberry Banquet step as soon as both are in your stash to avoid accidentally scrapping them during a later inventory purge.
- Only start liquidating extras after the project stage that explicitly calls for Frying Pans is marked complete.
Should you sell or recycle extra Frying Pans?
Once you’ve satisfied Candleberry Banquet, the Frying Pan becomes a question of conversion rate and stash space.
On its own, each pan is worth 640 coins at a vendor. If you choose to recycle it instead, it breaks down into 8 Metal Parts. Metal Parts are the basic metal resource for a wide range of workbench upgrades, crafting, and expeditions, and they’re one of the more frequently bottlenecked materials early on.
The tradeoff looks like this:
- If you’re short on raw crafting materials and comfortable on coins, recycling the pan into Metal Parts is usually the better move.
- If your benches are in a good place and you’re more constrained by stash size or project value thresholds, selling the item or dropping it into Caravan contributions can make more sense.
Either way, there is no hidden late-game recipe or Scrappy requirement that consumes Frying Pans specifically. They sit firmly in the “safe to liquidate after quest” tier.
Frying Pan vs. other high-yield recyclables
In terms of pure material yield, the Frying Pan isn’t unique, but it is efficient. Eight Metal Parts per recycle places it alongside other top-end metal donors like Candle Holder, Metal Brackets, Ruined Handcuffs, Rusted Bolts, Rusty ARC Steel, and the Garlic Press, which breaks into 12 Metal Parts.
Practical takeaway: when you’re building out runs for basic materials, it’s worth mentally tagging Frying Pans in the same “grab this if you see it” category as those other heavy recyclables. Even after Candleberry Banquet, they remain a strong pickup simply for how many Metal Parts they condense into a single inventory slot.
The Frying Pan is never going to be the flashiest item in Arc Raiders, and right now it’s not the melee meme the community keeps joking about. But if you’re chasing Candleberry Banquet or trying to keep your Metal Parts topped up, learning how to sweep Residential zones efficiently and recognizing the pan’s silhouette in cluttered kitchens will save you a lot of frustration later in the season.
