The Cooling Coil in ARC Raiders looks like a throwaway scrap, but it quietly solves one of the game’s early bottlenecks: getting reliable Chemicals and Steel Spring without burning your coin stash. It’s also one of the first “rare but basic” recyclables that teaches how the item economy works.
Cooling Coil basics: stats, rarity, value
Cooling Coil is a Recyclable, Rare-tier item. It sits in the same general family as random scrap like broken electronics and rusted tools, but with a higher payout when you break it down.
| Property | Cooling Coil |
|---|---|
| Item type | Recyclable (material) |
| Rarity | Rare |
| Can be crafted | No |
| Weight | 2.0 kg |
| Stack size | 3 per slot |
| Sell price | 1,000 Raider Coins |
There is no crafting recipe for Cooling Coil. Every copy comes from loot, and every use is either selling it for coins or converting it into base materials.
Where Cooling Coil can be found
Cooling Coil lives in one specific loot biome: Industrial. That tagging matters more than the map name on your loading screen. Any Industrial-marked zone or interior has a chance to roll this item in its container tables.
Players who go hunting for it repeatedly hit the same pattern: long dry streaks followed by a single Cooling Coil tucked away in a crate or box. Reports cluster around the Dam Battlegrounds map, especially:
- Water treatment areas on Dam Battlegrounds
- The hydroponics section in Dam
- Underground water tower spawns with metal crates, just before staircases
These spots share a theme: dense industrial machinery and containers that look like utility or maintenance storage. The rarity tag means Cooling Coil is fighting against a lot of other Industrial loot in the same drop pools, so it will not turn up every run ev,n if you only hit the “right” buildings.
Why Cooling Coil feels so rare
Cooling Coil’s drop rules are simple, but the experience of looking for it rarely is. Several players spend hours inside Industrial zones and come away with a single coil, if any.
There are a few reasons it feels worse than it is:
- Industrial is a crowded loot table. You’re competing with other recyclables and trinkets that can roll in the same containers.
- Stack size hides the grind. Each inventory slot only holds three coils. Filling a couple of stacks takes many runs, so progress looks slow.
- You only notice it when you need Chemicals or Springs. Once a project demands basic materials, every run without a coil feels wasted, even though you are still amassing other salvage.
Once you know what it recycles into, the rarity makes more sense: this is basically a concentrated bundle of Chemicals and Steel Spring packaged into a single rare item.
Recycling Cooling Coil in the Raider Den
The most efficient way to use Cooling Coil is to recycle it in the Raider Den. That turns one slot of rare scrap into a predictable pile of basic materials, with a small coin penalty compared to selling raw.
| Action | Result per Cooling Coil |
|---|---|
| Recycle in Raider Den | 6× Chemicals, 2× Steel Spring, −100 Raider Coins compared with selling |
Chemicals and Steel Spring both sit on the critical path for many early projects and workshop upgrades. Cooling Coil effectively compresses 6 Chemicals and 2 Steel Spring into a single, rare pickup. If you are short on those materials, recycling beats selling every time.
Salvaging Cooling Coil topside
Salvaging is the lighter version of recycling that you can perform topside, away from the Raider Den. The output is more limited but still useful if you are chasing a specific component.
| Action | Result per Cooling Coil |
|---|---|
| Salvage topside | 2× Steel Spring |
Salvaging skips Chemicals entirely and only returns Steel Spring. That makes sense in the fiction of the item: a metal coil is an obvious place to pull springs from, but extracting chemicals requires a proper workbench back at the Den.
Use salvaging when:
- You desperately need Steel Spring during a raid.
- You don’t trust that you’ll extract alive with the coil in your bag.
If you are relatively safe and expect to reach the Den, keeping the coil for full recycling offers more value overall.
When to sell Cooling Coil instead
Cooling Coil sells for 1,000 Raider Coins each. That is a respectable payout for a single recyclable, especially in the early game when every weapon repair and vendor purchase hurts.
Choosing between selling and recycling comes down to what you are currently bottlenecked on:
- Short on coins, comfortable on Chemicals and Springs. Sell the coil. It’s effectively a high-value vendor trash item in that case.
- Short on materials, sitting on coins. Recycle in the Den for the 6/2 material split and accept the small coin loss.
- Mid-raid, crafting limited topside. Salvage for Steel Spring only if a project or repair hinges on it right now.
Because there is no way to craft Cooling Coil, there is no way to turn coins back into coils. Once sold, that material potential is gone. Treat each decision as permanent.
Practical farming patterns players use
Cooling Coil doesn’t have a single, named “farm” in the way some higher-end loot does, but player behavior has converged on a few habits that help.
Run Industrial-heavy routes. Maps like Dam Battlegrounds naturally funnel you past water treatment plants, hydroponics set-ups, and tower maintenance rooms. Prioritize these over open ground or residential blocks.
Open every industrial crate and locker. Metal crates, utility boxes, and similar Industrial containers are where coils show up. Ignoring half the room because it “looks empty” is how an eight-hour dry streak happens.
Accept the slow burn. Cooling Coil is not meant to be a power-farmed currency. It trickles in across many raids, then pays off in bulk when you recycle a stack into Chemicals and Steel Springs to finish a project.
Once a few stacks are sitting safely in the Den, the early-game scramble for basic materials eases up. Crafting chains that looked impossible suddenly unlock because you have a reservoir of scrap that condenses into exactly what the workbench demands.
Cooling Coil ends up being more than a blue scrap icon. It’s a quiet accelerator for your progression, compressing several common materials into a single rare find. Treat it that way, build Industrial routes into your raids, and decide consciously whether each coil is worth more as cash, chemicals, or springs.
