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:
Step 1: Spawn on Buried City and move toward the southern cluster that contains Grandioso Apartments and Santa Maria Houses. Avoid getting pulled north into more industrial or combat-focused areas.
Step 2: Clear Grandioso Apartments systematically, floor by floor. Open every drawer, locker, cabinet, and suitcase inside apartments, not just visible crates on stairwells or roofs.
Step 3: Sweep Santa Maria Houses next, cutting through each small building and looting kitchens, bedrooms, and closets. Prioritize small furniture containers over large crates.
Step 4: If you have the required keycard, push into Town Hall and check all locked offices and archive rooms. This is where multiple players have reported picking up more than one Film Reel in a single raid.
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:
Step 1: On spawn, check whether Pale Apartments or Ruby Residence are closer; head for the nearer of the two instead of bee-lining major objectives like the Dam Control Tower.
Step 2: Work through each building vertically. Focus on interior rooms with desks, sideboards, and wardrobes rather than exterior sheds or garages, which tend to be tagged differently.
Step 3: If time and storm conditions allow, loop through Pattern House as a third stop before extracting or pivoting to other objectives.
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:
Step 1: From spawn, move straight to Village, prioritizing it over other POIs unless you are in immediate danger from storms or events.
Step 2: Start on the northern side of Village, which is mostly residential buildings. Work building to building, clearing one completely before moving to the next.
Step 3: Loot interior containers exhaustively: lockers, dressers, bedside tables, kitchen cabinets, suitcases under beds, and small storage boxes. Large industrial crates are much less important for Film Reels.
Step 4: Check roofs and attics. Some upper spaces are only reachable via internal stairs or skylights and often hide extra cabinets and boxes, which are easy to miss on quick sweeps.
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
Step 1: Spawn on Buried City and immediately mark Grandioso Apartments and Santa Maria Houses on your map.
Step 2: Run Grandioso first, looting every apartment interior. Ignore side excursions into non-residential POIs until the building is fully cleared.
Step 3: Cut south or southeast into Santa Maria Houses, sweep the small homes one by one, and hit any nearby unnamed Residential blocks on the way.
Step 4: If you hold Town Hall or Residential Master keys and the storm allows, push Town Hall and Library before extracting.
Low-conflict Dam Battlegrounds route
Step 1: On a Dam Battlegrounds drop, break away from common objective paths and head directly for Pale Apartments or Ruby Residence, whichever is closer.
Step 2: Clear each building interior from bottom to top, focusing on Residential-style rooms.
Step 3: Add Pattern House as a third stop, then either extract from a nearby hatch or pivot to whatever main mission you queued for.
Village sprint on Blue Gate
Step 1: Spawn into Blue Gate and beeline to Village, especially if you start on the northern or central side of the map.
Step 2: Work through the northern Village blocks first, clearing every apartment and rooftop attic space.
Step 3: If you still have time and inventory space, swing through Raider’s Refuge or one of the southern Old World sites (Ruined Homestead or Ancient Fort) before extraction.
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.
