The Anvil is the heavy-caliber hand cannon that carries more topside raids than almost anything else in ARC Raiders. It hits very hard, punches clean through ARC plate, and drops careless raiders in two well placed taps. But getting your hands on the Anvil Blueprint isn’t easy because it’s not a guaranteed drop, and the RNG behind it can drive you mad in the middle of a raid. You can either roll the dice farming high-density human containers, or skip the loot and craft the blueprint yourself at Outpost.
Anvil Overview in ARC Raiders
The Anvil is a Rare, single-action revolver that uses Heavy Ammo, deals 40 base damage per shot with a 2.5x headshot multiplier and Strong ARC Armor Penetration. It works as a pocket marksman rifle that can crack Bastion knee joints, blow Rocketeer thrusters out of the sky, or win mid-range peek duels when an enemy raider gets cocky.
You can buy ready-made Anvil I revolvers from Tian Wen in Speranza for 15,000 Raider Coins, or occasionally bag high tiers from quest payouts, but buying your loadout over and over gets expensive, so with the permanent blueprint unlocked, it lets you print fresh copies at your Workbench whenever a bad run claims your rig. The Anvil’s durability drops over time, but you can repair or remake it.
How to Craft the Anvil Blueprint in ARC Raiders
If you are sick of praying to the loot gods, you should craft the blueprint manually at Outpost’s Research Station in the Blueprint Crafting tab.
To craft the schematic at the Workbench, you will need:
- Station Tier: Research Station Level 2
- 3,000 Research Points: Collected by studying manuals, technical handbooks, and ARC data drives in your stash.
- 5x Bully Fragmenters: Harvested by scrapping four-legged Bully chargers or cracking open ARC Couriers.
- 1x Rusted Tools: Scavenged from industrial garages, workbenches, and toolboxes.
ARC Raiders Anvil Blueprint Locations
If you would rather save your Research Points and Bully parts for base upgrades, the Anvil blueprint spawns randomly on different ARC Raiders maps only inside human-made containers—lockers, raider caches, boxes, and cases, not in ARC containers.
Anvil Blueprint Locations on Dam Battlegrounds
One of the quietest solo checks on Dam Battlegrounds is under the sheared highway overpass between Raider Outpost East and East Broken Bridge. Drop from the road deck (catching the lower ledge to save your ankles) or ride the nearby zipline up. Look into the gap directly underneath the broken concrete to find a Raider Cache spawn point. It draws from the high-tier Raider weapon pool, and because ARC enemies rarely route through there, you can loot it in peace.
If you deploy into a raid with the Night Raid or Uncovered Caches modifiers active, both of which increase rare blueprint drop rates, head to the Research and Administration complex. Check every office room for red industrial lockers, desk drawers, and weapon lockers, and if you have the Dam Surveillance Key or Dam Staff Key, pop open the security rooms where you’ll find many stacked crate rolls in a single visit.
Heading northeast from the dam structure will take you to the Pipeline Tower and Controlled Access Zone just northwest of it. Most squads sprint past this tower to contest main POIs, leaving the interior duffels and raider cases completely untouched. Just behind the Water Treatment Facility is another locked breach room that needs a keycard, though the cases inside have solid odds for Anvil and Venator schematics.
Anvil Blueprint Locations on Buried City
On the Buried City map, head to Marano Station, where the outskirt usually has two or three high-rarity caches with a decent chance of weapon blueprints inside. But you’ll have to breach a locked door, which makes plenty of noise and draws attention. On smaller maps like this, you’ll want to clear or scout the area to make sure no third-party rats are lurking around before you interact with the breach. Here, you can randomly find an Anvil blueprint from the raider containers.
Even if you have found the rarest blueprint in ARC Raiders, it’s only half the job, and the other half is to extract safely with it. Place it in your Safe Pocket slot so you don’t lose the item even after death. Back in Speranza, inspect the blueprint and select Learn and Consume to unlock it permanently. If you obtain multiple copies, you can sell extra for 5,000 Raider Coins each or trade them to squadmates who are still stuck playing the lottery.
Gunsmith Crafting, Upgrades, and Amplifications
Because the Anvil belongs to the Rare weapon tier, crafting it requires refined parts rather than basic scrap metal.
Craft Anvil I (Gunsmith Level 2)
- 2x Advanced Mechanical Components: Refined at your workshop using Steel Springs and basic mechanical parts, or looted off heavy walkers.
- 3x Heavy Gun Parts: Refined from Simple Gun Parts or salvaged from dead Bombardiers and Rocketeers.
- 3x Hand Drills: Found around industrial shelving, garages, and tool racks.
Upgrades (Gunsmith Level 1)
Toss the base Anvil into the Gunsmith bench, and it will strip away the rust, increase max durability, and speed up the cylinder cycling:
- Anvil II: Costs 1x Anvil I, 3x Mechanical Components, 1x Simple Gun Parts (Grants +25% Fire Rate, -6.5% Dispersion Recovery Time, +10 Durability).
- Anvil III: Costs 1x Anvil II, 1x Advanced Mechanical Components, 1x Heavy Gun Parts (Grants +50% Fire Rate, -12.5% Dispersion Recovery Time, +20 Durability).
- Anvil IV: Costs 1x Anvil III, 2x Advanced Mechanical Components, 1x Heavy Gun Parts (Grants +75% Fire Rate, -18.75% Dispersion Recovery Time, +30 Durability).
Weapon Amplifications (Anvil V)
After you upgrade Gunsmith and Research Station to Level 4, you’ll unlock the master tier where you can spend an Amplification Module Mk. III to upgrade your Anvil IV into one of two mutually exclusive specs:
- Anvil Splitter: Modifies the firing mechanism into a four-slug spread (+3 Projectiles Per Shot), which converts your revolver into a terrifying close-quarters pocket shotgun.
- X-Rounds: Chambers volatile anti-armor rounds (+5 Base Damage and +33% Damage against ARC armor plating) at the expense of bullet velocity and recoil control.
