How to Get Planks and Sheet Metal in ARC Raiders: Every Farming Spot and Vendor Trick

How to Get Planks and Sheet Metal in ARC Raiders

The fastest way to get Planks and Sheet Metal in ARC Raiders is to buy them from the trader Celeste, who sells each for 3 Assorted Seeds. The full Sheltered Retreat Stage 2 requirement of 3 Planks and 5 Sheet Metal costs just 24 seeds. If you would rather keep your seeds, farm Planks in the residential houses of Old Town in southwest Pendola Pass and Sheet Metal as loose surface loot around the Commissary Supermarket. Both are Frozen Trail (2.0) "Outpost materials," so you need the current version of the game to find them at all.

Confirm Your Version and Unlocks Before You Start

Planks and Sheet Metal did not exist before the Frozen Trail (2.0) update, so confirm your client is patched before you plan a run. Check the version string on the main menu, in the bottom corner of the title screen; you want it to read 2.0 or later. If it does not, update through your platform launcher and relaunch.

For the vendor route, bank 24 Assorted Seeds (3 seeds per item across 8 items) and confirm Celeste appears in your trader list at the Outpost. We could not verify the exact unlock condition for Celeste, so check your in-game trader roster directly rather than assuming she is available; if she is not listed, progress your Outpost projects and re-check.

Access to Pendola Pass is likewise not documented in any official source we could confirm. If the map is not selectable from your raid menu, treat it as gated behind progression you have not yet completed and check back after advancing your Outpost.

For the farming route, bring a raid-ready loadout you are willing to lose, since Pendola Pass is a live PvPvE zone and other Raiders contest the same buildings.

Stash space is rarely the problem. Both materials weigh only 0.1 kg each, but you will also want room for the 10 ARC Alloy and 3 Advanced Electrical Components that Stage 2 demands.

Buy Planks and Sheet Metal From Celeste

Celeste is the only trader who accepts Assorted Seeds, and she sells both Planks and Sheet Metal at a flat 3 seeds each. This is the correct play if you are time-poor or your seeds are piling up unused, because these two materials are the cheapest part of Stage 2 by a wide margin.

Stock up beyond the project requirement here if you plan to upgrade the Research Station, which is widely reported to need 35 Planks at level 1.

Farm Planks in Old Town

Old Town, in the southwest of Pendola Pass, holds roughly a third of the map's Plank spawns, making it the densest single area for the material. Planks appear as light-brown wooden boards lying flat on floors, leaning against walls, or resting on tables and shelves. They are loose world objects, not container contents, so you are looking for visible geometry rather than loot prompts.

1. Land on Pendola Pass and rotate southwest toward Old Town along the main road.
2. Enter from the south road and clear the two-story houses on the main street first. These have the highest concentration of furniture and lived-in rooms.
3. Work top-down inside each building: upstairs bedrooms and storage rooms before ground-floor living areas.
4. Check floors, tabletops, and shelves visually as you move. Do not stop to open containers unless you are also farming other materials.
5. Skip refrigerators, freezers, fridges, and cash registers entirely. Planks never spawn in them, and each one costs you seconds you cannot spare.
6. Clear three to four buildings per raid, then extract. A focused run through four houses takes roughly eight to ten minutes and reliably yields several Planks.

Spawn figures come from community guide sites, not datamined tables, so use them for relative priority rather than exact expectations.

Farm Sheet Metal at the Commissary Supermarket

The Commissary Supermarket on Pendola Pass is the densest Sheet Metal location on the map, with the vast majority of its spawn points on shelves. Sheet Metal appears as flat, grey, rectangular panels, often stacked or leaning on shelving units and open industrial surfaces. It spawns as loose surface loot far more often than inside containers, so sweep shelves, floors, and open surfaces rather than looting every box.

1. Enter the supermarket through the main front entrance and clear the checkout area first; panels frequently sit on the counters and floor near the registers.
2. Move aisle by aisle, checking shelf tops and shelf bases. Sheet Metal spawns both on and under shelving.
3. Sweep the stockroom and loading area at the back. Industrial surfaces there carry panels at a high rate.
4. Budget five to seven minutes for a full supermarket clear, then rotate to a nearby Industrial or Residential POI if you are still short.
5. Stella Montis (Assembly/Loading Bay, yellow drawers) is sometimes named as an alternative, but that "guaranteed drop" claim is unverified. Treat it as a backup, not a plan.

Build a Flexible Pendola Pass Route

Pendola Pass runs on a Dynamic Loot Zone system introduced with Frozen Trail, so the value of any single area can shift from raid to raid.

• Do not hard-commit to one building. Chain Old Town and the Commissary Supermarket into a loop and adjust based on what you actually find.
• Both materials are tagged "Outpost materials" in the loot data, so if you see one, the surrounding zone type is likely good for the other.
• Bank your haul early if you are only a few items short. Dying with 5 Sheet Metal in your pack costs you the whole run.
• Re-check known hotspots each raid rather than assuming last raid's layout still holds.

If it goes wrong: Materials banked at your stash before you die are safe and carry over between raids. Materials still in your pack when you go down are lost with the rest of your raid loot. Partial hauls do not carry over unless you extract and bank them, so if you are within one or two items of a turn-in, extract and bank rather than pushing for a full set in a single run.

Turn the Materials Into the Sheltered Retreat Unlock

Stage 2 of the Sheltered Retreat project requires 3 Planks, 5 Sheet Metal, 10 ARC Alloy, and 3 Advanced Electrical Components, and rewards the Red Light Stick blueprint.

1. Bank all four material types at your stash before starting the turn-in.
2. Open the Projects menu from your Outpost terminal and select the Sheltered Retreat project.
3. Navigate to Stage 2 and confirm the turn-in. The materials are consumed from your stash automatically.
4. On success, the stage advances and the Red Light Stick blueprint is awarded to your account.
5. Complete the remaining stages to finish the project and unlock the Outpost, which grants access to the Research Station used for higher-tier weapon customization.

Sources disagree on an alleged Level 18 unlock requirement for the Outpost. It appears in only one low-authority source and is not corroborated by Embark's official post, so do not plan around it. Once the Outpost is up, your first task there involves photographing a farmland house near the Ruined Homestead on the Blue Gate map.

Mistakes That Cost You Raids

• Looting refrigerators and cash registers for Planks. They categorically never spawn there, and you will burn minutes per raid on dead containers.
• Container-hunting for Sheet Metal when most of it sits as loose loot on shelves and open surfaces. Check the shelf, not the crate.
• Spending seeds on Planks and Sheet Metal when you are also saving for other Celeste stock. 24 seeds is cheap, but it is not free if you are mid-progression elsewhere.
• Assuming a fixed route. Dynamic Loot Zones mean last raid's hotspot can be this raid's empty room.
• Trusting the "8 planks and sheet metal" phrasing some guides use. That is the aggregate of 3 Planks plus 5 Sheet Metal, not 8 of each.
• Treating spawn-count figures as official. They come from guide sites, not datamined tables, so use them for relative priority only.

After the Outpost: Research Station and Furniture

With the Outpost unlocked, push toward Research Station level 1, which reportedly requires 35 Planks, a much bigger Planks sink than the Sheltered Retreat itself. Frozen Trail added 100 Furniture Designs: 73 found Topside and 22 unlocked by upgrading the Outpost, so keep farming both materials after the project is done.

One early crafting example makes the scaling clear: an Archive Floor Lamp needs 15 Sheet Metal and 3 Light Bulbs.

Keep running the Old Town and Commissary Supermarket loop on Pendola Pass, and keep buying from Celeste whenever your Assorted Seeds stack gets high. The vendor route covers the early Outpost grind, and the farming loop covers everything after it.