Step-by-step walkthroughs for Lost in Transmission and Medical Merchandise in ARC Raiders, with precise map callouts, route suggestions, and PvPvE tips that build on an Escalation-focused progression path.
ARC Raiders’ early progression quests are deceptively simple on paper, but the PvPvE format and map verticality can easily stall your Escalation grind. Lost in Transmission and Medical Merchandise both send you across contested hotspots where other Raiders and ARC patrols naturally converge. This guide breaks each quest into clear routes and practical tactics so you can finish them efficiently without donating gear to the nearest third party.
Lost in Transmission: Control Tower A6, Spaceport
Lost in Transmission is a single-raid objective tied to Spaceport. The quest is straightforward: reach the top of Control Tower A6 and interact with a terminal in the control room. The catch is that all progress must be done in one run, which makes player interference the real obstacle.
Objective overview
- Travel to Spaceport and locate Control Tower A6.
- Fight or sneak your way inside the tower.
- Reach the elevator shaft with the vertical zipline.
- Ride the zipline to the top floor.
- Enter the control room and interact with the console under the open window.
- Extract or die to return to Speranza and turn in the quest.
Map callouts and route planning
On Spaceport’s tactical map, Control Tower A6 is near the central airfield, a tall, easily identifiable tower with an attached control building.
From spawn, treat A6 like a mini-raid inside your raid. Open your map and plan a path that keeps you along solid cover and away from the widest sightlines across the runway. If you spawn on the western side, use the hangars and cargo stacks to close distance to A6 with minimal exposure. From the east, cut through interior corridors of adjacent buildings rather than crossing open apron.
When you reach the base of A6, enter through the main lower doors and begin clearing hallways. You are aiming for the northern hallway that leads to the elevator shaft. This shaft is your key landmark: an open vertical space with a climb that is replaced here by a cable that functions as a zipline.
Inside A6: finding the elevator shaft and zipline
Move floor by floor, hugging walls and listening for footsteps or gunfire. Control Tower A6 is a magnet for other players because of the zipline shortcut and the terminal on top, so expect ambushes.
Navigate to the northern side of the building. You will enter a hallway with a break that opens into an elevator shaft. Look for a vertical opening with a cable stretching up into the tower. That cable is your zipline to the rooftop-level control room.
Before you grab the line, clear adjacent rooms and listen carefully. You want to avoid riding straight into a squad waiting above.
Taking the zipline without getting farmed
You are extremely vulnerable while on the zipline, so treat the ride itself as a risk you must manage.
Before committing, do these checks:
• Sound check: stop moving and listen for footsteps, reloads, or ability audio above.
• Visual scan: if you can see any silhouettes or muzzle flashes in upper windows, wait or reposition.
• Team sync: if you are in a squad, ride the zipline in quick succession so no one is isolated.
If you suspect players are camping the top, consider baiting them. One teammate can ride up with minimal gear while others hold angles from windows or stairs, ready to punish anyone who overpeeks the shaft. Solo players can delay and let other squads collide first, then move in while they trade.
When you commit, ride the zipline straight up. Have a close-range weapon ready as you near the top so you can immediately snap to threats when you step off.
Control room terminal location
At the top, step off the zipline and push into the control room. This room wraps around the tower with large windows overlooking the airfield. You are looking for a console on the western side of the room, roughly underneath an open window.
The console is a computer terminal with a keyboard. Approach it and hold the interaction key. The interaction bar fills quickly, but you are fully committed while it channels, so clear enemies first or smoke the area before starting.
Once the bar completes, the Lost in Transmission quest finishes instantly. You do not need to survive after this for the quest flag to stick, but you still want to preserve your gear if possible.
Recommended extraction choices
After the interaction, your next decision is how to leave.
The safest extraction close to A6 is usually the Control Hatch extraction just north of the tower, if it is active. From the top of A6, drop down levels using interior stairs rather than jumping from high windows, then cut north along building cover toward the hatch. Its confined entry makes it easier to defend from a single direction.
If the Control Hatch is offline or camped, use the South Elevator extraction. Approach it through interior paths instead of sprinting through the open apron. Smoke grenades or decoy gadgets help break long sightlines while you wait for the elevator.
In both cases, assume that other squads might have heard the gunfire from your tower push and will be converging. Rotate unpredictably, avoid running directly from A6 in a straight line, and be willing to disengage if a stronger squad contests your route. The quest is already complete; do not throw away a successful run on a greedy extract.
PvPvE tips specific to Lost in Transmission
Control Tower A6 often has ARC patrols in the vicinity of the airfield. Use them to your advantage. Shooting nearby machines from cover can draw other players into a fight or force them to burn resources before they reach the tower. If you prefer a low-profile approach, stay off high-caliber weapons near A6 to avoid broadcasting your exact position.
Queues around the zipline can be an opportunity. If you hear a squad riding up ahead of you, wait a few seconds and then follow. If they run into another group or ARC patrol on the roof, you can arrive late and clean up rather than be first contact. Inside the tower, listen for heavy ARC steps or ARC firing audio, which can be a sign that players are already engaged above you.
Medical Merchandise: Three-map container hunt
Medical Merchandise spreads its objectives across three different maps and can be safely chipped away over multiple raids. Progress is tied to searching containers in very specific medical-themed rooms, not to extracting with loot, and the quest tracks the moment you complete a valid search.
The quest steps can be done in any order.
- Spaceport: Search two containers in the Departure Building exam rooms.
- Buried City: Search three containers in the Hospital.
- Dam Battlegrounds: Search two containers in the Research and Administration medical room.
Because you do not need to survive for the searches to count, you can take more aggressive routes and even treat each objective as a one-way sprint if your gear is disposable.
Spaceport: Departure Building exam rooms
Open your map on Spaceport and identify the Departure Building, a multi-floor structure that sits close to the terminal-side of the map. Your goal is the exam rooms on the second floor in the northeasternmost section of this building.
Enter the Departure Building from a side or rear doorway to avoid the most obvious front approaches. Work your way upstairs, remaining close to walls and watching long corridors where players like to set up crossfires.
On the second floor, push toward the far northeast corner. Look for the clear medical signage that marks the exam wing, typically a large medical cross icon above or near the entry door. Inside, you will find small exam rooms off a main hallway.
The quest requires that you search two containers inside these exam rooms. Any proper searchable medical container counts: wall-mounted cabinets, drawers, and white medical shelving. You do not need to pick up the loot afterward, just complete the search action.
As soon as both searches are done and you see the progress pop-up in the top left of your screen, the Spaceport leg of Medical Merchandise is locked in permanently. You can attempt to extract or accept death and move on to your next objective in a future raid.
Buried City: Hospital search routes
On Buried City, your target is the Hospital point of interest. It is a large, multi-floor complex that attracts players because of its concentrated loot and vertical vantage points.
From spawn, decide whether to approach the Hospital directly or flank around the edges. If you spawn nearby, you may want to sprint straight there and secure a few searches before other squads fully gear up. If you spawn far, it is often safer to route through adjacent blocks first, letting early contests resolve before committing.
Any floor of the Hospital can progress the quest as long as you are searching valid containers that reward Search XP. These include cabinets, lockers, drawers, shelving units, med bags, and similar interactable objects. Destroyed ARC husks, scattered debris, or non-lootable props do not count.
For a fast completion, target high-density zones like nurse stations, storage rooms, and side rooms near the main wards. These typically stack multiple searchable containers within a very short distance, letting you secure all three required searches with minimal exposure.
Crowd noise and gunfire echo heavily through the Hospital’s interior, which can make it difficult to triangulate exact positions. Move deliberately, close doors behind you to limit sightlines, and avoid sprinting constantly so you can catch approaching footsteps. If you hear another group on your floor, backtrack to a side wing, complete your last search there, and then exit via a different staircase or a broken external wall.
Once the third container search registers and the quest tracker confirms Buried City progress, your work here is done regardless of whether you survive.
Dam Battlegrounds: Research and Administration medical room
The final map segment takes place at Dam Battlegrounds, specifically inside the Research and Administration building. You are looking for a dedicated medical room in the southwesternmost section of that complex.
From your spawn, navigate toward the Research and Administration POI, which usually sits near the southern portion of the dam facility. Take side roads and lower catwalks rather than wide-open dam tops where snipers thrive.
As you enter the building, clear each section, then work your way toward the southwest. Look for a door marked with a green medical cross. This is your primary landmark. Passing through leads into the medical area, a compact set of rooms with beds and clinical supplies.
Inside, you will usually find at least two quick-search options: a desk drawer and a med bag near one of the bed stalls. Both count toward Medical Merchandise’s Dam requirement. If for any reason you do not get credit for two searches here, check nearby locker rooms branching off the same corridor, which can spawn additional med bags or med-focused containers.
As with the other steps, you only need to complete the search interactions. Once two valid searches have registered and your quest tracker updates, you are clear to focus purely on extraction or PvP without worrying about losing progress.
PvPvE strategy for Medical Merchandise runs
Because Medical Merchandise progress persists even if you die, you can adjust your priorities by gear level. On low-value loadouts, it can be optimal to sprint aggressively to your objective, secure the minimum searches, and then either extract quickly or accept that you might die in the chaos. On high-value kits, slow down, plan your routes, and avoid stacking multiple high-traffic objectives in a single raid.
On all three maps, medical areas like exam rooms and hospitals function as natural convergence points. Treat them as contested zones. Pause before entering, listen for movement, and consider tossing a non-lethal item into the room to check for reactions from campers. If you encounter a larger squad, it is often smarter to rotate away and hit a different floor or wing instead of forcing a frontal brawl.
Whenever possible, align Medical Merchandise attempts with other Escalation or contract objectives that already send you into those same points of interest. That way, you turn one dangerous trip into multiple forms of progress and reduce the total number of raids you need in these hotspots.
Completing Lost in Transmission and Medical Merchandise back to back tightens your grasp of Spaceport, Buried City, and Dam Battlegrounds, three areas that continue to feature heavily in higher-level Escalation quests. Once these are checked off, you will move through later objectives with a much better sense of where threats gather, which zipline or stairwell routes are safest, and how to bend the game’s PvPvE chaos in your favor instead of being swallowed by it.