Anvil Splitter: What You Need to Know

The Anvil Splitter is the only Tech Mod in Arc Raiders, it’s Legendary, and it’s hard to find. None of that makes it good. It turns the Anvil’s single heavy round into four weak pellets, trading the Anvil’s long-range precision for a short-range spread that, on most targets, doesn’t even kill faster. Here’s what it actually does, whether it kills faster than a bare Anvil or the Il Toro, and the one trick that justifies keeping one in your stash.

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What the mod actually does

The Anvil Splitter has two modifiers: +3 Projectiles Per Shot and 70% Reduced Projectile Damage. That turns the Anvil’s one round into four pellets, each dealing 30% of the Anvil’s 40 base damage. So you get 12 damage per pellet, 48 total if all four connect.

It touches nothing else. Fire rate, magazine (6), ammo consumption, and reload all stay exactly as the bare Anvil. The only changes are projectile count and per-pellet damage.

The catch is dispersion. The mod carries a large built-in spread penalty that makes it effective only at very close range, roughly 20m by community testing, after which the pattern opens up like a wide shotgun. Patch 1.23.0 (April 8 2026) fixed an exploit that let players use the Splitter without the dispersion penalty, and nothing since has changed its spread or its damage.

Field	Value
Type	Legendary Tech Mod (Anvil only, the only Tech Mod in the game)
Effect	+3 projectiles, 70% reduced per-projectile damage
Per shot	4 pellets, 12 damage each (48 total if all connect)
Effective range	~20m, heavy spread beyond that
Fire rate / mag / reload	Unchanged from the bare Anvil
Value	7,000 coins
Acquisition	Drop-only, cannot be crafted

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Does it actually kill faster?

Short answer: barely, and only in one matchup. Here’s the body-shot count at point-blank with all four pellets landing, against each shield tier. The bare Anvil lands one 40-damage round per shot, the Splitter lands 48 across four pellets, and the post-nerf Il Toro lands 63 across nine.

Target	Bare Anvil	Anvil Splitter	Il Toro
Unshielded	3	3	2
Light shield	3	3	2
Medium shield	4	3	3
Heavy shield	4	4	3

The Splitter’s only body-shot improvement over a bare Anvil is one fewer shot against Medium shields, because 48 damage breaks the 70-charge Medium shield a shot sooner. That edge only exists at point-blank where every pellet connects, and the Il Toro still out-kills the Splitter on unshielded and Light-shield targets.

The real advantage is headshots. Community testing indicates each of the four pellets independently keeps the Anvil’s 2.5x headshot multiplier. This isn’t officially documented by Embark, so treat it as high-confidence but unconfirmed. The Il Toro has no headshot bonus at all (1.0x, head equals body). With headshots, two Anvil shots kill through Light and Medium shields, and three through Heavy (a Heavy’s 80 charge and 52.5% mitigation soak two mitigated headshots before it drops). The Il Toro, with no headshot bonus, can’t leverage headshots at all.

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The Rocketeer Flipper

This is the one use that justifies keeping a Splitter. Anvil + Anvil Splitter + Extended Barrel can flip a flying Rocketeer. The four pellets multiply the upward knockback on the Rocketeer’s exposed underside thruster, and Extended Barrel’s velocity boost makes the flip reliable. It only works while the Rocketeer is in combat mode with its thrusters accelerated. A flipped Rocketeer crashes and explodes, and shoving it into a wall or lamppost adds heavy collision damage. The pellet volume also helps stagger Wasps and Hornets.

This is a real in-engine physics interaction, and it’s the Splitter’s best-justified job.

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Against ARC, the bare Anvil wins

Despite the Anvil’s Strong heavy-ammo penetration rating, each Splitter pellet only carries 12 damage, which plinks off the plating of Bastions and other armored ARC. Players report shooting armored ARC several times with the Splitter for no effect. Armor stripping depends on per-hit damage, not just the penetration rating, and 12-damage pellets are too weak to punch through.

The bare, single-round Anvil lands its full 40 and actually penetrates, which makes the unmodded Anvil one of the better budget anti-ARC options. For general PvE, leave the Splitter in the stash and run the Anvil clean or with a Compensator.

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Mods you can pair with it

The Splitter occupies the Tech-Mod slot, so your only open slot is the Muzzle. The Anvil has just two slots total, Muzzle and Tech-Mod, with no grip, stock, magazine, or optic. That also means Kinetic Converter (a Stock mod) and Horizontal Grip (a Grip mod) can’t be equipped on it at all.

Muzzle mod	What it does	On the Splitter
Extended Barrel	+25% velocity, +15% vertical recoil	Best pick. Tightens the pellet pattern like a choke and enables the Rocketeer Flipper.
Compensator	Cuts per-shot dispersion (20/40/60% by tier)	General tightness if you’re not chasing the Flipper.
Silencer	Noise reduction only (II ~40%, III ~60%)	Quieter, no damage or dispersion change.

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The shield math behind those kill counts

Every shots-to-kill number above comes from the in-game shield formula, so it’s worth knowing how shields work. When a shield has charge, your HP loss is Damage x (1 − Mitigation) x Headshot multiplier. Shield charge itself drops by the full base damage (the headshot multiplier doesn’t apply to charge). Mitigation is binary: full while charge is 1 or more, including the hit that breaks the shield, then zero once charge hits 0. Base health is 100, fixed, with no upgrades that raise it.

Shield	Charge	Mitigation
Light	40	40%
Medium	70	42.5%
Heavy	80	52.5%

These match our Shield guide. Some older calculators list Medium at 50% and Heavy at 55 to 60%; those are superseded rounded values.

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How to get it, and what it’s worth

The Splitter is drop-only from containers and cannot be crafted, so treat each copy as a one-off. Best-reported spots are high-value containers (red lockers, breach and key rooms) on Night Raid or storm conditions, with players citing Dam staff rooms and Buried City residential and pharmacy areas as examples rather than guaranteed farms.

It’s worth 7,000 coins, recycles into 1x Mod Components + 1x Processor, and salvages into 2x Mechanical Components.

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Bottom line

Community tier lists put the base Anvil at S-tier in the current Riven Tides lineup and treat the Splitter as a novelty that doesn’t live up to its Legendary, hard-to-get status. The post-nerf Il Toro sits at A-tier as a close-quarters option inside about 8m.

Use the Splitter if you want the Rocketeer Flipper, or you’re a point-blank player who lands every pellet on the head. Skip it if you want reliable PvE armor damage or all-range PvP, where the bare Anvil and the Il Toro both serve you better.

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Damage and shots-to-kill figures use community frame-verified testing and the in-game shield formula. Splitter kill counts assume all four pellets land at point-blank; real spread will often drop a pellet and worsen them. The per-pellet 2.5x headshot multiplier is community-tested, not officially documented. No Anvil, Splitter, or shield balance changes have landed since Patch 1.23.0, so these values are current as of Patch 1.31.0.