Breachway early access review: a graceful reinvention of starship combat as a question of taut deckbuilding

Who’s for a game of Picards?

Image credit:Hooded Horse

• Developer: Edgeflow Studio
• Publisher: Hooded Horse
• Release: September 26th 2024
• On: Windows
• From: Steam , Epic Games Store , GOG
• Price: £15/€15/$15
• Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7 12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11

The beauty of cards is that they can be anything. You can slap together a working game with them in a couple of minutes. Take 12 blanks, doodle some faces and landscapes, and lo, you have a procedural narrative generator. Make some duplicates, invent a few rules and lo, you have systems.

Conversely, the great drawback of cards - especially in those roguelite deckbuilders people have been churning out since Slay The Spire - is that everything can be reduced to them. For example: last night, I played a round of Fungi with my partner, Fungi being a charming tabletop foraging sim in which you gather scrumptious chantarelles and boletus from the forest floor. This morning I resumed playing Breachway , out now in early access, in which you guide a starship through a series of wartorn solar systems, with battles unfolding as a turn-based exchange of cards corresponding to ship components.

Piling up a delicious panful of puffballs is not much like organising a missile volley, but when cards are involved, there’s the risk of interchangeability. It’s all just hoarding number cards and multipliers for the opportune moment, right? What is a corvette, but another kind of fungus? Thankfully, Breachway makes the deckbuilder format its own. A huge part of the fun, in fact, is watching it find ways to recharacterise familiar cardgame synergies so that they’re consistent with the sweaty daydream of crafting your own Enterprise, Battlestar or Sulaco. It’s off to a fine start in early access. Still - and at the risk of getting my decks even more mixed up - I do think it could do with some additional flavour.

The problem is less the cardgame than the surrounding roguelite element. Each solar system is a web of nodes for battles, refuelling or repair opportunities, space stations where you can give your warp core a haircut, and storylet events that sometimes involve quests - all of it funnelling towards a boss encounter at the far end. The overall goal - as described in a tutorial prologue that can be disabled, once you’ve completed it - is to chase down one of sci-fi’s many anomalous signals, but there are also a bunch of factions to reckon with enroute.

As you travel, you’ll make or lose friends while pursuing your own interests, accruing or losing reputation points with each side, which dictates whether you’ll be met with open arms or torpedoes a few nodes along. Aside from the lure of plunder (new cards and credits to spend on ship upgrades) or the need to patch your hull, your movements are lightly governed by your fuel reserve. This is only consumed when you travel along tangential, yellow-tinted starlanes - it’s a slightly forced way of preserving the branching roguelite structure, and ensuring you can’t just loot every map node at your leisure.

Sounds robust, yes? As robust as a freshly plucked bouquet of enoki, sizzling on the campfire with some cider and butter. Ah, but I’ve found solar system traversal quite dry so far. The starmap presentation is tepid and the events or quests are pedestrian sci-fi fare, rendered all the sleepier by roguelite repetition - go and fight X of Y ships, decide whether to answer a distress signal, attempt to scrape some bonus credits from a wreck. The game’s small variety of mission types might feel more inviting if the writing were sparkier, but it all reads like codex marginalia: clipped, world-buildy stuff with some reluctant stabs at humour. It functions well enough as a roguelite - each run at a system is about tailoring your ship for the boss, without taking too much attrition on the way - but there isn’t nearly the richness and suspense you get from, say, the woebegone roads and landmarks of Darkest Dungeon 2 , even at the same point in its early access career.

Image credit:Hooded Horse

If the roguelite element and the narrative backdrop are dreary, the card-based ship engagements and their supporting resource systems jolt Breachway out of the doldrums. Again, the game does a wonderful job of reworking the base conceit of dealing and playing cards into a plausible approximation of a starship’s anatomy. Each turn, you’re dealt a random handful based on your (upgradeable) reactor output. Each card requires one or more of three resource types, ordnance, energy and mass, which are themselves generated turn by turn according to how you’ve configured your reactor. Your opponent also pulls cards unpredictably from a deck, but with pips filling up on each card to show you when they’re ready to play. This allows you to anticipate attacks, target weaknesses and puzzle your way past dreadnoughts that, schematic for schematic, ought to have you bang to rights.

The cards span a familiar assortment of attack, defence, support and resource management abilities, but each lends itself cleanly to certain tactics, and there is a gratifying emphasis on chaining them together. Different species of pulse laser can be fired in sequence, for example, reducing the cost or increasing the damage of the next blast. As precision weapons, lasers can also be used to target individual ship components - reduce them to scrap, and your opponent will lose access to certain parts of their deck for a couple of turns.

Image credit:Hooded Horse

Flak cannons are more about momentum between turns; they inflict randomised damage within a range, but get deadlier as each heaping dollop of flak abrades the target’s hull. Ion bolts knock out shields and suffuse the victim with static electricity, eventually causing systems to misbehave. Missiles can be devastating, but take a turn to cross the distance between ships, and are gone from your deck once fired. As such, they should be saved up and timed to coincide with instant-effect cards.

As for defensive play: one of Breachway’s most important gambits is that shields swiftly dissipate once raised, halving in power every turn, which means you have to treat them more like parries. The same is true of enemy shield usage, though certain bosses will happily turn themselves into bulletsponges using more advanced cards, unless you snipe and sabotage the relevant bits.

Periodically, the generic rhythms of the deckbuilder format assert themselves over all this wanton Star Trekery. Chew through a lot of shield cards in one turn, and you won’t draw many others till you clear out your discard pile, but is it worse to keep them in your hand and not have room for new offensive cards? It’s lovely to watch the game move between thinking like a cardgame and thinking like a spaceship strategy experience. And the writing, so lacklustre when it comes to the roguelite stuff, does a nifty job here of dramatising each card’s effects, reframing them as battle scene devices you might recognise from myriad movies.

Image credit:Hooded Horse

All that said, there are times when the game’s desire to render the deck-building consistent with the ship-building feels like a constraint. Or rather, the specific tenor of harder sci-fi invoked here limits how adventurous Breachway can be with its build possibilities. Aside from acquiring new cards, you can increase and reorganise your reactor output with credits, and plug in subsystems which act as modifiers, but the evolution of your ship - there are four varieties in the early access build right now - currently feels quite trim and decided. There’s none of the sheer eccentricity of Cobalt Core .

Still, you might prefer it like that, and Breachway has “around a year” ahead of it in early access, which is plenty of time to salvage some exotic alien tech from derelicts, and transform itself into a galactic legend. The big challenge, again, is spicing up the roguelite layer, or perhaps thinning it even further back to the parts that matter. If Breachway can manage that, it will satisfy me more than any chantarelle ever could.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

Breachway

PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.

All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.