Death Stranding 2 is as much a rebuttal of Death Stranding’s theme of connection as a sequel

Kojima explains how his thinking evolved during the pandemic

Image credit:Kojima Productions

Earlier today there was a mighty eruption of Death Stranding 2 : On The Beach previews, featuring commentary on the new game’s themes and social relevance from erstwhile Metal Gear Solidifier and Kojima Productions boss Hideo Kojima. Themes and social relevance, eh! Kojima is one of the few bigwigs who will engage openly with such things, which is perhaps less praise of Kojima than a judgement upon the hesitant and anodyne way other blockbuster game creators discuss the impact of their work.

In this case, Kojima has talked at some length about how Death Stranding 2 builds on and, at times, resists the first game’s theme of connection, based on his experiences of the Covid pandemic and his dislike of the “metaverse” - that ageing umbrella term for a newly monetisable “web 3.0” fauxtopia of networked technologies, ranging from VR to cryptocurrency, which many large video game publishers have sought to normalise in their hunger for profit growth.

A quick and mildly spoilerific catcher-upper: Death Stranding takes place in a North America near-obliterated by the opening of portals to the realm of the dead, which have trashed communications and rendered a lot of the countryside impassable. Among its plot elements is the construction of the Chiral Network, a spectral internet routed through a purgatorial dimension, the Beach, which is used to reunite a divided country .

All of this was very much a political statement on Kojima’s part. “We released Death Stranding before the COVID-19 pandemic,” he recalled in a Q&A at the latest Death Stranding 2 event, as reported by VGC . “The world was heading towards isolation and division, such as the UK leaving the EU. So I was saying, ‘Let’s connect. We’re headed for disaster if we don’t connect.’ That was the theme, story, and gameplay for Death Stranding.

“After the release, just three months later, we entered the pandemic, and I was really surprised,” Kojima went on. “It looked like Death Stranding, in a way. In the real world - the 21st century - we have something similar to the Chiral Network, which is the Internet. This was a little different compared to the 19th century, such as the Spanish Flu or the like. We survived the pandemic because of the Internet and people were connected online.”

Now that the pandemic is “over” - that’s to say, now that the continuing circulation of Covid has become “manageable” , and the weekly death tolls no longer make headlines - Kojima is revisiting the idea of the Chiral Network and portraying it more negatively. This stems, apparently, from his own experiences as a studio manager trying to persuade remote workers to return to the office.

“What happened was, there are now people in our studio who work from home, and I still don’t know their faces,” he continued. “Even music concerts were cancelled, and it all became online streaming. I understand this was unavoidable at the time of the pandemic. The same thing applies to schools; instead of getting to play with your friends or learning from teachers, you just look at a screen online which isn’t any different from watching YouTube videos.”

In a leap of association that deserves more interrogation, Kojima also linked the normalisation of remote working and socialising during the pandemic to the much shat-upon metaverse concept - which, I would argue, has many origin points besides the pandemic.

“Everything was leaning into the metaverse,” he said. “When you turned on the TV, everyone was talking about how it was the age of the metaverse now and there was no need to interact with people. I felt that we were going down a terrible path. Communication between human beings is not meant to be this way. You meet people by chance or see sights you didn’t expect to see. With the way we were headed, you would lose all of that.”

All these concerns led to Kojima rewriting the concept of Death Stranding 2 to fit his experiences of the pandemic. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “After I created a game with the theme of ’let’s connect instead of division and isolation,’ we had the pandemic, and I began to think, ‘Maybe it’s not such a good thing to connect so much’,” he said. There are specific characters and events in Death Stranding 2 that express these feelings, though Kojima naturally didn’t give anything away during the event.

According to VGC, Kojima’s sense that humanity now has too much of the wrong kind of connectivity has also shaped his approach to press events. It was “the reason he had insisted on hosting media from around the world, in-person, at his Tokyo studio last month”, rather than putting together an online preview event, as is now routine.

“You came all the way here and played for four days,” Kojima said. “This may typically be done online nowadays. But this game is about connection. You will know when you play further into Death Stranding 2; I think you will start to feel it after a while.

“That is why we invited you to physically come during your busy schedules, and people from all over the world have gathered here, and I’m sure you all met with many people and had many conversations. You saw the view from Tokyo Station, or you may have walked into a random restaurant - these things are the human experience. These coincidences and unintentional happenings connect seamlessly, but that doesn’t happen with the metaverse.”

As often with Kojima, there is a blend of insight and crushing naivete or obliviousness to all this, with the usual caveats about possible misunderstandings due to linguistic and cultural disconnects. I greatly enjoy Kojima’s willingness to disagree with the direction of his past projects, and even offer a playable rebuttal: it’s a healthy change from the “more/better” rhetoric you generally get from triple-A sequel-makers. I share his distaste for the metaverse, whatever that currently means, and sure, I like to meet my own colleagues in the flesh, now and then.

That said, a lot of this reads like yet another manager throwing a tantrum about his employees and associates exerting some agency with regard to their own health and social requirements. It echoes active efforts to put an end to remote-working elsewhere: Activision, for example, recently ended hybrid working for QA staff , in what union workers branded a prelude to “soft layoffs”. Rockstar are reported to have required GTA 6 developers to return to the office in the name of “quality and polish”. All of which serves company management far more than it does the workers, especially those who have disabilities and other life factors that make working from home preferable, even in the absence of a pandemic.

Personally, I remote-work partly because it’s more convenient, but mostly because I have clinically vulnerable relatives and Covid is, in fact, still happening. I do attend press events in person (I still mask up ), but I’d rather do the bulk of them online. I would probably have said no to this particular press trip, if I’d learned in advance that it was designed to illustrate the sublime importance of returning to the office.

I’m keen to see how Death Stranding 2 explores the fallout from the pandemic. As a canary in culture’s coal mine, Kojima’s work can be slapdash and cheesy but it is always worth wallowing around in, yanking up all the threads. Still, the language here doesn’t inspire much hope of a complex portrayal. That line about “the human experience” turns my craw inasmuch as, like most appeals to “the human”, it doesn’t acknowledge that different human beings have different contexts, different needs and different degrees of autonomy and privilege.

It’s strange, because there’s quite a pronounced labour politics element to the first Death Stranding. Your character, Sam Porter, is an overtaxed delivery guy with bosses who sometimes muscle into his “private” quarters as holograms, even chasing him into the shower. I’d be interested to see the purposeful oppressiveness of those interactions extended into a critique of demands for a return to in-person working “after” Covid. Anyway, Death Stranding 2 is out for PS5 on 26th June, with a PC launch to follow - last we heard, it was slated for 2026.

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

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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

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