Doom: The Dark Ages review

Midieval

Image credit:Id/Rock Paper Shotgun

• Developer: id Software
• Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
• Release: May 15th, 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam/ Game Pass
• Price: £70/ €80/ $70
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 10

I was having a pretty good time with Doom: The Dark Ages . Then I rolled credits, reinstalled Doom Eternal , loaded up Mars Core, and realised how much Id have lost their sense of playfulness. Less grounded than landlocked, less weighty than weighed down, this is the slightest, least essential, and least creatively vibrant of the modern trilogy. It’s also a sinuous, gurning, intoxicating beast of an FPS . I like it. I’m disappointed. I can’t wait for DLC to round it out. I don’t think Id are capable of making bad games. I really hope the next one is better.

Game director Hugo Martin trotted out a fair amount of investor speak in the run up to release, and now I can’t get the phrase “core pillars of engagement” out of my head. It made me feel like a cocainated lab rat every time I started enjoying myself. Not for nothing, either. Eternal’s dance had signature moves, but gave space to freestyle. The Dark Ages - between its call-and-response enemy design and Simon Says traffic light parries - wants you to dance to its tune. A campaign this long needs fresher riffs.

Cards on the table, I’d comfortably call Doom Eternal a masterpiece. I hated it for about one and a half playthroughs, baffled to why Id saw fit to gum up Doom 2016 ’s flawlessly oiled murder machinery with oodles of unnecessary faff. Then it clicked, and I actually find 2016 unplayable now. Eternal, for me, is the FPS. I’ll return to it at least once a year, its capacity for freeform Cacodemon eye surgery and Mancubus mashing ensuring I’ll never step in the same Super Gore Nest twice.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Id

Conversely, at its worst, The Dark Ages feels prescriptive to the point of restriction. Its combat sandbox never stops offering meaty thrills, but it starts to show its creative limits before the end of a single playthrough. Its skill ceiling might even be a little bit higher than Eternal, but the edges of its space for self-expression feel comparatively stifling. It’s didactic and honestly a little patronising, barking commands and doling out audio-visual synaptic tugjobs and paws full of armour shards from a treat-laden conveyor belt like Werther’s Original day at the grandad factory.

The problems start with Id’s stated and oddly gleeful philosophy of simplification. And sure, Martin’s “less strings on the guitar” sounds great, unless you want the full range of notes. Most gun upgrades are downgraded from active, switchable alt-fire modes to passive buffs. You can buy a perk for your plasma rifle that shocks enemies, another for bonus damage to those shocked, and a third to spread the stun jolt when you shoot a shocked demon. Your shield has a similar ability that activates when you parry. Combine them, and watch hell-blasted battlefields light up with convulsing, immobile hellspawn. Aim. Shoot. Parry. Enjoy the fireworks. Except, I didn’t light those fireworks myself: they’re the passive effect of skills I slotted in a menu. Purchase and equip, until it is done.

This is all done in service of letting you focus on your shield. Hurl it at a group of chaff zombies to power it, rocket across the field into the face of an Arachnotron to shatter its armour. Parry a projectile to make it falter. Use that opening to whack it with your flail, lighting it on fire for some bonus armour shards. Throw your shield again to buzzsaw its brain into stunned submission. Mop it up with the super shotgun. As worthy a star of the show as the shield may be, it also hogs the spotlight, ripping solos and leaving the guns to play second fiddle.

Efficient patterns of play make themselves clear early on, and weapon switching is so slow I felt punished for experimenting. Specific enemy weaknesses and reactions meant arena fights in Eternal had the capacity to become strings of rehearsed combos, but these strings feel more tightly wound here; heavy and manacle-thick. I hope you liked Eternal’s marauders, because The Dark Ages expects you to rat-ta-tap your feet to similar pied piping for at least a third of the demons here.

I’d have liked the game to go harder on the medieval setting, although Slayer vs Wood is always a good time. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Id

“A Doom sandbox full of war and riches” was one of the marketing lines for this one. And… no. No, it’s not. Eternal was a Doom sandbox, because Doom is combat and Eternal’s combat was electric with combos and calculations, weak spots and weapon skills. The ‘sandboxes’ here are a few massive maps - maybe five of 22 levels - that let you pick e.g which of three portals you want to close first, with a few optional arenas where you’ll fight waves to whittle a shield off a meaty ’leader’ variant of an elite enemy type you’ve already fought, to be rewarded by a shard that gives you ten percent extra health or armour. There’s also lots of gold to collect - mostly in increments of a single piece, upgrades cost hundreds - because nothing is more Doom than bringing up the map every five minutes to make sure you haven’t missed a solitary good boy nugget.

At the end of the first level, I was sat in a gun turret, flaying the leg meat from a massive titan, and I couldn’t help feel things had come full circle to the sort of tired setpieces Doom 2016 was a reaction to. I understand why it’s there so early, to give you a ground view of these colossal demons so the later punch-and-dodge mech sections have a sense of scale. But it’s not the only thing here bizarrely redolent of those same mid-2000s cinematic military shooter tropes that 2016’s Slayer would have disdainfully punched to glue without a second’s hesitation.

Missions are often punctuated with too-long third-person cutscenes, in which potentially interesting characters like the sentinel king are utterly wasted, recast as boring chain-of-command dishcloths making war plans, nattering into walkie talkies about the invasion. There’s a speech at one point. There’s at least one level where, after clearing arenas of demons, you get comms like “the enemy troops are being pushed back!”. So much of it feels like a first draft.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Id

Eternal got lost in its lore, for sure, but The Dark Ages feels besotted by its bland storytelling. The Slayer writhes on the floor after getting immobilised whilst villains monologue. A space witch zaps purple glowing light at a damseled sentinel commander’s blue glowing light while guitars try to build tension like I’m supposed to know or care which colour of light does what. The monologues continue. Fuck it, Edge were right . I’d love to be able to talk to these creatures, because then I could ask if they’d kindly stop flapping their gums.

Attempted deliberate pacing becomes a stolid bore. There are multiple sections where you swim very slowly through long stretches of water. The music doesn’t help. There are a few great riffs and some filthy, rattling analogue bass guitar lines, but sometimes it’s just spooky ambience for long stretches. Where’s Mick Gordon when you need him, eh? Oh. The droning ambience is fitting perhaps, for this tale’s apocalyptic sci-fi war, but why go for that tone in the first place? It’s less Army Of Darkness or Tokyo Gore Police , more C-tier Destiny expansion. It’s not as simple as just “no Mick Gordon” either. Eternal’s level design and scenario beats had a cadence and playfulness to them that’s been sacrificed in favour of expository bloat and supposed sandboxes that only feel a touch less curated anyway.

But, look. I did have another reason for mentioning that I changed my mind about Doom Eternal up top, and that reason is this: I do not think I, or honestly anyone, is capable of forming a comprehensive take on modern Id Software’s combat design in the space of week. They’re too good at what they do. Even if I don’t love this incarnation, a failed experiment is far more interesting than stagnation. My gut feeling is that The Dark Ages is not robust enough to last the test of time - I’m getting tired of it already, honestly - but I can’t be certain. Maybe the other shell casing will drop at some point.

If you need to travel a decent distance to your next objective, the game will treat to you to a chase sequence against a ship that can’t fight back. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Id

Anyway, here’s some stuff I loved. You can quickly switch between weapons in a given category e.g the shotgun and super shotgun. This won’t mean anything to you if you’re not using a controller, but then again, I’m not sure I’ve ever played an FPS so consciously designed for buttons and analogue sticks.

The skull-chipping gun has a perk where it increases your movement speed after firing it for a few seconds, and zipping around spraying skull chunks in a wide arc at groups of groaning hell soldiers is as Doom as Doom ever was.

Having your grapple analogue tied to your permanently-equipped shield rather than the situational super shotgun is a great change. Rocketing across the battlefield into a mess of chaff demons stays brilliant for dozens of hours. You’ll scan the arena and make notes of where the zombies are because they’re basically walking grapple points made of meat. Weaving through projectiles like a 3D bullet hell is great at making you feel like a flash bastard, too, even if the patterns veer simple.

Glad I can’t actually do this outside of cutscenes, that’d be too much fun. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Id

And, despite the abundance of serious third-person cutscenes, the game hasn’t completely abandoned the Slayer’s Spinal-Tap-goofy ultraviolent heroics. There is at least one moment towards the end that is now in my list of best ever videogame things, in a smashing-your-favourite-action-figures-together sort of way. Rocketing out of an hell airship and landing back on your dragon in first-person is great. The cyber dragon itself is basically forgettable (terrible sentence to have to write) but I do think these sequences have their place in terms of giving you a sense of the conflict’s scale. Some of the city skyboxes you’ll zip through are real winners, too. The main antagonist, demon lad Prince Ahzrak, is pretty compelling. And each of the game’s three boss fights are great.

The one thought that kept occurring to me during my first playthrough was this: I can’t wait to collect everything and get all the upgrades so I can stop worrying about sniffing out air vents and puzzles, switch my brain off, and just play some goshdarn Doom. It took me about halfway through my next run before I realised something: all this exploration, all this bloody gold collecting, it’s not something you’re supposed to do once as a fun extra before the real game starts. It’s an integral part of the cadence of a game that veers repetitive and thin without it. There’s just plain less to do here. Less to combat. Less reason to replay levels. This is a solid enough FPS that I don’t regret playing - sometimes, it’s downright captivating - but between the mech, the dragon, and all the medieval armour, something vital has been crushed under all that extra weight.

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Doom: The Dark Ages

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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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