Endless Legend 2’s early access launch is a triumph of asymmetrical 4X design, but I do wish it were even stranger

Getting eXXXXperimental

Image credit:Hooded Horse

As the ravening shitbeetles of the Edwinphage overran the coral fortifications of the neighbouring Aspect kingdom, filling the air with the moist crunch of mandible on polyp, it occurred to me that I don’t feel as much like a horrible doomsday cockroach as I should. We’ll circle back to that feeling. Endless Legend 2 launches into early access on 22nd September, and I’ve now spent around 20 hours with it. I’ve previously praised its new/reborn factions and retreating ocean mechanic, and I plan to carry on praising, but there are definitely some more comprehensive issues I’d love Amplitude to address as this splendid scarab of a turn-based strategy game rumbles toward 1.0.

First, the Good Stuff, and if you’ll forgive me, something of an overview, because with a game this fiddly it helps to get your legs under you. Endless Legend 2 sees a bunch of different species vying for control of a flooded world that is mysteriously draining dry. Broadly, it works like this: you start with one city and slowly expand it, while sending out named heroes and generic units to explore, gather resources, and complete itty-bitty quests in return for more resources.

The hexagonal map consists of regions that can be painted your colour by building a settlement, and there are plentiful villages of minor factions that can be wrecked or pacified to get rid of inconvenient roaming armies and add new unit types to your roster. There are five basic resources. Production is for building, and Food is for population growth (which then lets you generate other resources faster). Influence is primarily for expanding cities, bringing new hexagons inside the curtain wall for development. Science is for research, and Dust is magic money used to instantly complete construction projects, among other things.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

These basics unfold according to a gently regimented tech tree of unlockable ages, encompassing maybe 10 techs each, with the option to circle back to earlier ages and polish off any techs you skipped. For higher-tech units, you’ll also need rare goods like Titanium, which have to be tracked down and mined or traded for. It’s a statelier, more concise progression structure than you’ll find in a lot of 4X strategy sims. Combine this focus with the emphasis on questing heroes, and Endless Legend 2 at times resembles an RPG with a town-building component.

Each army has a unit cap, which makes military victory less about stacking up units, and more about levelling them up and (in the case of heroes) bolstering their stats with gear and new abilities. Your forces generally feel more like a loose collection of Final Fantasy parties than an army. The turn-based battle system, meanwhile, is both a welcome advance on the original game’s awkward pseudo real-time approach, and quite routine in itself. It plays out on the world map, rather than distinct battle maps, and is governed by rock-paper-scissors relationships and rudimentary terrain tactics such as occupying forests for increased defence, or locking down chokepoints.

Little of the above will shock you if you’ve played the first Endless Legend. Tidefalls, on the other hand, might catch you out. At semi-predictable intervals, the ocean retreats and the playable map expands, joining up islands into continents while exposing sunken treasures, fresh villages of minor factions (have they been holding their breath?) and dungeons that harbour the choicest relics. One benefit of the Tidefall mechanic is that you have regular incentives to change your strategy: this peninsula is now a land bridge and whoops, there’s a load of mad science lizards on the other side.

An associated thrill is trying to anticipate what might be exposed by the next tidefall, and plan for that contingency by, say, popping a settlement on an initially barren coastline. The presentation of the flooded world is crafty, a real demonstration of what a glossy technical makeover can do for a sequel: you can make out structures below the waves, and gauge the possibility of an emerging shortcut to a rival power’s heartlands.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

Speaking of rival powers, the flooded world helps ensure that you won’t encounter too many opposing civilisations early on. I can’t give you an exact overview, and there’s a clear element of chance, but in all the games I’ve played, the majority of enemy civs have started out on different islands. In this way, Endless Legend 2 keeps a relatively firm grip on the transition between periods of exploration and discovery and periods of trade, diplomatic jockeying and open war.

Tidefalls aside, there are the monsoons, which reduce unit viewing range, but also spawn a fresh batch of collectible resources and some Dust-riddled megafauna who can be slain for juicy trophies. Monsoons sort of rewild your territories to initiate a second gold rush. As with Tidefalls, they bring a little unpredictability to the midgame, though you soon learn to exploit them by, for example, appointing city councillors with passive traits that kick in during the rainy season.

As the campaign unfolds, each faction’s initial spread of quests knit together into a core storyline that produces a set of possible ending goals, in addition to the usual 4X staples of murdering everybody, outproducing everybody, etcetera. I won’t spoil these, but suffice to say it’s another way of jolting you out of your rut after you’ve established an empire.

Now, how does choice of faction flesh out this already rather meaty skeleton? Endless Legend 2 starts in early access with a leaner selection than its predecessor, and perhaps a less chaotic one: the opening five (with one more to come before 1.0) are essentially tailored towards one of the generic 4X victory types. Within those broad strokes, however, each faction is an intoxicating abberation.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

If you’re a Necrophage, for example, you won’t be engaging in much diplomacy, because you are an apocalypse ant. You’re geared to roll over the land unstoppably: each battle you win spawns a free handful of megamaggots, which can then be fed corpses to evolve them into hornets, acid-spitting mantids and behemothic centipedes. You don’t build cities in other regions, but sneaky burrows for fast travel that can be expanded into nests, extending the reach of your core city. The downside is that if your core city falls, you’ll find it very hard to recover.

By contrast, if you’re one of those mad science lizards, the Tahuk, you’ll be hyper-accelerating your research by transforming whole regions into glass, so as to very rapidly get hold of your snazziest ranged units and promptly splattergun your pushy bug neighbours. You can also build cute little Sauron towers on impassable ridges for either bonus boffin points or defensive death-ray purposes. And you can send your most embarrassing nerd-zealots, the Called, to labour for other empires while spying on their cities and generating extra influence abroad.

There’s loads to pluck and pick at here. So many different methods of topping the civ score table. So many ways of bursting through the woodwork of the generic victory conditions. I’ve been having a blast as the Necrophage, and am looking forward to getting to grips with the Tahuk and their hysterical labcoat nonsense. Nonetheless, I do find Endless Legend 2 a little disappointing in places.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

Probably the most important one, from the perspective of a 4X regular, is that I don’t think the AI has ever shown me a good fight as yet. Take the grim fate of my Aspect neighbours in the scenario from my first paragraph. A blithe and spiteful seapeople, the Aspect are Endless Legend 2’s diplomacy faction, able to field some resilient armies but better suited to wooing other civs by seeding their territories with Dust-rich coral, which acts as a surveillance network.

If you are an Aspect player, and you are parked next door to a burgeoning Necrophage hive, you need a plan B in the highly likely event that the creepy-crawlies aren’t up for talking things out - a sturdy military, powerful alliances, seriously ample bribes. My Aspect chums did not have a plan B, which is why they are now calcium carbonate soup in the bellies of some very large weevils. After declaring war - which requires the approval of your populace, and is much easier when your populace consists of ravenous insects - it took me fewer than 10 turns to annihilate them completely.

That could just be luck of the draw, rather than weak-kneed AI. I haven’t played nearly enough games to call it. I’m more comfortable making judgements about Endless Legend 2’s RPG quest elements and associated writing. Again, the factions are wonderfully dissimilar, but the shared 4X mechanics do poke through in places, and the quests and dialogue especially make me think of how most Star Trek aliens are just humans with dodgy tans and avant garde nosejobs.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

As in Star Trek, much of that is likely a question of production cost. Amplitude are not a vast studio and have just gone independent , so it’s no surprise to run into some efficiences. Many of the Endless Legend 2 questlines are written vaguely enough that they could apply to any faction, give or take a proper noun. The factions also share many unexciting “+5%” technologies with interchangeable art and flavour text. You know the kind of thing: “Wheels Turn Better Than Squares” - Wheely McWheelson, Head Wheelwright of Wheelsville in the Epoch Of Wheeling And Dealing.

I don’t think it’s just about saving development resources, however. In general, the writing seems trapped both by a limp quest format that is basically about choosing between three reward payouts, and by the fact that every faction has a core storyline and a government structure consisting of named rulers, generals and heroes.

The Necrophage are supposed to be a heedless force of devastation, chewing through the map with no regard for both the individuals that comprise their horde and the cultural and biological nuance of their foes. In conversation, however, they are oddly… human. In one quest, my Necrophage queen praised the troops for masking up and wielding wooden batons to minimise the odds of contamination while visiting a burial site.

Wooden batons! I realise ants have surprisingly intricate quarantine protocols , but this doesn’t seem very Necrophagey to me. These aren’t UN peacekeepers. I thought the golden rule was to eat everything and make sense of it afterwards. On a similar note, I love that the Aspect are essentially a sentient ocean reef, with units that resemble bouncing barnacles and tufts of renegade seagrass. So why, then, do they partake in traditional character-based dialogue at all? They should be communicating by means of electrochemistry, dang it.

Image credit:Amplitude / Rock Paper Shotgun

You could argue that these are necessary compromises in a game that doesn’t, in fact, want to be five wholly different strategy games devised by five different species, attempting to coexist. But imagine how interesting life would be if the writing pushed properly into New Weird territory, and discarded some of these tepid characterisations and frameworks in its pursuit of bizarre varieties of 4Xing.

I don’t think the Necrophage should have named characters at all. Or what if the Aspect didn’t have units, as such, and were instead a kind of encroaching terrain formation who flourish by attracting other lifeforms to serve as an indirect standing army? I suspect I’m succumbing to the kind of blue-sky thinking that leads to endless release delays, and prodding past what is desired or feasible in a 4X strategy game. Still, it’s early days for Endless Legend 2 and there is yet time to at least revisit the quest writing and tease out some of that moderately stifled strangeness.

Endless Legend 2

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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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