Goblin Stone review: turn-based charm spells only last so long

Goblin’ up my patience more like

Image credit:Orc Chop Games

• Developer: Orc Chop Games
• Publisher: Orc Chop Games
• Release: Out now
• On: Windows
• From: Steam
• Price: £21/€25/$25
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-8600K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2070, Windows 10

In the world of strategy and management game Goblin Stone , the goblins are nearly extinct. Getting murdered in large numbers by adventurers hungry for a quick experience point and a slack handful of coin will do that. I cannot tell you that you will want to bestow protection and prosperity on these gribbly green niblets. They exhibit a tweeness that you’ll either find charming or despicably manipulative, even when they’re showering in the blood of their enemies. Should you want to, though, Goblin Stone offers you the chance to rescue these maligned misfits from the brink of extinction, rebuilding their kingdom and leading them on outings to take the fight to all those heroes that have spotlight-hogged the left side of your screens for far too long.

These outings see your six goblin troupe exploring the land and fighting turn-based battles, collecting both base building resources and personal treasures. There are also more unique encounters, like testing your party’s stats against a trio of rogue chefs wielding a mysterious ham. You’re privy to a ( vaguely Slayish, somewhat Spirelike ) full map right from the start, so you can plan routes depending on what you want to gain from an outing. Early on, these choices are fairly straightforward: do you pick a regular fight for treasure? Or a harder one for more treasure? Soon, you’ll find yourself going on runs specifically to hoard a certain resource, like bone or wood, so you might prioritise gathering spots. Or, you might run into a nasty boss, lose, and know to hit as many vendors, treasure chests, or blessing shrines as you can in the next run to prepare.

Your gobs get angry if one of them dies, granting a damage buff. Cute! |Image credit:Orc Chop Games

If you do get all your gobs killed by a band of nasty not-hobbits, though, you’ll still make progress. Not in terms of loot, which you’ll lose, but with souls. Alongside resources, souls are the major currency you’ll need to upgrade the lair. Veteran gobs are worth more souls, and you can retire them via a special room. They’ll hang around this way, growing long beards and letting you still breed them. Breeding is… not as fun as it sounds, honestly. You pick two gobbos with stats or traits you want to breed for, usually to get the best candidate for whatever class you’re after. Many of the traits are fairly rote, mainly related to stat modifiers. Most of the gobs look the same, too. No beards for your actual combat goblins. Maybe a different grin if you’re lucky. Missed opportunity? I mean, “goblin breeding is not that fun,” is a devastating sentence to have to write, yes.

Those classes are well considered, though, with lots of variety, and most importantly, a wide selection of fancy hats (it is me, the twee enjoyer). Your gobs feel puny individually, but deadly as a team, giving battles a suitably gob-like ‘death by a thousand cuts’ feel. Sometimes, quite literally. Your raider might inflict two bleed stacks with an upgraded throwing dagger, while a second picks those wounds to add another stack, then a third might unleash a devastating ‘blood rupture’, cashing in those stacks for huge instant damage. A stool-shield wielding guard might stun-whack a zombie, setting up the next raider in line for a ‘wakey wakey’ - a two hit combo that adds a third hit on stunned or slowed foes. Shamans can heal, guards can buff armour and tank hits, and other, secret classes might do some other, secret stuff, too. Again, it’s all about the team plays here.

Image credit:Orc Chop Games

Goblin Stone’s best idea has nothing to do with goblins, but is also comparatively unsexy, at least next to those sexy, sexy goblins. I’ll call it the ‘time bar’. Both friend and foe move along the time bar, from outside to inside towards the middle, where they act. Along the bar are numbered pips. Each turn, you’ll pick from one of three abilities, randomly selected from a total of four. Each ability costs a certain number of pips, sending your gob to the back of the queue and that number of pips back on the bar. You’ll get the hang of this in about fifteen seconds. After another fifteen, you’ll learn to prize abilities that manipulate the bar, pushing foes back or stunning and slowing them. Bar manipulation is king here. Plan it right, and you can keep your foes stuck as you steal turn after turn. It’s a clean, readable bit of combat flow design that plays nicely into a great many abilities.

My problem with Goblin Stone is just how stodgy it all feels. You’ll want those lair upgrades to unlock advanced classes and other adventuring perks, but lair upgrades mean grinding, and grinding means hours of slow, repetitive combat. There’s something like eight abilities total for each of the nine classes, four of which you can equip each run, so things get flowchart-y very quickly. You can’t shorten combat animations. Gold, the most common reward, just isn’t that useful. A winning trick the best in the genre pull off is making the moment-to-moment progress feel as worthwhile as the bigger picture, but there’s no real deckbuilding or many permanent upgrades, so the micro rewards are scant and even the macro rewards aren’t that exciting, save new classes. It’s tiresome to realise you’ll have to do three runs or so to hit the next progress milestone, and even more so when those runs won’t offer much new.

Image credit:Orc Chop Games

I do not need to tell you that Goblin Stone’s art direction is wonderful, nor that its UI delights me with its crispy cleanness. Less immediately obvious is the winking Bakshi-esque movement of the human enemies, or the parchment-sketched storybook interludes. The music is also lovely, all jaunty and bucolic, and the narrator narrates his heart out. But what you’ll want to ask yourself before deciding or not on GobStone is the sort of space you’d like the game to occupy. If you’re looking for your next Spire or Monster Train shaped obsession, ripe for long devoted evenings, I think you’ll hit a wall here much sooner than you’d like. 20 chill minutes a day over coffee though? Those problems are going to take a while to emerge, letting its charm stay potent for much longer. And, of course, it all comes down to how well that charm hits for you in the first place.

Image credit:Orc Chop Games

I’ve got a list of other gripes in place of the effusive praise I wanted to give here. You fight vanishingly few heroes for a good while after the introduction. I signed up for hero slaying, but this is all zombies, wolves, and spiders. I can slay these bastards anywhere. The game threatens a good idea in letting you collect healing items on quests that you can then sell if you don’t use. A potentially nice risk/reward that falls flat because, as I said, gold just isn’t that useful compared to how common it is. The main issue is that pacing, though. I’m left in a weird position where it’s too slow to really want to play much more than a pickup game here and there, but a single run just isn’t very satisfying, or tense, or tactically interesting either. So if I don’t want to play for a short while, and I don’t want to play for a long time, I suppose I don’t actually want to play at all? Shit. Sorry, gobs. Extinction it is, I guess.

This review was based on a copy of the game provided by the developer.

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Goblin Stone

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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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