How Rockstar banning Cake Day helped launch a designer’s career in edible games

Former L.A. Noire developer Jenn Sandercock on the overlap between feast and play

Image credit:Jenn Sandercock

Years before she worked on top-drawer point-and-clickers Return To Monkey Island and Thimbleweed Park , Australian game developer Jenn Sandercock was a junior designer on Team Bondi’s historical open world game L.A. Noire . Eventually published by Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar in 2011, L.A. Noire took seven years to make and is an especially notorious example of crunch culture and mismanagement . Sandercock joined in the middle of one such crunch period, and wanted to make life a little easier for her exhausted colleagues. “Everyone looked so miserable after literally years of hard work & crunch,” she wrote on Twitter in 2018 . “So late one night after work I baked 2 cakes for the office. I sent out a mass email & we all took 30 minutes to eat cake and talk.” Sandercock began hosting weekly “Cake Days”, baking a fresh batch in her own time to share around the office.

Rockstar were unimpressed, however. They thought Cake Day was evidence of poor productivity and, according to Sandercock, badgered Team Bondi leadership into forcing her to only share cake during official lunch hours. “Apparently the higher ups thought our entire office slacked off ALL the time because we had cake once a week,” Sandercock wrote. She herself was told “that I was jeopardising my career”. Sandercock hasn’t let the demise of Cake Day cramp her creative interest in food, however. In fact, she’s found a way to combine baking with game design. Sandercock is now the author of Edible Games, a book of recipes and instructions for concocting games out of food, and food out of games.

Image credit:Jenn Sandercock

The games in question cover a large and colourful range. Some are about rejoicing in the physical properties of certain foods, like the self-explanatory Flip ’n’ Stick or J-Wobbler, which is sort of pinball with pieces of jelly. Others are brainier - there’s hidden role game High Tea Assassin, in which the roles correspond to the flavoured innards of interchangeable-looking baked treats, and The Order Of The Oven Mitt, a waistline-expanding take on chess.

The Edible Games cookbook didn’t begin with Sandercock’s time at Team Bondi, though the experience certainly shaped Sandercock’s thinking. The idea of games you can eat was one of several early-career experiments. “I ended up doing a project where every week for a year, I came up with a new game idea,” Sandercock says. “And one of them was like a baking game where you were going around a Monopoly board, competing for ingredients, and then you make something, and it’d be random, depending on what you did during the course of the game. And then a couple of years later, I did another project where I was implementing a different gameplay mechanic every month for another year. And in that, I thought I really like this idea. I’m gonna try this out.”

Sandercock’s first edible game was Dinner: The Boardgame, latterly reinvented as Roll For Flavour, in which players move around a board’s worth of cooking instructions, throwing together a full meal square by square. After showing her creation off at a gamejam (actual jam may have been involved), Sandercock felt that she had stumbled on a “new medium”.

Sharing food is among the most basic forms of community. Fighting over it is among the most basic forms of competition. In her edible games, Sandercock emphasises community, which extends to being mindful of different dietary needs, preferences and taboos. “I like games that are about friendship and curiosity,” she says. “So I was very clear about not making games that would make people eat more than they really wanted to, or be mean to people - like, trick them into eating something way spicy, or something they were allergic to. There were some basic rules, like you will not share saliva - it’s a core principle of my games that you don’t share saliva with people.”

That said, there is a definite element of competition to some games, albeit transfigured by the element of taste. Take The Order Of The Oven Mitt. “Each of the pieces has a different candy on top, and none of them have points values, but when people play they get really competitive about ‘I really want the Jelly Bean’, or ‘I absolutely do not want to eat the Jelly Bean’. It’s interesting seeing people play it because it’s a two player game or two teams, and I tell people that you can play cooperatively, or you can play competitively. And it’s interesting to see how the cooperative people will be like, ‘yeah, sure, I’ll give you this, if you give me that candy’. And the competitive people are like, ‘I’ll do everything so that you can’t get that, and I’ll like, move stuff around, I’ll make the game take forever.’”

Image credit:Jenn Sandercock

Whether people treat edible gaming as a competitive exercise or not, Sandercock says there’s more tolerance of mess and ambiguity here than you’d find among many players of videogames. “In many ways the requirements for an edible game being fun are much lower than most other games,” she muses. “The games can be fairly janky, not particularly great, but people still get to eat food, and they’re very happy about that.”

Talk like this makes me yearn for an Edible Games manifesto of some kind, perhaps weaving in recent conversations about wanting to play shorter games with worse graphics that aren’t so back-breaking to develop. Sandercock doesn’t have a manifesto, sadly - for her, it’s more about open-ended experimentation and responding to players. “I’m not a very formal game designer, which is why I can make silly things like this, totally out of the box,” she says. But she has thought in broader theoretical terms about what it means to apply design principles to food preparation, and turn food preparation into an act of play.

“When I was putting together my baker’s dozen of 13 games, I was trying to get a mix of different experiences around food, so I was spending a lot of time going what is the medium of food?” she says. “What things can you do that you can’t do in a digital space? And try to really leverage that, rather than try to pigeonhole it into something else, or make a different type of game. So I did try to make sure I had a breadth of different games for different age ranges, for different groups of people.”

Have any of these thoughts had a direct impact on her videogame projects? “It is a bit off in its own space, but I think the joy that I like to create with edible games is what I want to create in digital games as well,” Sandercock continues. “So the outcomes for players are somewhat similar - I want players to feel happy and joyful. I’ve learned through some of those projects that I was doing that I don’t want to make games that are either about sad topics, or about very difficult encounters between people, or pitting people against each other and being mean to each other. When I’ve tried making those games I feel miserable, and I get into a depression. And I don’t like being in a depression! I want to be happy, and so I work on games that hopefully make other people happy.”

The lessons of edible gaming for videogame development aside, Sandercock argues that making a ceremony of sharing food within the architecture of game development is an important source of morale and team cohesion. She feels this was something Rockstar and Team Bondi didn’t grasp, when they cracked down on Cake Day. “It was an AAA company, there were a lot of people I didn’t know,” she says. “But I made cake, people then remembered me, and I was meeting people across many different departments.”

The day I was told not to do Cake Day I had already baked a cake. I was so scared I decided not to announce anything. I never ate that cake. It was a Portal cake. That’s what voluntary crunch pressure does: it scares people into believing there’s no other choice. pic.twitter.com/tabovChDI4 — Jenn Sandercock 🔜 NZ (@JennSandercock) October 16, 2018

Sandercock says that the ritual of sharing cake actually contributed to L.A. Noire’s creation in smaller ways. “I remember one case where I had a problem that was about a lighting bug. And if I hadn’t been doing Cake Day, I wouldn’t have been able to say “oh, I know so-and-so in the lighting department. They’re a nice person, I can go chat to them, and they will help me work out how to solve this thing.” It’s worth noting here in closing that the word “company” is fundamentally about sharing food: like “companion”, it comes from the Latin “companio”, which refers to somebody you share bread with. Or as the case may be, a fat, oozing slice of Portal gateau.

You can find out more about the Edible Games cookbook over on the official site .

L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition

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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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