I spoke to an Nvidia AI NPC, and he mainly wanted to get me bladdered

In conversation with the cocktail-obsessed gamepeople of our supposed future

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

If the purpose of a tech demo is to induce a flash of thinking “Hey that’s neat,” then I’d be lying if I said Nvidia’s Covert Protocol – a playable showcase for their AI NPC tool, Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) – hadn’t worked on me. If, on the other hand, it’s to develop that thought into “Hey, I want this in games right now,” it’s going to take more than a slightly stilted natter with an aspiring bartender.

ACE, if you haven’t caught its previous showings on the tech/games trade show circuit, is an all-in-one “foundry” of AI-powered character creation tools – language models, speech, text-to-speech, automated mouth flapping and so on – that Nvidia is pitching as the future of NPC interaction. Plugged into the third-party Inworld Engine , which seems to handle the bulk of the actual AI generation, ACE aims to replace pre-written and recorded character dialogue with more dynamic lines that can respond accurately to any questions or statement you can mutter into a microphone.

Covert Protocol wraps all that up into a short social investigation game, tasking you – a private detective – with schmoozing/lying your way into a fancy hotel’s private suites. First up for an AI-assisted interrogation was cheery bellboy Tae Hyun, and first among a gathering of journos to hit the mic, it turned out, was me.

The conversation started, as most of mine do, awkwardly. Once I’d gone full Obsidian RPG protagonist mode by asking what the gossip around the hotel was, Tae deflected with a gag about some extraterrestrials checking in. But he could recommend the hotel bar, so I asked in turn about their best cocktail. This was a mistake. As it happened, Tae had designs on taking over the bar himself, and was so proud of his own Baltimore Zoo (with a Korean twist) that he managed to work in a plug for it to several successive responses.

It was weird. But it also… worked? As a game interaction, our question and answer session progressed perfectly logically. AI-generated answers were specific to the question, not hedged, and there were no “Could you repeat that?” or “I’m not sure what you mean” hiccups. Had someone walked in with no knowledge of the machine learning aspect, they might well have just thought ACE was feeding canned lines in response to preplanned queries. So yes, it was neat. A lot of responses even seemed to be taking previous responses into account, using them as context to avoid repetition.

Mostly, anyway. That man was consumed with Baltimore Zoo pride, slipping in endorsements to answers about his political views or his relationship with his mum like he was doing an SNL bit. In fairness, the segues were cheesy, but not entirely non-sequiturs, given I’d broached the subject of drinks to begin with. It’s also possible that this was more of an intentional character tic, of the AI’s making, than a glitch in the Matrix.

This guy doesn’t seem to love anything, except being a jerk. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Still. I laughed at the time, but in hindsight there was something off about how readily this guy circled back to the exact same topic of his signature tipple. If meant as quirky joke, it was tonally out of whack with the slick detective story presentation, and if it wasn’t, then surely it betrayed how quite literally artificial these ‘performances’ are. As if ACE was clinging to this character detail like a safety blanket, scared of deviating when it knows it’s got the cocktail thing down, even when doing so makes everything seem more robotic – not less.

Not that the masquerade was particularly well-maintained elsewhere. ACE’s AI voices were more naturalistic than those of last year’s ramen shop demo but were still stiff, monotonous, and peppered with strange pauses and pronunciations. All the classic text-to-speech tells, basically. Tae spoke of his family leaving Korea “for a reason,” implied to be North Korean aggression, with the same gravity as when he cracked the rubbish joke about aliens. Another of Covert Protocol’s chattable NPCs, a bigshot keynote speaker from whom we needed to extract a room number, reacted with the same non-surprise both to a friendly greeting and to being told his speech was cancelled.

Some responses also only came after an extended pause, which an Nvidia handler quickly attributed to the venue’s slow Wi-Fi – so even if this whole system made it into a finished retail game, it would presumably be an always-online affair, relying on your ownership of a high-quality connection to make all these remote queries to Inworld.

ACE debuted last year, fronted by this wooden model of a noodle salesman.Watch on YouTube

Then there’s the writing. Nothing I heard curled my toes like the stinking dialogue of Ubisoft’s NEO NPC demo (even if, worryingly, that’s also based on a combination of Inworld and Nvidia tech), but it was also kind of just there . No sparkle, no playfulness, no real weight to the words. I did laugh at Tae’s incessant booze hype but only over the stark ridiculousness of it, not at any of the machine’s more intentional humour. And its attempt at a grizzled private dick-speak voiceover amounted to a tragically bland “A bar. Could go for an Old Fashioned right about now. But focus, Marcus, focus.” Nobody Wants to Die , it ain’t.

I’m still genuinely impressed by the reactivity of the question-and-answering, but as a whole, ACE feels at least a few years away from the point where it might power a game that could pass for human-authored. Thing is, game developers apparently aren’t keen on waiting. Besides Ubisoft, I’m told multiple companies have already approached Nvidia about using ACE to build their NPC casts. That’s not to say we’ll all be jabbering with robots before Christmas, but I do worry that the rush to grasp the benefits of AI – ideally of the “properly non-linear social play” variety and not the “now we don’t have to pay writers” variety – will end with a selection of equally half-baked games.

I don’t say that as some blanket AI disliker, either. Outside of generative AI, Nvidia themselves have made loads of useful, ethically unproblematic tools that employ machine learning to help players and developers alike. Upscaling darling DLSS , to give the obvious example, or the instant visual upgrades of Ray Reconstruction . Despite producing mods of varying quality, RTX Remix has been a net good so far as well. This actually does use a dash of generative AI to help produce higher-resolution models and textures, but I’ve never had a problem with these parts of, say, Portal with RTX . A room away from the Covert Protocol demo, I also got a rather promising glimpse of Half-Life 2 RTX in action, showcasing a mix of hand-crafted model and lighting upgrades as well as some AI-generated (but tasteful) texture replacements Correction - Orbifold Studios, the mod team behind HL2 RTX, have also created the 4K textures by hand, rather than use RTX Remix’s AI upscaling tools. Good for them!

Half-Life 2 RTX gives an old classic the full (if unofficial) remaster treatment, |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Yet there’s clearly a huge gap between having AI perform anti-aliasing, or touch up some brickwork, and going all-in on generative AI to recreate the behaviour of an entire human-ass being in real time. ACE has made progress since the iffy ramen shop visit, but still, I’m not convinced it’s ready to jump that chasm quite yet.

And even when it does, will enough players actually want to hear what AI voices have to say? For all the novelty of dynamic dialogue, the desire for emotive, moving, funny, scary, saddening, surprising stories isn’t going anywhere, and if Covert Protocol is any indication, the best ones will still be spun from human hands .

Even ACE’s own cogs and gears don’t suggest otherwise. Tae Hyun’s mood and speech may be AI-generated, but they have to be generated from something. In this case, it’s a character profile that Inworld Engine keeps for him, with every other NPC having the same: a potted, personal history of their life, loves, dreams, and fears. This is the source of everything that makes Tae interesting, or at the very least, capable of spouting more interesting responses than a British Gas support chatbot, be it his family’s flight from political tension or the formation of a bartending obsession that he now can’t shut up about. And all of it was crafted from scratch – not by AI, but by a human writer. Just saying.

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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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