Last Epoch review: a vibrant time-travelling ARPG that makes percentage point stat increases fun

It’s not a question of where, but when

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Eleventh Hour Games

• Developer: Eleventh Hour Games
• Publisher: Eleventh Hour Games
• Release: February 21st
• On: Windows, SteamOS + Linux
• From: Steam , GOG
• Price: £30/€34/$35
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-11340F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11

Last Epoch is, as has been observed many times, a kind of middle-ground ARPG. You hold down a button to evaporate hordes of enemies from a top down isometric perspective, but, in a step further than Diablo 4 , it has more in-depth, any-time crafting for entry level percentage perverts to eke out incremental slivers of health regen vs. damage. At the same time, it’s less complex than Path Of Exile , which is where advanced percentage perverts go when they die. Last Epoch has been in early access for a while now, so there’s a decent chance that you already know what you think of it now it’s in 1.0. If you haven’t yet dipped your toe in, then I can tell you it’s very decent. It makes building an extremely overpowered mega-wizard very easy, and I liked it better than Diablo IV , I think.

Heresy. There’s a large caveat, though. When I played Diablo IV for review I actually had a cool time because I was playing with someone for a lot of it, and we could have nice chats. By contrast, Last Epoch’s review build was running on a siloed test server, and about as densely populated as a strip club on a Tueseday morning. I saw two other players the entire time, so I can’t speak to the seamless drop in, drop out multiplayer being a large feature of most ARPGs. In fairness, if you look at streams of the un-1.0-patched Last Epoch there are people cutting about in the town areas all the time. And in further fairness to the game, it does keep the solitary player in mind.

Last Epoch has a full offline mode, which is a very nice option, and if you’re not the trading-with-player type, the 1.0 patch allows you to join the Circle Of Fortune, an in-game faction that gives you passive loot benefits, improving the quantity and quality of drops from your adventuring around. Most players are going to chose the Merchants’ Guild, which allows you to trade with other players, but it’s nice to give some bennies to the introverts who want to avoid strangers. Both of these factions are late-game stuff, though, and you won’t get the option to join until you reach a level 50-ish area of the Last Epoch. Before that, there’s about 20 hours of story to get through.

And I haven’t gone over the story yet, but like most ARPGs you can pretty safely ignore it, because you are mainly making numbers of ever increasing size pop off melting skeletons and farting plant monsters. Last Epoch’s story is both more entertaining and more confusing than other RPGs, though, because it plays the time travel card (which it presumably stole, from you, in the future). Early on you, in the Divine era of the fantasy world you’re in, help some wisened sage folks called the Keepers to secure three shards of a magical time traveling device. Because there’s a war going on , one of the Keepers decides to hide the time travel MacGuffin in the future, except when you get there the world has been all apocalypsed by a void that mutates people. The story of Last Epoch is thus about pingponging back and forth through time to remedy this.

Thanos was rightThere’s end-game stuff to keep you ticking over in Last Epoch, apart from whatever the devs release post launch. There are repeatable dungeons, the single-use keys for which are low-chance drops from rare bosses and monsters. In the End Of Time era is the Monolith, a web of alternate timelines that is in fact high level challenge maps that confer buffs if you complete them without dying and, yes, dungeon keys.Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Eleventh Hour Games

Large swathes of the middle of Last Epoch are about defeating the empire of an undead emperor who can bestow immortal unlife on people, so many of the bosses you fight in the future are people you meet in the past. Which is also your present. I think there could have been more fun had with this (the giant lightning crab monster admiral could scream that he always hated you during the boss fight that takes place before you meet him for, chronologically, the first time, sort of thing), but the devs really use the time travel framing to their full advantage vis. setting and enemy design. When you take into account the different time periods in the game, there are a lot of locations in Last Epoch. Snowy mountains with ice monsters, a desert crawling with giant poisonous scorpions, broken aqueducts full of zombie eagle men. You’ll see a lake at the time that it’s the staging ground for a resistance to the empire, with wooden homes and paths on stilts, and then in the future when it’s all corrupted by the void, full of mutated cultists.

I found streamlining my character builds in Last Epoch to be much easier than in other ARPGs. There are five broad classes which break down into three “masteries” - my rogue could have been a blades specialist or have a falcon best friend (a new addition for 1.0), but I chose to be an archer - and you can change mastery whenever you like similar to Diablo IV’s on-the-fly respeccing, although you character will be class-locked. Along with that you have Skill Specialization, eventually allowing you to specialise in five of your favourites to level up their own specific little skill trees. So yeah, skills have skill trees. For example, I had the ability to summon two ballistas on the battlefield, and their skill tree included things like my own buffs applying to the ballistas at a reduced percentage, getting armour, shots piercing multiple enemies, and so on.

But wait, there’s more! You have a passive skill tree for your class and mastery, too. A different rogue build might go in for stacking bleed damage or coated blades. After I’d been playing a while I built my archer around health regeneration, since I was playing alone. The passive ability Draining Arrows gives you health whenever a bow attack hits an enemy, so I combined that with Sapping Strikes, which leeches health whenever you use an ability with no mana cost. All of this lined up perfectly with my main bow attack, which had zero mana cost. I crafted gear with health regen and arrow damage in mind, and pretty soon I had an invincible archer who could stand still and shoot hordes of enemies and giant bosses as they rained hellfire down upon her. You can do fun things like that with a bunch of classes. I enjoyed trying to build a mage who had as little mana cost for spells as humanly possible, making him a sort of magical perpetual energy machine.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Eleventh Hour Games

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Eleventh Hour Games

The difficulty does rubberband a bit if you can’t be arsed doing some of the side quests and end up under-levelled for the area, but if you spend valuable time engaging with the crafting and passive skills, the combat requires about the same amount of active thought as walking. You’ll quickly kick the habit of picking up any loot on the ground that isn’t something for your build, because it’s not about selling gear, it’s about improving things that are specifically useful for you.

In contrast to the streamlined crafting and levelling, there are rough edges here and there. Quest markers blipped out of existence sometimes, and while you can resurrect on (rare) death immediately, Last Epoch gave me a sort of res roulette, spawning me almost exactly where I was standing when I died, back at the start of the map, or sometimes at the nearest fast travel waypoint. It also, for some reason, completely wipes map exploration whenever you enter an area again, even if it’s a place you’ve cleared before, or a town hub. Sometimes I got a percentage on a boss health bar, sometimes a bar with no percentage, and sometimes no bar at all. These are annoyances one would hope to see sanded out over years of early access.

Still, it’s a very worthy buy, and I hope the devs keep it up with the post-game improvements. Mostly, I really like the high drama and high fantasy of Last Epoch. It’s much less depressing to stare at for hours as you blast mercenaries and ice wolves into trembling ragdoll corpses that some of its contemporaries, and the the mid-complexity crafting and gear systems, along with the character building, makes it easy and, dare I say it, actually fun to engage with minor percentage increases. I never thought I’d see the day.

This review is based on a review build of the game provided by developers Eleventh Hour Games.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

Last Epoch

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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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