Prison Architect 2 is coming up for release, but it’s hard to rehabilitate from years of 2D

A hard cell

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

There are management games and there are micro-management games. Prison Architect 2 is the latter. I don’t mean this as an annoying thing, like when Harold from corporate starts commenting all over your document at 4.30pm on a Friday. I mean it as a distinction between those games that let you plop down a house, and others that need you to stack the bricks, install the plumbing, fit the lights, and select the wallpaper. The first Prison Architect allowed you to finesse every detail of a secure correctional facility, down to each cell and dog kennel. Unsurprisingly for a sim about prison, it encouraged obsessive control. The 3D-ified sequel isn’t finished yet, but it’s taking a similar approach. Maybe a little too similar.

One of the memorable joys of the first Prison Architect was its ability to generate daft stories . Maybe your best informant gets addicted to drugs and you need to make sure the policy on contraband isn’t too severe because he’ll go into withdrawl. Maybe the on-duty psychologist gets shivved in the kidneys during a therapy session by a maximum security inmate with no respect for the tenets of mindfulness. I only played the sequel for a few hours, so relatively few anecdotes emerged from my hum-drum concrete hellhole. But there were enough hints of trouble to reassure me that similar shennaigans were afoot.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

As the eminent “Dr. Videogames”, rehabilitator and administrator of “Bogbutter Penitentiary”, for example, one of my first steps was to sell every tree on the property. The health benefits of natural surroundings be damned. Likewise, when I noticed the entire staff of one of my prisons were hanging out on the bleachers in the prisoner’s yard because there was no adequate staff room, it hinted at a disaster to come, a violent misunderstanding or a dangerous friendship that will surely emerge if I don’t do something about this. I got unsettling feelings about a prisoner called Chung who would not stop pacing in his cell, even as all the other inmates went to sleep.

But that is all I have right now. The seeds of disaster. A pre-shanking foreshadowing. It takes a long time to get things up and running, what with all the wall-building. We are in slow-paced furniture tweaking territory here, even with the generous fast-forwarding buttons that encourage dozens of construction workers to zip around, throwing up fences and heavily barred gates. As with the first game, there seems to be enough depth to ensure events will unfurl in a chaotic mess that your sleek, wet brain will interpret as a drama of Shakespearean ironies. But it is taking me noticeably longer to feel the emergence of those anecdotes. It’s not treacle slow (its predecessor was not without a hunger for your time either) but I do feel some friction where it did not exist before.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

There’s a lot of switching back and forth between menus, for example. Prison Architect’s user interface was not perfect (my god) and there was a lot of ground to cover for any player planning things in detail. The sequel feels like a chance to clean that up but so far it only rearranges the disorganised cupboards. Electrical cables and power sources are in a different menu to the lights, for instance, meaning you’ll flip from one to the other quite a lot while doing your electrician routine. The general flow of building a room means you’re always going from construction mode to room-assigning mode to object-placing mode and then back to construction mode to correct some mistake. Few of the objects stand out in clear, distinct ways, so looking into the objects menu feels like opening a drawer of knick-knacks to find the one pen you always use. For a game about control, the menus simply feel hard to read and interpret.

That disorder is not the case everywhere. A career mode teaches you the ins and outs of prison building in a cleaner and more modern way than the previous instalment. Challenge Maps force you to build prisons with particular requirements. A small-scale “pop-up” prison, let’s say, or a prison that can go an entire day without somebody dying (absurd expectation). The world map on which these levels are arranged is also emblematic of the cutesy style change that has seen the papery 2D pawn-world of the previous game transformed into a smooth toy-like diorama of egg-shaped dopes walking around in three dimensions. It’s pleasant enough, yet I can’t help but feel that some of the scrappy character of the original sim has been lost with the shift in artistic style. That and I have doubts even about the practical need for such a change.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

Thematically and mechanically, Prison Architect is about control. It is about little people’s lives being directed to a tragicomically draconian degree. But if this franchise is all about being the overbearing loon in charge of every minor detail, does a 3D camera complement that feeling of jealous control? For me, not hugely. If anything, the top-down 2D view of the original allowed you to quickly parse more information. To place and remove items more cleanly, to build and demolish walls more efficiently. The ability to rotate the camera all around to get a proximate peep at your penitentiaries is cool. But it’s also of limited value. It even sometimes gets in the way of clean and functional click ’n’ drag management.

One way this manifested is that I often ended up rotating the camera directly overhead to emulate as flat a top-down view as possible, in an effort to be more precise with my wall construction and object placement. I was instinctively and unconsciously trying to return to 2D comforts, the behavioural equivalent of being gifted a top-of-the-range gaming PC and immediately installing Age of Empires 2. That might be the result of a dusty mind unwilling to get to grips with the realities of, you know, space. But it might also be the fact that Age of Empires 2 was a banger and Age of Empires 3 was not. Incidentally, did you know that the original Prison Architect had a hidden 3D mode ? It was an interesting novelty, a rudimentary test by the developers. But when it comes to running your prison, why would you ever use it?

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

This is the first big fence Prison Architect 2 must dig itself a tunnel under. The direction it pushes in feels vaguely unnecessary. A new camera-swirling perspective barely feels like enough of a step to justify starting over again as a fan of the first prison sim. Especially if you’re an obsessive who has smuggled all the existing DLC into your 2D prisons, in which case doing all that again (undoubtedly with Paradox’s classic hunger for DLC drip-feeding) may seem a lot to ask.

On top of this, the preview version I played was very crashy. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge concern. When it comes to getting early builds, journos expect a bit of roughness. However, the game has already seen two delays stemming from the need to fix stability issues and other “technical challenges” . Following that news, the developers who worked on it, Double Eleven, have parted ways with the publisher and owners of the franchise, Paradox Interactive.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Paradox Interactive

So now a whole other studio, Kokku, has been handed the game to finish in time for its September release. Kokku have been helping on the project since last autumn, but still, the departure of the entire initial team mere months before release doesn’t inspire confidence. It takes long enough just to find the right button to press on a new microwave, never mind where all the bugs are hiding in the tangled code of a video game your workmate has handed to you, at the proverbial 4.30pm on a Friday.

It wouldn’t yet be fair to judge the game too squintingly. It does include all the elements of a sim that will provide silly stories about escaping prisoners crawling through sewer pipes only to climb out of the warden’s toilet. But I fear simply doing this in 3D won’t be enough to surpass one of the best management games on PC . The developers left holding the blueprints have more barbed wire to cut if they want to escape the shadow of the original.

Prison Architect 2

PC

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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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