Quantic Dream’s Spellcasters Chronicles plays better than I thought, but is still an oddly passive MOBA

You win summons, you lose summons

Image credit:Quantic Dream

One of 2025’s unlikeliest game announcements was Spellcasters Chronicles , a 3v3 MOBA in development at erstwhile singleplayer specialists Quantic Dream. It’s a three-lane magic-slinger starring a selection of flying mages, with an emphasis on summoning creatures to do your structure demolition work for you, and I’ve now played a couple of games ahead of its closed beta on December 4th-8th.

I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Spellcasters based on the original reveal. And after two games of mostly bodyguarding other, bigger, cooler magical beings, I’m still not convinced. That said, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared: it makes bold, maybe even brave departures from wizard fight genre conventions, some of which pay off rather nicely.

The shorter-form match structure, for one, is appealing. While each team has three big pillars (“Lifestones”) to knock over, there’s a hard 25-minute time limit om each round, with the victors decided by whoever did the most damage before the clock runs down. I enjoy the max-level drama of a late-running Dota 2 match as much as anyone, but there’s more urgency to Spellcasters Chronicles; more impetus to make things happen and get your summoned lads down lane ASAP.

I played the preview via a remote streaming doohickey, hence the slightly fuzzy screenshots. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Quantic Dream

Despite looking quite daunting in straight menu form, the deck-based spell equip system helps with the age-old MOBA problem of learnability. Each mage has some unique skills, but most offensive talents and summoned minions come from a big, shared pool. Thus, if you become enamoured with a particular flavour of fireball, you can take it with you when trying a new character and avoid having to go into their skillset completely blind. It does make individual mages less distinct, but it’s far more approachable than the usual MOBA onboarding process of having to absorb potentially hundreds of abilities at once.

Combat is also visually spectacular in a way most MOBAs rarely are – even the ones that similarly blend in third-person action, like Smite 2 and Deadlock . Ultimates are screen-filling explosions of shocking colours and particle effects. Levelled-up summon squads fill out lanes like RTS armies. And the Titans – team-allied giants you can only spawn after filling up a lengthy damage gauge – are properly gigantic, monstrously strong kaiju whose lumbering threat quickly makes them a focal point for yet more raging spellstorms.

Making all AI-controlled allies entirely player-summoned, a break from the MOBA orthodoxy that decrees creep waves must spawn at regular intervals, is also an interesting twist in itself. You can’t just swan off on a one-mage offensive: ignoring the need to occasionally retreat to friendly territory and respawn a few units will mean losing ground to players who take care in keeping their forces topped up. And as tempting as it is to hit the big red button as soon as it’s ready, even Titans have an element of timing. In one match, an enemy Titan was bearing down on our central pillar, and while I had mine ready to go in an adjacent lane, it would have taken too long for my guy to stomp his way over there. Instead I flew over myself, dropped a summoning circle in the last remaining square foot between our Lifestone and their behemoth, and watched my towering defender materialise between them like a big fleshy door slamming shut in the attacker’s face.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Quantic Dream

I do wish, though, that the most impactful plays in Spellcasters Chronicles weren’t so regularly centred around helping AI-controlled units win the game for you. I was struck by how inherently supportive Spellcasters Chronicles feels: most of the time you’re either creating summons, buffing summons, or killing enemy summons so your summons can advance faster. Player-to-player interactions barely factor in, as everyone is strong and fast enough at the start of each match to survive in a lane by themselves, and even killing another mage in a midair duel (a rare occurrence, given the ease of simply flying away) only feels impactful in the sense that it helps your summons live longer. Which, actually, is always, always the goal, as player damage against structures is heavily blunted, making your gaggle of imps and trolls the only feasible means of victory.

To stress the point, a lot of them are much, much tougher than you. Especially when you’re on defence, this doesn’t produce elegant displays of battlesorcery so much as it does extended periods of mashing left click in the hopes of whittling down one of the other team’s four-bajillion-HP war elephants before another one shows up. Which does feel like trying to knock down St. Paul’s Cathedral by flicking Pringles at it. Good thing you can whip up another batch of underlings to deal that damage on your behalf, eh?

This also has a knock-on effect on your spells, namely that they don’t have anything like the kinetic impact to match their extravagant visuals. XP-earned upgrades allow them to remain viable as simple hitpoint reduction measures, but when I launch a salvo of magic missiles into the back of a rival player’s head, there’s little tactile sense that I’ve done anything besides make a little red bar get smaller. And if I launch them into a Titan, or any of the chunkier summons, sometimes I don’t even get that.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Quantic Dream

The free, three-dimensional movement has its drawbacks too. Again, it’s maybe a little too straightforward for ambushed players to zip back to the protection of a tower – escape tools are some of the most satisfying to use in MOBAs, but when everyone can so easily engage and disengage from the off, there’s little value left for good positioning or situational awareness. The floatiness doesn’t help with lack of heft to magic attacks, either. Would it be too cruel to blast someone clean out of the sky with a well-placed lightning bolt?

I appreciate that these complaints might make it sound like I was expecting to play some form of ego-ballooning, wish-fulfilling singleplayer action fantasy, not a team-based strategy game. But the MOBAs that go the distance, and many do not, are the ones that afford even its lowliest support mains the opportunities to make a big impact. Usually by way of outplaying or outsmarting other players: a fight-winning ult from the laneside trees, or saving a heavier-hitting teammate’s life 0.002 seconds before an enemy shuriken would have lodged itself in their spine. The closest I got to something like this during my time with Spellcasters Chronicles was that clutch Titan deployment, and that was still ultimately just creating yet another summon.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Quantic Dream

This babysitting passivity worries me, as does Quantic Dream’s continued reluctance to share details of another unusual MOBA feature: its player-determined story and seasonal updates. Spellcasters Chronicles was announced with the promise of bringing the choice-and-consequence of their previous solo adventures to an ongoing multiplayer game, but none of the developers I asked during this preview would describe the actual mechanics of how thousands of players could simultaneously pick out plot developments, map changes, and balance updates. I’m not a marketer but from the outside, this is a strange tactic, given that branching melodrama is what the studio is best known for. Besides suing French newspapers, obviously.

I don’t think it’s fair to fixate on previous output to the point of holding Quantic Dream’s lack of multiplayer experience against them – fresh perspectives can bring fresh ideas, and some of the ways in which Spellcasters Chronicles breaks from MOBA tradition show some promise. It has a big job, however, in balancing that iconoclasm with actually being exciting to play.

Spellcasters Chronicles

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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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