Rally Point: Zephon demonstrates that good 4X faction design is really characterisation

Finding your Voice

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

Factions. Here are the factions: the aggressive conquest Klingon guys. The evil insectoid hive mind who build stuff and/or have loads of cheap soldiers. The researchers who are probably robots and you usually pick because they can be competitive at anything. The diplomacy/espionage ones (humans, or The Greys).

You know what I’m talking about. You may well have thought of a recent exception too, since we’ve had a fair few 4Xeses experimenting with some of the standard formulae these last few years. It’s been a while though since I read through every word of every faction’s description and wanted to play all of them. Zephon captured my interest immediately.

Despite the strength of their flavour text, Proxy Studios were thoughtful enough to put the factions’ innate effects and abilities above it, one of those small but outsized annoyances when it’s mishandled. It’s also a hint at why those factions are intriguing - their descriptions and histories aren’t just well written, but a supplement to the designs and how they operate. The selection screen isn’t about picking a bonus; it’s an invitation to inhabit these characters. You technically only pick a “leader”, and play out their story as the personification of their people.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

Take the Heartless Artificer. The closest to an outright evil leader, her whole thing is “perfection” - cold, accurate, uniform structure in everything, and the eradication of anything that doesn’t serve that. So you’d think, what, she’d get maybe research bonus, or production bonus from clean unfeeling machines? Nope. She gets a population bonus, as she has the excellently evocative, yet unspecific “no fear of abhorrent sciences”. So alright, she’s the reflavoured growth option. Except that her downside is lower production… unless you sacrifice that population . You could be reductive and say it’s just extra steps, but those steps are key to what Zephon is trying to do. If you pick the nasty faction, you can’t just go “alright I’m Chairman Yang, I build fast”, waving away as innate whatever monstrous thing happens to provide that, then never thinking about it again. It makes you do it. To choose to kill those people. To play the part.

Better still, you get to define that part, not just go through its motions. I’d be amazed if Alpha Centauri wasn’t a major influence, but instead of philosophy or an ideology , Zephon’s leaders are about their history and circumstance. SMAC’s Deirdre and Endless Legend’s Roving Clans were already committed to an ideal, set on a specific path. Zephon’s are characters starting at a crossroads. They’re more like vault dwellers, with preconceived ideas, facing a fight to survive that could lead them several ways.

Some literally are, in fact. Like the Furtive Tribunal, a trio of women who entered an apocalypse bunker as strangers, and emerged as its only survivors, blind and two mute, the other speaking of impossible alien knowledge. A man who discovered his immortality after his execution, whose soldiers carry a piece of his flesh, constantly regenerating their health. Is he a champion sharing his luck, or a monster using his elite army to rule forever? One human-machine hybrid fends off an attempted assimilation by a genocidal AI, and now runs a side limited to one city, but gaining extra resources from capturing special hexes, like Endless Legend’s cult. Her starting point? “She has survived cancer. She has survived ZEPHON. And she will survive this.”

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

They nearly all cry out to be played whenever I start a new game, and some replayed because I realised their potential too late. The scavenging faction take extra morale damage as their leader’s compassion gives them higher hopes to dash, take resources from defeated enemies, and can convert units back into production and resources. I realised what the first two meant - you won’t lose morale if you’re the attacker, and victory pays for reinforcements. I underrated the third, which offers flexibility - you can spam lots of meat shield infantry in a siege, then quickly convert them into a counter-attacking tank force. Each leader gets research options to mitigate their problems too - the scavengers’ reduce the morale penalties. Does that make his story a fall from grace, his nobility worn away by compromises and rationalisations?

Everyone gets their own subplots too, with multiple choices revealing secrets or testing your character’s beliefs. I didn’t even think of second-guessing what the game outcomes would be from those decisions. Even for its main plot event, I made the mad reckless decision to defy both superpowers, only for one’s world-ending forces to rise up directly in the middle of my army, while the former ally there with me threw in with the other superpower. I started my final war for humanity by shooting my own backup to clear a retreat, hoping the giant horrors would attack them while I figured out what the hell to do now that everyone else picked a side, the turncoat cowards.

That’s Zephon’s other big thing: it’s a hybrid not just of 4X and light narrative roleplaying, but it’s absolutely a wargame too. Dramatically less so than Shadow Empire , with which it shares a sense of the evocative, prompting imagination to embellish where the reality is familiar hexes and hit points. You will do lots of fighting, as this is Earth after two competing invaders have attempted a full apocalypse, making terrain swampy or desert at best. But you can even ally with either, supporting the void aliens or AI (the titular ZEPHON), potentially both until things come to a head and it’s time to choose.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

Which leaders pick which side can suddenly change everything, and even your subplot decisions hours earlier can have consequences. Your own choice might be to side with the inscrutable aliens because they seem the lesser evil, or a subplot hinted that they weren’t the aggressor, or just because your territory is between the two and you’d never survive alone. Maybe you’ll support the machines out of transhumanist adaptation to the new world, or have to go it alone because you angered both while fending off a rival. Even winning might not be a victory: treachery or moral dereliction, or perhaps even defeating both superpowers was a failure to become more than a semi-evolved ape.

It is unfortunately more lacking in diplomacy than I’d hoped. Dialogue is specific to each combination of leaders, but interactions feel more limited than in SMAC (a high bar, to be fair), especially when it comes to expressing opinions. I appreciate, however, that diplomacy feels more like a conversation than ticking and unticking options and balancing pluses and minuses. Diplomacy lacks simulationist elements by design - you make your offers and demands, but you don’t magically know how likely they are to take it. You are told what influenced their decision, but only after they make it. In fact for a while I thought there was no stats/power chart screen at all (and part of me kind of wishes there wasn’t, but that’d probably get old), and only realised I had a good military when a nervous rival unexpectedly backed down.

Its story structure means constant warfare (even exploration is so hostile you might not uncover half the map, nor need to, since higher populations and city counts incur harsh resource penalties), and considering managing armies is usually what puts me off, I’m still way more invested in replaying to see more possibilities and make different decisions. You might pick the side that’s not a natural ally, different technologies, or try a mutator. One of those makes demoralised units switch sides, another penalises uniform armies. One turns dead units into “deformities” hostile to everyone. They’re unlocked at the end of a campaign, which is nice but there really should be some starting ones.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Proxy Studios

Comebacks are possible too. Cities expand cheaply, and barrackses combine their output to produce fast enough that I’ve bounced back from some surviving losses: one an absolutely brutal, desperate last stand of mankind with just a handful of fighters left as fragile medics and engineers ducked around the city, surrounded by a sea of hostile machines. I thought I’d benefitted from its slightly erratic AI, as its re-prioritising of targets led to less efficient warring than a human probably would. But then that other behemoth of the Voice faction, the one I’d wounded, chasing its retreat into uncharted territory long enough to guess it had circled round to trouble someone else? The bastard came back, partly regenerated, and started hitting me again. Humanity on a tightrope being sawn at both ends, every remaining figure a defiant thread.

Zephon is not without some faults, notably in its Everything Button UI, and some disappointingly undramatic high end research options. Although I love that any techs can be worth researching; even bottom-tier starting ones can become relevant right to the end, and starting units upgraded and levelled up (many levels at once if close to a valuable enemy’s death) to retain some use. If I were reviewing it, I’d stress more that it has its limitations and annoyances, and that my enthusiasm for its narrative is colouring my opinion enough to shrug off the parts where its design is more intriguing than consequential. But I can’t even remember the last time I enjoyed a 4X strategy game , hybrid or not, enough to finish a campaign then go straight to “new game” and consider the same faction again. That sense of character, of premise and story to contextualise your goals as more than “win the game”, and a design that works with it to guide your behaviour are a rare combination, and the genre needs more of them.

Zephon

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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