RPS Verdict: Monster Hunter Wilds

Wild about it?

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Capcom

Nic: Life, the absolute bastard, has kept me away from the Monst. Let me experience it through you. What’s the best Monst so far?

Brendan: I am fond of the squiddy critters that slop about. The Nu Udra is a giant gloopy octopus that feels like a stand-out fight partly because of its many, many arms, but also because of the environment you fight it in. It’s horrible (in a fun way) to wade about in the oil of this region, and try to avoid the flames that inevitably start to spread. Another later squid-like beast has some horrible knifey hands at the end of its tentacles, but I’ll let the readers discover the rest of that creep’s tactics by themselves.

Ollie: I’m partial to the Yian Kut-Ku myself. It was the very first monster I ever fought in any Monster Hunter, back in the days of Monster Hunter Freedom on my PSP. And all these years later, I still recognised all its moves, and it made the whole act of beating up the big fire-breathing chicken even more enjoyable and satisfying than it already was.

Brendan: Oh, it’s a good one. I like the way it soars between areas, limping through the sky on holey wings. Shame it only arrives at the end of the lengthy story, mind.

Jeremy: The Lala Barina, an early game spider monster that exudes a web of scarlet flower petals and fluffy white poofs of fur, is one of my favourites. This came as a surprise because I usually veer on the side of disliking spiders in just about everything. I think it’s just a splendid design that somehow manages to make one of the dullest video game bosses - the giant arachnid - compelling and even beautiful. Also, all of its weapons are sleek, refined, and kind of princess-like, and you can get a frilly dress as one of the armour pieces that makes your hunter look like a Nier character. I feel very pretty wearing it.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Capcom

Nic: Are some of the later monsters still exhausting to fight? That’s something that stopped me getting into the last one as much as I wanted, just realising I’d have to carve out 40 minutes for non-stop wailing.

Brendan: I got tired of emptying endless arrows into the final boss. I won’t spoil the exact nature of it, except to say that it goes through phases which mix up the fight’s flavour, but I still felt fatigue as it dragged on. Battles do get more protracted the further you get into the endgame. There are new “tempered” abominations that are there to act as more challenging fights. Big bruisers who have seen the wars and won’t go down easy. That feels like work to me, but I’ve read complaints that the game feels too easy to long-toothed veterans of the series (it’s true that I’ve only fainted in two battles so far, and only properly failed one quest). So where I see a long battle and think “god, just die” a lot of fans will probably stomp in gung-ho, glad to have a lengthy hunt.

Brendan: Ah, yeah. The geography itself probably would feel layered and interesting, but all the actions you perform within the space remove that feeling. The auto-piloting dino plays a big part in this. Even if you wrestle control back there’s still an always-on trail of fireflies leading you straight to where you need to go. I couldn’t find any option to turn this stuff off, and I’m not sure how the game would play if you could. It frustrates me that level designers and environment artists have put so much effort into providing a sense of place, but you quickly become numb to it because you don’t actually need to think about the routes you’re taking. It feels more like getting on a bus to the next fight, rather than driving there yourself. You don’t need to worry about shortcuts.

Edwin : Do people have favourite weapons? I was hoping to do an against-the-grain run as a solo Hunting Horn user, because back in the day, the Hunting Horn was designed quite deliberately for support roles in multiplayer. Sadly, they’ve made it a lot more single player friendly, though that’s possibly more to do with the other changes to the controls over the years. I might fall back on my old friend, the Gunlance.

Brendan: I read recently that the designers wanted all the weapons to be equally “viable”, so you can still pile on the hurt even with a traditional support bubble machine. The Gunlance I didn’t try (I got scared when I tried to use it in Monster Hunter World and could NOT understand the best way to use it). I started with the Twin Blades, which feel like absolute wreckers once you learn to perform the mega twirly sawblade manoeuvres. You roll down a monster’s entire spine like a hideous human buzzsaw. But I found that fighting up close made monster movements harder to track and I kept getting knocked down. I swapped to the bow, and it was very satisfying to learn, if a little fiddly at first.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Capcom

Nic: " This is a story of monsters and humans and their struggles to live in harmony in a world of duality". Discuss.

Brendan: This is a comical line of marketing for a game about murdering dinosaurs for high-heel boots. But it is a minor theme of the story. These monsters are simply animals doing what they are naturally compelled to do, we are sometimes told. A small boy comes to relate to a big bad mega monst who once wrecked his village, but his emotional turnaround is so unconvincing it doesn’t land at all. I could scoff and chuckle and wryly fnar-fnar-fnar at how the dialogue and characters try their best to tackle this subject and ultimately fail. But that might just be making a stink out of the game’s mild lip service to wildlife preservation. As humans our relationship to animals is an absolutely batshit web of intractable contradictions. My brother’s dog is dying and my entire family is currently in bits. But we eat endless cows for supper without thinking too much about it. The natural instinct is to try to scrunch these contradictions until some “right” way of thinking about animals emerges. But it rarely does. All this is to say that preservation and good treatment of wildlife is beyond both the scope of this article, and the scope of a game in which you ride around on Yoshi from the Bob Hoskins Super Mario movie while killing his lizard cousins for their glands.

Ollie: I liked the bit where one of the villagers asked me to deal with a monster that was plaguing their ore miners. I went and clobbered the living shite out of it, harvested its parts for my armour, and then returned to the villager and said “actually, they’re really not a threat, you can learn to live with them in harmony”.

Jeremy: Generally, I think Monster Hunter as a franchise has made some strides since the early days, which were really more overt about how the setting only existed as a gameplay loop for you to brazenly brutalise big beasts and carve up their carcasses to craft cool clothes. But perhaps that overtness was more honest? As it stands, the concessions that Monster Hunter Wilds makes to the idea of ecology or preserving life come to a halt whenever you run into a big boss. Your hunter immediately turns to Alma, the latest doe-eyed handler who kind of looks like she stepped out from behind a barista counter. It’s obvious what you want - Guild permission to engage the enemy. And Alma grants it without a second’s hesitation, even when said enemy is just an ornery toad who’s lashing out because the annoying humans are in its home.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Capcom

There are moments that hint at alternate worlds where Monster Hunter is less focused on killing, though. I’m thinking of the Lala Barina again, and how prior to fighting it you’re exploring its ecosystem, which is a truly gorgeous forest packed to the brim with enough wildlife to justify the game’s entire photo mode. I was reminded of those edutainment ‘90s CD-ROMs I used to play as a kid, about navigating a rainforest or boating down the Nile. There’s potential here to go further in that direction in future installments of the series, perhaps having hunters navigate environmental shifts or undertake more missions that are about transporting injured monsters or healing sick ones. But ultimately, all of this vanishes when we realise that the Lala Barina has paralysed one of our comrades, so off we go again to beat a behemoth and then use its spinnerets to make a switch axe.

Edwin: It’s sort of fascinating to watch Monster Hunter attempt to carve a coherent throughline from those intractable contradictions. It makes room for a lot of discussion about conceptions of humanity and animality and how certain categories of human have modelled certain categories of nonhuman to suit their purposes. Monster Hunter’s “ecology” is really just a slaughterhouse mechanism with various outputs; the more they try to simulate “natural” behaviour the more glaring the machine’s overall purpose becomes. Generally speaking, I think Capcom could feel less guilty and/or resist the urge to conservation-wash their simulation. This is fiction, and while fiction can be harmful or reductive, it’s often a way of figuring ugly things out. Not being a Japanese speaker, I’ve never had much luck getting Capcom to talk about whether they’ve learned anything from big game hunting or safaris, but there’s surely a great interview there.

It’s also just entertaining to watch the game try to make sense of its own morals. I’m recycling a joke from several RPS Slack meetings, but I think it would be fun for Capcom to go full Edge Doom review and let the monsters talk. Doubtless they would say things like “Oh golly, I’m overpopulating my habitat!"

Brendan: “This will have ramifications to the food chain!”

Edwin: “Quickly, thin my numbers so that the ecosystem can survive.”

Monster Hunter Wilds

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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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