Should you bother with… path tracing?

Lights, camera, more lights, seriously just lights everywhere

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nvidia

Path tracing has been back on the PC hardware agenda recently, with Nvidia’s sales pitch for the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 more than lightly based on how good they are at shotgunning this premium graphics tech down your eye stalks. Yet beyond the sparkling glamour of marketing slides, however, path tracing remains exceptionally niche: nearly six years since Quake II RTX served as the tech’s de facto gaming debut, you can still count the number of compatible games on your fingers. Compare and contrast with the dozens upon dozens of games that have embraced ray tracing , path tracing’s less demanding nephew, and you’ll likely start wondering why more game devs don’t go for it.

We’re not here to answer that, though. This is Should You Bother With, here to investigate whether you should start using path traced effects to give your games – some of them, anyway – the full maxed-out-visuals treatment. Even if it takes a graphics card upgrade to do so.

The natural place to start is with a explanation of what path tracing actually is. Like ray tracing, it’s a method of producing more realistic (or, at least, more visually striking) lighting, shadow, and reflection effects, involving the real-time tracing of light rays from the game’s camera to their intended light sources. Both are more computationally intensive than how games more typically present lighting effects, but ray tracing still limits itself by only tracing one ray per pixel and calculating a small number of secondary rays should the light hit a reflective surface. Path tracing is the “Sure, go nuts” version, generating multiple rays per pixel and allowing them to bounce around surfaces randomly until they either find a light source or hit a set bounce limit.

This eats up yet more processing power, but what you end up with is basically a model for how all the light in a scene should behave – not just specific rays. In theory, this makes for more realistic effects that are more reactive to real-time changes. It’s also why path tracing is sometimes called “full ray tracing”, as the principles of ray tracing are being applied to the entire image as opposed to very specific light sources and effects.

Applied with aplomb, path tracing can deliver the kind of visual overhaul that you rarely see outside of dumping half of NexusMods onto a Bethesda RPG. Take a look at how much it changes Cyberpunk 2077 , even compared to the Psycho ray tracing preset:

Granted, on an individual level, some changes work better than others. The wet pavements look nicer with path tracing, for sure – with ray tracing, these can have an ugly grainy effect when you’re moving, which then abruptly smooths out as soon as you’re standing still. Bit weird. Path tracing gives them a more consistent, less patchy look that ultimately works better with the aesthetic.

The overall lighting presentation, however, becomes simultaneously much brighter and much warmer, which I’m not sure suits the grungy crime vibe so well. There’s also a sense that the light sources themselves are overegging it – that neon sign is barely legible with path tracing.

Fellow path tracee Alan Wake 2 – which has just had its ray tracing enhanced with RTX Mega Geometry support – opts for a subtler approach. In these shots, the visible benefits over standard RT are mainly just the shinier car bonnet and the cleaner puddle reflections. But, during an earlier section – while traipsing through the woods as Saga – I did notice a touch more detail to shadows, which responded more authentically to both myself and various leaves and tree branching moving around within torches and spotlights.

Since I was playing these games on a GeForce RTX GPU, they’ve also been touched up further by DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction , which uses (what else?) AI to improve detailing, reduce visual noise, and slightly speed up the performance of path tracing settings. Still, do either of these make a convincing sell for this being must-have tech? Maybe not so much. Cyberpunk 2007 just gets too bright and bold for my tastes, and while Alan Wake 2 is a more straight-up improvement, a lot of the upgrades (like the more detailed shadows on that street litter, or the spookier forest shadows) are barely distinguishable from the plain old Ultra ray tracing setting.

To do a bit of BBC-ish journalistic balance, I would like to bring up a use of path tracing I really like: Portal with RTX . This Valve-approved, Nvidia-developed remaster of the original Portal combines new textures with fully path-traced lighting and shadows, which makes for some gorgeous effects while staying true to Aperture Science’s clinical-yet-dingy design.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nvidia

I’ll admit, however, that part of the reason it showcases path tracing so well is that there isn’t a standard ray tracing mode to compare it too – you can only play with path tracing. It’s also utterly brutal to run, which brings us to another, bigger problem with path tracing: performance.

You probably saw this coming. Even if path tracing only makes minor improvements over ray tracing, it can and will impose a much bigger levy on the game’s performance, and ray tracing is already a practiced taxman. I tested three recent graphics cards at their typical monitor resolutions – the RTX 4060 for 1080p, the RTX 4070 Ti for 1440p, and the RTX 5080 for 4K – and all three of them suffered heavily in the aforementioned three games, sometimes dipping below 30fps even with help from DLSS upscaling.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

(Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 tested using DLSS 4’s new Transformer model, Portal with RTX using the original Convolutional Neural Networks model)

Path tracing can quite happily cut average performance by 50% or more, and again, that’s just on these new (or newish) GPUs. Older but still widely-used cards like the RTX 3060 aren’t going to cut it. And if they did, does path tracing make a game look more than 50% prettier? Not unless it’s remaking an old classic, no.

Those big, blue bars do point towards a possible workaround to this leaden quality, with the RTX 40 series able to call upon DLSS 3 frame generation to push framerates back into not-bad territory. The RTX 5080, meanwhile, can deploy DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Generation (MFG) for an even bigger boost.

Problem solved? Not quite. As I recently lectured Monster Hunter Wilds about , frame generation isn’t supposed to cover up framerate deficiencies by simply making up the numbers. It is supposed to make smooth-running games look even better by building on a solid (i.e., fast) base of frames that the PC is capable of rendering itself. This distinction is important because half the reason low framerates suck, outside of the visual element, is that the on-screen image is less frequently reflecting your control inputs. Hence the molasses feel, and why higher-framerate games have less input lag. Not only do generated frames fail to reduce this latency – because they come from outside the PC’s main rendering pipeline, and thus don’t take control inputs into account – but they actively add to it. The result is that while Alan Wake 2 on the RTX 5080 looks great when it’s hitting 124fps with path tracing, it still feels like it’s running at 36fps, with all the sluggishness that entails.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red

There is an element of history repeating itself, here. When ray tracing first became a possibility in games, back alongside the RTX 20 series GPU launch in 2018, it could only do so by necessitating DLSS upscaling to absorb the performance hit. Now, whenever a game gets path tracing, it’s usually necessitating frame generation for the same reason. Except upscaling, especially DLSS, never came with tradeoffs and drawbacks to the degree that frame gen does, which in turn makes the associated path tracing a harder sell.

As does, to return to an earlier point, the lack of games that support it. In terms of full, original games, current releases only span Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong , and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle , with Teardown and Portal-inspired puzzler Desordre providing some indie rep. Arguably Star Wars Outlaws as well, which uses a very path tracing-like lighting system called RTX Direct Illumination, while MMORPG Justice has it but isn’t available on PC in the West.

Otherwise, it’s just mods like Quake II RTX and Portal with RTX, and that’s not to poo-poo them – I’m definitely keen on checking on Half-Life 2 RTX when it eventually releases. Still, a bulging catalogue it is not. And even if you’re willing to upgrade your PC to something that can run path tracing, there’s a serious question of whether you’d get your money’s worth.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Epic Games Publishing

Should you bother with path tracing? Probably not. Even ray tracing’s prettiness-to-performance ratio isn’t always favourable, and path tracing exacerbates the problem, so I can’t recommend you out go out and buy RTX 5090 to enjoy the more reactive shadows cast by Keanu Reeves’ beard hairs. Not when it’s this hard on your hardware, and when only a tiny proportion of your Steam library will let you take advantage in the first place.

I have considered that there are other ways to keep performance up, while still partaking in path tracing’s fruits. You could, say, lower DLSS from Quality to Performance mode, or drop other settings like textures or vegetation quality or whatever. But that’s not really in keeping with what path tracing is about, which is making your games look as good as they do in the pre-release bullshots. If you have to kill off other elements of that visual richness, it’s just defeating the point.

Alan Wake II

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Cyberpunk 2077

PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Portal with RTX

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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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