Show less, randomise more: a Cyberpunk 2077 designer on how to stop open worlds feeling exhausting

“I love the idea that I found something that almost nobody else has found.”

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red

In the first post for my series on “saving” open world design, I complained that many of today’s open worlds feel like checklists of formulaic tasks and rewards, their geography a vaporous staging ground for itemisable, cycling content-gathering opportunities, which flies in the face of the sense of freedom and wonder they’re supposed to inspire. My interviewees, Elder Scrolls veterans Matt Firor and Nate Purkeypile, argued that this reflects the expense and scale of today’s open world productions, which constrains experimental design both at a practical level and in terms of overall direction.

CD Projekt open world designer Jakub Tomczak doesn’t, as far as I know, have an answer to the issue of production bloat, but he does have a disarmingly obvious solution to the ‘checklist problem’, based on his time creating missions for Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion: get better at hiding the checklist. Weave it into the landscape and setting more artfully, with an elegant balance of randomisation and responsiveness to the player’s behaviour which keeps everything fresh.

“The most important thing in an open world is that the player, when travelling, is not looking at, you know, the next waypoint or the next objective on their minimap,” Tomczak told me during a chat at the Digital Dragons conference in Poland this summer. “It’s that they’re looking around the world, that they can find something cool that’s not marked [for them] already.”

Tomczak is a newcomer to the Cyberpunk team. He joined CD Projekt RED in 2022, a year or two after the disastrous initial launch of Cyberpunk 2077, and right in the middle of the gruelling redemption march that culminated in last year’s 2.0 update and the release of Phantom Liberty. But he’s been tinkering with open worlds for the best part of a decade, having worked as game director on the much-liked Gothic 2 total conversion mod The Chronicles Of Myrtana .

“I personally don’t like the idea of to-do lists in open world games,” he began, when I shared my feelings of exhaustion with the genre. “And I think that’s the biggest problem we currently are seeing, that we’re just focusing on ‘opt-in’ content, and we’re doing much less ‘opt-out’ content. We’re focusing on people who want to do 100% and complete everything, and maybe thinking that they’re getting their value back, and you’re less thinking about immersive exploration and ‘opt-out’ content.”

Cyberpunk 2077’s vehicle contracts - in which you steal cars for fixers - are an example of ‘opt-out’ content. They’re left for you to stumble on, rather than being relentlessly itemised for your attention. Similarly to other “gigs” in the game, they manifest spontaneously as you roam. “You don’t see a marker on every corner of the map, even though the vehicle contracts can spawn anywhere, almost anywhere,” Tomczak continued. “They have, like 150 predefined spots across Night City, so there’s a lot, and you can try to get all of them, but it’s not a list. There’s only one spawning at a time, and it spawns nearby.” Each vehicle contract is a fleeting opportunity, but the chance to carry out a contract isn’t gone forever if you hurry past.

Image credit:RPS/CD Projekt Red

Tomczak’s hope is that there’s a sense of interacting with a coherent body of activities, but without any oppressive feeling of obligation to clean them all out. “I think that’s why we find ourselves feeling exhausted in open worlds, because, OK, I did one of those, and you already see it’s one of 60 and you go OK, I will try to do every one of them, because they are cool and I like them. And halfway through, you say OK, I’m exhausted.”

In addition to being offered in a more organic way, Cyberpunk’s vehicle contracts are also partly randomised, with an unpredictable secondary objective to fulfil in passing. “It might be enemies, maybe a time limit, maybe it’s delivering the vehicle without any damage.” The randomised flourishes needn’t be dramatic to create a feeling of vitality, Tomczak explained. “They don’t have to be huge things. It’s enough to change the placement of enemies. It’s enough to add some animations, maybe some very small, generic dialogues. But every little bit that changes makes the world more believable.”

The game’s randomisation systems are also guided by your behaviour, to stop them feeling too, well, random. “So for example, in vehicle contracts, we base a lot of what’s happening on the previous actions of the player - if the player failed the previous mission, maybe we should spawn fewer enemies, or maybe if the player already did 20 of those missions, we can pump up our difficulty.”

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red

Night City takes less time to traverse than many open worlds, but it’s visually denser, jutting from the desert like a clump of fulgurite decked in Christmas tree lights. Again, Tomczak wasn’t involved with the world’s original incarnation back in 2020, but this is the kind of open world he favours. “Personally, as a player, I much more prefer if the world is a little bit smaller, but more condensed and filled with things that are more unique,” he commented. “And I have the feeling that I’m exploring something new, something custom, handmade. And, yeah, I think this is something that we have to think as as players and developers - are we trying to achieve the biggest possible playable area, and maybe the quality of things we have there will be a little bit lower, or maybe we should focus on something smaller, but, you know, fully embracing how it works.”

“I see that there is a big push for more immersive worlds, for more handcrafted worlds, and I feel those were the things we were playing in the 90s and early 2000s,” he said. “We are seeing that people still want that kind of game again. I feel that there is huge potential in rediscovering things we used to do as an industry 20 years ago, and redoing those things with the new tools we have, with new technology in new games.”

Specifically, and to expand on the point about leaving the world’s activities unlisted, Tomczak reckons that today’s open world designers can get away with hiding more. “I think that there is a kind of feeling that players should see everything we have in store for them,” he told me. “And I think it doesn’t have to be like that. We shouldn’t be afraid to make some things hidden in the world, because that’s the great thing for me as a player - I love the idea that I found something that almost nobody else has found. It’s a great thing. And if you see a video on YouTube that only has a few views, and you see, wow, that person also found that - you can share that with other people.”

My chat with Tomczak left me a little wiser about how open world designers minimise the feeling of checking boxes while, inevitably, giving me more to ponder. One thing this interview doesn’t fully address is that many open world landscapes are their to-do lists - they exist to serve their activity design, which means there isn’t really a distinction between the HUD and the geography. Everything from the choice of flora to the play of elevations is an exercise in content delivery.

An urban open world game such as Cyberpunk 2077 makes that more obvious, because modern western cities are, after all, designed worlds themselves, which aim to stimulate or accommodate flows of people, things and commodities. Avoiding feelings of futility and burnout, and encouraging the enthusiastic motion of bodies through the crannies is a central facet of not just open world design, but urban planning and tourism. Consider this paper on how to stop sightseers experiencing cognitive or affective fatigue, for example.

We could carry that forward into an analysis of the quintessential urban open worlder, Grand Theft Auto . Next time, I’d like to get beyond questions of execution, and think about the conceptual underpinnings of the open world genre - the notions of space, time, curiosity, exploration and discovery these games facilitate, and how all that is bound up in the material circumstances of game development. In the meantime, I’d love to know what you think of Cyberpunk 2077’s open world (Graham liked it back in 2020 , complaints about bugs and “baggy” RPG fixtures notwithstanding, and even more so in 2023 ), and whether there are any particular forgotten approaches to the genre you’d like developers to revisit.

Cyberpunk 2077

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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

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