SpaceCraft is aiming for the gap between Starfield, Satisfactory and Eve Online

There are always more worlds to conquer

Image credit:Shiro Games

I’ll be blunt: the only thing that really entices me about SpaceCraft is that it’s from Shiro Games, creators of such robust RPG and strategy fare as Dune: Spice Wars , Evoland , Northgard and Wartales . As a concept, at least, SpaceCraft seems both flavourless and oddly inclined to overplay its own familiarity. I mean, look at that title. Consider its chilly blend of functionality and punmanship. Look at that capital “C”, poking out of the middle like the bow on a present whose silhouette leaves nothing to the imagination. You already know broadly what this game involves, yes? Indeed, you do: it’s a game about crafting spacecraft, so that you can travel to other planets and craft their resources into other, better spacecraft. This you may do eternally, for there are thousands of planets in store.

If you’ve spent far too much time playing any or all of No Man’s Sky , Elite: Dangerous , Eve Online and Starfield , you may even now be holding this computer over your head, preparing to smash it against the floor and return SpaceCraft to the sleep-gobbling hell whence it came. As Shiro president Nicolas Cannasse and community lead François Roussel acknowledged when I spoke to them in December, SpaceCraft’s chief difficulty is persuading burned-out virtual astronauts that it’s worth leaving the atmosphere at least one last time.

In SpaceCraft you play an outcast human pilot, part of a grand exodus from Earth after a bunch of aliens called Tripods rock up and smash everything. Those Tripods thought they had won; in practice, all their conquest seems to have achieved is unleashing humanity upon the wider cosmos in an epidemic of bottom-hugging voidsuits. Your objective is broadly to rebuild, and build, and build some more. You’ll kick off roaming planets in first-person, harvesting resources by hand, but as you found bases and improve your facilities, you’ll be able to automate extraction and production - the devs cite Satisfactory as an inspiration - freeing you to lift your sweat-stung eyes to the heavens.

There are no character classes, but during our interview, Cannasse mentioned various “evolutionary paths” for players in terms of tech and playstyle. As your initial rickety ore-panning operation swells into a prosperous, multiple-planet minestead, you’ll stumble upon other players and found corporations, that you may even more efficiently strip brave new worlds of their bounty.

It’s a continuous universe, with no loading break between outer space and planetary surfaces, and there are thousands of systems, each with several planets and smaller organic or artificial celestial bodies, such as space stations. The starmap is broken into sectors, each woven around a core of “static” NPC encounters and missions, plus a swathe of procedurally generated material.

Image credit:Shiro Games

“It’s not like a lot of procedural generation and then everything is empty,” Cannasse assured me, evidently mindful that “procedural generation” is, for many, synonymous with “lumpy gruel”. “We have actual content, but it’s randomised in the way it’s placed, depending on the server you are on, but on one given server, it should be in the same place for other players on this server.”

Which brings us to the question of online. SpaceCraft is categorised as “massively multiplayer” on Steam and in announcement materials. Each server houses a few thousand players, with the exact number still TBC. In our reveal post from the PCGeoffies , I called the game an MMO. While I think that was a fair framing, based on the information I had at the time, SpaceCraft isn’t an MMO in the “classical” sense, and Shiro are keen to avoid the association. In practice, it’s more about asynchronous than real-time interaction, and while collaborating with others is a focus, Cannasse was at pains to stress that you can do everything in the game by yourself - though you can’t play offline.

“We put a lot of emphasis on the cooperation aspect,” he explained, “and not cooperation in terms of a lot of real time cooperation, like doing dungeons with your friends in World Of Warcraft, but more asynchronous cooperation, in the sense that when you create a corporation together, and you have several space bases, you will have an overall goal as a corporation to improve this or that aspect, develop our base further, build specific buildings or find specific resources.”

Image credit:Shiro Games

Members of a corporation may benefit from exploring and building together, but you can always break formation if you fancy: the absence of classes means that you aren’t locked off from certain ways of playing. “If you want to go very deep into a single aspect of the game, then it’s better to collaborate with other players who will be better in other aspects that complement you,” Cannasse said. “But it’s a choice that you have.”

There’s also the prospect of PvP, though the game isn’t PvP-focussed; mostly, you’ll be fighting with NPC banditos and, presumably, those villainous Tripod aliens. Ship engagements take place in third-person view - Shiro are considering a cockpit perspective, but it’s not guaranteed - and are comparable to MMO skirmishes. There’s no real-time dog-piloting: your ship flies itself while you assign targets and execute ship skills with cooldowns, supplied by your equipment. There’s not much else to share at this point, but it’s this aspect of SpaceCraft that I most trust Shiro to nail, given their previous accomplishments with Wartales and Northgard.

I’m less convinced that the game’s distant planets and their inhabitants will be intriguing to uncover, given the unceremonious way Shiro are positioning this as a game of imperial extraction and production, but you won’t just be landing on chunks of rock and getting out your laser-shovel.

Asked to specify “something weird” players might encounter while planet-hopping, Cannasse gave me an example of how a random mission might spill over into resource collection. While approaching a planet, you receive a distress call, and trace it to a ruined base. While exploring it in first-person, you craft an item to repair a door and rescue a trapped NPC. As you take off, you realise that the planet has extensive oceans. So you pilot beneath the waves in search of plunder, only to discover that you need to head home and upgrade your ship to withstand the pressure.

As you’d hope, the ship customisation seems pretty elaborate. It needs to be, because it’ll be critical to the in-game economy. Cannasse compared the construction yard element to assembling LEGO blocks, with editor options ranging from choice of engine drive or weapons modules to the paintjob and decals. Having devised an absolute banger of a frigate, you can sell your blueprints to other players for in-game currency, though they’ll need to dig up the requisite building resources themselves.

Image credit:Shiro Games

Were SpaceCraft a spacecraft blueprint inside SpaceCraft, I’m not sure I’d be reaching for my space-wallet, not for the moment. Again, none of this sounds particularly novel, and while I enjoy space sims, I do not enjoy their current abundance. Given that outer space is, as Douglas Adams says, a lot bigger than a trip down the road to the chemists , I often think that we really only need one space sim that houses all the others. It would save a lot of time reinventing the hyperdrive. Perhaps it could be a publicly funded project, with galaxies freely awarded to developers providing they can meet some simple admissions criteria, like proving beyond reasonable doubt that they aren’t Todd Howard.

Shiro are, in fairness, upfront that SpaceCraft is a cunning compound of bits and pieces from many other starfaring digital distractions. The hope, of course, is that the final dish will taste more exotic than the ingredients.

“Several games have been very focussed on the simulation aspect,” observed Cannasse. “Some of the games have been focussed on the economic aspect, or on the combat aspect. And I think what SpaceCraft brings is a unique mix of these. So we have a big focus on exploration, and also it’s a persistent world, where you play in a community with other players, and you can build cooperation and collaborate together in a player-driven economy. I think there is no game at the moment that has this specific mix, that puts all these things together.”

“It’s a very much a Shiro game, in the end, because I think Shiro tends to blur the lines between genres,” François Roussel interjected. “And I think SpaceCraft is very much that. We’re going to borrow a bit from several games, but we’re going to offer a very unique experience, something that is really standing out, that is in-between existing games. I think this is one of the challenges that we have, to carry that message to the player.”

SpaceCraft

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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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