Survival game City 20 is The Sims set in the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Blood in the sandbox

Image credit:Untold Games

I find myself increasingly turned off these days by simulations that boast of endless butterfly effects. I guess my misgivings can be boiled down to “a chain of dominoes is still a chain of dominoes even if it’s 1000 metres in extent”. Without some reason to care supplied by a narrative or broader question of theming and aesthetics, it all risks being admirable of execution but also like sheer technical maximalism - systems for the sake of systems. What do I care if I can make the 567th domino fall over by kicking the first?

Still, I’m very interested to see more of City 20. In development since 2018, it’s the work of Untold Games, a studio hitherto known for VR projects, location-based “immersive experiences” and ports of games such as Journey To The Savage Planet . As a piece of mechanics, it’s a top-down sandbox survival experience with a highly reactive environment and procedural storytelling, influenced by the likes of Rimworld (and not, the developers insist, created using latter-day generative AI tools ). As a story scenario, meanwhile, it’s inspired by Cold War conspiracy theories about Soviet “secret cities” given over to uranium enrichment and nuclear experiments. The titular City 20 is one such burg, though not a direct recreation. As the game begins, a nuclear accident has led to a radiation spike and a partial evacuation: you play one of the poor suckers who didn’t make the last bus out of town.

Fast forward a few years, and City 20 has been sealed off and essentially transformed into a Petri dish for the full spectrum of human empathy and maliciousness, where the butterfly effects multiply like, er, rabbits, who themselves will scuttle about in accordance with the availability of food and the behaviour of predators. A new society has arisen within the quarantine zone, as tends to be the case with quarantine zones - a washed-out Mad Maxian civilisation divided into factions of fringe scientists and former soldiers with their own belief systems, their own histories of the calamity, and their own ideas about the world outside. The look of the place combines nods to Eastern European cities with allusions to Polish painters and to 70s and 80s sci-fi movies. There’s also a soundtrack of electronic music inspired by the likes of Kraftwerk. It’s certainly a layered portrayal, though I’m not sure much of the detail will be obvious from the stratospheric default perspective.

Your task here is firstly to survive, and then to find a way out. To achieve these goals, you’ll need to negotiate with the people around you, each of whom has needs and desires that give rise to a range of daily activities. Take your local baker. They’ll need wood for their oven, which they might trade for or obtain directly by heading into the forests with an axe. Once they can light the oven, they can open their bakery and flog some loaves to the populace, improving everybody else’s quality of life. If they can’t find wood - perhaps because you’ve already gone out and hacked down the nearest trees yourself - they’ll try to meet their needs in other ways. They might go mushroom-picking, for instance. If they’re somehow injured and killed in the process, perhaps because a storm sets in and they’re stranded away from shelter, the local community will organise a funeral and seek out a new baker. Perhaps you’ll end up taking the job yourself. Each iteration of City 20 harbours a finite number of citizens and once they’re gone, they’re gone, leaving a hole in the world that can either be filled or compensated for or left to fester.

Relationships between characters also dictate how they behave. A merchant who doesn’t really know you might not show you their entire inventory, or tell you everything useful about the local area. Naturally, you can improve somebody’s opinion of you by doing favours for them - which might also cause one of their enemies to lose respect for you. Start a fight, and bystanders may join the brawl or leg it based on how they feel about the instigators and how brave or foolhardy they are. Governing factions have different ideas about crime and punishment, some issuing fines for misdemeanours while others require you to work off your debt to society, and others just beat you up on the spot.

While tracing every procedural ricochet may be tricky, many choices have consequences that are writ large in your surroundings. If a generator breaks down, depriving the neighbourhood of light after sunset, the faction in charge will seek out the resources to fix it, and post patrols to defend the generator in future. If you or somebody else steals from a house, the owner will reinforce the windows. Poison a well, and you might return to find half the locals dead and the well under lock and key.

All of these repercussions seem to apply whether your character is actually present at the time or asleep in a shack somewhere. A town might burst into civil war over some tiny thing somebody or other did that put everybody else on edge. Perhaps most fascinatingly of all, Untold Games want to simulate how knowledge travels, with townsfolk passing on secrets and gossip based on who they trust. And that’s just the human geography: out in the wilds, there’s an overlapping ecosystem of plants that grow from seeds spread by other plants, and animal populations with particular dietary needs and associated migration patterns.

City 20 will launch in early access this year with two of four planned factions. The first big update will introduce a proper seasonal cycle for plant growth, with associated temperature variables. As a project, it’s certainly a lot, and I suspect that a fair few of the more elaborate ideas here will wither away in the course of development. But I do applaud the ambition on show, especially from a team without much of a reputation for original projects, and I’m hopeful that all these moving parts will give rise to stories that feel like more than just another set of dominoes, waiting to fall.

City20

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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