The combat in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn feels a bit floaty, but at least its café staff have ten hands

How do you take your soulslike?

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Kepler Interactive

How do you like your coffee? For those who answer: “served by a barista with ten arms wearing a mask adorned with intense scarlet lipstick”, you are in luck. The multi-limbed coffee shop owner of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is, indeed, a reassuring sight, since they are the ones who sell the player fashionable jackets and trousers to wear while you axe enemy heads to bloody fragments. In this soon-to-sally-forth soulslike from the makers of Ashen , the creature design is a highlight. Whether it’s a good souls ’em up remains to be seen. I’ve only played a couple of hours in the Steam Next Fest demo. But I want to make clear that, among the reservations I’ve collected on my murder jaunt, nothing will diminish the espresso-pumping hand-haver of the game’s first café.

All this is to say that Flintlock is set in a strange world at war with the gods. As the explosives-happy sapper Nor, you may have accidentally unleashed a bunch of angry deities into the countryside and cities that surround a muddy battlefield you’ve been stuck in. The job, then, is clean-up.

Amid the cinematic scene-setting and swift character-culling of the opening, you’ll be introduced to all the running and sliding and triple-jumping that will later help to navigate open, multi-route mountain towns and city streets. There is so much mobility and platformy navigation that it often feels like an action adventure with Bloodborne combat and soulsy infrastructure, as opposed to sharing the gloomy groundedness of Fromsoft’s dead and dying worlds. Sekiro is probably the closest comparison, really. It too likes to allow the player to clamber around on the roofs and ledges above enemies before committing to a fight.

As for those fights, imagine the gun-parrying of Bloodborne combined with the posture meter charging of Sekiro’s one-armed swordster. Here you watch out for signposted unblockable attacks, which require you to shoot your way out of them. The catch being you only have a few shots before you have to recharge by getting some ordinary hits in. All the while a magical purple “curse” meter will help you crack the hard shell off armoured knights and monsters. To build up that meter, you direct your small god foxpal, Enki, to slorp through your enemy’s body, or suspend them in a paralytic purple haze. Once the meter is full, the enemy slows to a standstill, and you can give your sluggified foe a big dirty megawhack.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Kepler Interactive

The axe-hacking and pistol shootin’ looks stylish and fierce, but so far it also feels to me less clean, less sure-footed than, say, Bloodborne or any of the other major Souls. The developer’s previous game Ashen, for all its qualities, also had this feeling to it at times: a wavering imprecision that’s hard to pin down. Maybe I find it hard to read the enemy animations. Maybe I’m used to a longer window to “cancel” a regular attack into another attack or parry. Whatever it is, it threw me off during the demo.

But it’s early days. You can’t get a true feel for a souls ’em up’s combat in such a short time. Plus I find a soulsathon’s margin for jank is more forgivable the more even-handed it is. And Flintlock, despite having some hard-hitting enemies, is not merciless on its normal difficulty (it has a story mode and hard difficulty too). I’m still annoyed when hurt by enemy sword thrusts that seem to go right past me. But I’d be more irritated if it meant certain death, as opposed to a hefty scratch.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Kepler Interactive

Enki himself is another sweetly designed beast. He’s like a miniaturised Trico from The Last Guardian , with fennec fox ears sensitive to loud noises (he complains when you set off a charge of black powder at one point, poor wee fella). But he can do some damage in fights. Aside from the slorping curse build-up, he can automatically taunt and distract enemies when you’re outnumbered, and can infrequently unleash a huge area effect blast. There’s a whole skill tree devoted to his tricks, but I didn’t get to see anything else beyond the basics.

There are other subtleties that build up to make an interesting soulsy ramble. The currency of experience points you collect - the notsouls of this game - is simply called “reputation”. You gain reputation with each kill, but on top of that each successful strike against an enemy will slap on a bonus multiplier. That means every axe crack and shot you take, you’ll see a number on your screen ticking up. 4% extra reputation. 10% extra reputation. 20% extra reputation. Amazing. Until you get whacked. At that point, the multiplier is cancelled, your pride is bruised, and you only cash in the basic, low number of notsouls.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Kepler Interactive

Getting the most experience from fights therefore requires never getting hit and dispatching your enemy as swiftly and cleanly as you can. Our hero Nor even remarks on this at one point, saying, yes, she’s a killer, but it’s always better to kill someone fast, with as little pain as possible. If you do fluff a fight, experience will still trickle in, but the dropped multiplier is a good “I’m missing out” incentive to drive your desire towards a perfect fight. Of course, if you eat dirt, usual souls rules apply. You lose everything, and have to get back to your point of death to reclaim your literally rubbished reputation.

There’s more to it. Grenades to toss. Materials to gather. Long muskets to fire. Ancestors to honour. Plus a generous shortcut philosophy that looks promising (but will be hard-pressed to beat the delectable level design of The Surge 2). But I’ll let you explore all that in the demo yourself , if you want. Weirdly, I’m left feeling its action adventure stylings more than the souls ones. It reminds me of Plague Tale series, in the sense that this too feels like a smaller studio aiming for blockbuster production levels.

Sometimes they seem to hit that mark, as in the gorgeous animation of Enki’s foxy flight. Other times they miss it, as in the jarring transition that occurs after one boss fight (I was just in a burning village, now the village is immediately alive and populated). Or in the fact that your musket seems to shoot a full half-metre off the crosshair. This is an early build, so glitches are expected. But it’s worth saying I have seen a few more progress-halting bugs than I’d like for a game that is coming out, gulp, next month.

Then again, I’ve seen enough freaky creature design and handy shortcuts to keep me intrigued. Plus I have serious good will stored up from Ashen , enough to give Flintlock’s gun-toting air-dashing the benefit of a fuller playthrough. I’ll sip some coffee as I wait.

Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn

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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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Our 9 favourite demos from the summer Steam Next Fest

Try them

Image credit:Akupara Games

This week, we’re highlighting the best demos you can play during Steam Next Fest , which starts June 10th. We’re calling this Wishlisted , in partnership with Eurogamer and VG247.

Excuse me, sorry, pardon me, can I just, thank you, ah, sorry, thanks… Phew, made it. Steam Next Fest is pretty crowded, eh? As if the unholy swarm of trailers and game announcements from Summer Game Fest was not enough, this week the fearful megalords at Valve decided to drop their regular cavalcade of coming-soons onto their megastore. The beautiful (and terrifying) thing about Next Fest, of course, is the overwhelming number of demos that come out during the event. A small herd of video games are standing on my toes as we speak. But that’s okay, we are expert curators. Here’s a handy list of our nine favourite demos of the lot.

Tactical Breach Wizards

A magical SWAT team bust down doors and blast bad folk in this confined tactics game from Suspicious Developments. At the end of a fight in this funny tacticianesque turn-taker, you are awarded with a score for speed, efficiency, and number of “defenestrations”, which should tell you everything you need to know. The healer on your team is a necromancer, so to heal her squad mates properly, she may first have to kill them. “It’d take a serious hex to stop me diving into the full game when it releases,” said Nic when he tried the demo for the window-breaking Into The Breach-like . He won’t have to wait too long - it’s out August 22nd .

Download the defenestrating demo on Steam .

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

A soulslike that challenges all the other soulslikes to pistols at dawn (I stole this joke from one of our commenters, who may demand satisfaction). Flintlock sees you explore a world where twisted gods have been unleashed and must be taken down. You can triple-jump from the opening chapters and curse lads with a magical fennec fox sidekick. The demo is quite buggy (not reassuring for a game due out next month) but when it works it is stylish, curious, bright, and inventive. The creature design is a particular treat .

Powder your musket via the Steam page .

Disco Samurai

A rhythm-action Sekiro where you stab your way through neon-lit dioramas by tapping in time to the techno beat. It’s hard stuff , says Nic. But it also doesn’t outright punish you for missing a beat, in the way something like Thumper might. Here, you simply won’t attack. It gets more complicated as you 4/4 your way to bloody victory with parries, dodges, stuns, and guns. You can also kick vases around for extra damage, smashing the priceless heirlooms into goon faces. To paraphrase the seminal work of 1990s Italian eurodance group Corona: This is the rhythm of the fight, the fight, oh yeah.

Dance and dice in the demo on Steam .

Spilled!

Well, oil be damned. Spilled (I’m not writing that exclam, it’s quiet time) is one of them there cosy games about relaxing and having a satisfying clean-up. You drift around in a pleasant boat filtering black puddles of gunk out of the water. You’ll also be herding plastic flotsam back to your recycling HQ and rinsing harmful goo off the rocks above the waterline with a big splooshy hose. Yes, you can upgrade your boat to make the job easier but “the pleasure is very much found in the cleaning itself, rather than the rewards,” says James, who enjoyed his boaty break at sea .

De-gunk the demo on Steam .

Sorry We’re Closed

Heard you like Silent Hill games. Heard you like Paradise Killer . Heard you like the hottest pinks on the face of the earth. Heard you like changing to a first-person perspective to shoot. Heard you like Persona games. Heard you like not having enough bullets. Heard you like the London tube, but fucked-up. Heard you like running from room to room while being pursued by a mutilated being of unknown origin which let’s face it is probably a psychological manifestation of your grief or guilt or shame or repressed sexual desires and is also groaning and swinging around a piece of sharp rusty metal to kill you perhaps metaphorically but also quite literally. Heard you like all that .

Scream through the dream on Steam .

Tiny Glade

In Tiny Glade you start with a grassy patch of countryside and end with a cosy castle. Its simple diorama-building lies somewhere between the zen-like rearranging of Quiet As A Stone and the pleasant seaside brickery of Townscaper . A lot of the toughest decisions are made for you as you drag stonework walls and wooden fences around with sigh-inducing ease, the game inserting piles of wood, pitchforks, and even bird’s nests into the nooks and crannies of your bucolic fortress. “Managed to quieten my brain for a few precious hours,” said Kiera when she made the witch’s cottage of her dreams .

Bewitch yourself in the demo on Steam .

Enotria: The Last Song

Two soulslikes on the list? Don’t be absurd. We don’t need TWO soulslikes. Oh, this one’s Italian? And everyone wears a creepy mask that determines their purpose for their entire life? Well, I suppose, why not. Si, per favore. The combat does look beefy, with lots of slow, charged attacks I bet will have to be extremely well-timed. And there’s no block button, I’m told. That alone will get the souls sickos lining up to salivate through the window. I’ll let Edwin take you through the finer details . He’s part Italian, I think. Always talking about Rococo this and Baroque that. Can’t get the guy to stop.

La demo è su Steam .

Faceminer

What is the price of a face? $43. That’s our Ed’s estimate based on the time he spent playing Faceminer , the dystopian idle game about ravenously hoarding human portraits. You sit on an old PC with the grey interface of yesteryear and click on as many faces as you can by rummaging through datasets and directories. You get emails about it. Management requires more faces, it seems. Install more RAM and auto-clicking software to increase your facerate. Buy some solar panels to ease your hunger for the visage of every human ever photographed. Where does it end? When will you be satisfied? I don’t know. This is just a demo. These are all just demos, dude.

This one, too, is on Steam .

Lost and Found Co

You are a duck. Excuse me, you were a duck. Until some dressy goddess turned you into a human because she needs an intern for her “magical startup dedicated to finding lost items”. Let the hidden object hunt commence, as you click and maybe cluck your way through stages of packed teahouses, crowded cabaret clubs, and floral countryside scenes. Graham is the resident Hidden Objectifier at RPS. “I appreciate that there’s a story to pull you through each scene too,” he said when he first spotted it at the Wholesome Direct , his eyes full of a fierce and slightly concerning focus. He must be looking for a lost cat.

Find the demo hiding on Steam .

Disclosure: Suspicious Developments, the makers of Tactical Breach Wizards , is headed by Tom Francis, who has written for RPS in the past and knows all our darkest desires.

Disco Samurai

Video Game

Enotria: The Last Song

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

FACEMINER

Video Game

Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn

Video Game

Sorry We’re Closed

PC

Spilled!

PC

Tactical Breach Wizards

PC

Tiny Glade

PC

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