The Crush House is a saucy 90s reality TV show simulator from the developers of Reigns

Big Bother

Image credit:Devolver

I’m not much of a reality TV watcher. Genuinely, I’ve been humiliated on this count in RPS morning meetings, with certain “colleagues” whose names rhyme with “Malice Knell” making references I don’t understand and laughing at my expression of hurt and confusion. My grasp of reality TV basically ends with the finale of the very first season of Big Brother, feat. Nasty Nick. But you could argue that you don’t need to watch reality TV to understand and enjoy reality TV, because the basic reality TV thrill of forming weird parasocial attachments to people who are role-playing as themselves is now the golden rule of digital society generally.

“‘Reality’ stuff is huge now, and it’s not just reality TV,” says Nicole He, designer of The Crush House - an enticing, absurdist and engrossingly unpleasant new sim from Reigns and Card Shark developers Nerial. “It’s any kind of celebrity or influencer or streamer or something like that - there are so many parasocial relationships in that way, and I think that really started with reality TV, and then [continued] in the era of social media. It’s one of those topics that we don’t talk about in an explicit way, necessarily, but it’s something that you hopefully think about as you’re playing the game.”

The “popcorn” faction are the easiest to please: they just want to see people forming relationships, though they’re also mystifyingly keen on scenes of people drinking the show’s official beverage Crush Juice. The “flower” group are landscape lovers who are thirstier for posh shrubbery than people. “They’re kind of like a HGTV audience who likes gardens and things like that,” says He. “Not only do they want to see plants, but they also sometimes want to see specific plants, like a blooming prickly pear, so I have to figure out what that is.”

Film students, meanwhile, prioritise form over content: they yearn for avant garde camera angles and artfully unfocussed backdrops. “Schadenfreuders” are after displays of cringe - at its most basic, this could be a close-up shot of a toilet bowl, but “cringe” is a term that harbours multitudes. And “sexy seekers”, of course, are partial to footage of butts and people making out. While you’re chasing the characters around the mansion and balancing the preferences of these different groups, you’ll also have to make space for ad breaks in order to monetise those views. In one of publisher Devolver’s trademark shows of self-referentiality, some of the ads were contributed by the creators of other Devolver games. There’s one for Bennet Foddy’s upcoming Baby Steps , a wiggling golden bottom-supplement commercial of sorts, which I am finding impossible to unsee.

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Image credit:Devolver

That’s your day-to-day. By night, you’ll pore over your earnings in the wilting office/bedroom below the mansion, and possibly buy props and decorations that might foam up a little chemistry or suit the tastes of one or other viewing demographic - disco floors, statues of people fighting, and saucy lawn ornaments. You can also venture upstairs to enjoy the darkness and silence of the mansion without any pressure to Create Content - and during these reprieves, you might stumble into a member of the cast.

Again, you’re not allowed to talk to the talent, but does that apply after hours? The talent don’t think so. They may have feedback and suggestions, perhaps with a view to building their own brands. Bare-chested lothario Emile might request that you capture him snogging somebody with only his face in view. Wholesome prude Charlie might ask you to avoid filming below waist level. Self-professed man of culture Gunther might demand that you procure some special cooking equipment, so that he can propose to another housemate after serving them an exquisite meal. Taking on these favours doesn’t earn you anything directly, but it might lead to some spicy interactions and perhaps, show you a side of each character that isn’t apparent when they know they’re being filmed. “They’re not actors,” says He. “They’re not completely different [at night], necessarily, but there’s another side to them, other motivations for them being here.” Curious and curiouser.

There are 12 Crush House characters in total, and you can cram any combination of four into the house each weekly season, though there isn’t fully scripted dialogue for every last possible character interaction - after all, there are hundreds of possible permutations. Instead, the game relies on a “semi-procedural narrative system”, as He explains, which “looks at each of the cast members in the House, their personality traits, what they’re attracted or not attracted to, and sort of creates these scenes that happen between them.”

Image credit:Devolver

Perhaps needless to say, there’s a mystery at the heart of the Crush House. It boils down to a couple of questions. Firstly: where do the cast go, exactly, when they triumphantly exit the mansion via the “Success Slide” at the end of the week - assuming you manage to keep the show funded that long? And secondly: what’s in the basement below your office? If you play your cards right, or wrong, you might receive an invitation over your walkie-talkie to step into the elevator and find out.

He says that The Crush House takes cues from all across the history of reality TV as a concept, blending understandings of the genre at its most innocent and most cynical. “We were inspired by lots of different shows, including older ones from [the Big Brother era] and also newer ones in terms of format and stuff,” she explains. “I think something that is really interesting in contemporary reality TV is that when reality TV first came out, the appeal was like, ‘oh, we get to see regular people doing stuff in this way. And it’s interesting to have a glimpse into other people’s lives or whatever’.

“And now, everyone’s like ’this is all fake, right?’” she continues. “We all know that it’s scripted, that the producers are manipulating things, but I’m going to watch it anyway, and watching it is more about not taking it at face value, trying to figure out the meta story, I guess. What is this person’s real motivation for being here?”

The Crush House also picks and choose eras of reality TV in terms of how it portrays things like abuse, bigotry and harassment. “That was an interesting question that we had to think about from the very beginning,” He says. “And also just in how we designed the characters, how we read the dialogue, because we have 90s references and stuff in the dialogue, but we didn’t want it to feel really 90s, because there’s so much misogyny and so much homophobia at the time.

“I think we use humour to try to walk that line, because with audience groups like the butt guys, right, it’s a little on the edge,” she goes on. “But I think that with the overall narrative, and treating the cast members like three dimensional characters, we’re not just trying to be edgy for the sake of being edgy, or trying to reflect all those toxic things just to get a rise out of people, but just take it as part of the culture and the experience and make it sort of fun.”

Image credit:Devolver

The character I have the greatest parasocial attachment for in The Crush House at the time of writing is Jae, the unsleeping, free-roaming voyeur who must wear the hats of an entire TV production crew. The exertion of trying to keep tabs on all housemates at once, the brutalising requirement that you pay no regard to their personal space, the neck and back problems that will surely result from having to angle the camera bizarrely so as to cram in as many hashtag-worthy moments as possible… It seems like a thankless, degrading line of work. In terms of mechanics and systems, there’s clearly fun to be had racing to appease all those different eyeballs while peeling back an underlying conspiracy. But The Crush House is also profoundly ugly in ways not lightyears away from Santa Ragione’s otherwise dissimilar Horses . It’s a digital grotesque in which you strenously tee up and record scenes of cadaverous melodrama for a shifting audience of sickos.

It wasn’t always quite this frenzied, inasmuch as there was once a clear division between shooting footage and editing it into a show - it’s almost as though Nerial laid off members of the in-game TV crew during development. “The first approach was a lot more like you’re filming something, and then later you edit an episode, and set up a nice shot, etcetera,” says He. “But we found it to be both more fun from a gameplay perspective to be driven to do a bunch of different things, and have little challenges, basically. And also, I think thematically it’s nice, because again you are a worker doing a job, and you’re driven by your boss’s profit essentially, and trying to do things that are kind of absurd, to be honest, because the audience is demanding this.”

“Obviously the tone of the game is quite silly and funny in some ways, the absurdity of the requests is part of the fun of that,” she concludes. “But I think you had a really nice way of putting it - the ugliness of things, the hecticness is part of the vibe that we wanted to have as well.”

The Crush House

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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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