The First Descendant is stacked with glitzy graphics tech, but performance could still use a polish

Getting’ testy with the final preview build

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nexon

I don’t dislike The First Descendant . It has a good grasp of the numbers-go-up-yay appeal behind looter shooters. Sometimes you get to grapple onto a vast robot crab. The first evil alien overlord you fight is named Greg. Not bad, not bad. It’s also, wholeheartedly and unapologetically, a big graphical show-off, complete with multiple ray tracing modes and shinier power armour than if you fed the entire cast of Warframe through an industrial car wash.

Happily, this doesn’t necessarily translate into chugging performance on low-end PCs, or even handhelds like the Steam Deck . But judging from its final preview version, which has just closed prior to the July 2nd release date , feasting on The First Descendant’s finest visuals will definitely tax your rig – and it has its share of technical quirks on the side.

Our new stablemates IGN put together a settings guide in video form, including some of my testing findings.Watch on YouTube

If you’re planning to take up its shimmering arms next week, be prepared to make some cuts to its quality settings, and to almost definitely lean on upscaling help from DLSS or FSR . Maybe even a spot of frame generation, too.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nexon

The First Descendant system requirements and PC performance

Conventional free-to-play wisdom dictates that PC requirements should never stray too high, lest they erect a barrier where the lack of an upfront cost leaves none. The First Descendant is no different, to its credit, only asking for entry-level or older mid-range CPUs and graphics cards .

The First Descendant minimum PC specs

• OS: Windows 10 (x64, version 20H2)
• CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 / AMD FX-8350
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband internet connection
• Storage: 50GB available space

The First Descendant recommended PC specs

• OS: Windows 10 (x64, version 20H2)
• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband internet connection
• Storage: 50GB available space

I’d wager that the minimum requirements are targeting 30fps at 1080p; when I tried my GTX 1050 Ti, with the RPS test rig’s above-spec Core i5-11600K, it averaged 36fps on the Low preset. And my chosen benchmarking spot was in the most aggressively framerate-sapping region/biome in the whole game, so if anything this humble GPU can get further above that 30fps floor elsewhere. A more recent budget card, the Intel Arc A750 , could also manage a smooth 56fps at 1080p on Medium – though the step up to High took a heavy toll, with performance falling to 37fps.

As part of The First Descendant’s extensive arsenal of graphics tools, all GPUs can apply either AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, or Unreal Engine 5’s built-in TSR upscaling – while Nvidia DLSS and DLSS 3 frame generation are available for compatible GeForce RTX models. It shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point to hear that DLSS is the best-looking upscaler here, with TSR proving the sharpest option for non-RTX PCs. It’s a complete FSR 3 implementation, mind, so a lesser version of frame gen is up for grabs too. On the GTX 1050 Ti, that 36fps result became 53fps, once both Quality-level upscaling and frame gen were in use. The Arc A750, on Medium quality, also lept to 98fps with the same FSR settings.

But what of DLSS 3? This might not have the hardware agnosticism of FSR 3, but it does generally work better: sharper picture, less added input lag, better frame timings for superior smoothness. Even the basic, laptop-grade RTX 4050 can benefit from it, with the MSI GF63 Thin lappy running the Low preset at 65fps on native res and 108fps on a combination of Quality upscaling and frame gen.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nexon

There’s a lot of toys here to boost yer framerates, essentially. Which is good, except The First Descendant also has some problems that will take more than some upscaling to buff out.

First: it’s weirdly scared of its own performance. On the MSI GF63 Thin, it actually locked the Low preset in place, making it impossible for me to change anything except the addition of DLSS. That’s more than a little overly cautious, given how Low can pull over 60fps in one of the game’s most demanding locales. This settings lockdown wasn’t repeated on any desktop hardware I tested, thankfully, but on the Steam Deck, the game seemed very keen to kick me back to the main menu whenever it detected unstable performance. I can see how constantly-crashing players might upset the integrity of online play, but man, I was being booted for slight wobbles below 30fps, not for bricking the entire system. Relax, game.

Stuttering is common as well, despite The First Descendant – at least in this preview build – stopping to rebuild its shader cache every time you warp to a new region. They’re only tiny microstutters, but they do persist, and they’re a particularly common occurrence with ray tracing enabled. RT effects can also introduce a brief flickering on surface when they first appear onscreen – a shame, as they provide a pretty clear visual upgrade over the standard, less vibrant lighting and shadows.

Speaking of which, the Ultra preset is a particularly tough cookie, I suspect because it uses UE5’s Lumen tech, which employs similar light-recreating techniques to ray tracing (and therefore comes with a similar performance tax). Use it as-is, and you’ll need a brawny GPU at minimum: my RTX 4060 only averaged 30fps with Ultra at the relatively lightweight resolution of 1080p. Again, upscaling helps, as the RTX 4070 Ti got to 65fps at 1440p/Ultra with DLSS on Quality (climbing to 108fps with frame generation).

That’s still a £700-plus graphics card, though, and even hench-card-in-chief the RTX 4090 was only just enough for smooth 4K, producing 64fps on Ultra with Quality DLSS. The addition of Ultra-quality ray tracing dropped that to 57fps, through frame generation was on hand to punt it back up to 91fps. Back with the more attainable RTX 4060, it took a drop to High to achieve a smooth 56fps at native 1080p; adding Quality DLSS to the mix raised that to 71fps, then to 109fps with frame gen.

Just to regather some perspective: The First Descendant is not some technical catastrophe that only the latest and greatest hardware will run. It evidently can tick along fine, on lowered settings, with affordable PC kit. But it does need the latest and greatest to look and perform at its best, and even if developers Nexon have already embarked on an aggressive pre-launch optimisation programme, I can’t see that changing much in the final game.

My advice, assuming you’re not one of the 0.99% of Steam users with a 4090, is to simply tone down the settings a bit; you might be surprised by just how much smoother The First Descendant can run with just a touch of tuning.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Nexon

The First Descendant best settings guide

However, while the Ultra preset is ill-advised, most systems will still be able to run a bunch of the more granular settings on Ultra. That’s because, of the dozen quality settings I tested with the RTX 4060 individually, only three of them actually improved average performance after I dropped them down to Medium.

(Even faster speeds are possible by toggling them to Low, rather than Medium, but we don’t want to knacker the quality too much if we can avoid it. Besides, the gap in detail between Ultra and Medium is actually narrower than Medium and Low, to my eyes.)

Rather than run through every single setting that did nothing to enhance the RTX 4060’s 30fps-on-Ultra result, which would bore us both, allow me to cut to the specific settings you should consider tweaking…

Additional options: This is where you’ll find all the upscaling and frame gen options. DLSS on Quality mode is the best of the upscalers, singlehandedly bumping the RTX 4060 up to 45fps, while Epic Games TSR is the finest-looking alternative for non-RTX cards, and no slouch itself with 44fps on Quality. Intel XeSS was the fastest, scoring 49fps, but also by far the ugliest, so I wouldn’t bother with it. As for AMD FSR, it looks okay on Quality mode, which also produced 44fps, but given TSR looks better, you should only enable it when you also want to turn on FSR 3 frame generation. Which, uh, I’m not so sure about.

Frame generation: The DLSS version of this is fine to use, if you don’t mind a tiny dash of added input latency; with both frame gen and Quality upscaling, the RTX 4060’s framerate more than doubled to 74fps. FSR frame gen proved slightly faster, with 78fps (also in tandem with Quality-level upscaling), but wasn’t as smooth in my hands. Something about it just felt off – the extra lag was more tangible, and that 78fps just didn’t look as velvety as 78fps normally does. It might be worth trying, to see how you get on with it yourself, but DLSS 3 is clearly better.

Shadows: Lowering this from Ultra to Medium saw the RTX 4060 instantly jump from 30fps to 46fps, an outstanding improvement from a single setting. My benchmark run included a trip through an especially open stretch of swampland that usually tanked the framerate, but this change alone kept performance a lot more solid and stable.

Reflections: Dropping this to Medium only got me an extra 1fps, but given most of the other settings did nothing at all, sometimes you got to take the small wins. Reflections aren’t a big part of The First Descendant’s aesthetic, anyway.

Object: With an improved average of 37fps on Medium, object quality is the second most impactful non-upscaling setting in the book, and I can’t say I noticed much of a visual downgrade in exchange. Cut it.

Motion blur: This doesn’t affect performance either way, but the blurring effect is offputtingly strong, and doesn’t seem to play well with DLSS, with noticeable artefacts on fast-moving objects when both are in effect. I’d disable it.

The First Descendant’s best settings thus look a little somethin’ like this:

• Ray tracing: Off
• Additional options: DLSS on Quality (frame generation optional) / TSR on Quality
• Visibility: Ultra
• Anti-aliasing: Ultra
• Post processing: Ultra
• Shadows: Medium
• Global illumination: Ultra
• Reflections: Medium
• Textures: Ultra
• Effect: Ultra
• Vegetation: Ultra
• Shader quality: Ultra
• Object: Medium
• Physics: Ultra
• Motion blur: Off

To reassure, all those Ultra settings, performed identically to their Medium counterparts, so on most PCs can be safely left up. Ray tracing is very much a luxury, however – while it doesn’t perform significantly worse than Ultra-quality shadows, probably because the latter are using Lumen, enabling it will undo the benefits of dropping shadow detail in the first place.

And you probably should, given these settings got my RTX 4060 averaging 82fps, or nearly triple the original 30fps result. Even without any upscaling, they still produced a swift 68fps, an improvement that’s more than the sum of its parts: the individual cuts to shadows, reflections, and object quality drops added 16fps, 1fps, and 7fps respectively, well short of this 38fps boost. Odd? Perhaps. But when it comes to smoother crab-grappling, you don’t see me complaining.

The First Descendant

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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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