The Gamergator rhetoric of historical accuracy has come back to bite Kingdom Come on the arse

Deliverance 2’s gay and Black representation sees Warhorse fending off the demons of 2014

Image credit:Deep Silver

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is billed as a faithful recreation of 15th century Bohemia, with an open world setting derived from primary sources and historical consultancy that seeks to “challenge misconceptions” , but I’m enjoying it partly for the inconsistencies. As I amble into a random village, my eye is caught by what feel like carefully observed period flourishes: a particular arrangement of crops in a sloping field, a woman praying at a shrine by the gate. Some of these sights and sounds unlock codex entries, layering up the pedagogic texture.

I also, however, sense the gamier elements, the electric wire within the illuminated tapestry. Identical horse troughs where I can wash off the trail dust and make myself more palatable to the locals. Crafting facilities, such as drying racks and alchemy tables, that are strangely free for any passer-by to use, in a settlement where barging into a house will get you arrested. Considerately placed roadside campsites with usefully unclaimed beds, for early-game or plain unlucky players who can’t afford the inn. All of this forming a dense pottage of icons on a papery map screen that, for all its ornamental specificity, could have been lifted from any open world game.

Image credit:Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun

I don’t mean any of this as scorn. As with many such fictions, I like trying to decipher Warhorse’s efforts to achieve “historical accuracy” through the fusty stage machinery of a first-person RPG we can still approximately summarise as dragonless Skyrim . Sometimes the more generic design props appear to complement the social, cultural and architectural objects and practices itemised in the codex, and often, they don’t: either way, I’m engrossed in guessing at the competing artistic priorities. Rather than a static recreation, this is history in the making, as history generally is - a fleeting and partial assemblage of values and details that projects backward from “the present” as much as it seeks to restore “the past”. It’s an alternately delicate and clunky, consummate and compromised, ceremonial and irresolute act of interpretation. That’s what makes it “fun”.

This isn’t really how Warhorse have been promoting Deliverance 2, which is partly why Warhorse and especially, co-founder Daniel Vávra are currently getting it in the neck from a bunch of returning Kingdom Come players for whom “authenticity” is an excuse to own the libs. Released in 2018, the first Kingdom Come was promoted as a more “mature” piece of historical realism in a universe of fantasy medieval sims that let you hurl fireballs at ogres. That true-to-life, empirically grounded ethic has always been integral to how Kingdom Come positions itself against the work of competitors like Bethesda and CD Projekt. As Vávra told Red Bull in 2016: “No one has tried to create a historically accurate and realistic RPG, yet. That’s our edge.”

The theme of authenticity became more forceful, however, when Warhorse met with suggestions that the game’s portrayal of Bohemia seemed a teeny bit slanted, based on the Kickstarter descriptions - omitting non-white people from the setting despite evidence of their presence, while also adhering to the stereotype of medieval women as passive and subordinate and peripheral. I’m not sure I’ve discovered patient zero for this discussion, but it could be this post from MedievalPOC , a Tumblr account that curates representations of people of colour in pre-Enlightenment Europe to counteract “retroactive whitewashing” of history.

The accuracy of Deliverance’s “historical accuracy” soon became a talking point in specialist press coverage. Vávra responded by asserting that the game’s depictions of ethnicity and gender are true to accounts of the period, while decrying western journalists at large as a bunch of would-be censors and hypocrites, calling not-unfair attention to the fact that a lot of video games media publications have a surplus of white cishet men. In the process, and rather less sympathetically, he threw his weight behind Gamergate - a febrile harassment campaign, originally sparked by somebody’s clownishly toxic grudge against their ex, who sometimes advertise themselves as being about “ethics in games journalism”, but are better understood as a hate group pushing back against progressive representation in video games and the games industry.

Image credit:Warhorse Studios/Prime Matter

As reported by Tessa Kaur over at The Gamer , the bigoted elements of the Kingdom Come playerbase are currently at war with the developers over the discovery that the new game allows players to have a same-sex fling. Others are outraged that it includes a Black character - a travelling Malian noble, Musa, who has arrived in the lively city of Kuttenberg as part of an invading army.

The backlash to these revelations has led publisher Deep Silver to impose a new code of conduct on the game’s official forums, prompting further outcry about censorship. Vávra, meanwhile, has been fending off social media accusations of “forced diversity”, together with anti-Semitic abuse. In a longer thread , he both confirmed the above reports about Deliverance 2 and defended them, commenting that, firstly, having a gay romance is optional, because KCD2 is fundamentally an RPG in which players pick their paths, and secondly, that Musa’s presence in Kuttenberg is both a plausible historical event and a source of “interesting situations” arising from his racial difference.

If you’ve ever had to deal with a Gamergate dogpiling campaign, you are probably high as a kite on schadenfreude right now. You are probably knocking back a huge mug of crocodile tears. I’ve read some amusing reactions from homophobic players who reason that, if player character Henry can be gay in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, he was also potentially gay in Kingdom Come: Deliverance , that game they completed and liked back in 2019 - fellahs, does that make me gay as well? It’s also hard not to experience a rich, rancid glow of enveloping karmic justice when Vávra’s followers respond to his really rather lefty-sounding description of Musa by feeding him his own words from 2015 about there being “no black people in medieval Bohemia. Period.”

It should be noted that the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was the work of several hundred people besides Vávra, some of whom have publicly despaired about his antics, and that while the game is capital-p Problematic, it is not outwardly hateful. I reviewed it back in the day and liked a lot of it, especially the bits where I got to be a monk brewing dreadful potions, which are a welcome reprieve from all the vengeance-questing and wench-bedding elsewhere. I stumbled, however, when it came to articulating the problems with the game’s portrayal of 15th century Bohemia and its ideas about “authenticity”. In a post for Unwinnable , Reid McCarter does a much better job of exploring how Deliverance’s core tale of “a virtuous Czech underdog” battling villainous Hungarians lends itself to a present-day fixation with cultural purity, placing this in the context of Czech politics at the time of release.

The obvious defence against McCarter’s argument is that, despite Vávra’s bluster and despite the top-line marketing, Kingdom Come has always been presented on some level as a “vision of history”, rather than some zealous and naive 1-1 facsimile. Speaking to RPS in 2017 , Vávra described the game as “a story-based historical playground”, allowing the player to experiment between the poles of ‘major’ historical events, like the deaths of kings. Henry himself is an anachronism, a blacksmith’s boy who is fundamentally classless, able to make his way between the spheres of the peasantry and nobility and dabble in any profession, if he puts his mind to it. Far from a believable medieval protagonist, he is a modern-day renaissance man.

The sequel, similarly, is described on Warhorse’s website as “a careful combination of historical fact, indirect detective work and imaginative world-building”. And again, I am genuinely enjoying noticing and attempting to dissect that blur of creative agendas in-game, whatever I eventually conclude about the direction and values of the project as a whole.

Here’s another set of anecdotes: a lot of the conversations you have in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are tacitly about playing a wandering scholar. An NPC shares a viewpoint on religion, dynastic feuding or life in the next village over, and you’re prompted to acquiesce or intervene - to reference scripture or get mad about somebody’s contempt for your liege lord or just pass on some tall story you’ve heard in the tavern. The ability to “fail” these conversational skill checks suggests a monolithic, “correct” account of the period, but these “failures” also reflect the knowledge, biases and varying cultural circumstances of the person you’re talking to, with local “reputation” changes based on your replies. I’ve yet to encounter Musa - and the relevant part of the game is, I think, under embargo till review - but you can see how that kind of writing methodology might lend itself to thoughtful chinwags with a visiting Malian noble. But all this nuance and possibility risks being stamped out and banished by the fixation with authenticity.

Image credit:Deep Silver / Rock Paper Shotgun

Appeals to historical accuracy are, I think, innately reactionary because they assume a singular, static incarnation of the past that needs to be reclaimed and restored, even when the past in question isn’t being held up fervently as a ‘golden age’ when women and ethnic minorities were either invisible or knew their place. The more superficial objection is that they are boring. In centring Kingdom Come as a historical reenactment, whose empirical findings must be defended against those weasel journalists, Vávra has not only lent Gamergate a degree of respectability, but actively denied himself, his studio and, arguably, the game’s players the ability to enjoy history as an interpretative practice - a difficult group project, produced by atrocity and omission but also by community and dialogue, where you enchant yourself chasing the gaps in the fabric and pondering their implications.

For all his gator-baiting and rants about SJWs, which nowadays extends to Trump endorsements , I do think this is how Vávra would like Kingdom Come to be experienced. He is trying to position it as a “playground” again in the Xitter thread above, a place for “interesting stories”, some of which might even feature people of colour. But the gators won’t let him. They think it’s their playground now.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

PS4 , Xbox One , PC , Mac , Nintendo Switch

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Video Game

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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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