The Maw - 2nd April-6th April

Our weekly news liveblog, with this week’s gamiest videogame releases

Image credit:Wikimedia Commons/José Guadalupe Posada

New week, new PC games! It’s another mercifully brief four day week in the UK due to reasons of religion, so let’s roll with an appropriately snappy intro that avoids any extended digressionary preambles about, oh, I don’t know, magpies fighting outside my flat this morning. Did you know that European magpies are great mimics? Second only to the Northern Mockingbird, apparently, though many ornithologists contend that the Brown Thrasher is sorely overlooked. You certainly hear their vocal range when they squabble - I reckon somebody should train up a ChatGPT AI on their calls and no, stop it, I’m doing an anecdote!

Those new PC game releases, without any further ado about birds: Minish Cap-esque shmup Minishoot Adventures (2nd April); Cuban fantasy metroidvania Saviorless (2nd April); culinary defence game Kitchen Crisis (3rd April); Dorfromantikal world builder Planetiles (3rd April); rhythmic robo-dystopian roguelike Beat Slayer (4th April); 90s biker’s delight BMX Streets (5th April).

Our live coverage of this event has finished.

• 07:32 am 04/05/2024 FRIDAY THEN
• 08:01 am 04/04/2024 NOW FOR THURSDAY
• 07:58 am 04/03/2024 HELLO WEDNESDAY
• 08:52 am 04/02/2024 IT’S… TUESDAY ALREADY?

IT’S… TUESDAY ALREADY?

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, a time of much wailing and gnashing of teeth for online news writers. Some of the “announcements” and “surprise releases” appear to have been genuine, however. Here’s one Alice0 spotted - a very short game about cars .

📢 BEEP BEEP!! Our new game CARS is out! https://t.co/k2LS2lnJf7 🚗💨 pic.twitter.com/afMJ0jMPAB — Playables (@playabls) April 1, 2024

Also from Alice0: new horror game Content Warning is free on Steam today only. It’s a co-op experience “where you film spooky stuff with your friends to try and go viral”.

Here’s a new Helldivers 2 patch . This one adds blizzards and sandstorms while rebalancing various weapons, missions and enemies.

Grinding Gear launched new Path Of Exile expansion Path Of Exile: Necropolis over the weekend and have already posted a list of things they plan to flesh out or fix.

Via Eurogamer , Halo and Call of Duty support studio Certain Affinity are letting 25 people go due to “multiple factors” including an “industry-wide slowdown”, in the words of CEO Max Hoberman. Best of luck to everybody affected.

Fans got some juicy Hollow Knight: Silksong info over the long weekend. The long-awaited metroidvania was given an official listing in the form of an Xbox Store Page. Cheers Ian! (of the Ian Games Network )

A Steam page went up over the long weekend, alongside an announcement trailer for System Shock Remake studio Nightdive’s remaster of brilliantly bizzare 90’s shooter PO’ed. Chicken butt and frying pan enjoyers, rejoice!

The Guardian has a gaming-adjacent piece about research demonstrating that some people effectively perceive more frames per second.

Blizzard say they’re open to more Warcraft movies if they can find the right filmmaker to partner with.

Former Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw has revealed his much-teased fantasy game. Eternal Strands is a third-person action adventure coming in 2025 in which you can clamber about on giant boss enemies, Shadow Of The Colossus-style, and also wield Tears Of The Kingdom-style physics powers .

Game Pass is getting six more games for PC in April , including the delightful Lil Gator Game.

For April Fools’, Arma developers Bohemia announced Tiny Wars, a mode in which you control toy soldiers battling between Duplo blocks and household bric-a-brac. April 1st or not, you can now actually play it for real .

I like the look of Falling Frontier, a space RTS with blocky spaceships and a big zoom:

Vampire survival sim V Rising leaves Early Access on May 8th. Ahead of hitting 1.0, its (v) rising its price to $35 from $20 on April 5th. That gives you three more days to pick it up at the cheaper price , if you’re interested.

Gearbox confirmed to Eurogamer that there are layoffs at the company following its sale by Embracer to Take-Two. It’s unknown how many staff are affected.

Is it just because I’m British that all of Gearbox’s recent public statements seem to be dripping with passive-aggressive niceness? “We are grateful that our talent and capability are of interest to you and your audience”?

Edwin wrote about recently-released horror game Content Warning and its being free to keep for a short while earlier today. It now has over 200,000 concurrent players on Steam.

HELLO WEDNESDAY

Former GTA dev Obbe Vermeij has been tweeting about the finer points of GTA. Here’s some insight on the mechanics of plane collisions and near collisions in San Andreas.

In GTA San Andreas, small planes are periodically created near the player to perform a fly-by. Sometimes they crash. Before creating the plane, my code looks for obstacles in its path. It scans a number of lines in the forward direction of the plane. These scans are slow so I… pic.twitter.com/8uUQcmU958 — Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) April 2, 2024

Fachewachewa says: Hello your Mawness. Frogmonster, a “Metroidvania FPS adventure”, released yesterday. From what I’ve seen it’s a wild one.

Unless my eyes deceive me this is, in fact, a first-person tonguer .

The mad scientists of NASA are going to stream the next solar eclipse on 8th April between 7pm-9pm BST for the benefit of UK people who might otherwise miss it. They’re also partnering with Twitch, Microsoft, Epic and the National Esports Association to commission “eclipse-themed versions” of Fortnite and Minecraft created by students, which will be streamed alongside the eclipse footage. What direful corpo-lunar cash-in wizardry is all this? I’m off to burn some protective incense.

PSA: You’ve got a couple more days to grab vampire survival game V Rising for $20 before its price nearly doubles , ahead of its incoming 1.0 exit from early access.

Borderlands makers Gearbox didn’t quite escape the ongoing Embracer layoffs despite their recent sale to Take-Two , as the studio confirm a number of job cuts.

Knights of the Old Republic remake devs Saber have insisted the game is “alive and well” after their recent split from Embracer.

Atari are now publishers for the whole RollerCoaster Tycoon series , after buying missing 2004 sequel for $7m.

Finally, a game which lets me pass on love letters using a vacuum cleaner.

⚡️it’s time to put an end to the A-POCKY-LIPS!!!⚡️ officially revealing our newest game: GREAT GOD GROVE suck up dialogue boxes n’ use them like items to befriend gods & humans alike, and save the whole dang world!! pic.twitter.com/oSwLJWfvtx — LIMBOLANE (@LimboLaneGames) April 3, 2024

NOW FOR THURSDAY

The Merlin Matrix has overloaded! Hose it down for a few minutes while I fetch another bucket of pixies. FEED THE MAW.

Here’s a game update for this week’s surprise hit Content Warning, which adds a party popper item, a garden projector and a reporter mic, amongst other things.

‼️Breaking news ‼️ Content Warning bug patch and new items! pic.twitter.com/vvjrMgXymX — Landfall (@LandfallGames) April 3, 2024

As passed on by PCGamer , Arrowhead have nerfed Helldivers 2’s Slugger shotgun because people were treating it like a sniper rifle.

There’s a new Palworld update , too, which adds the game’s first Raid Boss, Bellanoir, alongside a host of fixes and smaller changes.

The Last Epoch devs have penned a rather severe blog about two, now-fixed exploits that allowed people to duplicate items and generate gold. Excerpt: “We don’t think it’s a very controversial statement to say that abusing an exploit, ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban.”

PolygonClassicist says: Is the Key Points section new? It’s a welcome addition for easier reference!

Sort of! We could use it before but it auto-promoted the liveblog to the top of the site, which seemed a bit excessive. There’s now a magic tickbox that stops this happening. And yes, it hopefully makes the feed more digestible, pun intended.

According to Polygon , Ninja Theory’s founder and Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades has left the studio, for reasons yet to be shared.

Momentous news in the indie scene - Rami Ismail has sold his share of Vlambeer to co-founder Jan Willem Nijman.

🚨 VIDEOGAME COMPANY ACQUISITION ALERT 🚨 Big news: I now own 100% of @Vlambeer , the studio I co-founded with @tha_rami back in 2010. Here’s what this means: pic.twitter.com/7pFjwwYfCG — Jan Willem Nijman (@jwaaaap) April 4, 2024

Saber’s Matthew Karch has been talking to GamesIndustry.biz about life at Embracer Group, of which Saber are no longer a subsidiary. He mounts an extended defence of Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors, whom Karch says has been “very maligned” because look, Embracer haven’t laid off absolutely everybody and besides, other big publishers have done worse. The article includes Karch’s account of the role of interest rates and skittish/calculating investors in precipitating last year’s mass cost-cutting. It also touches on the infamous failed Savvy Games deal.

Stop Killing Games is a campaign to pressure regulators to look at developers who turn off the products they sell , prompted in part by Ubisoft’s closure of The Crew on March 31st.

Roblox Studio’s head says, sure, you could call their platform child explotation , but what of the 15-year-old Indonesian slum dweller who is set free by generating value for Roblox shareholders? Makes you think.

As Edwin noted earlier, Nuclear Throne makers Vlambeer return, now as a dynamic solo rather than a duo. Here’s more on the whys and hows .

Goblin Stone is about building a colony for, well, goblins, then biffing other fantasy races (and humans) with turn-based RPG combat and cards .

There’s a proper 3D camera mod for SimCity 4 , which is truly baffling to me because I thought its buildings were 2D sprites generated from 3D models not included in the actual game. Is this magic? It seems like magic. I want to try it out.

Speaking of games that exist, No Plan B came out this week . It’s a topdown tactics game about plotting synchronous breaches, takedowns, and grenade tosses. It looks like it might be slicker (and less ick?) than Doorkickers.

Right, I’m out. To keep you company during these wee hours, here’s By Your Side from the wonderful Omori soundtrack:

FRIDAY THEN

Nightdive have a massive patch in the works for their System Shock remake - topline additions include a female hacker protagonist and a reworked final fight. It’s out 11th April.

Blizzard have been talking to PCGamer about not doing advance community testing (aka, Public Test Realms) for Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery, which launches today. According to associate production tester Clayton Stone, having more bugs is an OK price to pay for not spoiling much of the season in advance. “Keeping that level of mystery and of discovery for Season of Discovery, with each phase that we roll out, has really created a moment every time for the whole player base to come together and experience something fresh together at the same time.”

Castaway is a pint-sized The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I saw this go past earlier in the week and forgot about it - thanks Gamesradar for the reminder.

There are distant rumblings of the Splinter Celery variety over on Ubisoft Toronto’s Facebook page. Seems likely we’ll hear more at the Ubisoft Forward event on June 11th.

Maaaybe some news on Splinter Cell Remake. Ubisoft Toronto changed their Facebook header and profile picture just yesterday. https://t.co/6KUXYmGjjs pic.twitter.com/bSwYCjbtkF — MauroNL (@MauroNL3) April 3, 2024

Eremite are bringing species hubs to Against The Storm in update 1.3, amongst many other bits and pieces . It’s due some time in May.

Player Non Player is out now, and has the smack of something special. Explore a sad island full of brutalist structures, musical sculptures and lost souls, stroking and embracing characters to help them Move On. You can also chuck them around like dolls.

As Edwin mentioned earlier, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War developers Relic have confirmed a round of layoffs one week after reclaiming their independence from Sega. Here’s the full story.

IGN have an inside report on claims of toxicity, hate speech and crunch at Life Is Strange: True Colors developers Deck Nine.

More details on the allegations of toxic working culture at Life is Strange devs Deck Nine , as Edwin recently shared.

Helldivers 2 is adding an explosive crossbow, grenade pistol and other ways to blow up your friends by “accident” next week , in next premium warbond Democratic Detonation.

There’s now a cure for Dragon’s Dogma 2’s dreaded pawn pox Dragonsplague: mods!

Reports say that Gears 6 will be announced during an Xbox showcase on June 9th , alongside release dates for Avowed and Indiana Jones And The Great Circle.

Cosy free-to-play life sim Palia released on Steam just a couple of weeks ago, but its developers have now laid off a third of their staff .

Frostpunk 2’s closed beta kicks off on April 15th and will run for a week, but it’s only available if you’re willing to pre-order the digital deluxe edition, and it ain’t cheap.

No Plan B is a close combat tactics ’em up in the Door Kickers style, in which you command troops to breach and clear on a timeline. It’s out now . I mentioned this in The Maw previously but hey, now it has its own post.

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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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