The Maw: what’s new in PC games this week?

Festive wind-down edition

Image credit:Library of Congress / S. Merinsky / Rock Paper Shotgun

There’s not Much Ado this week, the final RPS working week of 2024, but I have a few last yuletide PC game bonbons for the banqueting table. On Monday 16th December, it’s time to march up and down the streets of Neko Odyssey , photographing cats. Alternatively, get your teeth into Idle Colony , a powerfully sinister fruit-picking simulator. As for Thursday 19th December, let’s recommend a VR game for a change. It’s Alien: Rogue Incursion ! I don’t own a headset capable of rendering those xenomorphs, but it seems promising. And on Friday 20th December, settle down for the weekend with The Midnight Crimes , a hard-boiled point-and-clicker that whiffs of The Wolf Among Us .

It should be a quiet few days as we ready the Treehouse for hibernation. Nic’s already vanished into the forests till new year aboard an Orc-drawn sleigh. I’m away Monday, as per the traditional pre-Xmas rite of using up leftover holiday allowance like I’m scraping carbonised potato out of a roasting tray. We’ll be focusing on scheduling things to go live over the break, but I do have at least one feature I’d like to publish before Horace puts us into cryostasis. Find our last news liveblog of 2024 below - Merry This Week, all!

Our live coverage of this event has finished.

• 09:08 am 12/20/2024 THE HOLLY AND THE FRIDAY
• 09:07 am 12/19/2024 HARK THE HERALD THURSDAYS SING
• 09:07 am 12/18/2024 GOOD KING WEDNESDAY
• 09:02 am 12/17/2024 ONCE IN ROYAL TUESDAY’S CITY
• 09:13 am 12/16/2024 DING DONG MERRILY ON MONDAY

DING DONG MERRILY ON MONDAY

Capcom is “focusing on re-activating dormant IPs” according to a press release intended for investors . Basically this is Capcom hyping the recently announced Okami 2 and Onimusha: Way Of The Sword, but it also gives further hope to anyone praying for a Dino Crisis reboot or remake.

The Balatro developer is annoyed that PEGI (the European organisation that decides age ratings) has rated the card game for players of 18+ years. They’ve done this because it teaches “skills and knowledge that are used in poker”.

“Since PEGI gave us an 18+ rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions/loot boxes/real gambling to lower that rating to 3+ like EA sports FC,” joked the game’s creator .

ONCE IN ROYAL TUESDAY’S CITY

A Number From The Ghost is a collection of interactive music videos, playable in a browser. I’ve just tried “Atomize”, and it’s like a blissed-out walking simulator. Thanks to game designer Natalie Lawhead for circulating it on Mastodon .

Toy Box , released earlier this month, is a “pull apart puzzle visual novel” in which you disassemble toys. “At the end of their shelf life, it’s up to clever inspectors like you to decide which of the Maker’s creations are worth salvaging,” explains the blurb, non-menacingly.

Borderlands 4 will have less “toilet humour”, according to narrative director Sam Winkler. Specifically , it won’t have a skibidi reference and no, there isn’t a gun called Hawk 2A. That still leaves a lot of Dank Memes that could potentially make the cut. Tread cautiously.

Here’s David Murrieta and Chris Redfearn-Murray’s latest round-up the year’s best video game music . I always pick up an earworm or two from their recommendations.

I had missed that there’s a Porsche spaceship in Naughty Dog’s upcoming new game Intergalactic. Where is my third-hand Reliant Robin, Naughty Dog? Where’s my space jalopy?

“Almost great survival horror game” Hollowbody has received a comprehensive update that adds a third-person mode with its own set of moody camera transitions, among other things.

Here’s a free floating island creation tool for Bossa’s Lost Skies - you can sculpt the geography and fill it with traps, treasures and Lore. I wasn’t particularly anticipating Lost Skies, but I do like floating islands.

GOOD KING WEDNESDAY

Here’s the first proper gameplay trailer for Exodus, Archetype’s Mass Effecty space RPG shooter.

Roman city builder Citadelum has received a free DLC campaign in which you sally up to northern Britannia to teach those Caledonian tribes a jolly good lesson. We missed this game when it launched in October - community response seems positive, and it’s got some fetching cutaway buildings. Also, giant god avatars strutting about like they own the place.

Arrowhead have announced the first Helldivers 2 crossover - they’re bringing back Sony and Guerrilla’s Killzone series.

Dispatch from Acquisition Centre Superstore: To celebrate your heroics in liberating the Voteless from their tortured existence, we’re bringing to the table our first official crossover - Helldivers x Killzone. Full briefing: https://t.co/yRhvS6OjvR pic.twitter.com/U5ItCHyvXN — HELLDIVERS™ 2 (@helldivers2) December 18, 2024

HARK THE HERALD THURSDAYS SING

The active and efficient Chris Tapsell has an interview at Eurogamer about The Witcher 4, which focuses on the choice of Ciri as a protagonist and how that fits in to Witcher booklore.

After much speculation about an acquisition, Sony have announced “a strategic alliance” with Kadokawa Corporation, parent company of FromSoftware. They’re now Kadokawa’s largest shareholder. The two companies are looking at various forms of collaboration and “potential joint investments”, such as making live action films and TV based on Kadokawa’s intellectual property.

Begone Beast is like Little Nightmares meets Overcooked. Control one of four flashlight-wielding toddlers searching shadowy maps for bogeyfolk of various kinds. Includes an all-important SCREAMING function.

Tower Of Mask seems a promising first-person dungeon RPG, with some nicely unnerving monster designs and a lot of hidden traps.

For the pen-and-paper gamers, here’s a brand new Tiny Tome of single-page A5 RPGs to regale your banqueting guests with over New Year. I own the first one and it’s a lovely thing. I recommend buying the physical incarnation.

THE HOLLY AND THE FRIDAY

A quick video tour of World Of Warcraft’s forthcoming Undermine update, which adds an underground goblin city.

Hot Wax is a sensuous riff on Tetris from PUNKCAKE Délicieux. The tetronimoes are candles: to remove them from the board, you must drop a flame onto each candle’s wick to burn it away over time.

Hooded Horse are doing a publisher sale on Steam . The steal is probably Old World for 75% off. Here’s a snippet from Steve Hogarty’s early access review from 2020: “It’s a story engine as much as it’s a strategy game, one that revels in the playful details of the past, and represents history’s ancient rulers not as the pompous set of weirdos we’re all familiar with, but as capricious drunks, disastrous idiots and beautiful freaks with monkey butlers.”

Friends, RPS is officially done for the year. We’ve got some stuff going up over the break, including the remaining advent calendars, our annual Selection Boxes, and a brace of features from Sin, but this is it for Mawposts and news articles until 2025.

I can’t think of a festive song for the outro, so instead, here’s some old school punk rock from Patti Smith.

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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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