The Outer Worlds 2 review

Order of the Alrightscendant

Image credit:Obsidian / Rock Paper Shotgun

Good if you’re in the mood for a fun and ultimately rather forgettable Avowed-style RPG romp, but not quite on New Vegas’ lofty level.

• Developer: Obsidian
• Publisher: Microsoft
• Release: October 29th 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam , Microsoft Store
• Price: £60/€70/$70
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, Windows 11

I am a baby, floating through space. A decade or so passes while I’m frozen in a pod, dead to the world. Clearly, though, all is not as it seems. Upon finally being rescued and thawed out, I’m given grave news.

I’ve been diagnosed with consumerism.

You WHAT? I’ve only been alive in The Outer Worlds 2 for ten non-frozen minutes and in that time have bought exactly two items from a single vending machine. Sorry, it’s consumerism, the popup box of flawed doomsaying reiterates. Promotions and sales have riddled your brain. I laugh in disbelief for about an hour. Then, I hastily cobble together a headcanon about having spent all of my time adrift in the cosmos on the phone trying to order a talkie toaster advertised somewhere inside my coasting coffin.

Having accepted the flaw - one of several permanent negative effects you’re offered throughout the game - I was prepared for a playthrough in which the renegade gunslinger I’d set out to play was forced to reckon with her acquisition-related affliction, a battle to wrench out the corporate hooks which had dug into her otherwise cynical and money-savvy personality. The reality was that I could buy items slightly more cheaply, sell for slightly less, and was given the sort of generically dumb new dialogue options you usually get if you opt for a straight-up low intelligence Fallout: New Vegas playthrough. Rarely have any of these quips really been relevant to an addiction to buying stuff. Instead, being a confessed consumer has seemed to render me just plain stupid in The Outer Worlds 2’s eyes.

That perplexing quirk is among a few disappointments Obsidian’s latest RPG has served up in what’s otherwise been a fun time gallivanting around Arcadia. The Outer Worlds 2, much like its predecessor, pitches itself as a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s an enjoyable Saturday morning cartoon, with vibrant visuals helping its galaxy feel full of life, a regular stream of gags and ironic humour flowing at the same rate as any serious chatter, and fights which generally pack a punchy flow aided by an arsenal of armaments that are as satisfying to use as the game boasts they are at one point.

Image credit:Obsidian / Rock Paper Shotgun

In the first of a series of broad similarities to Avowed , the fantasy RPG Obsidian put out earlier this year, The Outer Worlds 2 casts you as an Earth Directorate agent. As with the Aedyran Envoy, you’re a morally grey representative of a faraway faction, sent to sort out some shit on the other side of the galaxy, and given just about enough rope that you can make any number of roleplaying choices without having to consider why your bosses aren’t on the phone demanding an explanation. The world’s divided up into decently chunky hub areas on different planets that you progress between, each boasting a couple of factions clawing for control. The colourful artistic choices are where the thing really sings. It never falls into the black hole of visual blandness that a more NASA-pilled space adventure (cough, Starfield ) might be sucked up by.

Avowed isn’t really the comparison Obsidian have embraced when hyping up The Outer Worlds 2, though. From what I’ve seen while trying to avoid ads featuring a man I’m sure is very funny appropriating my first name and proceeding to read some lines which aren’t that funny, the major talking point is Fallout: New Vegas. I’m close to as big a New Vegas advocate as you’ll get, and I liked the first Outer Worlds , but I’m not sold that its sequel fills those very big and beloved cowboy boots.

That said, I think a lot of this is down to New Vegas and the Outer Worlds 2 simply being games with contrasting outlooks and modus operandi. The latter’s three main factions offer more in the way of contrasting worldviews than the first Outer Worlds and are openly at war with each other, but their conflict ultimately serves as the biggest subplot to the game’s insistence that you save the world from a sciencey existential threat. The corpo-types of Auntie Cleo and Spacer’s Choice have merged together via hostile takeover into Auntie’s Choice, who wander around chattering about profits and committing cartoonishly Scrooge McDucky crimes.

Image credit:Obsidian / Rock Paper Shotgun

The Protectorate are the opposite side of the coin, an authoritarian collectivist monarchy who control their citizens’ lives with an iron fist and buckets of Orwellian propagandising. Doing sums somewhere in the middle are The Order, determinist nerds who believe the universe runs to an equation, a doctrine which occasionally leads to some maths extremism from those who get a bit too excited about enforcing the numbers. Lurking on the fringes are a couple of minor groups who help flesh things out a bit, in the form of shady smuggler-types Sub Rosa and a science anomaly obsessed band of cultists dubbed the Glorious Dawn. Only Auntie’s Choice, The Order, and Sub Rosa get the full reputation meter treatment. The Protectorate’s exclusion from that puzzled me, until it became apparent that shooting up their facilities was going to be an unavoidable part of the main quest, with the game content to lean on them as generic baddies whenever it needs some to stand in the way of you pushing an important button.

As a result, they feel rather one-dimensional despite attempts to flesh them out and chip some cracks into the dogmatic face they project. That leaves the corporates and the nerds as your only options to side with in the main quest, with a third way of sorts being offered in brokering an alliance between them. You can kind of go the independent route by simply ignoring or refusing both, but there’s not a proper questline around doing so. Both have a bit of interesting backstory to them if you care to roam their fiefdoms in search of side quests, especially Auntie, but I’d like to have seen a bit deeper examination of their doctrines to go with the bit of chat about how they got here.

There’s some discussion along the lines of ‘we do this because of the X’ if you pry, but none of the leaders I’ve dealt with in-depth seem likely to whip out their own specific interpretation of a certain philosophy, and convincingly outline how they see themselves as applying it to the game’s world. I don’t think every video game talking head necessarily needs to be able to pull an essay on Hegelian dialectics out of their bum to be compelling, much as I love Caesar , but the majority of those running The Outer Worlds’ factions struggle to feel like talismanic figures putting a memorably specific stamp on Arcadia.

Image credit:Obsidian / Rock Paper Shotgun

As with the first game, there’s commentary to be had in terms of those running the world being out of their depth or uncaringly laissez faire, but the New Vegas formula runs on strong, visible characters whose shadows loom large over the Mojave’s sands. That element becomes even more important when the war they’re fighting is stretched across multiple planets, leading to a tougher task getting across the gritty, knife-edge tension of a boiling pot world which could erupt at any time. I’ve also found the factions who do have reputation meters rather difficult to piss off through quest choices, outside of outright reneging on an agreement with them in the endgame.

Mass murdering their members and stealing can also do the trick, but even that seems to have a relatively high forgiveness threshold. At one point I added a kleptomania flaw to a list of quirks that ended up about 16 long by the time the credits rolled. As of writing, it’s auto-nicked about an entire city worth of junk out in the open while I’ve been running around in towns. Only once has that resulted in bounty-inducing mass aggro, which runs a bit counter to the flaw notification’s stern warning that I’d be kissing goodbye to stress-free safe space wandering.

Generally speaking, I’ve got a lot of time for the Outer Worlds’ flaw system, especially now each one comes with built-in pluses and minuses rather than just awarding a perk point. They’re nice optional twists mid-playthrough that can push you to switch up how you play when their execution matches the sales pitch, as is the case with the likes of the foot-in-mouth syndrome which adds a timer to dialogue choices as a punishment for skipping through chatter. The one which forces you to put most of the bits you earn straight into a savings account, which gradually pays out as you level up, is also great, since it helps limit your ability to just buy everything right away once you get towards the mid to endgame.

Image credit:Obsidian / Rock Paper Shotgun

The cast of companions, while a bit openly formulaic in terms of being a six person gang neatly split into pairs of healers, ranged shooters, and melee brawlers, are likeable and have some fun quests that allow you a bit of influence over their personalities. Stern Protectorate Judge Dredd Tristan and recovering corporate soldier-drone Inez’s missions stand out in terms of that last part, with the rest lagging a bit behind, even if they’ve all got some nice jokes to pepper lulls in the action. While your ship does gradually fill up with keepsakes from your travels, I’ve found myself spending very little time just chilling on-board with my crew. Outside of missions, they don’t seem to have much to say aside from the usual ‘give your quick take on how the story’s playing out’ or ‘say whether you like one of the other companions’.

While you can tinker with gear or unlock lockboxes, there aren’t any activities that can set up camp chats or even instances of companions getting up to interesting stuff you can join in on. Far from a dealbreaker, but something that would have been cool. Then again, they’re probably just avoiding listening to me moan about the locking of extra weapon quick-switch holster and healing primer slots to gear mods. It’s a bit of a ballache, especially given the limited slots most gear has in comparison to the number of tweaks you can install. Sure, it forces you to pick and choose rather than equipping everything and achieving instant godhood, hand in hand with the levelling system, but is standing in the way of me adding a melee swatter to my regular rotation of normal gun/energy gun unless I ditch a more interesting ability really contributing much to the roleplaying?

Honestly, most of the gripes I’ve had with the Outer Worlds 2 are along those lines. Things that don’t necessarily impede your enjoyment of the thing, so long as you’re willing to embrace the elements it does well as an incremental embiggening of its predecessor, but do stop it waltzing over the threshold from plain and inoffensive good to great. When it’s sticking to its strengths and serving you wittily-composed Order radio tunes about Fibonacci number sequences, it’s a fun romp I’d have no issues recommending a mate pick up or give a go on Game Pass, were they inclined to use the service given its current baggage .

Meanwhile, if you float into Arcadia expecting something as deeply crafted and eminently memorable as New Vegas, or even Obsidian’s medieval murder mystery Pentiment, I’d say the experience falls short of those very lofty marks. Or, as The Outer Worlds 2 seems to think my advertising-addled brain would put it: me like Other Words too, but no new New Vargas.

Find out how we conduct our reviews by reading our review policy .

The Outer Worlds 2

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.

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

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.