The Rise Of The Golden Idol review: fiendish but fair detective puzzling whose mystery you’ll want to unravel

Fuzzwords

Image credit:Color Gray Games/Rock Paper Shotgun

• Developer: Color Gray Games
• Publisher: Playstack
• Release: November 12th 2024
• On: Windows, macOS
• From: Steam
• Price: £20/€20/$20
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2070, Windows 10

Here’s a Steam quote for you: ‘ The Rise Of The Golden Idol is the best game I’ve ever played where I spent most of my time staring at the screen going “well what chuffing well is it , then?!” Fiendish but fair, this detective puzzler demands a heady mix of observation, deduction, and logic, but rewards you with a progressively engaging story, and steadily more infuriatingly brilliant puzzles. Despite teaching you everything you need to know in the tutorial, it still manages to introduce new wrinkles and twists on the formula with each fresh chapter. My verdict? Imagine me lying my floor, massaging my temple with one hand and giving a fat thumbs up with the other.

The first scene takes place in a dingy asylum, where we’re shown a nurse desperately crawling toward a truncheon while a patient chokes them with a strap. Later scenes will task us with answering the ‘why’ and more besides, but for now, our job is to divulge the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’. Certain objects and other points of interest are highlighted, and examining them pours a selection of related words into our word box. Many of these words are useless. Some of them are not. The nurse’s name tag, for example, has his name on it. “Ah” we think. “That’ll be useful for the ‘names’ objective”. We drag his name underneath his portrait, and feel like Dale Cooper doing it.

Image credit:Color Gray Games/Rock Paper Shotgun.

But what if we’re wrong, eh? We actually won’t know that until we’ve filled out all the names. The game will let us know if we’ve got “two or less” incorrect, but otherwise, it’s a big fat “wrong” symbol, and back to the word box it is. But let’s say we know how name tags work, and we sort them no problem? Then it’s on to ‘events’: “The ‘profession’, ‘name nameson’, killed ‘moniker handle’ with a ‘object’ from a ‘different object’ in the ‘named location”. Drag the right words into the right places and, name’s your relative, you’ve cracked the case. These sort of context hints (‘name’, ‘location’) aren’t on the actual sheet, mind, but the game does give you some help, both through syntax and colour coding certain word categories. Names are always red, for example.

The most important thing the game had to nail, as far as I see it, is not letting what’s effectively multiple-choice detective work become too easy to brute force. One way it achieves this is by simply having too many viable options. Once you get past the tutorial, you’re dealing with half a dozen names minimum, and plenty of points of interest will throw in extra words that are either not needed to solve the case at all, or end up being so contextually specific that you all but need to work out what happened to use them correctly. Alongside these red herring words are full on red-herring stories within the stories you need to solve, bastard subplots specifically engineered to throw you off the scent.

The reason these flubplots work so well at distracting you is that, like everything in Golden Idol, they’re all grounded within their own individual snippets of a larger story. Each scene spells out not only the crime, conspiracy, or other incident, but the moments and sometimes days leading up to it. Early on, I found myself getting stumped because I’d developed tunnel vision for just the points of interest. But what the game really wants you to do is take in the scene as a whole, including parts that aren’t necessarily highlighted. A scrap of cloth. An open window. What individuals are wearing. You might not be able to inspect these things to add extra words to your collection, but they’re still crucial in eventually putting all the pieces together.

Each scene tells its own story, of course, but I think it was around chapter three where I started wanting to solve individual scenes not just for their own satisfaction, but because I was becoming invested in the larger mystery. The story skips back and forth through time, at some point showing recurring characters at different point in their lives. It’s supremely satisfying to start drawing connections based not only on what’s in front of you, but through context you’ve previously picked up on from the larger unfolding mystery.

Image credit:Color Gray Games/Rock Paper Shotgun

And this is what makes The Rise Of The Golden Idol truly special, I think - the way it draws out so much character and flavour from such a straightforward means of interactivity. You can go about sleuthing safe in the knowledge that you have all the tools to solve a scene, but still don’t feel constrained or railroaded. It’s a wonderful example of a stripped back design pitch in one area - “fill in the blanks” - allowing for an incredible amount of variety and creativity in others.

I do have a few complaints, but they’re basically just ease-of-use features I’d have liked to see. You’ll want to cross-reference a lot of information, and so have multiple windows open at the same time. But I couldn’t find an option to resize them, resulting in a lot of screen clutter. At the end of each chapter, you’ll fill in another timeline of events, but still have to revisit scenes you’ve already played to remind yourself of crucial information - more detailed summaries on these that you can access from the scene select menu, where you’ll perform this, would have been ideal.

That said, the most important accessibility feature - at least mainlining it as a reviewer who hadn’t played the previous game - was tuned just how it needed to be. I used hints a lot , and not once did they strip away the sense of fun or mystery, with even the biggest ones still leaving me a lot to chew on. All said, I really don’t have anything too profound or insightful to say about this one. Rise Of The Golden Idol is a moreish, satisfying, occasionally brain-malfunctioning mystery that’s polite enough to match every time it makes you feel like a complete idiot, with another instance of making you feel like a genius.

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The Rise Of The Golden Idol

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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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