The RPS 101rd best game on PC

The games we wish had made the top 100 if it wasn’t horribly rigged

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Daedalic Entertainment

That there are more than 100 entire PC games is a revelation as shocking as it is disturbing, but despite recently spending days translating Horace’s sonorous yawps into the list that eventually became our RPS 100 , a chill silence recently befell the treehouse when we realised that some of our personal favourites had somehow been excluded. Determined to right this most heinous of wrongs, and armed with the conviction that no subjectivity be allowed to exist on the internet without at least one supplementary article of caveats, we’ve all put forth a single game that absolutely should have made the list. Consider the matter closed, then, at least until we all realise we’d actually like to do a 102nd pick each.

Image credit:Sierra

Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness

Jeremy: The Secret of Monkey Island was the only classic point and click adventure game that made it onto the top 100, since there is probably LucasArts bias deep within the halls of RPS. I, however, was a Sierra kid growing up, and there was no Sierra series that moved me more than Quest for Glory. There also hasn’t been a franchise similar to Lori and Corey Cole’s mashup of adventure game mechanics and RPG stats ever since the ‘90s, and the fourth entry, 1993’s Shadows of Darkness, is the best.

You play as the nameless hero, navigating the Eastern European-inspired valley of Mordavia. The overall quest is about saving the land from vampires who want to summon Avoozl, a not-so-subtle reference to Cthulhu, but what stands out the most is the sheer sense of melancholy that infuses this game’s side plots. Every NPC in the valley is suffering from some sort of sadness, from the innkeeper whose daughter has been kidnapped to the lead vampire herself. And as the hero, the sense of accomplishment you get from helping them solve their problems and bring a little bit of light through Mordavia’s eerie treetops is a sense of accomplishment that’s rarely been equaled in gaming for me.

All of this is combined in a great package with a combat system inspired by Street Fighter II and expert voice narration with John Rhys-Davies acting as the narrator. Alas, Shadows of Darkness was also buggy as hell when it was first released - to the point that it nearly killed the series - but fan patches have since rectified this. Go and play it alongside the other Quest for Glory games on Steam, which sell for a negligible eight pounds these days.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/3909

Return Of The Obra Dinn

Brendan: Few games put you in the shoes of an insurance man circa 1807. Fewer still manage to make his job a compelling investigation into the deaths and disappearances of 60 people. Obra Dinn sees you clambering aboard a ship of the same name, recovered intact but with none of the crew remaining. Using a magical stopwatch, you revisit moments frozen in time and log the details of each and every death. It is not just a 60-person whodunnit, but a howdunnit, wheredunnit, whendunnit, and whydunnit.

Across four decks of the ship you slowly piece together the exact fate of the crew, and eventually realise how avoidable many of the deaths might have been. But also, how a few seemingly straightforward deaths spark a cascade of tragedy that engulfs everything, often in some surprisingly mythical ways. It’s an act of social archaeology as much as a murder mystery, a dithered Macintosh equivalent of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and it grips you from the first arcane swirl of that mysterious watch.

Image credit:Nicalis Inc

The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth

Ed: One of the early roguelikes that’s stood the test of time, BOI makes the whole randomly generated moving through rooms schtick a real doozy. Maybe doozy is the wrong word, considering the theme of this game is bloody and foetal and smeared in faeces. But you sort of get what I mean right? It’s simple: you control Isaac (and later unlockable weens) who sprays his tears at nasties in rooms. You survive for as long as you can, delving deeper and deeper into his Mum’s basement.

One thing I really love about BOI is its frightening replayability. I’ve sunk 112 hours (light work for a number of you, I’m sure) into it and I’ve barely unlocked all the weird items that augment your Isaac into a monstrosity that shoots blood from his eyeholes or has a fat sprog circling him like a kevlar cabbage patch kid. One of my friends has nearly 1000 hours on it and he’s still chasing certain achievements on the daily. And it’s now got online co-op, so I’ll inevitably join him on this crazed hunt for a silly little square he can show off on his profile.

Image credit:Subset Games

Into The Breach

Graham: Into The Breach is perhaps the best turn-based tactics game ever made. Controlling small squads of mechs, it’s your job to defend cities from invading aliens. What makes it accessible and rewarding is that the aliens telegraph their next move, giving you perfect knowledge of the single-screen, 8x8 battlefield, and with it the opportunity to determine the perfect counter-move. The move which attacks, shoves and defends just-so, and causes the enemy to do no damage except to themselves.

Into The Breach felt like a response to the hit percentages of XCOM: Enemy Unknown (which made the list), and in turn feels like it has influenced a further generation of turn-based tactics such as XCOM: Chimera Squad and Tactical Breach Wizards (the latter of which made the list). Into The Breach might remain the best of all of them, and I find it painful that it didn’t make the top 100. Doubly so when you consider we also dropped FTL: Faster Than Light . Subset Games, we have failed you.

Image credit:Angel Matrix

Neon White

Nic: Writing about Sekiro for the Big List, I mentioned that its flowing levels and encounters feel deliberately designed to impart the joys of speedrunning, so it would be criminal of me not to highlight the one game that does that better than any other. Neon White is the game you play after binging SQDQ and needing to feel the same effortless skill through traversal of digital space you’ve mapped into instinctual mastery. It’s also the game that stops you going outside again that summer.

It achieves this sense of simulated mastery by effectively offering you curated FPS rollercoaster rides, where the levels both teach how to speedrun with intended routes while giving you increasingly more leeway to experiment as you progress. The feeling is pure controlled vertigo. It may not have made the top 100, but it gets my personal award for the most videogame-ass videogame of the decade.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Coffee Stain Publishing

Deep Rock Galactic

James: Who’d have thought that Left 4 Dead ’s successor as the co-op FPS par excellence would come out of a little Danish studio, let alone star a quartet of sloshed, deep-space dwarven miners? Deep Rock Galactic nails the basics, with its theatrical armoury and satisfyingly squishy hordes of bugzoids, then masters the interplay that gives truly great 4-person shooters such long legs. I love zipping around as a shotgun-jumping Scout, but I’m only half a class without an Engineer to lay down the platforms I need for high-altitude mineral mining. And while its alien caves are purely proc-gen, it consistently pumps out terrain that’s both visually impressive and rich in interesting navigational challenges – hence the importance of bringing a Driller who can carve out the rock to create new paths, or a Gunner to zipline the crew across chasms.

Banding together to conquer these deathpits and bag their jewels is as gratifying as blasting any bug, and even if not everything goes to plan, a generous unlimited-revives policy means that failure is only an option if everyone goes down at once. That, in turn, leaves the wiggle room for individual dwarf mishaps to remain as pure comedy, and it is indeed hard not to smile when an overeager Scout gets caught in a C4 blast. Or when an Engineer misjudges a platform jump and faceplants the rock below. Deep Rock Galactic is funny, and light, in ways that most co-op games either actively reject or attempt to force through naff banter. And without having the option to down pints at the space-tavern after a mission.

Image credit:Supergiant

Transistor

Ollie: If we all had core memory spheres like in Inside Out but purely for games, then one gorgeous swirling marble of white and red inside my head would be my first playthrough of Transistor. Still Supergiant’s hardest-hitting story, Transistor takes 3-4 hours to play through and then stays with you for years. It’s a quiet, sombre tale of love and survival between a singer who’s lost her voice and her companion, trapped inside a device that’s part giant sword, part USB stick. All of which takes place in a stunningly realised digital heterotopia which dripfeeds lore with a quality only matched by FromSoftware. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on this game, for pete’s sake.

Transistor is a marvel, and as much a joy to play now as it was in 2014. The curious blend of real-time and turn-based combat is odd but compelling, and the wonderful recursive functions system where you can place abilities inside abilities to give them new effects is something I wish more games would have the courage to try. It’s beautiful, and sad, and joyous, and playful, just like its masterpiece of a soundtrack. Along with Pyre, Transistor might be Supergiant’s most divisive game - but for me it’s probably still their most important.

Image credit:Sucker Punch

Ghost of Tsushima

Kiera: In the impatient few years we were all clamouring for an Assassin’s Creed set in feudal Japan, Ghost of Tsushima came along and stole the show. You play as Jin Sakai, a samurai who must defend his people against the invading Mongol empire. Jin is constantly torn between keeping to the ‘old ways’ of honourable duels or adopting the more underhand but arguably more effective stealth tactics, the ‘way of the Ghost’.

The cinematic scenes and colour palette of this game are simply a work of art and the island of Tsushima is so atmospheric that it’s worth the price tag based on this alone. If you want to catch a break from the main storyline, you can supplement your time by writing poetry, discovering Shinto Shrines, Inari Shrines (with a cute little fox spirit to guide your way) and following the direction of the wind to your destinations. There are also hot springs you can visit to ogle at Jin’s ample booty…and for the increase in health, of course.

The combat allows you to perform combos which change depending on your samurai ‘stance’. I quickly unlocked an ability that I rinsed to death which allowed me to challenge an opponent and then cut through up to 5 enemies at once in just a few swipes. It’s so satisfying and gruesome. This is one of the best games I’ve played in the past few years and definitely deserves some recognition, particularly if you’re interested in the lore and histories of Japan (and don’t mind a little dramatisation in the process).

Image credit:Failbetter Games

Sunless Skies

Edwin: There’s a bit in Sunless Skies where you’re chuffing merrily across a vast, astral ice-sheet and you realise that there is Something inside it, a fat coil of darkness that seems to stir in the glare of your locomotive. “How deeply do the dead sleep?” the game asks. “Fly softly”. Moments like these are the highlights of Failbetter’s alt-Victorian space sim, as far as I’m concerned. The lowlights, rather.

Instead of open void, it gives you a universe of layers, dragging the eye down from the smoking filigrees of ports and settlements to shadowy ruins and a horrible, ocean-floor sediment of myth – murdered suns, frozen wormholes, heavenly beehives. Your space train trundles over the surface like a pond skater braving a lake of pike. Your crew have the luxury of shutting the portholes, but as captain, you have no choice but to look. Masterful stuff. The previous Sunless Sea provoked similar unblinking unease, but Sunless Skies is where the art and technology really come together. It’s the only space game I’ve ever played that triggers my thalassophobia.

It’s also an absurd bounty of great writing, exploring various kinds of literary fantasy that together form a complicated accounting of the British Empire. Each realm, each location and each winding sidestory is a baroque peculiarity that both stands apart from and sheds light upon the whole. In the skies of Albion, time itself is smelted in factories by rapidly ageing labourers. In the Reach, there are nebulous oakwoods and cosmic winds that cause your food supplies to sprout. You can take on many, many quests, but really, the only objective here is to travel around and marvel at it all – once you’ve mastered the art of keeping your crew healthy, fed and sane, at least. The last part is easier in Sunless Skies than in Sunless Sea, but this remains a gruelling experience. Absolutely worth the trouble though. If you like lush words, weird places and pervasive creepiness, there’s no game like Sunless Skies.

Nic: I’ve heard it said that the internet is driven by rage, which I’m inclined to disbelieve simply because the RPS commentariat are such a standup gaggle of A+ humans. Except that one guy, obviously. However, I will never pass up a good opportunity to shamelessly appeal to the algorithm. So what about you, dear readers? Which single game are you MOST ANGRY at us for not including? Say it with your whole chest, and at least one of your lungs.

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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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