The Sunday Papers

Image credit:RPS

The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web.

What pressure! As I mentioned last week , this is my last ever Sunday Papers as I’m leaving Rock Paper Shotgun (and Gamer Network) this coming Wednesday. I’m not sure how to meaningfully summarise twelve years on this site or twenty years in the field, but after several aborted essays I rediscovered the columnist’s crutch: bullet points.

You’ll have to forgive the indulgence, because I present here just some of the values - and the personal taste, clearly - that I’ve tried to express through the site during my time here. Many of the values were instilled in me by my excellent colleagues (particularly the unimpeachable Alice O), and I only hope I lived by them more often than not.

• Previews are almost always a waste of time thanks to every journalist getting the same limited access. You can occasionally make them worthwhile through wit and personal insight, but don’t fool yourself: more often than not you’ll be made the stenographer of a marketing campaign.
• A game you can play now is worth a thousand games you’ll be able to play in the future. It’s a real problem that we spend more time writing about the trailers at GeoffFest than we do the demos at Steam Next Fest. Free 3 was one attempt to correct for this and, in a way, Wishlisted is another. Still we ought to spend more of our time on games that are out than those that aren’t.
• Games are not exceptional. They are one artform among many and one small element of a full life, and they can be better understood and championed when placed in that wider context by people with full lives of their own.
• All games are equal regardless of their ambition, team size, cost or marketing budget. You can put an 800-person blockbuster alongside a one-person free game and treat both the same and that’s fine. I’m proud of RPS’s writing about free games over the years, particularly where a single writer was able to paint a picture of the state of the art over months, and in particularly Porpentine’s Live Free Play Hard , Brendan’s Free Loaders and Kat Brewster’s Priceless Play . (Read also: Brendan’s Punk’s Not Dead .)
• You don’t need to write about that yearly franchise forever just because it continues to be commercially successful. Let games enter their Vegas residencies and let critics move on.
• “Indie” is mostly useless as a term and today serves mostly to marginalise certain work. (“AAA” is likewise useless for being vague.)
• Game discovery is less important than game persuasion. A lot of your audience have already “discovered” more games than they can play in a lifetime and have them on their wishlist or in their Steam library, untouched. The critic’s job is to not simply help the reader discover yet more games, but to persuade them to play those games and help them to understand those games better.
• Don’t promote pre-ordering. That digital store isn’t going to run out of copies and pre-ordering is an attempt to get people to spend money before they know whether a game is worth that money. Helping people decide whether a game is worth their money is one of our jobs, so why would you encourage pre-ordering?
• You owe it to the reader to be honest about your feelings, not to hedge based on how you think the reader will feel. This sounds obvious, but I still see writers do it all the time. If you’re playing a game that seems great or that you think other people will like, but you are finding it a boring dirge, write about why you’re finding it a boring dirge, even if the answer lies in you and not the game. Trust readers to find the writers that align with their tastes, rather than sacrificing your own taste in favour of the imagined reader’s or a false objectivity. Trust that clear expression of your honest feelings is the most valuable thing you have to offer as a critic.
• When appropriate, write about what makes a game interesting and remember that whether a game is good or bad is often the least interesting thing about it. Trust the reader to draw their own conclusions. These last two ideas may seem to be in conflict, but try to hold both ideals at the same time, loosely.
• Videogames are better than ever and there are more videogames being made than ever. This also means your readers’ time is more valuable than ever and you should therefore raise your standards.
• Never be cruel. Never make it personal. Never call a developer lazy.
• Whatever impact your writing has on a developer’s business, positive or negative, is none of your business.
• Who cares how much a videogame sells or how many people are playing it? Shareholders and developers, probably. We as critics and reporters should not care (unless you’re a B2B website which RPS is not).
• Videogames are hard to make and you can help players to understand that better. The Mechanic was our most explicit attempt to make that case, in which Alex Wiltshire talked to developers about the challenges they faced in designing a specific element of their game. Many other series less directly served the same function, such as Pip’s The Great Outdoors .
• The people who play a particular videogame are not a “community”. Games have players, who are individuals, and if those players congregate, it’s typically in small groups. Attempts to define a playerbase as a single coherent community is normally either a function of the marketing department or of a tiny minority of players claiming they speak on behalf of the whole. Be wary of stories about what eg. “the Apex Legends community” thinks, therefore.
• What players do in and with games is often more interesting than the games themselves. We represented this constantly via reporting, diary series, and never better than in Brendan’s Ridealong column.
• There are infinite ways to play a game and none of them are wrong. There are infinite ways to write about a game and some of them are wrong, but you have to decide what those are for yourself.
• It’s in the strapline of every one of these columns: read more! I’ve curated The Sunday Papers in part to spread writing I think is worthwhile, but I’ve also handed the reigns of the column to the newest writer on the team several times over simply to give them an excuse to read more during work hours. The field of games journalism has a cultural memory of about six weeks in part because even the practitioners of it don’t read enough games journalism - but also, you should read voraciously outside of videogame journalism, too.
• No word in an article is less important than any other word in an article. The strapline, the slug, the captions, the tags: treat these not as afterthoughts (or as SEO fodder) but as opportunities for entertaining the reader and the reader will love you for it. Marsh Davies hid entire secondary articles in his Premature Evaluation alt texts , and that’s just one of the reasons why Marsh is among the best to ever do it.
• Avoid using patronising or gatekeeping terms (“asset flip”, “casual”, “git gud”, “hardcore”, “pretentious”, “shovelware”, etc.), even ironically. I personally also avoid “gamer”.
• Don’t write about the gamers being angry. The gamers are always angry.
• As William Goldman once wrote about Hollywood: nobody knows anything. This is equally true in videogames and important to remember when market analysts come looking for free press.
• Some games are weird. Try to make them feel normal to the readers.
• Some games are normal. Try to make them feel weird to the readers.
• Pissing people off is fine - essential, even - but piss off the right people.
• Videogame is one word.
• I could ask ten people to describe RPS and get ten different answers. I could speak to ten people who miss some previous era of RPS and find they all miss a different previous era. Coherent branding, consistent voice, a house style; these things are valid aspirations, but overrated. Better to be like Frasier Crane, who explained his style of decorating to his father thus: “It’s called eclectic. The theory behind it is that if you’ve got really fine pieces of furniture, it doesn’t matter if they match. They will go together.” Hire really fine writers, give them the platform to do what they want, and they will go together. (And argue among yourselves over who is Martin Crane’s ragged yet comfortable armchair.)

This final bullet point matters the most. This post is otherwise not intended as a cage for whoever succeeds me, who I’d prefer ran this site their own way, unburdened by ghosts of gaming past. That’s what I always did and hopefully what I enabled Katharine to do. The remainder of the team here is also great and can be trusted to steer RPS true, as they have been for several months already.

As for me, my new day job is outside of games media (and in gamedev, instead), but I will undoubtedly do games media things on the side because I can’t help myself. If you’d like to see whatever I do after RPS, you can follow me on Bluesky or via my never-updated blog . Thank you for reading and supporting me all these years. You are the best commenters in games media (except for the hundreds of you I personally banned, you guys were the worst ).

I tried to resist it, but music this week is ‘93 til Infinity , because I do indeed be chilling. All my music picks from this era of Sunday Papers shall remain available in a YouTube playlist .

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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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