V Rising 1.0 review: one of the slickest survival games gets even slicker

I’d bat for this one

Image credit:Stunlock Studios

• Developer: Stunlock
• Publisher: Stunlock
• Release: May 8th 2024
• On: Windows
• From: Steam
• Price: £30/€35/$35
• Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, Windows 11

You won’t be surprised to know that after two years in early access, V Rising ’s 1.0 launch hasn’t seen Stunlock Studios drastically change the V for “Vampire” to V for “Venetian Blinds” or “Vienna Sausage”. From a top-down view, you still play as a newly awakened vampire on PVE, PVP, or private servers, and you’re still tasked with becoming the most powerful bloodsucker around. It has, however, streamlined some things and added in an endgame zone. All of this combines to form a survival game that was great back then and is even better now, with thrilling MOBA-esque fights and little in the way of faff.

In my early access review , I talked about how V Rising doesn’t exactly iterate on the typical survival fare: punching trees, building a workbench, punching rocks, building a wall. And with its 1.0 release, you’ll be totally unsurprised to learn that this also hasn’t changed. To become a more powerful bloodsucker, you have to craft leather pants and copper swords and raise your gear score a la Destiny. To gain power is to build things, until the thing you want to build requires you to build something else. And to build that something else, you need something else .

Image credit:Stunlock Studios

In most other survival games, I find the building loop grinds me down. Mostly because the process of gathering things can be laborious, unclear, or when you finally pop your thousands of bits into the pissing refiner, you produce one (1) pissing ingot. V Rising is different, though, in that gathering materials is generous and simple. You clunk trees with your axe just like you’d attack an enemy, and loads of logs enter your inventory automatically. No smashing a button to pick up individual bits. No holding down a button to lock onto a tree.

And while I hadn’t really noticed the promised 1.0 UI tweaks to make building clearer than its early access release, I can confirm that building things is wonderfully streamlined no matter what. Unlike, say, Nightingale ’s nightmare lists , V Rising clearly draws your eye to dropdowns and materials needed and works in tandem with how your brain actually thinks. Want to slide the material into the box? Yes, it will work that way. Want to split those stacks? The tooltip is displayed where you’d expect it.

Seeing as you’re a vampire, blood is a key resource. You have a pool of blood that drains over time, so you need to keep it topped up by plunging your fangs into necks and sipping up the red stuff. Different creatures confer different blood types, with different benefits. Higher quality blood, marked by a percentage when enemies are at low health, also means better passive buffs. |Image credit:Stunlock Studios

While building isn’t your typical vampiric activity, it’s coupled with bounty hunting that’s not only more vampire-y, it also feeds into the building side. To become stronger you’ll need to work your way up a hierarchy of V Carriers, with 1.0 popping Mr. Dracula at the top of the food chain. You’ll select those of a similar level to yourself, click “track”, and then follow their scent to wherever they’re tucked away. Defeat them and you’ll unlock new building recipes (being able to construct a tannery, say), as well as spell points you can spend in one of several skill trees. In early access you’d hunt powerful V Carriers and receive whatever spells were slapped into your tree. With 1.0, spell points mean you’ve got greater choice in how you’d like to build your character. And the higher you climb, the more complex the spells that can be bought, too. Early on it’s exploding frost bats and easy to control orb flings. Later, it’s summoning death knights to bludgeon things for you.

And fights are intense, ramping up as you start unlocking new abilities. Drawing on Stunlock’s MOBA credentials, they are essentially Battlerite -esque one-on-one duels where you’re dodging area-of-effect toxic blasts and waiting for your dash to come off cooldown. Against mobs it has a touch of Diablo to it, too, as you clatter through bandits with axe boomerangs or generate exploding spiders to crisp them. Early on it’s a bit repetitive, mind, but it doesn’t take long to rinse the first few bosses and start upping your options.

Image credit:Stunlock Studios

I’m a fan of the bounty hunting setup in general, though, which pushes you into unfamiliar territory, guarantees a good fight, and promises solid rewards. I like a bit of structure to my survival, and V Rising keeps my tiny attention span whirring, even if the world doesn’t earn any points for originality. Sure, the lighting’s been given a bit of spruce with 1.0, but it can’t make up for what’s a pretty trad fantasy affair. Woods with some rock golems, some snowy mountains, some gloomy bogs. They do at least have a sense of life to them, where you might stumble on wolves nipping at the heels of skeletons or bandits now pushing carts filled with precious materials.

Being a vampire, you can better navigate the woods by shapeshifting into a wolf or a bear or toad or many other things that I’d say are more up a druid’s street. But then again, I am no vampire lore expert and they are more than entitled to transform into whatever they’d like. Anyway, yes, spider form is the latest addition, built expressly for those who want to avoid being burned by the sun when they want to logout in the middle of a dirt path, as opposed to the safety of their base. At the press of a button you can burrow under the ground, not only protecting you from the sun’s rays, but also from nasty players who might loot your corpse if you leave the server to get din dins.

Once you’ve upped your Castle to rank two (an easy feat), you can relocate your castle by popping down a green castle heart in the territory you’d like to move to. Then it’s a case of interacting with the green heart, and using the new build menu to piece together a replacement castle from the parts you already own. Confirm the change and your old castle fizzles away, while your new one forms. Any unused bits will be broekn down into resources for you to use. |Image credit:Stunlock Studios

A word on the sun, which I thought was an “irritant” in early access. While I understand that the day night cycle exists to promote a rhythm of doing stuff when it’s dark, and not doing stuff when it’s sunny, I still find the threat of UV endlessly annoying. I can incinerate a throng of zombies with a snap of my fingers, yet I have to run between shadows like a buffoon. Can I construct a cape to further my sun resistance? Yes. Would I rather defeat a Superdrug employee in a fistfight and wrestle some Nivea Factor 50 out of their pockets? More than yes.

Thankfully, the new endgame area The Ruins Of Mortium is permanently dark so you won’t find me cowering in a patch of shade with my arm raised to the sky, performing the universal hand gesture for “tosser”. And that’s about the only upside, as it’s otherwise occupied with lots of Dracula cultists who aren’t best pleased you’re barging into their turf, as well as plenty of new V Carriers including ol’ Draccy himself.

Now I’ll level with you quickly. I’d found plenty of time to test out the early to mid game, but only really got to experience V Rising’s new endgame offerings by creating a pre-levelled super vamp on a private server. This meant I rocked up in the Ruins missing some context, but hey, such is the way of things.

Context or no, the Ruins continue V Rising’s tradition of areas being just fine. It’s fine! A lot of grey forest and stone, with grey pillars and the occasional slightly less grey zone (I’ve on the grapevine that Dracula recently had his carpet done by The Carpet Man ). The main new activity is to explore the area and farm for things called Stygian Shards, which you can then use to buy new passive abilities, shattered weapons you can restore, or to upgrade existing legendary weapons.

The activity itself has two difficulty tiers, with the toughest unlocking once you’ve defeated two of the newest V Carriers. In general, the activity has you seek out cults praying to big crystals, battering them so that smaller crystals spawn, and then battering the demons who spring up. Once you’ve battered everyone - succubi and other assorted demons - you’ll hoover up Stygian Shards, with the biggest crystal offering plenty of Shards once you’ve bested a miniboss. Current shard gains are generous, which is great, as its mindless ARPG tendencies can grate for those who aren’t into their Path Of Exile or Diablos.

Image credit:Stunlock Studios

Image credit:Stunlock Studios

Fights against those new V Carriers are tough , though, demanding far more patience and an understanding of your abilities than the early game stuff. There’s a lot of waiting for tells and dodging flashing red zones by the skin of your fangs. If it’s your server, you can now turn the difficulty down if you’re struggling, or up if you’re more of a masochist. Again, being granted more choice makes it a far more inviting prospect for all types of bloodsucker.

The expanded arsenal includes apex legendary weapons, one of which is an axe that’s got a wonderful spinny ability that definitely kept me in a lot of fights against Dracula’s pals. And there’s a new Storm spell tree that lets you generate bouncing electric orbs if you successfully block, as well as hurl lightning tornadoes. While I’d say both of these additions more than fulfil the power fantasy, I do feel like I’m missing some of the context as to why players might want to chase the finest endgame equipment.

I’m presuming it’s for an edge in PVP battles, where players can raid each other’s castles and nick each other’s belongings. There are servers for this, which may appeal to you if you like forming clans and battling against other people. I didn’t get a chance to test these bits out properly, but truthfully, PVP isn’t my jam in these sorts of survival games. I prefer the PVE side, which is more than catered for here in this 1.0 update. All those shards and spells and passive abilities? You’ll want to gather them all for the final hurdle, Mr. Dracula.

Launching into 1.0, V Rising is in a great spot. This is a survival game that doesn’t faff around and is wonderfully streamlined, making your climb through the vampiric ranks a bounty hunting delight with little in the way of chores. To be honest, the game was worth getting in early access, and with 1.0, my thoughts remain the same. Get this if you’re a survival fan who wants a good time by yourself or with pals, and especially if you love some MOBA combat.

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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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