What’s on your bookshelf: Saltsea Chronicles, Mutazione and Thronglets’ Hannah Nicklin

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Booked For The Week is our weekly chat with industry folk about the books they love, have loved, and are hoping to love in the future

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Having finally read The Epic Of Gilgamesh recently, I feel I should in be awe at how the proliferation of certain themes and dramatic modes throughout history speaks deeply to the truths of the human experience. However, gaming has taught me to recognise a dirty asset flip when I see one. For shame, much of storytelling.

This week, it’s Saltsea Chronicles , Mutazione , Thronglets, and much more ’s Hannah Nicklin! Cheers Hannah! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

What are you currently reading?

I’m someone who has a number of books on the go at once. I also have to avoid non-fiction or ’easy’ reading books unless I’m on holiday/vacation because my specific kind of hyperfocus sees me one-shot books and massively disrupt my sleep schedule. So the books I tend to read are a little more friction-full (in the best ways). In that context I’m currently feasting on a buffet of: The Mechanic And The Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism Of Technology And Capitalism (Jathan Sadowski) I’m loving this so far, the dual lense Sadowski articulates as a means of reflecting on contemporary capitalist technoculture is super incisive. I’ll let him describe it, the book orients itself around: “[A] critical study of technological capitalism through two metaphorical role models for how to do materialist analysis: the mechanic and the Luddite. The mechanic knows how a machines is put together, how its parts function, and what work it does. The Luddite knows why the machine was built, whose purposes it serves, and when it should be seized––in both senses of stopped or taken, destroyed or expropriated. […] The materialist analysis of the mechanic provides the basis for the material action of the Luddite.” It’s frankly essential reading for our current moment, and generously arranged as a series of essays which you can dip into in any order. The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & the Promise of Direct Democracy (Murray Bookchin) I’m interesting in representing alternative means of collective decision making in the work I do in games. Saltsea Chronicles definitely approached this by portraying societies and communities with collective decision making, but it wasn’t systematised in the game, something which made sense for the needs of that game, but I hope one day I can think through collective decision making/consensus in a narrative system. Bookchin’s is a book I’ve left far too long (it’s a decade old now I think), to be honest. It’s a proposal for a new left politics based on citizen assemblies. Many recent political trends and upheavals in the world, and certainly in the country I live in (the UK) have shown the paltry nature of ‘representative’ democracy (what does it even mean to vote every 4-5 years in a first-past-the-post system where a King is still technically in charge and vested capitalist technocultural interests have the ear of power?). I don’t think representative democracies will last much longer into the 21st century, and instead of letting strong-man fascists fill the vacuum, I want to know about alternatives which empower people, hold power accountable, and give us means of working past either bottom-up blockers (nimbyism, misinformation, disenfranchisement), or those from above (the interests of capital, the ruling classes, etc.) to building healthier, more humane, more just societies which also tackle the most urgent crisis of our times: that of the climate. A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel) I appear to have written a lot about the previous two books, so I’ll keep this short. This is an 871-page doorstop semi-fictionalised account that follows Danton, Desmoulins and Robespierre from childhood through to the 1789 French Revolution. I’ve been listening to the podcast series Past Present Future on Revolutions, and I’ve always found it a little tough to track the detail of this particular revolution. I’m deeply interested in revolution (can you tell) at the moment: in tipping points, in the people on whom it pivots, on the people they purport to speak for, etc. I felt like a semi-fictionalised account would give me the handhold I need on the history of it all. I’m only 150 pages or so in right now, but it’s quite intoxicating.

What did you last read?

I’m on holiday this week so I’ve allowed myself some one-shot read type books. I read in one sitting: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady (a sort-of-auto biography by Scottish comedian Fern Brady - largely focussed on her mid-30s diagnosis with autism) and The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (a thrilling part-horror part-mystery about translation, language, and what it means to remake yourself as you shift between cultures).

The next three on my table are: History and Revolution: Refuting Revisionism Edited by Mike Haynes & Jim Wolfreys Playing Oppression: The Legacy Of Conquest And Empire In Colonialist Board Games by Mary Flanagan & Mikael Jakobsson Disordered Attention: How We Look At Art And Performance Today by Claire Bishop The first two are fairly self explanatory but the last, by the author of essential read Artificial Hells, is an exploration of what it means to make art in an era of disordered attention.

What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?

Hm, I think scenes and words aren’t what stay with me. Instead it’s ideas. I think the idea I return to most at the moment is connected to one of my next answers – the idea that our stories about who we are are built on the biases of a bygone era, and in fact there’s plenty of evidence that at our heart we are a co-operative, egalitarian and playful species. There’s great hope in that idea.

What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?

Probably these four: Parable Of The Sower by Octavia E. Butler. An electrifying read. It was published in the year I was born (1984), and begins in 2024. How much she got right is a terrifying act of imagination. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. We have all of these stories about who humans are, all drawn from who we have been and what we imagine our natures to be. In fact a lot of that is built on either fallacious or disputable readings of archeologists, anthropologists or philosophers drawing on a paradigm of knowledge that deeply impacts how they read the evidence. The Dawn of Everything is an immensely freeing exploration of evidence which shows human nature to be deeply egalitarian and playful. It is only the past few centuries which are a blip. And if that’s so, why can’t we return to a life which is co-operative, equal, just and playful? Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad. A deeply humanising tiny book (it’s an essay based on a speech, really) from a Palestinian author about what it means to be present, to witness at this point in history. And for craft, I always go back to recommending Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate – it’s a recommended text in my book Writing for Games: Theory & Practice, in fact. I return to it often, it’s such a masterclass in a life-long practice, so rich in all of his acknowledged influences, so metatextual as he unpicks his performances as a series of creative decisions. It’s a generous gift from someone deeply interesting in why and how language and human feelings intertwine. It won’t suit everyone, but it massively suits my brain.

What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?

Your Wish Is My Command by Deena Mohamed – which is a comic. I recommend this a lot as a beautiful piece of worldbuilding/imagining. The essential premise is that wishes are real. But, other than that, everything is the same. That means you end up having to ban wishes as a weapon of war in a treaty after World War II, that means a working class Egyptian gifted a First Class wish (there are classes of wish, the cheapest of which always go wrong out of wilfully misunderstanding your intent when wishing, e.g. a wish for a Ferrari hands you a toy car, etc) will find herself bullied by the cops, imprisoned, and forced under duress to hand it over because ‘someone like her’ would never have access to a First Class wish. And like all wonderful worldbuilding, the three stories at the heart of the book are also deeply human. At the heart of the act of wishing are seeds of human desire. Mohamed has planted and tended and grown into a perfect reflection on what it is to be… us. I’d love to adapt it myself, if anyone wants to build a game dev team with me as creative director or narrative lead, please let’s find Deena Mohamed and make an anthology game oriented around wishing!

If you’ll allow me to be unforgivably earnest for a moment: thank you to everyone who has told me they miss the column when it’s gone, and appreciate it when it’s here. The idea that something I do is valuable or at the very least fun to people is hugely meaningful to me, at a time in my life where meaning feels elusive. Of course, I do have to now grapple with the failure to name all the books, cascading with each subsequent column. Eh, we’ll work it out. Book for now!

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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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