Where Winds Meet’s PC performance Wing Chuns itself with technical and presentational problems

Whoops-xia

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

Not for the first time , there’s a new, wuxia-inspired RPG whose technical fortitude shatters faster than a bandit’s teeth. A few hours into the F2P, bear-brawling Where Winds Meet , it does at least seem to be arriving on Western PCs (it’s been out in China for nearly a year) in better overall shape than Wuchang: Fallen Feathers did. Even so, it’s beset by performance hitches and even basic visual nuisances, ranging from iffy translations to unplayable stuttering.

It’s not all sad news. Where Winds Meet can hit high framerates on cheap or old graphics cards , possibly a positive side-effect of it also having a Genshin Impact -style mobile version, while its PC credentials are evident in its full mouse/keyboard support and a settings menu that decently covers DLSS or FSR upscaling and frame gen. For a game that’s been live and kicking overseas since December 2024, though, I wasn’t expecting to see so much of what would typically be day-one blues.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

Where Winds Meet system requirements and PC performance

This is a chunky game – the official specs list a 100GB storage requirement (ideally on an SSD , and the ‘Standard’ version I tested asked for 110GB at the time of installation. The same installer offered a “Lite” version for 68GB, though it’ll more closely resemble the visually pared-back mobile version, and I therefore look down on it as I ride past in my PC carriage.

Not that this has stopped the minimum specs list from naming 60GB (not 68GB) as the storage cost of entry, and to make things even stranger, the requirements on the game’s website differ from those on its Steam page . I’m reproducing the former below, on the grounds that they’re from more of a primary source.

Where Winds Meet minimum PC specs

• OS: Windows 10 / 11
• CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K / AMD Ryzen 5 2400G or equivalent
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 550 / Intel Arc A380 or equivalent
• RAM: 8GB
• Storage: 60GB HDD space, SSD recommended

Where Winds Meet recommended PC specs

• OS: Windows 10 / 11
• CPU: Intel Core i7-10700 / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or equivalent
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super / AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT / Intel Arc A750 or equivalent
• RAM: 32GB
• Storage: 100GB SSD space

Where Winds Meet high PC specs

• OS: Windows 10 / 11
• CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K / AMD Ryzen 9 5950X or equivalent
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or equivalent
• RAM: 32GB
• Storage: 100GB SSD space

32GB of RAM also sounds a little high, though to honest, most of my nitpicking grumpiness around these specifications is washed away by the soothing sight of those GPU requirements. Genuine, honest-to-god budget cards listed as minimums? The humble Arc A750, ascending to the glittering heights of the recommended tier? It’s beautiful . Sensible, reasonable system requirements, just living in the moment. After games began having the gall to ask for an RTX 2060 as a starting point, I sometimes feared I’d never see their like again.

In practice, too, Where Winds Meet shows a welcome willingness to run on basic kit, even without resorting to the DX11-only mode. The minimum-listed GPUs are in fact so minimal that I’ve neglected to own any of them. But, while borrowing the GTX 1060 from those mystery Steam-posted requirements, the Performance preset – on native 1080p – let me whizz my magic swordsman around a particularly detail-heavy village at a comfortable 50fps average. Enabling FSR upscaling at its fairly sharp 70% setting pushed that up to 64fps, and upping to the Balanced preset (while keeping FSR) only brought performance down to a usable 45fps.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

There are, again, tech problems going on that framerate counts won’t capture, and we’ll get to those shortly. But Where Winds Meet is also unusual in a much more agreeable way: it is weirdly, almost suspiciously fast on Intel graphics cards. The Arc A750 sped to 80fps at 1080p with the Quality preset, no upscaling required, and even on Ultra, that merely dipped to 70fps. The newer Arc B580 managed 90fps at 1080p/Ultra, and even secured a nice 65fps average with the same preset at native 1440p.

Next to Nvidia’s RTX 4060, which usually trades punches with the Arc B580, it’s a clear advantage to Intel: the 4060 ain’t slow, scoring 64fps at 1080p/Ultra, but it needed DLSS on Quality mode to average 66fps at 1440p, only narrowly beating the B580’s un-upscaled result. I checked around to see if there was some kind of extra ray tracing setting that was enabled on Nvidia’s card but not Intel’s, or whether the latter was mistakenly running in DX11 rather than DX12, but as far as I can tell, Where Winds Meet just seems to have a natural affinity for Arc hardware. And y’know what, fair enough – few games do.

That said, the RTX 4060 could also engage DLSS frame gen, rising from 66fps to 97fps at 1440p. It’s a respectable implementation, even if it does look to be DLSS 3 instead of the newer DLSS 4; I wasn’t offered the latest version’s Multi Frame Generation on RTX 50 GPUs. Speaking of which, the entry-level RTX 5050 could handle Where Winds Meet just fine, averaging 65fps on Ultra quality when running at native 1080p and 66fps – dead even with the RTX 4060 – on a DLSS-upscaled 1440p. That, subsequently, became 95fps with frame gen. And while you wouldn’t strictly need such a powerful GPU for Ultra-quality 4K, the RTX 5080 is a strong match for it, pumping out 116fps on this tricky resolution with Quality DLSS and 189fps with added frame gen.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

So far, then, Where Winds Meet is a nimble-running, well-equipped PC game that opens its doors to those on less extravagant rigs. So why all that moaning above?

For one: these benchmark results look good, but they weren’t always easy to collect. On multiple runs, across various GPUs (including those precious Arcs), the game began stuttering so severely that I had to abandon the recording and start over. If you’re lucky you might just get away with the occasional spot of traversal stutter, but I’ve seen Where Winds Meet stumble so hard that it appeared to be in the midst of a full-on crash. The lack of a clear trigger for these moments only adds to their capacity to frustrate, as there’s no reliable setting to lower or disable that might stop them.

Frame generation also only works if you’re using the DLSS flavour. FSR upscaling is fine if you’re on non-RTX hardware, but its version of frame gen looks and runs atrociously, with crunchy, jarring frame-to-frame transitions of a sort I’ve rarely seen since FSR 3 first launched back in 2023. It also lacks an equivalent input lag compensator to Nvidia’s Reflex system, so inputs and camera movements feel extra-sluggish too.

Yet even when Where Winds Meet is running well, it still undermines itself with numerous counts of sloppy presentation and unfixed visual bugs. The amount (and variety) of pop-in is especially egregious: even on Ultra settings, scenery and, in a lot of cases, people will blip into existence mere metres in front of you. On one occasion I entered a tea house and was met by the sudden apparition of a lady in white, like the vengeful spirit of someone who’d drank a poisoned oolong one hundred years ago that night .

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

There’s also the occasional ropey effect, or questionable character modelling work. Some of the former wouldn’t look out of place in Minecraft: burnable obstacles, like vines and ropes, vanish in a jerking, almost comically unpolished transition between distinct Slightly On Fire, Very On Fire, and Combusted Into Nonexistence states.

The point of these performance analyses is not and never has been to argue for photorealism, but if you want your game to look conventionally pretty in a modern, AAA way – as Where Winds Meet clearly does, most of the time – it should at least be consistent in its production values. It also needs, more urgently, to fix some of its outright broken localisation: I’ve opened at least a couple of dialogue boxes, while playing English, that defaulted back to Chinese. Actually, during an ultimately failed attempt to install the game’s launcher on a Steam Deck , I accidentally closed the installer, re-opened it, and found the whole thing back in Chinese.

(* I don’t want to declare too much about how or if Where Winds Meet runs on the Deck, as I was ultimately thwarted for good by the launcher mistakenly underestimating the amount of free SSD space I had left, blocking a full installation. The game is available on Steam, which in theory should make things a whole lot easier than going the standalone launcher route, though I don’t have a Steam copy and still haven’t tested performance or whether the multiplayer anti-cheat plays nice with SteamOS. I’ll check post-launch and report back.)

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/NetEase Games

Where Winds Meet best settings guide

Fair warning: this is going to be one of less useful settings guides on RPS, partly because little about the settings helps to solve the aforementioned problems, and partly because in simple framerate terms, anything with more computing power than your nan’s crossword solver is going to run it at least adequately.

Then again, making individual changes to the defaults is worth doing, even if you’re otherwise happy to blast off on the Ultra preset. I actually think, for example, that the next-step-down Quality setting for reflections looks better than Ultra’s, as per these screenshots of the four presets in action:

To its credit, Where Winds Meet also isn’t one of those games where high and low settings all perform more or less the same. On the RTX 4060, which I used to benchmark the effect of lowering each quality setting individually, the Ultra preset averaged 64fps at 1080p, Quality 79fps, Balanced 90fps, and Performance 108fps – all before even taking into account the effect of boosting tricks like the upscalers.

All the same, when most PCs will be able to run the higher settings without chugging (the sustained type, anyway), it’s fine to leave the less impactful options turned off while tactically cutting those with the biggest frame bounties. With that in mind, here’s the setup I’d aim for:

• Motion blur: Off
• Super resolution type: DLSS (or FSR if DLSS not supported) on Quality
• Tessellation: Low
• Vegetation quality: Medium
• Reflection quality: Medium
• Everything else: Ultra preset equivalent

Tessellation and vegetation quality were by far the biggest FPS hogs in my RTX 4060 testing, and while trees and bushes looked a little too scraggly on Low – thus, the Medium pick – tessellation can be safely cranked down with minimal visual loss. Reflections gave a few extra fames as well, and I still prefer how Medium looks to the peculiar haziness of Ultra. All told, these settings (including DLSS) got the 4060 averaging 84fps: still short of the Balanced preset at native resolution, but better-looking overall, and noticeably slicker if your monitor’s refresh rate goes beyond 60Hz.

Feel free to add DLSS frame generation if you want, and are able; it’s likely only adding eye-candy smoothness to a framerate that’s already quite high, but then its latency drawbacks are far less apparent in that scenario than if you were to use it to fudge the numbers of a low-performing game. Either way, that all applies to DLSS specifically. FSR upscaling should be shunned, shouted at, and driven out of town under a barrage of pelted stones. It really is that bad.

Where Winds Meet

PC

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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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