Will Nightingale’s crafting card menus be its downfall?

The RPS Treehouse goes head to head

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

By now you’ll probably have read quite a bit about our preview adventures in Inflexion Games’ upcoming fantasy survival adventure Nightingale - including our slightly raucous attempts to interview CEO Aaryn Flynn while instant KO-ing tree monsters and abusing our supplies of ice bullets. But outside this guided co-op session, several members of the RPS Treehouse were playing it on their lonesome last week, too, getting to grips with Nightingale ’s particular flavour of sticks-and-stones crafting, cooking up meat and berry wraps to keep ourselves fed, and generally being cajoled and maybe even lightly seduced by our fae Shakespearean guide, Puck.

With so many folks playing it - some diehard survival heads and others who are mostly just glad to be having a break from Palworld for a spell - it quickly became apparent that lots of us had quite different takes on how Nightingale worked as a craft ’em up. I swear, I don’t think our RPS Slack chat has ever seen such passionate discussions about UI layouts and hotkey assignments, so we thought it might be fun (and useful) to try and distil some of those thoughts for you. Will Nightingale succeed in capturing survival newcomers with its peculiar blend of gaslamp tea leaves, or will it chaff like a Victorian corset for the survival hardcore? Join us as we discuss some of its finer points below.

Puck’s impish twirls and the growling tones of voice actor Marc Warren have madesomemembers of the RPS Treehouse a little hot under the collar…Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Now, Inflexion told us during our preview session that they’re already working on a lot of changes to the UI ahead of its newly-shifted early access launch on February 20th, so here’s hoping some of these concerns are addressed by the time the game launches in full. But based on what we’ve played and experienced of Nightingale so far, let’s first talk about the biggest hurdles some of us had getting into the game. Ollie and James, I know you both have many thoughts on this.

James: Yeah, a lot of the UI is (was? We haven’t seen the redesign) either a mass of empty space or a cluttered card collection. Not every menu needs to be a dull text list but it wasn’t even doing something interesting and diegetic instead, like The Forest ’s junk-on-the-floor crafting screen and doodled build guides.

I’m obviously glad it’s being refined, but there are other basics that Nightingale didn’t get right for me. Some of the movement, especially climbing with your wall picks, was janky in the extreme, and the combat is dreadful. Weightless, drawn-out number subtraction exercises against monsters that jitter around like they’ve connected via 3G and don’t react to having elephant rounds slung into their foreheads.

Ollie: I will happily pick up the baton on the clunky card-based UI, which bulked out every element in the crafting and building screen so that you more or less had to resort to using the search bar to find what you needed. The UI’s common theme seemed to be that everything required multiple clicks when common sense dictates one should do. Nightingale has what Inflexion calls a “parametric crafting system” where you can use different materials of the same type (e.g. different types of fibre or wood) to create the same recipe in different quality levels. Which is cool in theory, but when every ingredient slot requires you to click on it to open a dropdown for you to click the right ingredient, it gets tedious very quickly. And the devs knew that, because they added an “autofill” option, which I can’t help but think defeats the purpose of the parametric crafting in the first place.

And don’t get me started on the bizarre reverse hotbar. I get it - 1-5 are your main hand, 6-0 are your offhand. And because everyone in the Fae Realms is apparently right-handed, 6-0 go on the left and 1-5 go on the right. But it doesn’t serve anything to restrict the player in this way! It’s only there to be different! And that difference makes it worse than every hotbar in every other survival crafting game! Gah! Nightingale’s UI is not good for my blood pressure.

Tap F5 and you can go into third person view - perfect for surveying the land below as you glide across it with your umbrella. Just keep an eye on that stamina bar, yeah? |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Katharine: Controversial opinion: I actually quite liked the drop-down menus and little card drawings. Perhaps I’m a more visual kind of survival game player, but neither they nor the hotkey number situation really bothered me that much (I mostly scroll through weapons, anyway), and I liked being able to see what objects look like beforehand. Admittedly, I can see this becoming a bigger burden as more and more crafting recipes get added, but in the early hours at least, I found it a lot more approachable than I was expecting. I also want to give a big thumbs up for being able to place objects temporarily in the landscape, even if you don’t have all the resources to finish building them right away. That was one thing I was really missing in Palworld (among many others, like an enjoyable, visually interesting world, an actual story, purpose - all things Nightingale has in spades), and laying out objects like this makes planning your base and outpost much easier.

As for the combat, I agree the melee bashing is just as airy and ’not really my bag’ as yer Skyrims and other first-person sword slingers, but I’m taking this as a clear sign that none of you tried the very good revolver and its pow pow pow pow chamber-emptying special move. Very, very satisfying that (as was your big swoopy dodge move), and this made navigating its hectic co-op fights way more gratifying.

The only real UI nitpick that really threw me for a loop was all the numbers attached to trees and rocks. I realised eventually these were related to the power level of the tools you can craft - slamming a level 2 axe into a level 10 tree, for example, isn’t going to get you anywhere fast - but it would have been nice for the game to tell me this itself, preferably through a menu, or at least some kind of vague, Puck-ish quip during the tutorial section (though, to be fair, the thought of Puck trying to relay this kind of information in setting-appropriate Shakespearean iambic pentameter does make me chuckle).

Even if you don’t have all the necessary ingredients, you can still place objects in the world and feed stuff into them to nudge them toward completion. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Ed: My problem with Nightingale so far, lies in what response it elicits from me: digging sleep out of my eyes. Like Ollie and James, I found the combat jittery and swipey, with a lot of the UI requiring an extra button press from me than I’d like. Sure, the setting is quite different for a survival game, which is nice! But what you’re doing in these swamps and deserts isn’t all that different. I’m still picking up sticks and plant fibres to create crafting benches and bedrolls, maybe a nice house with nice vases. Maybe when its full release swings around and with a bit more time, I’ll come to find each of these magical worlds brimming with possibility.

Right now, though, Nightingale’s worlds strike me as pretty crops to be harvested. I swing my mace in average dungeons, I pick flowers, and I crush beasts of little intelligence. Also, a lot of planets make you “Hot” in the sweaty sense, so you constantly have to whip out your umbrella for some shade. If you don’t have an umbrella, enjoy roasting in the sun, or darting between pockets of shade. Yes, I’m being a bit grumpy - sorry. But given the sheer number of survival games out at the moment, I’d hoped for an initial impression that would’ve left a bit more of a mark. I really hope it proves me wrong.

The dreaded crafting cards. Love ’em? Hate ’em? Let us know in the comments. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Edwin: As somebody whose interface design insight usually begins and ends with “ooh, this feels a bit faffy,” I appreciate James and Ollie’s steely dismantlings here. But I will poke my head above the parapet and say that I think I’ll learn to live with Nightingale’s crafting systems and hotbar layout, moment to moment. For me, the problem with the default UI is a broader and more familiar one - there’s too much of it, or at least too much of the explicit, non-diegetic stuff. You’ve made this gorgeous gaslamp fairytale world, Inflexion, this sparkling expanse of myths and legends lifted from all over and folded together care of an intriguing multiversal cardgame, and I can barely see the bloody grass for combat logs and button prompts!

I guess the overkill is in keeping with the theme of Victorian adventurers conquering and exploiting an “unspoilt” world, and I suspect Inflexion have ample playtester feedback to call on which indicates that this level of guidance is necessary. All the same, the very next thing I’m going to do in Nightingale once I’ve recovered from our hectic co-op session is turn as much of the UI off as I can without jeopardising myself.

James: I both liked and disliked the dodge move. Disliked it because it always hurled me way further than I was expecting, liked it because that actually is kinda funny.

I will also agree with Edwin that the world of Nightingale is delightful. The world-altering resets you can induce at the top of Fae towers were especially spectacular, while conveying just about the right amount of in-universe instability to suggest the technology was dreamt up by a moustachioed cad after a productive morning at the opium den. I just wish reaching the top of those towers was a tighter, more satisfying raid.

Playing a minor Blood Moon card and watching it transform your realm in real time is quite the spectacle. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Katharine: I’m mostly just looking forward to seeing how those dungeon towers play out as solo endeavours, a) because I’m a mostly solitary player (aka: has no willing friends to co-ordinate these kinds of games with), and b) I never felt like I really got the full measure of its combat possibilities. When five or six people are all laying into a boss at once, everything happens a lot faster than I’d like.

Jeremy: I don’t play too many survival games, and I’m coming to Nightingale from the perspective of having spent a month in the dungeon that is Palworld. Nevertheless, while I can understand complaints about the game’s UI, I’m not bothered by it that much. The inversion of the hotbar is unusual for sure, and I did experience difficulty picking items off the ground until I realised that you could just hold down E to collect everything at once. I was also playing in third person view - which the game clearly states is “experimental” - and there is a noticeable jank present in navigating across rocks and spamming enemies with attacks that sort of reminded me of a 2000s-era game, like the first Witcher. But just like how I was able to overlook a lot of The Witcher 1’s foibles due to the strong writing and setting, Nightingale somehow wins me over. Like Edwin wrote in his preview, at its best the game truly does feel like an Elder Scrolls from ages past, radiating a Morrowind-esque vibe that somehow brainwashes me into thinking the odd UI is a feature to be learnt and slowly digested rather than one to be rebelled against.

Maybe I’m just seeing everything through rose-tinted Victorian spectacles. There is, of course, the wider question of whether the enticing fae lore that Inflexion Games has whipped up here is the right kind of thing for a survival game. As Ed said, the gameplay loop still boils down to running around a map collecting junk to build structures that will enable you to collect bigger and better junk. But there’s still something about Nightingale that compels me, with its strange quirks and card-based mechanics that seem like they were partially inspired by the niche Gamecube RPGs Lost Kingdoms and Baten Kaitos . It may not surpass the likes of Palworld or Enshrouded in popularity, as the conflicting opinions within the RPS Treehouse and on the Nightingale Subreddit probably indicate, but I think this might be a sleeper hit that appeals to those who aren’t normally invested in survival games and are able to overlook weird gameplay for an experience soaked in atmosphere.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Guns are definitely the superior weapon choice in Nightingale, I’m calling it now. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Kiera: I am starting to see that I am a simple creature compared to the rest of the Treehouse. I do think that Nightingale’s UI could use some polish - it falls into the dreaded realm of ’telling not showing’ for me, and when I see too much text on a screen my brain just goes foggy and refuses to play along. However, I had a nice time with Nightingale regardless and for me, setting and tone are much more important, even in survival crafting games. Perhaps more so because of the sheer number of them that have come out recently.

In particular, I liked the feedback response you get when gathering materials and snatching up brambles. So much so, that I soon found myself terrorising the natural beauty of a landscape, stuffing my pockets full of trash until I became little more than a goblin hoarding treasures. Equally, I loved the dodge as well and the absolute chaos of not knowing how far forward you were going to be launched. After all, why walk somewhere when I can yeet myself through portals and cause havoc?

I will say that using the umbrella to negate the effect of overheating was slightly cumbersome as it automatically used up one of your precious hand slots. This meant that I had to resort to less eloquent techniques to take down foes (I mostly ran around, stabbing at ankles whilst clutching hold of my brolly). Flynn assured us, however, that there are other later-game ways to deal with climate control. Here’s hoping for a fetching umbrella hat or an unwitting NPC, forced to follow and shade me like the high-society Victorian lady I plan to be.

Katharine: I’m starting the campaign right now: Puck for umbrella butler, why not?

Well, there we are. Some additional thoughts on Nightingale’s crafting systems, there, suggesting that there may be more corset chaffing than expected for quite a number of us when it launches into early access. As I mentioned right up at the top, Inflexion have said they are working on polishing up various bits of Nightingale’s UI and interface for its early access launch on February 20th, though whether they’ll be able to magic away all of our concerns remains to be seen. Watch this space for further Nightingale chat next week.

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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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