ZA/UM’s spy thriller Zero Parades sure looks like Disco Elysium in glasses and a moustache

Operative words

Image credit:ZA/UM

Zero Parades is, if you ask its creators ZA/UM, a lot of things. It is an espionage CRPG. It is a character study of Hershel Wilk, the burnt-out, fallen-from-grace spook you’ll be playing as. It is, as I’m told before being shown some very early footage of the game in motion, “a story about failure, and about crippling regret.”

It’s also, quite nakedly, a Disco Elysium successor, perhaps the most overtly Disco-y in what’s set to become a bizarrely crowded field . Some will like that, I imagine. But it’s odd to see Zero Parades cling to the past, while so explicitly asking you to confront it.

Hershel starts the game as a “quasi-ex spy” for the communist Superbloc, one of three factions – along with an equal and opposite fascist superpower, and a shadowy international development bank – wrestling for influence across a fairly horrible-sounding globe. Caught in the middle is the sovereign, ostensibly democratic state of Portofiro, the site of a bungled op that sent Hershel to desk job purgatory, and where she’s now been ordered to return to investigate a new mystery.

On arrival, her most urgent concern – and by extension, a major focus of the game – is to reassemble her old crew, all of whom she’d left out to dry in her escape. Successful re-recruiting will thus require mending some shattered relationships, a process ZA/UM say may not be possible for everyone if they remain sufficiently ticked off. Or, indeed, if you fluff the reconciliation yourself.

Image credit:ZA/UM

Failure both is and isn’t a big deal in Zero Parades. It’s the background radiation of Hershel’s life: she failed before, and now she’s being given one last chance, she fears failing again. Portofiro, too, is a country with its best years behind it, many of its residents crammed into decaying slums that could pass for unexplored neighbourhoods of Martinaise. As a game state, however, failure will rarely mean the end, as it’s supposedly possible to irretrievably botch major objectives yet continue onwards regardless.

There was already an element of this in Disco’s skill check fails, which is something else Zero Parades continues with – I witnessed one scene where Hershel, in search of a disguise, approaches a table covered in hats and scarves before a bad dice roll has her don the oversized headpiece of a cartoon mascot costume. Tradecraft . But “failing forward,” as the developers put it, has been deemed viable enough that the story will bend and branch according to both your intentional choices and your miserable misfires.

So I’m told, anyway. The preview didn’t show much of this in practice beyond the hat thing. Though I did get a better look at Pressures, a trio of reverse-health bars that measure the stresses of being a lone agent who everyone hates. Gauges for Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium will fill up depending on your choices, with potentially fatal consequences if one of them hits the brim.

Image credit:ZA/UM

Although they can be reduced by, say, a good sleep, their interplay with skill checks means that some opportunities may be too good not to give Hershel nervous exhaustion. If a check looks too unlikely, you can elect to ’exert’ yourself – like smashing a door lock instead of looking for another entrance – for a chunky boost to success probability. But! Exertion will also raise of one of your Pressures, leaving you to decide whether the improved chance is worth the physical and mental toll.

There’s also a dash of extra choiceyness in the Conditioning menu, which is described as “the Thought Cabinet Plus-Plus-Plus.” Here, as in the mind-sideboard of Harry Du Bois, you’ll gather thoughts and ruminate on them for skill point adjustments, except this time you can opt to ‘reinforce’ or ‘punish’ the thought instead of simply internalising it. Besides further cementing Hershel as an even more conflicted soul than Disco’s amnesiac detective, Conditioning seemingly provides another avenue for roleplaying, as reinforcing or punishing thoughts will always make different tweaks to different skills.

Speaking of which, whereas Harry’s skills were mainly about defining him as a cop, several of Hershel’s aren’t really related to her day job at all. That’s not to say they can’t be useful in checks, but they can also be invested in just to shape who she is as a person. Technoflex, for example, represents her inner hardware geek, flaring up when she handles cassettes or enjoys the heavy clicking of old machinery.

Image credit:ZA/UM

I, for one, would support Hershel packing it all in and opening up a radio repair shop where she can appreciate the contours of broken speaker cones in peace. Instead, she’ll also be thrust into what ZA/UM call Dramatic Encounters: faster paced, more obviously perilous pseudo-action sequences, befitting of an espionage thriller. CRPG purists will be glad to hear that these are, judging from the rough version of a Dramatic Encounter I saw in the preview, still navigated through text and dice roll decisions, though I was left wondering if they stayed a little too true to the formula. In the scene, Hershel is meant to be shaking a tail, but an apparent lack of time pressure (or any visible threat) let the tension evaporate in seconds.

Still, it was only a prototype build and Zero Parades doesn’t even have a release date, so you’d think there’d be time to inject Dramatic Encounters with a little extra drama. Besides, at least it’s an attempt at something new. This game’s skills, Conditioning, and even the idea of surviving cockups all expand on ZA/UM’s earlier work, but it isn’t always clear whether Zero Parades is inspired by Disco Elysium or beholden to it.

Image credit:ZA/UM

Aesthetically, it looks a lot like Disco Elysium. The way characters speak, including your own, sounds a lot like Disco Elysium. The manner in which you interact with the world and attempt to influence its people feels a lot like Disco Elysium. It even recycles the communism versus fascism conflict, while once again suggesting – through the sight of Portofiro’s ruin – that centrism might be worse than both.

Thinking “Hmm, it’s more Disco Elysium” in adverse terms feels strange in itself. There was a time, before ZA/UM’s internal ruptures , that half the PC owners on Earth would have bit some Estonian hands off for a Disco 2: Elysium Harder. But, realistically, this is a very different ZA/UM to the one that existed in 2019. It still has the right and the means to show us what it can do, but Zero Parades is taking a big risk by trading so much on past glories, with or without its own affordance for mistakes.

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies

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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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