How to get high quality blueprints?

[Void]

I mostly have primitive gear and I want to get higher tiers. What’s the fastest way to get the highest quality blueprints?

[[WV] SotS]

Vanilla wise your best bet is to get yourself a Pteranodon and hunt down as many Beacon Drops as you can.
Especially ones of higher Quality.

Beacon Quality is as follows:
White<Green<Blue<Purple<Yellow<Red
Pretty much exactly like the quality tiers on items(Ascendant used to be red)

Beacons can also come with a Yellow-Orange "Halo" around them. Those beacons contain much better loot.

Caves and the depths of the sea also contain Lootcrates of similar color qualities(no halo mechanic though) so its worth raiding those places.

If you want to explore mods, check out the "Upgrade Station" mod. It allows you to upgrade your gear tier by tier by putting more and more of the initial crafting resources into them. You can fine tune the mod really well with the config options as well to make it as balanced as youd like.

I really recommend checking this one out!

[Void]

Originally posted by Analog.SotS:

Vanilla wise your best bet is to get yourself a Pteranodon and hunt down as many Beacon Drops as you can.
Especially ones of higher Quality.

Beacon Quality is as follows:
White<Green<Blue<Purple<Yellow<Red
Pretty much exactly like the quality tiers on items(Ascendant used to be red)

Beacons can also come with a Yellow-Orange "Halo" around them. Those beacons contain much better loot.

Caves and the depths of the sea also contain Lootcrates of similar color qualities(no halo mechanic though) so its worth raiding those places.

If you want to explore mods, check out the "Upgrade Station" mod. It allows you to upgrade your gear tier by tier by putting more and more of the initial crafting resources into them. You can fine tune the mod really well with the config options as well to make it as balanced as youd like.

I really recommend checking this one out!

Thank you for your answer. I’d like to ask s bit more about the underwater loot crates, which maps have them, how do you locate them, are they everywhere? Also, does fishing give you blueprints?

[[WV] SotS]

Fishing only returns the items themselfs not the blueprints. Note that the "Upgrade Station" mod also has a "Turn to Blueprint" functionality.

As for deep sea crates, as fas as I am aware most maps should have them, provided the map creator has placed the spawns for them. You should be able to use the Wiki in order to determine spawn locations for these.

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by Analog.SotS:

Fishing only returns the items themselfs not the blueprints. Note that the "Upgrade Station" mod also has a "Turn to Blueprint" functionality.

As for deep sea crates, as fas as I am aware most maps should have them, provided the map creator has placed the spawns for them. You should be able to use the Wiki in order to determine spawn locations for these.

Uh... I thought fishing only gave item blueprints and physical resources... that's been my experience.

Deep sea crates are kinda iffy. First you need a good underwater mount that can hold its own against pretty much anything, as you'll be down there for a while. I'm not sure how other maps handle them, but on the Island, there's multiple potential locations for them all around the island, but only a couple of them spawn, so it's a long hunt to find which ones spawned.

Honestly, I'd say the best map for deep sea crates is Ragnarok, as there's 5-6 of them located in the desert. At least half of them spawn at any given time and the respawn at a decent rate, I think. When you go find them, you'll see the other thing that makes them more difficult than regular supply drops - They don't have a beacon light and, while you'll notice how big they crates are compared to you, compared to the environment, they're tiny; so you need to know where you're going

[Xenulus]

You can find the locations of the deep sea loot crates on the Ark wiki. Locating them exactly in game is a bit trickier though, as you'll only really be able to pin point their locations with pillars once you actually find them. Searching youtube will provide you with a visual of where they are exactly.

This isn't vanilla, but for me on singleplayer for the last 50 hours or so I bumped up my loot crate qualities to 1.5. You still mostly get the vanilla stuff but with a slightly increased chance to get ramshackle and apprentice quality gear (items and blueprints) every once in a while. In a freak chance, just a couple days ago in fact, I found an ascendant simple pistol in a blue drop. This for me makes green and blue drops work checking out again.

[Void]

Originally posted by SteelFire:

Originally posted by Analog.SotS:

Fishing only returns the items themselfs not the blueprints. Note that the "Upgrade Station" mod also has a "Turn to Blueprint" functionality.

As for deep sea crates, as fas as I am aware most maps should have them, provided the map creator has placed the spawns for them. You should be able to use the Wiki in order to determine spawn locations for these.

Uh... I thought fishing only gave item blueprints and physical resources... that's been my experience.

Deep sea crates are kinda iffy. First you need a good underwater mount that can hold its own against pretty much anything, as you'll be down there for a while. I'm not sure how other maps handle them, but on the Island, there's multiple potential locations for them all around the island, but only a couple of them spawn, so it's a long hunt to find which ones spawned.

Honestly, I'd say the best map for deep sea crates is Ragnarok, as there's 5-6 of them located in the desert. At least half of them spawn at any given time and the respawn at a decent rate, I think. When you go find them, you'll see the other thing that makes them more difficult than regular supply drops - They don't have a beacon light and, while you'll notice how big they crates are compared to you, compared to the environment, they're tiny; so you need to know where you're going

Thanks for the reply, but how do I keep my breath for so long if it’s at the bottom of the ocean. I suppose a diplocaulus could work. Are these crates post SCUBA gear?

[Xenulus]

I guess the crates would be post scuba gear. I was deep sea crate hunting just last week. If you don't have scuba gear maybe cook up some lazarus chowder. Also some medical brews, as you can lose quite a bit of health fairly quickly while in the northern arctic waters.

[SteelFire]

Yeah, deep sea crates really are post-scuba in my opinion. A diplocaulus isn't going to cut it because you need a combat mount if you're venturing that deep for that long. There's also the issue that if you get dismounted it might swim for the surface and leave you behind.

I wouldn't count on Lazarus chowder being a good solution either, as temperature is also an issue if you don't have the extra insulation of scuba, as Xenulus pointed out, and I wouldn't want to be worrying about eating chowder when I'm in the middle of trying to fight off or run from a tuso or plesis or a mosa.

[🦊 Hermit]

Don't forget that tiers of beacons/crates also have a minimum survivor level to open. I believe underwater crates are 75-80 on most maps. If you aren't that level yet then there's no point in going down searching for them as you won't be able to open them anyways. Just get the highest level land beacons you can and make preperations so you can go swimming when you reach the right level.

[[WV] SotS]

Deep sea crates guide: get a Megalodon, make it fast, get yourself a Lazarus Chowder, eat it and then dive with your meg. That should allow you to easily locate and grab any deep ocean drops.

Originally posted by SteelFire:

Uh... I thought fishing only gave item blueprints and physical resources... that's been my experience.

Wiki states it gives the actual items. Might be wrong though, might be both. Im not a 100% sure.

[Xenulus]

After a couple of hour or so long fishing sessions, multiple successful catches of fish 1.0-1.8, with multiple 280%+ loot quality fishing rods, I've only ever got blueprints, outside of the more trivial loot like silica pearls, flint, metal, gunpowder, etc.

It wouldn't be the first time the wiki has been inaccurate.

Fishing is another great way to get blueprints though. Might be more boring, but its where I got some better weapon blueprints, including an apprentice compound bow. Most of the time you seem to get saddle blueprints, but they can be pretty OP as well.

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by Analog.SotS:

Originally posted by SteelFire:

Uh... I thought fishing only gave item blueprints and physical resources... that's been my experience.

Wiki states it gives the actual items. Might be wrong though, might be both. Im not a 100% sure.

It actually states the opposite, that items come as blueprints. If you look at the loot list details it says blueprints and it keeps referring to quality tiers for blueprints in several other places. For meat and resources you get physical items (including absorbent substrate, even though it's crafted).