Gold and Exotic Blueprints

In Andromeda you can craft a wide variety of weapons and armour to suit your exact needs. Players must first acquire special Blueprints before a new item can be crafted, with each of the games' blueprints falling into particular classes e.g Bronze (common), Silver (uncommon), Gold (rare) etc..

New items are crafted on board the ship at a special "laptop" called an R&D Kiosk. The kiosk has an easily accessible menu allowing you to browse new Blueprints, sell existing ones, and most importantly craft through the "development" menu option.

Research Data (RD)

Unlike other forms of currency, we're interested in RD for crafting purposes. Shorthand for "Research Data", RD is a currency used to purchase new Blueprints. It is gained through the process of researching i.e gathering data from the field. By continuously scanning new environments and creatures you will gradually build up accredited amounts of RD.

The tool to scan environments is handed to you early in the game meaning that you can start earning RD right from the beginning. However, for the rarer Blueprints you will need excessive amounts of RD which can only be gained by exploring some of the galaxies more dangerous and remote regions. Encountering more diverse species and planets will keep your intel varied and in turn help you accumulate greater RD gains.

Blueprints Rarity

As mentioned above, there are several types of Blueprint in the game:

Bronze (common)
Silver (uncommon)
Gold (rare)
Exotic (ultra-rare)

The greater the rarity not only the better the craftable item but also the cost in terms of RD increases - better craftable items required more scanning and research data. The final tier of Blueprint, Exotic, is a super rare version of a weapon or armour piece. You won't find these at regular vendors and there are only certain spots in the entire Andromeda galaxy that contain Exotic Blueprints.

Raw Materials

So let's say you get your mitts on a Blueprint and you want to craft the brand new item. You'd go straight for the "development" menu option at the kiosk, only to be disappointed at the extra requirements. Yes that's right, having the blueprint isn't enough on it's own - you MUST have the raw resources to go along with the development. In most cases the raw ingredients are a combination of:

Omni-gel
Iron
Cadmium
Element zero

Thankfully, most of these items can be scavenged from the many loot crates (containers) that you encounter during missions and scouting quests. Once you have enough of the materials simply head back to the ship and revisit the R&D kiosk to complete the build of the new weapon or armour piece.

See the Minerals and Materials guide for finding all of the games resources.

Augmentations

Every Blueprint comes with the guarantee that the final product will have X number of augmentation slots.

These are bonus slots that you can kit out with augmentations of your choosing. For example, in the case of armour we have augmentations for hover damage increases, low health damage increases, and other stat-based augmentations.

Weapon augmentations are a little more exciting, giving you the ability to change the entire behaviour of a weapon. For example a shotgun can be augmented to behave like a grenade launcher or a burst fire SMG. These augmentations can be quite advanced and there are a large number of possibilities for players to experiment with.