Items

Three of our Dying Light pages are lists of things you pick up. The blueprints page holds 86 recipes with their components and the effect each adds. The crafting components page names 20 parts and the container each comes out of. The posters page walks nine Old Town challenges that end in one more blueprint. What ties them together is the element. Every weapon blueprint that states an effect puts one or two of five elements on a blade, and reading the 59 weapon recipes as a whole shows that each element travels in one component: no Electricity without Batteries, no Burning without Aerosol, no Bleeding without a Blade, no Impact without Chemicals. This guide sorts the blueprints by that rule, then the components by how often the recipes call for them, and ends with the posters as the price of one blueprint. The weapons the mods go on are described in our weapons and equipment guide, and the main Dying Light guide reads the whole game through Techland's three pillars.

Five elements, five carrier parts

Fifty-three of the 59 weapon blueprints state an element; the six DLC rewards list a recipe and nothing else, and none of those six arrives with The Following. Of the 53, 34 add a single element and 19 add a pair, and the pairs are unevenly spread: Burning and Electricity together five times, Toxicity and Bleeding four, Bleeding and Electricity four, Burning and Impact three, Toxicity and Electricity twice, Burning and Toxicity once. Toxicity is the one element whose carrier slips. Every recipe that is toxic alone, or toxic with electricity or fire, carries Toxic Lichen, but the four Toxicity and Bleeding pairs (Bad Hangover, Filthy Blade, Poison Blast and Toxic Reaper) are all built from Aerosol, Blades and Electronics instead. Metal Parts, meanwhile, are in 58 of the 59 weapon recipes; Spiked Collar, a Slums bleeding mod for the Baseball Bat and Pipe, is the only one that skips them.

Level 1, level 2 and the one level 3

Six weapon blueprints are level 1, and five of them are bought rather than found: All-Purpose Toxic Striker from the Upper Tower store, Ben Franklin's Key from the Upper Level store, Fastball Special from any shop once you reach Survivor Rank 7, Industrial-Grade Leech from the Lower Tower store and Standard Issue Hellfire from Rais' compound. Each is a three-part recipe that works on melee weapons in general, one per element, which makes the five shop blueprints the cheapest way to see the carrier rule in action: Metal Parts plus Plastic and Batteries, or Gauze and Aerosol, or Nails and a Blade, or Kitchen Stuff and Chemicals, or a Common Plant and Toxic Lichen. The sixth level-1 recipe is Thorn Crown, a Slums pickup that puts Bleeding and Electricity on the Pipe and Baseball Bat. The other 47 stated recipes are level 2 and each names the weapon families it fits. The only level 3 on the page is not a weapon blueprint at all: Bolter Poison, from story progression, puts level 3 Toxicity on melee weapons for five Common Plants, an Underwater Algae and a Bolter Tissue.

Where the 59 weapon blueprints sit

The Slums hold more than the Old Town by ten, and the two areas lean toward different weapons. Old Town recipes name the sword family repeatedly, Khopesh, Machete, Short Sword and Two-Handed Sword, and the weapons guide places the Khopesh at the midpoint of the game and the Machete near its end; Slums recipes name the tools, Wrench, Small Hammer, Crowbar, Pipe, Police Baton and Baseball Bat, which the same guide files under the early game. The eight quest rewards are the ones that stack two elements most consistently: six of the eight are pairs.

Which weapons take the mods

Counting how often each weapon family appears in the 53 effect lines puts Short Sword, Small Hammer and One-Handed Axe at the top with eleven blueprints each, with Cleaver, Khopesh, Blade, Two-Handed Sword, Wrench and Long Knife on ten. The Pipe, at five, is the least served named weapon. The Baseball Bat, the one weapon the weapons guide says the quartermaster gives away, is named in eight: Fire Launcher, Glowing Stick, Home Run, Spiked Collar, Surprise MFS!!!, Thorn Crown, Tru-Action Electric Baseball and Zazhigalka.

Blueprints are one of two upgrade routes, and the weapons guide keeps them apart. Upgrade Mods, 21 of them from Assassin to Titan, need an empty upgrade slot on the weapon and raise damage, durability or handling; a rarer weapon, on the five-step ladder from White to Orange, has more slots. Blueprints need no slot, only the components, and add the five elements above. The guide's one warning about where not to spend either is the Cleaver, whose durability it calls too low to be worth a mod, and its one tip for the leftovers is to dismantle spent weapons for Metal Parts.

Throwables and equipment: taught, not found

The carrier rule is a weapon-blueprint rule and stops here: Burning Throwing Stars are Metal Parts, Chemicals and Alcohol with no Aerosol in sight, and Molotovs are Alcohol, String and Gauze. What the throwables share instead is the freezing ingredient, Fluorescent Mushrooms from caves, in both Freezing recipes and the Stamina Booster, and Toxic Lichen again in the two toxic ones. A Medkit is one Alcohol and one Gauze and, per the weapons guide, restores 100 HP; the Natural Medkit is three Common Plants. Lockpicks are a single Metal Part.

The 20 components and where the page sends you

Two of the most-used parts have no row on the components page: Aerosol, in 21 recipes and every Burning one, and Kitchen Stuff, in 17. Two listed parts appear in no recipe at all, Home Supplies and the Hunter Gland. Toolkits are the single best container, named for six components, and the page's other advice is to trust Night Sense to pick components out of containers, to expect Metal Parts and Blades in industrial areas, and to watch the map for Common Plants and Algae, which are marked on it.

Posters: nine challenges for one blueprint

The posters appear once you reach Old Town, so all nine are Old Town challenges, and by what they test they sort into three climbs, two races, three fights and a dive. The first of those fights happens after dark, which puts our Volatiles page in front of this list rather than after it. Each pays 10,000 Survivor XP. Finishing all nine marks Bozak on the map, and taking the Exploding Throwing Stars blueprint from him, then killing him, is the tenth reward. That blueprint follows the rule of this guide too: Metal Parts, Chemicals and Kitchen Stuff, the Impact signature, on a throwing star.

FAQ

How many blueprints are there in Dying Light?

Our page lists 86: 59 for weapons, 14 throwables and 13 pieces of equipment.

Where do you find blueprints?

Of the 59 weapon recipes, 24 are in the Slums, 14 in Old Town, eight are side-quest or escort rewards, six are bought, six come with DLC and one has no location given. Throwables and equipment are mostly taught by skills.

Which blueprints work on any melee weapon?

The five bought level-1 recipes, one per element, and Bolter Poison at level 3 Toxicity.

What do the posters give you?

10,000 Survivor XP per challenge and, after all nine, the Exploding Throwing Stars blueprint from Bozak.