Before 2019, Rocket League used to have crates which were special item drops that contained exclusive items. Then in December 2019, Psyonix decided to replace crates with Blueprints. Blueprints are simpler than crates in that they show the item that can be built and a price in credits required to build (aka craft or open) the item. Blueprints can be built, traded, or stored in one’s inventory like any other item.
Lots of players ignore blueprints because they don’t know what to do with them (just like twitch drops), but unknown to them, they may sometimes be sitting on blueprints that are worth up to a couple of hundred free credits. When Psynoix rolled out the blueprints update to replace crates they said they only did it with the intention of letting players have more transparency in what they’re spending credits on. But there still are 2 major problems with blueprints.
- High costs to build the item
- Surrounding ambiguity, especially among new players
In this essay, I’ll do a quick Blueprints 101. First, I’ll cover everything useful you need to know about Blueprints in Rocket League. Next, I’ll show you how I analyze a blueprint’s worth, so you know which ones to trade and which ones to keep i.e. which ones can earn you free credits and which ones are worthless.
While it is true that most blueprints are worthless, the few that are worth something, typically turn out to be those that can easily fetch you some free credits. The value of a blueprint depends on its ongoing demand which in turn depends on the value of the item that can be built using the blueprint.
Let’s take a deeper look at blueprints and how to make easy credits with them.
How to obtain blueprints?
The only way to obtain blueprints in Rocket League is by playing the game more because blueprints drop randomly after you finish online matches. In order to have an inventory full of random blueprints, you’re just going to have to play more Rocket League.
Identifying blueprints that are worth credits
The math is simple – if the item in a blueprint is currently valued at a price more than the price required to build the item then you stand to profit either by building and trading the item or trading the blueprint itself. There are many factors that decide how much an item is worth in rocket league trading circles, like demand and rarity.
I already pointed out how the value of a blueprint depends upon the value of the item in the blueprint, which in turn depends on the demand for the item. What’s interesting is that the nature of demand for items also varies – most items have a single peak in demand, some items have seasonal demands that cycle, and some items are always in demand.
It’s pointless getting into the question of what drives demand because that will require us to get into demographics, human judgment, psychology, and whatnot. I mean, who knows why Rocket League players are obsessed with Titanium White Fennec. Agreed that a lot of times, demand is directly driven by attributes like paint, certification, and edition, but even then it is hard to predict what will be in demand and what won’t. For now, let’s just accept that some items naturally have higher demands than others.
So blueprints for items that are trending or in demand are usually worth something. In the next section, I’ll elaborate on how I evaluate what my blueprints are worth.
How much is my blueprint worth?
I broadly classify my blueprint inventory into 4 categories which are as follows:
- Blueprints that are worthless
- Blueprints that can be traded for 5-20 credits
- Blueprints that can be traded for 20-100 or more credits
- Blueprints that could be built to trade the item (Optional & Conditional)
When you earn blueprints, check if the value of the item in the blueprint is greater than the cost required to build the blueprint. The greater the difference, the more your blueprint is worth. Thanks to websites like rl.insider.gg, you can check the ongoing prices of any rocket league item or blueprint for all platforms.
If you’ve come in the possession of a blueprint for an item that looks like it could be traded for credits, the easiest thing to do before listing it for trade is to check the cost of the blueprint on rl.insider first. However sometimes 3rd party websites don’t have the costs for blueprints. In that is the case then you can check the value of the item in the blueprint to see if it is more than the cost required to open the blueprint.
Here’s a simple formula to keep in mind.
If the cost of the item > the cost of crafting the blueprint then the blueprint is worth something. Let’s look at an example.
Let’s assume you have a black market item blueprint. The cost of that item according to rl.insider is 3000 credits and the cost of crafting the blueprint is 2200 credits. So naturally, there is 800 credits worth of potential profit to be made here via trading.
At this point you have two options, if you have 2200 credits to build the item then you can build it and trade it for profit – this will make it a category 4 blueprint in our classification. Or you can sell the blueprint to someone who intends to build and trade it for profit – this would make it a category 3 blueprint.
So the next question is, how much is that blueprint worth. Well, to be honest, that depends. If the difference between the market value and crafting value is 800, I would list that blueprint for up to 100 credits or more.
Feel free to follow your own logic for category 3 blueprint pricing. I follow my own logic which is broadly summarized by the following conditional ranges.
Assume value = market price – crafting cost.
If value > 50 and < 100, then blueprint price = 5 credits
If value > 100 and < 200, then blueprint price = 10~15 credits
If value > 200 and < 500, then blueprint price = 15~25 credits
If value > 500, then blueprint price = 75~150 credits
You may or may not agree with this logic of pricing blueprints. I like it because it works. The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of the person who wants to buy from you mostly to craft the item and trade it. Think of how much they think they’ll want to factor in for blueprint cost. Besides if you are someone that plays rocket league often you’ll collect hundreds of blueprints in no time, it’s better to trade them away for pocket change (which btw, adds up over time) than let them rot in your inventory.
Most blueprints you earn in the game will fall under category 2 and category 1. Let’s look at what you can do with category 1 blueprints aka those blueprints that are worth nothing.
What to do with worthless blueprints
The simple answer is to collect them and trade in.
If any of the very rare, import, or exotic blueprints that you earn fall under categories 2,3, or 4 from above then trade them for credits. If not let them collect in your inventory until you are ready to trade them in.
Trading in is simple, 5 items of the same quality unlock one item of the higher quality. So 5 worthless very rare blueprints may get you one import blueprint that is worth something, or not. And 5 worthless import blueprints may get you 1 exotic blueprint that is worth something, or not. And 5 worthless exotics may get you a black market worth something.
And now the final, the most important question of this essay.
What do you do with worthless black market blueprints?
The answer to this, no one knows. Let them sit in your inventory for eternity and grow into a population of thousands. If you don’t like that and have a better idea then tell psyonix about it.
Where to find other players to trade with?
You can find other players to trade with on any rocket league community. The most common trading communities exist on Reddit, RL-Garage, Steam, and Discord. Or if you’re lazy like I am, then use a trade curator like rl-trades.com which scans all trade requests from across the internet. Use it to find who is looking for what you have and where they are, then go to that website and get in touch with that player to trade.
