Arknights: Endfield Store

Released on January 22nd, Arknights: Endfield is a new free-to-play action role-playing game (Gacha), a successor to Arknights (a strategic RPG).

This game is newly released, so joining now will make you a veteran player. Let's take a look at its gameplay and see how it differs from other Gacha games before deciding whether to join.

Factory System

The biggest feature of Arknights Endfield compared to other Gacha games is its Automated Industrial Complex (AIC), or construction system.

This system allows players to build facilities, assist in resource gathering, and craft various finished products needed for operator equipment and upgrades. AICs not only produce materials, equipment, and consumables but can also be used to build combat turrets and exploration ziplines.

Industrial management involves numerous systems, such as mining, facility construction, power management, and the automated production of equipment, resources, and materials, all of which play a crucial role in character progression.

Initially, this system may seem complex and daunting, but after investing time in learning its basics, you can gradually solve resource problems by optimizing the combination of factory facilities, thus gaining a sense of satisfaction.

However, for impatient casual players, its complexity may also become an obstacle. Fortunately, in addition to providing a detailed A tutorial, the game also features a Blueprint System, allowing players to save their current building layout and share their machine, conveyor belt, and production facility layout designs with other players.

How to Build Your Factory?

In the early game, you don't actually need to focus on the factory system immediately. Progressing is more important because you need to acquire Data Loggers.

Data Loggers are collectibles scattered throughout the map. Once you track them down and find them, activating them will grant you a Basic AIC Index. You can then use Basic AIC Index in Basic AIC Plan interface to unlock nodes and obtain Templates.

Once you have a Template, you can use materials such as Amethyst Part to build the corresponding equipment here. Before building, ensure you are within your Factory's core AIC area.

Key Early Stages

In your basic AIC plan, the following stages are crucial for early development:

• Mining: Unlock at least Mining Level 3 to obtain Electric Mining Rig Mk II, which allows you to mine any surface mineral and transport it directly to your factory.
• Processing: Unlock at least Planting, and Grinding is even better. Be sure to unlock Shredding, Part Fitting, and Packaging.
• Power: Most importantly, unlock Power One, which will grant you a Thermal Bank, ensuring your factory continues to operate even when you are offline.

Mineral Harvesting

All minerals have specific icons on the map. You can travel to these areas and place Electric Mining Rig Mk II at the mining sites.

Ensure your mining rig is within Electric Pylon's sphere of influence to obtain power. Electric Pylon is the facility that powers all equipment. If the mining site is far from the factory, a power transmission line needs to be built.

The power transmission line has a limited distance. When it reaches its distance limit, a relay tower can be placed to connect and extend the line. This process is repeated until power can be transmitted to the tower at the mining site.

Flower Cultivation

Flowers are also an important resource. Unlike ores, you need to cultivate them to harvest this resource. The construction method is similar to mineral mining. You need to place a Seed Picking Unit and power it with an Electric Pylon device.

Establishing a Cycle

First, you need to put a small amount of initial flowers into Seed-Picking Unit, which will convert the flowers into Buckflower Seeds. Then, a conveyor belt transports the seeds to a Planting Unit, which grows the seeds into Buckflowers and transports the produced Buckflowers back to the Seed-Picking Unit, forming a seed supply cycle.

You only need to connect a second planting unit (or an additional output of the first) to a storage tank and then connect the storage tank to the factory. In this way, excess Buckflowers will be continuously stored in the factory, achieving unlimited production.

Materials

Almost all crafting requires basic materials, and in the early game, focus on five key basic materials:

• Amethyst Ore
• Originium Ore
• Ferrium Ore
• Aketine
• Buckflower

Operators

Classes

Besides the crafting system, another core system in Arknights Endfield is its operators. A large part of the value of an Arknights Endfield account comes from these operators. There are 23 operators available at launch, belonging to six different classes:

• Guard: Specializes in inflicting vulnerable and various physical statuses on enemies.
• Caster: Can apply art inflictions to enemies and trigger art reactions.
• Striker: Also a primary damage dealer, this class excels at weakening enemies with physical or magical effects before unleashing devastating attacks.
• Vanguard: Helps the team recover or manage skill points.
• Defender: Possesses high durability, excels at protecting teammates, counterattacking enemies, and providing healing abilities.
• Supporter: Operators can apply buffs to the team or debuffs to enemies.

Attributes

Each operator has four basic attributes, all of which provide bonuses. However, each operator specializes in two: a primary attribute and a secondary attribute. Focusing on increasing the primary attribute provides a larger percentage increase to the operator's power, while the secondary attribute provides a smaller percentage increase.

• Strength: Affects the operator's maximum health.
• Agility: Affects the operator's physical resistance.
• Intelligence: Affects the operator's magic resistance.
• Will: Affects the healing bonus or healing effect received by the operator.

How to Improve Operator Attributes?

The most common method is to use operator materials to increase the operator's level. Another method is to equip gear items such as armor, gloves, and components to increase attributes in a targeted way.

Operator level cap is divided into four Promotion stages:

• Promotion 1: Level cap increased to 40.
• Promotion 2: Level cap increased to 60.
• Promotion 3: Level cap increased to 80.
• Promotion 4: Level cap increased to 90.

Increasing Promotion levels requires specific operator materials, which can be obtained by collecting them at rare resource points or clearing combat simulations scattered throughout Protocol Space Hubs. They can also be obtained through exploration, opening chests, login rewards, or trading in the shop.

As an operator is promoted, you will unlock talent nodes or passive skills and upgrade the operator's combat skills, which usually also requires materials obtained from the aforementioned activities.

For new players, upgrading operators and building factories is sufficient to provide ample game content. As you progress through the main story, the game unlocks many more interesting mechanics.