Arknights: Endfield Beginner Guide: Tips for Your First Hours

Arknights: Endfield finally landed on January 22, 2026, and it's free on PC, PS5, and mobile. It's Hypergryph's action RPG set on Talos-II, a wild frontier planet, and it shoves three games into one package: a real-time combat game with a four-person squad, a big open world to wander, and a full factory builder that runs while you sleep. Coming from the original Arknights helps zero with the tower defense stuff here, because there is none. Everyone starts on the same footing, which is kind of nice for once.

The first few hours throw every system at you at once, and the tutorials move fast. Here's what's actually worth knowing before you get buried.

Choosing Your Starting Operators

You are the starter

Endfield doesn't open with a starter pick screen. The game just hands you the Endministrator, your player character, and they're a legit 6-star Physical Guard who swings a sword. Picking male or female at the start changes nothing gameplay-wise - same stats, same kit. If you regret the choice later, you can swap once every 24 hours at the Protocol Singularity in the Stasis Core aboard your ship.

The Endministrator carries hard through all of chapter 1, so don't go looking for a "real" main DPS on day one. You already have one.

The free squad builds itself

Chapter 1 rains free units on you, and they come fast:

| Operator | Rarity | Element | Class | How you get them | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Endministrator | 6★ | Physical | Guard | Default, from the start | | Perlica | 5★ | Electric | Caster | Finish the prologue (about 20 minutes in) | | Chen Qianyu | 5★ | Physical | Guard | Complete the main mission Break the Siege | | Wulfgard | 5★ | Heat | Caster | Complete the quest Westward into the Vale | | Snowshine | 5★ | Cryo | Defender | Pre-registration reward, arrives by in-game mail | | Ardelia | 6★ | Nature | Supporter | Day 3 of the Awakening Sign-in login event |

That's two free 6-stars and four 5-stars without touching the gacha. Ardelia is the one people sleep on - she's a healer-support who holds up even in tough late content, and she shows up on day 3 of the login event packing her own 6-star weapon (Dreams of the Starry Beach). Log in for her. Snowshine lands in your mailbox once the Mail feature unlocks, assuming you pre-registered before the 30 million milestone cleared.

What each class does

Six classes, and knowing the split makes team building way less confusing:

• Vanguard - feeds Skill Points to the team so everyone can cast more
• Guard - your physical damage, stacks the stagger and Vulnerable effects
• Defender - soaks hits and keeps the squad alive
• Caster - slaps Arts effects (the elemental stuff) onto enemies
• Supporter - buffs, debuffs, and crowd control
• Striker - the payoff unit, cashes in the setup everyone else built

So who actually wants each one? Early on, a damage dealer, someone feeding SP, and one survivor covers you. Akekuri, a cheap 4-star Vanguard, generates SP with her Combo Skill and Ultimate, and she slots into almost any squad as the battery.

Your first pulls

Pull the New Horizons beginner banner before anything else. It guarantees a 6-star standard character within 40 pulls, and finishing it hands you a crate to select a free 6-star weapon. The standard pool includes Ardelia, Pogranichnik, Last Rite, Ember, and Lifeng - Pogranichnik and Last Rite are the big get-rich targets if you're rerolling.

The launch limited banner, Scars of the Forge, runs January 22 to February 7 and features Laevatain, a 6-star Heat Striker who melts groups. The community's strongest launch comp is basically built around him: Laevatain carrying, with free Wulfgard and Ardelia plus 4-star Akekuri feeding him Heat stacks. If you skip Laevatain, the free physical squad of Endministrator, Chen Qianyu, Perlica, and Akekuri clears everything through mid-game anyway.

One rule whatever you do: pour materials into a single team of four first. Half-building eight units is the classic way to get walled.

Understanding the Combat Basics

One squad, one skill bar

You control one operator at a time and the other three fight on AI, but here's the trick the tutorial rushes past - you can fire anyone's skills without swapping to them. Stay on your carry and punch the button for a teammate's skill; they cast it from the background while you keep swinging.

All four share one Skill Point pool of three bars (100 SP per bar). SP trickles back on its own, and fills way faster when you play aggressive - land the final hit of your basic attack chain (the Final Strike), land perfect dodges, keep dealing damage. Battle Skills each cost one full bar and have no cooldown, so the real limit is SP management, not button timers.

Combo Skills cost nothing. Instead, each one needs a trigger condition - an enemy frozen, knocked down, electrified, whatever matches the character - and then it sits on its own cooldown. Ultimates charge up as the team casts Battle Skills; when the meter's full, hold the skill button and enjoy the fireworks.

The stagger meter is the whole fight

Most enemies have a white gauge under their health bar. Fill it and they get staggered - stuck in place, taking bonus damage, wide open for your biggest hits. Final Strikes, skills, and physical effects all build it. Finishing your attack chains matters way more than mashing, because that last hit builds stagger faster than anything else in your basic kit.

Watch for two tells. A red cross-shaped glint means an attack is incoming, and dashing right before it lands scores a Perfect Dodge - no damage, plus a refund of SP and stamina. A red ring around an enemy means they're charging something nasty; hit them with damage to interrupt it and stack extra stagger on top.

Physical versus Arts

Damage comes in two flavors, and your team should pick a lane.

Physical teams play setup-and-payoff. Lift and Knock Down effects stack Vulnerable on an enemy, then Crush or Breach moves spend all those stacks at once for one huge burst. The bigger the stack, the bigger the payoff, so crowd-control moves are secretly damage moves.

Arts teams work the elements. Same element applied twice builds stacks (up to four) and then triggers an Arts Burst - raw bonus damage. Two different elements touching triggers an Arts Reaction instead, and the effect depends on the pair: Heat burns (Combustion), Cryo freezes (Solidification), Electric shocks (Electrification), Nature corrodes. Freezing something and immediately popping a Combo Skill that triggers on frozen enemies is the kind of chain that doubles your output.

Two smaller habits worth building early. Heavy attacks at the end of chains hit hard but lock you into a long animation - dodge or skill right as it connects and you keep the damage without eating a counter-hit. And team slot order matters: left-to-right order decides which Combo Skills fire first, so park your effect-applier to the left of whoever cashes it in.

Exploring the Open World Early On

Get good at moving

Plain jumps in this game are bad, and that's being polite. Dash immediately before jumping and you cover way more distance - that one combo turns "unreachable" ledges into Tuesday. Most players lose their first hour thinking areas are story-locked when they just can't move properly yet. For resources sitting on high ledges, an attack in midair nudges you up just enough to grab them.

Your starting zone is Valley IV, a big open stretch of cliffs and ruins. The second region, Wuling, stays locked until your account hits Authority Level 43, so don't burn yourself out hunting for it.

Touch every resource once

Your AI teammates will gather for you, but only resource types you've personally picked up at least once. So the habit is simple: see a new material, grab it one time. After that, your squad scoops it up automatically whenever you run past, and they'll collect enemy drops too. Skipping this early means your team literally walks past free materials for hours.

Points, ziplines, and glowing orbs

Travel Points (TP Points) are the fast travel network - unlock every one you walk past, even off the story path. Glowing orbs called Aurylenes dot the map, and handing them in at a TP Point pays Stamina, EXP, Origeometry, and even Sanity. Free stamina refills lying around the world is not a deal to pass up.

Ziplines are the other big traversal tool. You craft them through your factory, deploy them from high ground, and ride cables across terrain that would take minutes to walk. If you have friends playing, you can use ziplines they've deployed and skip building your own.

The collectible hit list

A quick tour of what's actually worth stopping for:

• Chests and crates - Oroberyl (pull currency), EXP, weapons, gear
• Protocol Dataloggers - the wobbly tube-men scattered around; each gives AIC Index for your factory research
• Recycling Stations - collect free Aerospace Materials once per day per station; you'll want piles of these for your ship
• Energy Alluvium - spawns a pack of enemies; clear it for a chest
• Rare Growths - plants used for promoting operators and upgrading skills

There's also an exploration rank that climbs as you open chests, solve puzzles, and find points of interest, and it pays out materials and premium currency at each new tier. The detours genuinely pay. The awkward chest on the far ledge is usually worth the dash-jump.

Managing Your First Base

Your base is really two bases, and both unlock through chapter 1 story progress.

The ship: OMV Dijiang

The Dijiang is Endfield Industries' orbital headquarters, and it comes online after the Maintenance Progress main mission. It's your long-term progression hub: you assign operators to the Control Nexus and various cabins, and they produce stuff, grow stuff, and build trust with you while you're off adventuring.

The bits that matter early:

• Manufacturing Cabin - produces operator and weapon upgrade materials
• Growth Chamber - grow fungi, rare plants, and rare ores used for promotions and skill upgrades
• Reception Room - display your medals and roster, visit friends' worlds, help their production, trade clues

You upgrade the ship with Aerospace Materials, and those come from the Recycling Stations out in the world (another reason to hit them daily). Higher ship levels unlock more cabins, rarer outputs, and faster trust gains. Operator mood matters too - happy workers produce better, so poke around the assignment screens now and then.

The factory: your AIC

The AIC (Automated Industry Complex) is the factory game hiding inside the RPG, and it's where most of your gear and materials eventually come from. It runs while you're offline, which is the whole point - the earlier it starts humming, the more it compounds.

The setup logic is simple once it clicks. Every facility needs electricity. Power flows out from the PAC (the core building) through Relay Towers, then out to machines via Electric Pylons. You drop Mining Rigs on ore deposits, belt the raw ore into processing machines, and those spit out refined materials for the next production step. Chain enough of it together and the factory builds itself a supply line.

A few things the game explains badly:

• Research is instant. Unlocking nodes in the AIC Plan costs AIC Index (from those tube-men dataloggers) and Expansion Cores (from main missions), but there's no research timer.
• Play the Simulation Guides. They're short tutorials for each facility, they unlock blueprints you'll want, and they take five minutes.
• Start from the free blueprint. The game hands you a working starter layout. Use it before you try designing your own.
• Upgrade your mining early. The portable rigs you start with fill up and need manual emptying, which gets old fast. Electric Mining Rigs ship ore straight to your depot - set up a Relay Tower and Pylons and never think about it again.
• Keep generators out of corrosion zones. Marked hazardous areas grind down facility durability over time. Build the generator somewhere safe and run power in.

For your first production lines, prioritize Buck Capsules, Industrial Explosives, and Batteries - they unlock outpost development and exploration tools. The Thermal Banks layout is a solid early Valley IV build once your power supply can handle it. And if layout design isn't your thing, the game lets you import community blueprints via share codes, so you can paste in someone else's factory wholesale.

Layered over all this is the Regional Development system: earn Regional Development Metrics through outpost work, raise the region's development level, and you get better mineral yields plus a higher cap on facilities per area. The factory also builds your ziplines and exploration gear, so base and open world feed each other. Ignore the AIC for a week and you'll feel it in your gear crafting, guaranteed.

Common Early-Game Mistakes to Avoid

1. Splitting your resources

The number one account-killer. Every promotion material you spread across six half-built operators delays the four you actually field. Pick one squad, get them leveled, and only widen the bench once that team can handle current content.

2. Letting Sanity sit at cap

Sanity is the stamina system - it regenerates up to a maximum, then the regen is just gone. Every hour parked at cap is wasted farming. Spend it daily, and spend it smart: Protocol Space: Promotions and Protocol Space: Operator EXP first, since leveling your squad unlocks everything else. Skill and weapon materials come second. Grabbing Aurylenes out in the world tops you back up for free, which pairs nicely with an exploring day.

3. Pulling partway on a limited banner

The limited banner (Chartered Headhunting) has soft pity around 65 pulls, a guaranteed 6-star at 80, and a 50/50 shot at the featured operator. Lose the coin flip and your next 6-star is guaranteed featured, worst case 120 pulls total. The brutal part: that guarantee does not carry to the next banner. Spend 90 pulls, run out, and that progress evaporates. So it's 120 saved or don't start. New Horizons first - the 40-pull guarantee is the best value on the screen.

4. Ignoring the factory

The AIC looks like optional basebuilder fluff in hour two and turns into your entire supply chain by week two. A crude one-machine setup on day one beats a perfect one you build "later." Even basic ore processing running overnight quietly stocks the materials you'll be starving for.

5. Grinding a wall instead of pushing story

Operator level caps rise with story progress, not with grinding. If you're stuck on a boss, more farming often isn't the answer - the cap is. Push the main story, unlock the next cap, come back. Story progress also feeds the AIC, the ship, and your Authority Level all at once, so it's almost always the highest-value thing on your list.

6. Sweating gear sets

Gear here is friendlier than it looks - each piece has fixed stats, no reroll roulette. You equip four slots (Armor, Gloves, two Kits), and the main stat is king: match it to what the character scales with (Strength, Agility, Intellect, or Will). Two correct main stats beat a pile of substats. Set bonuses need three pieces and mostly matter at level 70 gear, so that's an endgame problem, not a today problem.

7. Leaving free stuff on the table

The in-game Database pays pull currency just for reading its tutorial entries, and each operator's profile has an Operator Guide with its own rewards. Toss in launch mail, login bonuses, exploration rank payouts, and the day-3 Ardelia, and the free pile is real. Launch players are reporting somewhere around 130 pulls across the first two weeks without spending anything. That covers the 40-pull New Horizons guarantee with plenty left over to take a real run at Laevatain before Scars of the Forge closes on February 7.