Arknights Integrated Strategies Guide: Surviving the Roguelike Modes

Arknights has a roguelike mode tucked in the Terminal called Integrated Strategies, and it's the part of the game that plays the least like Arknights. You pick a squad, you get three Operators from random recruitment vouchers, and you climb five or six floors of branching nodes with a wallet of Hope instead of a full roster. Lose your Life Points and the run is over, no retry button. It costs no Sanity, so there's no reason not to poke at it once you clear 3-8.

It's also a mode with a lot of layers. There are permanent themes (Phantom & Crimson Solitaire, Mizuki & Caerula Arbor, Expeditioner's Joklumarkar, Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables, and the newer Sui's Garden of Grotesqueries), each with its own gimmick currency, its own bosses, and its own endings. The bones underneath are the same though. Get those right in one theme and the rest mostly transfer.

How Integrated Strategies Runs Differ from Story Missions

The big one: you don't bring your roster. Your account-wide collection stays outside. Inside a run you build a squad from scratch using Recruitment Vouchers and HR Dispatch Letters, and both of those cost Hope. Hope starts at 6 and trickles in from Command Levels, Safe Houses, events, and shop purchases.

Recruiting and promoting has a flat price table that's mostly stable across themes:

| Rarity | Recruit | Promote | | --- | --- | --- | | 6★ | 6 Hope | 3 | | 5★ | 2-4 (theme-dependent) | 1-2 | | 4★ | 0-2 | 1 | | 3★ and below | Free | N/A |

That 6★ price tag is the whole game. Six Hope is most of your early budget, so grabbing one turn one usually means three or four cheap units around it, and cheap units in IS die fast if you're not careful. The wiki's general advice holds up: don't blow all your Hope early, keep a reserve of 2-3 for the next voucher, and remember Hope refills at Command Level ups anyway. A 4★ raised properly on your account is worth more here than a 6★ you own at Elite 1 Level 1.

Second big difference: your Operators show up at whatever build you have on your account. If your SilverAsh is E1 Lv60, that's the SilverAsh you get, and Truesilver Slash stays locked because it needs E2. Modules, potential, Masteries, skill levels - all copied over. So IS quietly rewards having a deep bench of built units, not just six favorites.

Third: Life Points are both your health bar and a spendable resource. Hitting zero ends the run. From Caerula Arbor onward, LP has a cap, and leaking enemies in that theme (and Joklumarkar) actually punishes you by dropping your Light or raising Collapse. In Crimson Solitaire, leaking is nearly free - there's no penalty beyond the LP itself. That single difference changes how greedy you can be.

And floors aren't missions, they're maps of nodes. Each floor ends in something fixed (a Rogue Trader, a Boons/Wish Fulfilled, a Dreadful Foe), and the middle is random: Operations, Emergency Operations, Encounters, Safe Houses, Downtime Recreation. Each theme adds its own flavor on top - dice and Light in Caerula Arbor, Foldartals and Anti-Interference Index in Joklumarkar, Plans and Thoughts and Epochs in Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables. The node map is where the roguelike part lives, and it's covered below.

One more structural thing worth knowing: each theme has multiple endings. The first ending is just "clear the 5F Dreadful Foe." The others need you to do specific event chains mid-run, and those chains usually require skipping steps that would otherwise end the run early. Four endings is standard from Crimson Solitaire through Joklumarkar, five from Furnaceside Fables onward.

Picking a Starting Squad for Each Theme

Squad choice happens after difficulty, and it's a run-long buff, not a team. Most themes share a core set: Leader, Gathering, Support, Spearhead, and the four Tactical squads (Assault, Fortification, Ranged, Destruction). The Tacticals are the workhorses. In Crimson Solitaire they auto-promote recruited 4★+ Operators of two classes each. From Caerula Arbor on they got reworked to discount Hope instead - 2 less to recruit, 1 less to promote - plus a chance at random free promotions. Same idea, gentler packaging.

The shared core, and who each is for:

• Leader Squad - extra Life Points (and in CS, temporary shields each battle). Good on high difficulty where you expect to leak.
• Support Squad - +20 Originium Ingots and +2 Hope at start. That Hope buys you a better opening trio. Great for beginners.
• Gathering Squad - +2 squad size, +2 deployment limit. More bodies fixes a lot of problems.
• Spearhead Squad - LP set to 1, but all units +15% ATK and HP. For when you know the map and trust yourself not to leak.
• Research/Special Training - extra Objective Shields and Command EXP. Speeds up your in-run leveling.
• First-Class Squad - first recruitment gets an Elite/Advanced voucher. Solid in every theme.

Past that core, each theme stacks on squads that play with its gimmick:

• Crimson Solitaire adds Monthly Squads that rotate, plus the permanent set above. The tacticals here are at their strongest (straight auto-promotion), so a Tactical squad plus a cheap 6★ in that class is a classic open.
• Caerula Arbor adds three, all upgradeable through Cognitive Shaping: Resourceful Squad (dice each floor, better starting die - dice grease the theme's Wish Fulfilled and Emergency Dispatch nodes), Mind Over Matter Squad (chance at extra collectibles from battles, better commission rewards), and People-Oriented Squad (everything costs 1 less Hope, plus extra Safe House choice and Command Level 11). People-Oriented is the comfort pick if Hope math stresses you out.
• Joklumarkar adds Eternal Hunting (Perfect clears cut Collapse, non-perfects add it - for players who want the meta-currency to behave), Life Prioritizing (start with 3 random Foldartals, Clairvoyance shows Foldartals too), and Scientific Thinking (start at 0 Anti-Interference Index but +2 per floor). If you're new to the theme, Life Prioritizing is the friendly one; Foldartals are map-manipulation items that let you swap or predict nodes, and starting with three teaches you the system fast.
• Furnaceside Fables adds Improvisation (random collectible each floor), Soul Escort (Inspirers and Toil), Erudite (Toil Limit and Hope plus Shrivel/Sprout Thoughts), and Blueprint (extra node refresh, free first refresh, extra Plans). Blueprint is the tinkerer's pick - refreshing nodes into shapes you like is a whole strategy in this theme.
• Sui's Garden of Grotesqueries has Sui's Shadow Squad built around the Candleguest system (Operators marked with a candle seal that certain collectibles and events care about).

Your initial three Operators come from one of the Rec. Voucher sets: First Move Advantage (Sniper/Specialist/Vanguard), Slow and Steady Wins the Race (Caster/Defender/Sniper), Overcoming Your Weaknesses (Guard/Medic/Supporter), Flexible Deployment, Indestructible, or the random As Your Heart Desires. The class-fixed ones are safer. As Your Heart Desires can hand you three vouchers in the same class or no DPS at all, and the wiki's blunt take is: if the opening looks dead, quit out and restart. You lose nothing but a minute.

Support Units get borrowed here too - but only during that initial recruitment. You can't pull a friend's carry mid-run, so decide early whether you're renting DPS or a healer.

Reading Node Choices and Risk Reward Tradeoffs

Nodes are the actual decisions in IS, and most of them are risk-for-reward trades. Here's the shape of the map, roughly:

• Floors have a fixed endpoint (Rogue Trader on 1F in CS, Boons/Wish on 2F, Dreadful Foe on 3F and 5F)
• The middle is random Operations, Emergency Operations, Encounters, Safe Houses
• From Caerula Arbor, nodes can sit vertically connected, and taking the vertical hop costs 1 Hope (Caerula Arbor) / 1 Anti-Interference Index (Joklumarkar) / 2 Plan (Furnaceside Fables) / 3 in Garden of Grotesqueries
• From Furnaceside Fables, nodes can be refreshed into something else (costs a Plan, and Prophecies/Dreadful Foes can't be refreshed)

Reading the map is mostly about three questions.

What does this floor's layout want from me? In Crimson Solitaire, 1F is four nodes ending at a Rogue Trader, 3F is six nodes ending at a Dreadful Foe, 5F is seven ending at the final boss. Longer floors mean more fights, more EXP, more Hope - but also more chances to lose LP before the boss. If your squad is shaky on 3F, routing toward Safe Houses instead of Emergency Ops is fine.

Is the reward worth the risk right now? Emergency Operations are regular fights plus a handicap (like a Challenge Mode condition), and they always drop a Collectible. That's the cleanest trade in the mode - the wiki advice is to hit them hard on the first three floors, where they're not too scary and the collectible compounds all run long. From 4F on, get pickier. A collectible you can't use because you leaked three LP getting it is a bad buy. Encounters that force you into ISW-DU or ISW-SP operations are a different animal - those are unique, often nasty fights, so check what you're getting into before committing.

Am I planning for an ending? This is the part new players miss. If you want ending two in Crimson Solitaire, you need to hit Encounter: Reprieve? and take the puppet, which changes the 5F boss. If you want the hidden floors, you need specific collectibles in hand when 5F clears. Ending routes live inside the node map, so decide before you start whether you're going default-ending or hunting, because the steps are easy to skip past and some can't be recovered once passed.

A few practical habits that pay off:

• Dreadful Foes are visible when you enter the floor (since Crimson Solitaire). Look at the boss before you route. If it's one your squad hates, plan extra stops.
• The Rogue Trader is a shop, not a freebie. Normal collectibles run 8 Ingots, Rare 12, Super Rare 16, vouchers 4-6, and Rusted Iron Hammer halves all of it. If you're missing a core role - no real medic, no Arts damage - buy the voucher first and the shiny relic second.
• Don't sleep on Encounters. They're where the ending chains live, and they're also the cheapest source of Hope and Ingots.
• Watch the bonus enemies. Duck Lord, Gopnik, and friends show up in regular operations, don't cost you LP if they leak, and drop a free collectible when killed. Free stuff with no downside.
• In themes with a punishment meter (Light in Caerula Arbor, Collapse in Joklumarkar), the "just leak it" habit from Crimson Solitaire will actively hurt you. Play tighter.

Recruiting Collectibles and Relic Synergies

Collectibles (also called relics or artifacts) are the items you stack over a run. They come in three grades - Normal, Rare, Super Rare - and they stack with each other and with Operator talents. A lot of them are boring stat sticks. The interesting ones are the multipliers.

The big relic families that stack well together:

Recruitment economy. Regional Action Plan (4★ cost -2 Hope), Comprehensive Operation File (5★ -2), Secret HR Letter (6★ -2), and Draft of a Speech (all Operators -2, Super Rare). Stack even two of these and 6★ operators drop to 2-4 Hope, which flips your whole recruiting pace. The Co-op Expansion/Reinforcements series upgrades class vouchers into Elite HR Dispatch Letters, which makes your shop buys stronger too.

Raw stats. The ATK/DEF/HP lines (Oriron Round Shield +15% DEF, Military Mirror Armor +25%, Old Steam Armor +35%, and the matching enemy-debuff lines like Fissured Restraints -7% enemy ATK up to Godmother's Token -17%). These look dull and win runs, because they apply to everyone on the field at once. In a mode where your squad is random, squad-wide buffs are the most reliable power you can buy.

Shop economy. Rusted Iron Hammer (50% off Rogue Trader wares) is the single best value relic in the mode. Antique Coins (+10 Ingots), Actor's Jewelry Box (+18), Flawless Jadestone (+25), Lucky Coin/Masquerade Mask (+2/+3 per noncombat node), Supreme Ring (+50% battle Ingot drops). Cheap relics that fund expensive ones.

Promotion cheat. Laughing Joker (free promotion), Miss. Christine Petting Ticket (2 free promotions), Antique Casting (3), plus the class-specific "- Training" relics like Rusted Blade - Training for Specialists. Free promotions are pure tempo - you skip the Hope cost entirely.

Gimmick engines. Each theme has relics that only make sense with its system. Caerula Arbor has die-related relics and Four-Leaf Clover Fossil (extra choice when collectibles drop - genuinely good everywhere it appears); Joklumarkar has Foldartal relics; Furnaceside Fables has Thoughts-based ones and Herr Hraaselsuher; Garden of Grotesqueries has Tongbao relics and stuff that keys off Candleguest operators.

So how do you actually build a relic set? A few rules of thumb:

1. Economy before flash on the first two floors. Hope discounts and Ingots early turn into more relics later. A Super Rare damage stick on 1F is worth less than a Normal discount relic you'll use ten more times.
2. Match relics to the squad you actually have, not the one you want. If you opened three melee vouchers, the melee ATK lines are worth more than a Sniper-only relic sitting dead.
3. One SP-recovery or ASPD relic changes more than a second raw ATK line, because it compounds with every DPS you field.
4. Super Rare isn't automatically better. A Super Rare that does nothing for your comp loses to a Normal that fits.
5. Check the ending requirements. Some hidden-floor unlocks are literally "hold this specific collectible when 5F ends." If you're hunting an ending, that relic outranks stats.

The 3F Dreadful Foe deserves special mention here: it awards a Super Rare collectible from two options whether or not you kill the boss, so long as you clear the operation. Even a scrappy clear there is a big power spike.

Negative collectibles exist too. Some events and difficulty levels hand you relics that buff enemies or apply handicaps, usually in exchange for something else. On low difficulty they're often worth taking. On Surging Waves 15, read them twice.

Boss Encounter Tactics for Deep Floors

The 5F Dreadful Foe is where runs go to die, and the 6F/hidden-floor bosses are worse. All the routing and recruiting above is preparation for one fight, so it's worth knowing what you're walking into. A few universal points first:

• Prep starts on 1F. The wiki's line on final bosses is that you need a solid team, good collectibles, and luck - built over the whole run. Squad-wide stat relics and a real frontline beat a stacked DPS with no one holding the lane.
• Final bosses deduct 30 LP when leaked (50 in Garden of Grotesqueries), which can instantly end a run. Never plan around leaking one.
• Bring true damage or elemental damage if your theme's boss has a damage-reduction phase. It's the consistent answer to enraged states.

Phantom & Crimson Solitaire - The Point of No Return. The default 5F boss is Lucian, "Blood Diamond." He dashes past your units, spawns an Ominous Apparition on each dash, has an AoE attack on a short cooldown, ignores some DEF, and applies Nervous Impairment. When unblocked he has 40% physical/Arts evasion, and leaking him costs 30 LP. The tactics that work: use ranged DPS since he circles the map twice before committing; bait the dash with a cheap melee unit, then block him in range of your burst to kill the evasion window; don't over-block, because every dash adds another Apparition and those pile up; bring a Wandering Medic for the Nervous Impairment; and watch the Roadblocks - he smashes through them, which opens side paths for the Heavy Defender Lieutenants and Scarlet Singers to walk straight at your objective. He pauses briefly at each Roadblock, so those are free damage windows. For ending two the boss becomes Big Sad Lock in All I Ask of You, who regenerates HP unless you've done the Useless Scissors event chain to shut it off - that chain is mandatory reading before you try that ending.

Mizuki & Caerula Arbor - 5F boss pool. The 5F Dreadful Foe is drawn from Course Correction, Requiem Aeternam, Separation and Unity, and rarer options like Eternal Wrath. Clearing it ends the run unless you hold the right collectibles to enter Deep Sea Woodland (6F), where Destiny of We Many or Glory of Humanity wait. If you're going deep, save your Hope and collectible picks for the 6F fight - the 5F clear is the gate, not the goal. Light management matters all run here: low Light locks you out of some branches and feeds the secret-floor events, so protect it.

Expeditioner's Joklumarkar - Lofty Silverfrost. The Samivilinn is a 3x3 boss that self-destructs if you stall too long, dealing heavy Arts damage and costing 30 LP. Its Icicle Fall hits the entire column of its target, and Surge of Nature stuns and deals Arts damage over time (telegraphed by rime-crusted vines creeping in from the edges). Below 50% HP it takes 60% reduced Physical and Arts damage and starts targeting two friendlies at once. Most of the map starts covered in Silvernwhite Bulwarks that block deployment - you need AoE damage to smash them fast, or you'll have nowhere to stand. The known tech: triggering an Accord with Silence spawns a friendly Shieldguard whose low aggression draws the boss's attacks almost indefinitely, but you need the ranged DPS to clear Bulwarks yourself since he occupies the right-side tile. Below half HP you need a second aggro-draw column. True and elemental damage bypasses the reduction - Valarqvin is the community's go-to. Slow continuous damage or fast-cycling burst beats trying to one-shot it, and the second enemy wave spawns when it enrages, so don't spend everything on the first half.

Sarkaz's Furnaceside Fables - Emergency Lecture. Fremont, Enlightener of Minds, seals any Operator that leaves the map into a Sarcophagus of Exile, which stops their redeployment timer until someone breaks it open. He also stores attacks when nothing's in range (Mystic Caster style), and each stored charge cuts the Physical/Arts damage he takes - at full charges he's near-immortal and hits like a truck. So: watch where your units die, because a sealed Operator is a dead Operator until freed; use summons (they don't get sealed); bait his stored charge with a sacrifice unit before your real DPS commits, then burst him after he's spent it; and go in with as few Operators as possible for First Form, because his Second Form opens with Punishment of Foolishness - every unit on the map gets teleported to random positions, which is devastating when Sarcophagi are waiting to trap them. A strong Sniper on the top-right high ground handles the Sarkaz Maze Spellweavers in Second Form before they set up Marks of Epoch. True and elemental damage again bypasses Improvised Defense. If your mind is Fractured from too many Thoughts, he revives and does it all again - so manage Thoughts before you walk in.

The pattern across all of them: these bosses punish deployment discipline more than raw stats. Where units die, what's blocked, when skills fire - that's what kills you on 5F and 6F, not your DPS number. Scout the boss when the floor opens, build the last two floors around the answer, and keep a spare 30 LP of margin for the fight you didn't plan for.