Arknights: Endfield launched globally on January 22, 2026 with more than 35 million pre-registrations behind it, and by the September 2026 “Dreamscape of Wind and Snow” update the roster had grown to 32 operators across six classes. If you’re staring at your first Authority Level menu wondering whether to prioritize combat, the AIC factory system, or your gacha pulls, this guide walks through all three in the order they actually matter.
Quick Start Checklist: Your First Week
Do these in order, before you start experimenting on your own:
- Finish the tutorial and claim the 14-day login rewards — they include a free 6-star Supporter, Ardelia, plus a 6-star selector ticket.
- Pull on the New Horizons Beginner Banner first. It guarantees a 6-star standard operator within 40 pulls, making it the single most reliable early investment in the game.
- Spend your selector ticket on a Vanguard or Supporter rather than a second damage dealer — SP generation is scarcer early on than raw damage.
- Manually collect from your first Portable Originium Rig before you unlock the Electric Mining Rig automation. Rushing past manual collection is the most common early AIC mistake.
- Push story missions toward Authority Level 43, which unlocks the Wuling region and Chapter 2.
- Save Oroberyl for limited character banners — don’t spend it on the standard pool once you’ve used your Beginner Banner pull.
- Don’t pull on a limited banner with fewer than roughly 120 pulls saved. This is a hard-pity gacha system, and pulling lightly gets punished.
Verified against the Dreamscape of Wind and Snow update (server-side September 2, 2026). Operator counts, drop rates and specific thresholds shift with future patches — check in-game before committing large resource spends.
What Kind of Game Is Endfield, Actually?
Endfield is a real-time action RPG bolted onto a Factorio-style factory sim — its own developers targeted roughly a 50:50 split between RPG combat and factory-building content. That split confuses two different groups of new players, in opposite directions.
If you’re coming from the original Arknights, drop your tower-defense instincts. That game rewarded patient, paused placement of static defenders behind chokepoints. Endfield hands you direct control of up to four operators in real time, with instant switching between them mid-combo. Treating early AIC construction as optional busywork — a habit a tower-defense player brings in — stalls your resource income, because AIC output is what funds your combat upgrades.
If you’re coming from a dedicated factory-builder, the mistake runs the other way: over-optimizing your production line while your combat team sits underleveled. Our Factorio: Space Age beginner’s guide covers the pure factory-loop version of this discipline — Endfield borrows the shape of that loop, but ties its output directly to a real-time combat system, so a half-built factory just means a slower grind, not a failed run.
Operator Classes and Damage Types, Explained
Endfield splits its 32 operators across six classes, each leaning toward one of two broad damage types — Physical or Arts — with Arts further split into four elemental Inflictions: Heat, Cryo, Electric and Nature.
| Class | Role | Damage Focus | Example Operators |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guard | Physical DPS, crowd control | Physical | Endministrator, Chen Qianyu |
| Caster | Arts DPS via Inflictions/Reactions | Arts | Arcane, Perlica |
| Striker | Condition-based burst, needs team setup | Physical or Arts | Laevatain, Typhoeus |
| Vanguard | SP generation for the team | — | Camille, Pogranichnik, Akekuri |
| Defender | SP restore, shields, tanking | — | Ember, Snowshine |
| Supporter | Buffs, debuffs, sustain | — | Ardelia, Gilberta |
The takeaway: the class you’re missing hurts more than the class you have too many of. A team with no Vanguard runs out of SP mid-fight, and a team with no Defender or Supporter folds against anything that hits back hard. Pick your main damage dealer first, then fill the remaining three slots by role, not by rarity.
Combat Basics: The Vulnerable-to-Crush Combo Loop
Every fight runs on the same underlying loop. Basic Attacks are strings of 4-5 hits built by repeatedly pressing the attack button; the last hit in that string, the Final Strike, builds Stagger and refunds SP. Battle Skills have no cooldown but cost SP to cast, while Combo Skills cost no SP but go on cooldown once triggered — either by landing a Final Strike or by setting off an Arts Reaction — and both fire a quick-time prompt you need to catch.
The damage math behind it: the first Physical status you land on an enemy always resolves as Vulnerable. A second Physical hit then triggers Lift or Knock Down, each adding a stack, up to four. Consume those stacks with a Crush for a direct Physical damage burst, or a Breach for a temporary “damage taken” debuff you stack more damage into afterward. Arts follows a parallel rule: hit an enemy with the same element twice for a Burst, or with a different element while an Infliction is active for a Reaction — Combustion from Heat, Solidify from Cryo, Electrification from Electric, or Corrode from Nature.
None of the guides we checked publish exact damage multipliers for Crush, Breach or the four Arts Reactions — treat any specific percentage you see elsewhere as a community estimate, not a confirmed value, until Gryphline publishes one. If you’ve played Path of Exile 2’s ailment-stacking system, the shape will feel familiar: Endfield’s Vulnerable stacking does the same job PoE2’s ailment stacking does, just resolved in real time instead of through a passive tree. Our Path of Exile 2 beginner’s guide covers that side of the comparison if the mechanic still feels unfamiliar.
The AIC System: Endfield’s Other Half
AIC — Automated Industry Complex — is the factory-sim half of the game, and skipping it is the biggest reason new players feel starved for resources a few hours in. Depots act as the connection points in every production line: route each one as Depot → output port → destination facility (a Smelter, for example), and expand depot capacity as you progress rather than building past what you can store.
Don’t skip the in-game Simulation tutorial — it’s the fastest way to learn the placement controls before you’re doing it live. Unlock facilities through the Basic AIC Plan before attempting freeform production, and lean on the game’s own blueprints for your first few lines instead of designing from scratch. Story missions gate new AIC facilities and resources as you progress, so treat balancing AIC, exploration and combat as one loop, not three separate to-do lists.
Building Your First Team
“Build a balanced team” isn’t useful advice on its own — what you should prioritize depends on how you actually play.
| Player Type | Priority |
|---|---|
| New player | Finish the tutorial, take the guaranteed Beginner Banner pull, and follow the story to Authority Level 43 before branching into side content. |
| Casual player | Use the game’s own AIC blueprints instead of designing lines yourself, and build around the free Ardelia plus your selector-ticket pick rather than chasing more pulls. |
| Hardcore/optimizer | Save Oroberyl exclusively for limited banners, budget around 120 pulls per banner for hard-pity, and drill the Vulnerable-to-Crush rotation on your specific class combination. |
| Completionist | Track every operator against the new Progression Overview system added in the September update, clear each AIC blueprint tier, and pick up both a 5-star and 6-star selector ticket over time. |
Whichever type you are, a starter team of one Guard or Caster for damage, one Vanguard for SP, and one Defender or Supporter for survivability covers the fundamentals — you can swap the fourth slot in as your roster grows.
Where to Spend Oroberyl, Arsenal Tickets, T-Creds and Sanity
| Currency | Used For | Spend On |
|---|---|---|
| Oroberyl | Character gacha | Limited banners only — never the standard pool |
| Arsenal Tickets | Weapon gacha | Weapons for operators you already use often |
| T-Creds | Leveling | Main team first, then skills, then weapon tuning |
| Sanity | Stage energy | Protocol Space: Promotions first, then Operator EXP stages |
Sanity itself regenerates slowly — roughly 1 point every 7-8 minutes, with a cap between 125 and 360 depending on your Authority Level — so spending it on the wrong stage type is the resource mistake that compounds the most over a week of play.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Arknights: Endfield pay-to-win?
Not in any way that blocks story progress. The guaranteed 6-star within 40 pulls on the Beginner Banner, plus a free 6-star Supporter from the login event, means a genuinely free player builds a functional first team without spending anything — the gacha mainly affects how fast you diversify your roster, not whether you can clear content.
Do I need to have played the original Arknights?
No. Endfield replaces the original’s tower-defense combat entirely with real-time action, so tactical knowledge from the first game doesn’t transfer directly — lore familiarity helps you follow the story, but every mechanic here is new even to Arknights veterans.
Should I prioritize combat or AIC first?
AIC first, in short bursts. It’s tempting to treat the factory system as a side activity you’ll get to later, but AIC output is what funds the T-Creds and materials your combat team needs to level up — delaying it just delays your own combat progress.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Arknights: Endfield
- Gryphline. Over the Frontier, Into the Front — Dreamscape of Wind and Snow update notes
- Endfield Talos Wiki. List of Operators
- Game8. Beginner’s Guide: Tips and Tricks — Arknights: Endfield
- Game8. Combat System Tips and Tricks — Arknights: Endfield
- Icy Veins. Every Operator Class and Their Gameplay — Arknights: Endfield
- Perlica.moe. Combat Guide — Arknights: Endfield
- Fextralife. Arknights: Endfield Beginner Guide
- GameWith. AIC Factory Beginner Guide — Arknights: Endfield
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.