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Arknights: Endfield guide: Master manufacturing and build a top team with these tips
D
Diego Perez
There's a lot more to Arknights: Endfield than the flashy combat and cool characters, and your first day at Endfield Industries can be overwhelming. You've got a whole factory to run, and your responsibilities will only grow as you add more outposts to your network. Keeping the operation running smoothly will keep your units in tip-top shape, but ignoring the logistics can cause you to fall behind.
It's a lot to take in, and while things will slowly start to click over the course of a few hours, we've put together some tips to help you get started. Read on—our beginner's guide to Arknights: Endfield will help you find success on Talos-II.
Getting started at Endfield Industries
The opening hours of Arknights: Endfield are overwhelming, even for experienced gacha veterans. Not only do you have to learn all the currencies, combat mechanics, and characters, but the game also throws a factory management mode at you after the tutorial mission.
The AIC (Automated Industrial Complex) is the hub for Endfield's activities in any given region. Your power grid and production lines start and end at the Core AIC area, and every outpost you unlock will give you another AIC area for manufacturing and power management.
Follow the in-game tutorial to get your factory running, but take some time afterward to organize things and get a feel for the industrial side of the game.
Then, keep an eye out for yellow inflatable tube guys called Protocol Dataloggers when you're out exploring. Each one you find will let you unlock a new factory upgrade in the AIC Factory Plan menu.
Most of the cool factory stuff is reserved for the bottom half of the AIC Factory Plan tree, so keep moving through the main story to get access to things like conveyor belt splitters and mergers. Once you have those unlocked, you can really start to get creative with your AIC layouts. You can also download blueprints from other players if you'd rather skip the process!
The Core AIC area only has a limited number of input and output slots, so it's a good idea to separate things and delegate parts of the production line to other outposts. If you try to manufacture everything in one region, you'll run out of space and power fast.
You can add a Depot Bus to your factory once you've unlocked them in the AIC Factory Plan. These let you withdraw or deposit things from your storage without clogging up one of your basic AIC ports. Each Depot Bus segment will cost you a pretty penny, but the additional space is more than worth it.
Establishing infrastructure
The Core AIC area isn't the only place where you'll be building things in Arknights: Endfield. While manufacturing is restricted to the AIC boundaries, you can place other stuff anywhere in the field.
Relay Towers are the most important item to carry with you. Craft a bunch of them and stick them in your inventory. Each of these has to be wired to the Core AIC tower. They have a range of 80 meters. Place them like a trail of breadcrumbs when you're exploring so you don't have to worry about plugging things in later on.
Relay Towers transmit power from the Core AIC tower to anywhere on Talos-II. As long as you have enough Relay Towers, you can expand your power grid anywhere. Try establishing a basic power grid of Relay Towers that passes through the main path of each region, then branch off into more important areas once the groundwork has been laid.
Electric Pylons can then be attached to Relay Towers to power up any machinery in the field. Electric Pylons are wireless, but they still have to be connected to a Relay Tower before they can start transmitting power. They have a much shorter connection range than Relay Towers, so make sure you don't stray too far from your power line!
Electric Pylons can keep your extractors up and running, but they can also power other useful structures like Zipline Pylons. Keep a bunch of those in your inventory, too. These can be used to create quick routes that let you zip around to areas that lack dedicated fast travel points. Try to keep them near your Relay Towers so the whole power grid can serve as a highway that gets you where you need to be.
Squad synergy
Once you've got a basic manufacturing operation going, you can start upgrading your squad. Arknights: Endfield's combat system is centered around a squad of four, and each character has unique abilities that can be manually triggered as long as you have enough energy.
Units also have a Combo Skill that is automatically triggered once certain conditions have been met. These are crucial to a good team composition, so make sure you read everyone's skill descriptions carefully!
For example, Chen Qianyu's Combo Skill lets her deal bonus damage and apply Lift to any enemies in her path. The prompt will show up after any enemy becomes Vulnerable, so she pairs well with characters like the Endministrator who can regularly apply that status.
Not every character works well together, so that fancy new six-star unit you're eyeing may not be the best fit for your team. Take the frosty greatsword-wielding Last Rite, for example. Her entire kit relies on stacking and absorbing Cryo Infliction. She really needs a full Cryo team backing her up, otherwise those Cryo stacks will be removed when other elemental damage is applied and Arts Reactions are triggered.
The best Arknights: Endfield teams follow the same basic structure. Ideally, you'll have one primary damage dealer who's on the field most of the time. Pair that character with two other units that have beneficial Combo Skills, typically ones that apply status effects. Round out your team with a support unit like Ardelia and you're all set!
Don't ignore these quests!
Arknights: Endfield throws a lot of quests at you during the opening act, and it can be hard to tell what's actually important. Of course, the main story quests should be your first priority, but what else should you be working on?
Some quests are placed into a special green section of the missions page. This spot is for important quests that unlock new things. Some of them grant access to major new features like outposts, while others unlock new shops or game modes.
Generally, if a quest has a "new feature" tag attached, it's worth doing ASAP. If you ignore them, you'll miss out on cool stuff like the tower defense mode or key improvements like Dijang upgrades.
One of the most important early-game sidequests is Produce Industrial Explosives, which gives you the ability to craft bombs that can blow up secret areas throughout the world. Without this quest, you'll have to hope there are explosives nearby whenever you come across a destructible surface.
Make sure you also complete the quest called Etchspace Salvage as soon as it pops up! This one doesn't have the "new feature" flag, but it's incredibly important. It unlocks the repeatable Etchspace Salvage game mode, which is a huge source of Oroberyls and other rewards. Make sure you're clearing out your important quests often so you don't miss out on stuff like this.
Stock up on rare materials
One of the most important things you can do as a new Arknights: Endfield player is learn the spawns for limited rare materials. Certain upgrade resources can only be found in very specific corners of Talos-II, and you can only harvest a small number per day.
Because you have to work around the game's allowance for these materials, it's a good idea to clear out the rare spawns every time you log into Arknights: Endfield—even if you don't need them. If you don't need them now, you'll need them eventually. Plus, it's good to have a steady supply just in case.
Thankfully, these resources are marked on the map and the game will even alert you when rare resources nodes are fully stocked. Limited resources are region-specific, so you may need to progress further in the main story if you can't find what you need.
You can also grow these materials aboard Dijang once you've unlocked a few basic upgrades. Just head to the Growth Chamber and pick the ones you need. It'll take some time, but the Growth Chamber will help keep your stockpile topped off. It's not a replacement for manual gathering though, since you still need to extract seeds from rare growths after finding them yourself.
Arknights: Endfield is available now on the Epic Games Store.