Arknights: Endfield — Complete Endgame Guide (Cores, Gear, Ship)

What Endgame Content is Like in Arknights: Endfield

Released at the end of January, the highly unusual and incredibly engaging gacha game Arknights: Endfield, like most similar projects, contains various endgame content that players tackle daily and weekly. In this article, based on the scenario where a player has just completed all available story quests, we will look at everything that can be considered endgame content, breaking down its main purpose and potential rewards.

Character Development

Perhaps the key endgame content in Arknights: Endfield, as in most similar games, is developing the characters that make up your main team, which you use to tackle all sorts of endgame activities. In fact, most of the things we'll discuss in this article allow you to obtain/unlock various items necessary for this purpose. Also, due to various limitations, this is, so to speak, the longest-running endgame content.

The character development process revolves around the following aspects.

Increasing Character Level - This requires the main currency and resources corresponding to the level range. Some allow you to raise a character's level from 1 to 60, while others – from 60 to 90. It's important to note that after level 60, the cost in currency and resources increases sharply.
Increasing the Level of Basic Attack, Primary Skill, Combo Skill, and Ultimate - This requires the main currency and various resources.
Unlocking Mastery Slots - Upon reaching the mentioned maximum level 9, the Basic Attack, Primary Skill, Combo Skill, and Ultimate can be further enhanced by unlocking Mastery slots. There are three in total, and unlocking each requires a large amount of various resources, including the rarest one, which we'll simply call a Crown. In total, a whopping 6 Crowns are needed - one for the first slot, two for the second, and three for the third.
Unlocking Various Passives in the Character's Small Skill Tree - This requires the main currency and various resources.
Equipping Gear - Consists of 4 elements, or 5 if you count consumable healing items.
Enhancing the Effects of Each Gear Element - We'll cover this separately in one of the points below.
Equipping a Weapon and Increasing its Level - This requires the main currency and resources. Fortunately, unlike with characters, the resources here are not divided by range and can be used freely from level 1 to 90.
Ascending the Weapon upon Reaching a Certain Level - This requires the main currency and resources.
Installing Cores with Suitable/Desired Effects into the Weapon.
Enhancing Core Effects - We'll cover this separately in one of the points below.

Enhancing Gear

Enhancing gear is perhaps the simplest aspect of character development, implemented as follows. Each gear element provides three effects - increasing two of the character's base stats and increasing one of the character's secondary stats. These effects can be enhanced by raising their level from 0 to the maximum possible - 3. For this, you only need 1 copy of the gear element and 1 consumable item called a Catalyst.

Due to the presence of a failure chance and a system guaranteeing an enhancement after X failures, in the worst-case scenario, fully enhancing one effect will require 41 copies of the element and 41 Catalysts. This unusual number is due to the following reason: for the first guaranteed enhancement, you need to accumulate 6 failures, then 12, and finally 20.

Weapon Cores

Weapon Cores are, in my opinion, the most complex and very lengthy (especially if you want a perfect core) aspect of character development, structured as follows.

Each weapon has three effects - two of them increase certain base or secondary stats of the character, and the third provides a special additional passive buff with a specific activation condition.
Each effect can be enhanced by increasing its level - At the maximum level 90 for an orange-grade weapon, the first two effects can be upgraded to level 9, and the third – to level 4.
You can only increase the level of effects by installing a Core with similar effects into the weapon; a Core can also have up to 3 effects.
Core effects are determined randomly, and despite the existence of a system that allows you to slightly influence the RNG, obtaining a Core with two effects you need is quite difficult, let alone three.
Each Core effect can be enhanced by increasing its level, which is then added to the weapon's effect level. This requires a Core with a copy of that effect. Even though Cores drop with random effect levels, when enhancing, the level always increases by +1. That is, you cannot feed a level 5 effect into a level 2 effect to get level 7.
Naturally, there is a chance of failure when attempting to increase the level, and in this case, you receive a special resource - Gel. By collecting a certain amount of Gel, you can spend it on a guaranteed level increase; the higher the effect level, the more Gel is required.

Ship Management

On the ship named OMV Dijiang, there are several modules and important objects that you interact with daily to achieve various goals. First, the level of each upgradable module needs to be raised to the maximum possible third level, and the level of the ship's main control nexus – to level 5. It's important to note that you can manage the ship from a separate interface by pressing the I key, but to upgrade a module/nexus, you have to approach it.

Also, ideally, you should place 3 characters with special passives into each module, which increase its work efficiency. For each character, you unlock the first such passive in their skill tree at level 20, and its only upgrade so far – at level 60. Essentially, this is the most compelling reason to level up all characters to level 20/60. In general, each character has 4 such passives, but the upgrade for the second one unlocks at level 80.

Next, a brief overview of each module and important object.

Reception Area

Contains a teleportation circle to other players and an Evidence Collection room. In the latter, you receive a random piece of evidence daily, which is placed into one of seven slots. If you receive a duplicate, you can send it to friends, and they, in turn, can send you what you're missing.

Incubation Module

Allows you to cultivate plants, mushrooms, and minerals of various grades. They are necessary for unlocking passives in the character skill tree and...