One of the most daunting questions facing players looking to jump into Hypergryph‘s Arknights Endfield is, “Which characters do I build first?” While there are already numerous videos and other references advising players on which characters are the most powerful, most of this content focuses on the game purely from a power perspective, often assuming that money and time aren’t major concerns. But what if you are F2P or even low-spend without endless hours available to grind out missions and resources?
With these restrictions in mind, we’ve assembled this list. Rather than crunching sheer numbers, I looked at which characters among the starting roster feel the most flexible. Which operators look like they will bring the most potential synergy to teams, making them likely to fit in with the highest number of allies, even if the results aren’t as explosive as other choices.
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How to build versatile operators in Arknights Endfield as a F2P player.
With these builds, players who don’t have the funds to pull the perfect squad or the time to endlessly upgrade new operators can be confident that the ones they have focused on have a high chance of transferring to a new team when additions are made.
Keeping with the F2P focus in mind, the following Arknights Endfield operators list consists of two four-star operators, one five-star, one standard six-star, and one premium six-star. This way, there is a greater focus on the operators players are most likely to acquire, while giving some recommendations for those bigger hits as well.
5) Antal (4-star)
The first of our four stars, Antal, provides a strong starting point for teams centered on heal or electric damage. His battle skill puts Focus on the targeted enemy, granting it susceptibility to both elemental types. His Ultimate provides heat and an electric amp for his entire team, further boosting damage from those avenues.
His combo trigger nudges him a little outside of his core focus, as it relies on any physical or arts infliction being applied to his focused character. This gives him a little extra versatility if someone on the team strays outside his core focus.
4) Flourite (4-star)
Much like her four-star compatriot, Flourite largely focuses on two elemental types, in her case, cryo and nature. Her battle skill applies nature infliction, and her ultimate increases the stacks of cryo and nature infliction on a target. Nature is a great infliction type to have, since it is key to creating corrosion and powering basic nature abilities.
But while her kit is heavily invested in the elemental side of the combat spectrum, she also steps outside it a bit, too. Her battle skill also inflicts slow, and one of her passives increases her damage to targets suffering from that infliction. This gives her a role in parties geared toward the more physical side of the combat kits as well.
3) Perlica (5-Star)
The five-star operators in Arknights Endfield bring the most specialized selection of characters, making the category the hardest to pick. Nevertheless, as she frequently does in the game’s story, it is the Endminister’s right hand, Perlica, who came through in the clutch for me.
While Peerlica solely focuses on doing electric damage, this starting game operator does provide some broad applications within her kit. Most notable is her combo. Triggered off the controlled character performing a final strike, it is the easiest combo trigger in the game.
This ability applies temporary Electricification to the target, amplifying arts damage. Plus, one of her passives allows her to strike a second character with the ability if the primary target is vulnerable. The solid amount of across-the-board arts amplification Perlica can deliver, and the ease with which it can be applied, give her more versatility than her kit suggests at first glance.
2) Ardelia (Standard 6-star)
Given that Ardelia is available for free to anyone who logs into Arknights Endfield on three separate days, it’s great to see her bringing a versatile kit to the game. Her battle skill works in conjunction with corrosion, allowing her to apply both physical and arts susceptibility. While corrosion requires an enemy to be hit by both a nature infliction and any one other type, it’s still fairly easy to set up. And providing a nearly across-the-board damage buff for the cost is well worth it.
The other thing that makes Aredlia a great pick is her passive, Friendly Presence. Once unlocked, both her battle skill and ultimate provide healing in the shape of adorable sheep she scatters around the battlefield. This allows her to provide both offensive and defensive aid.
1) Gilberta (Premium 6-star)
The veritable Swiss Army Knife of operators, Gilbeta provides some measure of aid for virtually every team configuration you can build. And while she is a premium pulled character, her banner is second in line, giving F2P players some time to build up resources for her.
Gilberta applies several status effects across her kit. Her combo applies slow to enemies, and her ultimate applies nature infliction, slow, and arts suspetabilty. This wide range of benefits alone ensures the operator can help most teams.
Further adding to her offensive support abilities is her battle skill, which has a powerful grouping effect. This allows both herself and other operators to be able to catch the most enemies possible with AOE effects, as well as set up main DPS operators for powerful group attacks.
While much of her kit is offensive-oriented, Gilberta can also directly buff her allies. One of her passive abilities gives an ultimate charge buff to every caster, defender, and support-type operator on your team. Meaning you’ll get to see your party’s biggest moves that much faster with her on the field.
With tons of powerful characters and a multitude of avenues for them to interact with each other, Arknights: Endfield offers a plethora of ways for players to explore their team comps. Hopefully, this list helps you pick some strong, flexible characters to build, ensuring that you have some basic building blocks ready for your teams, no matter what the gacha gods give you in your pulls.
Arknights: Endfield is available now for mobile, PC, and PlayStation 5.
