Stream: Arknights Endfield
Dive into Arknights Endfield through my perspective. This page serves as a living journal, updated daily with bite-sized reviews, exclusive video highlights, and curated screenshot galleries from my adventure.
Wuling First Part End?!
If you remember in my last post on Arknights Endfield ( https://blog.emptyblue.it/impression/arknights-endfield-yvonne-laevatain-and-gilberta-side-stories ) I was excited about completing the Wuling storyline and getting to make a new article talking about my experience with it, so I decided to start today and try to get it done in one sitting.
Food and drinks ready on the side, time to do a long session trying to get it complete. There was a lot of good will believe me.
Issue is that the story abruptly ends after getting the first village side-PAC (Tangtang's base in the Stockade) with basically nothing resolved and only very little information revealed at all. We got to know the vice-roy of the city (Zhuang Fangyi), a few other officials (Mi Fu for example) and the basic premise which is all centered around Xiranite production needed to power the defenses that are keeping the city safe from the blight that is expanding.
There is no real info given about the goals of the villains nor about what we're going to do to try and stop them. I understand they couldn't put the entire storyline in the first patch, but this feels hacked away without a reasoning around it. This isn't a "natural breaking point" that allows you to say "oh, this piece is done, let's wait for the next one".
Now we'll need to wait until the patch 1.1 (which is going to be mid-late March 2026) to see how it continues. I guess I'll go back at doing just dailies and wait for it I guess. There's not even a reasonably big amount of facilities in the Wuling AIC to focus on factory building either, kind of disappointing.
Gilberta's kindness as a messenger
I was expecting this to take a longer time considering the length of Yvonne and Laevatain side stories (around 2 hours-ish each), but turns out Gilberta was an extremely quick one compared to those two and it honestly left me a bit dumbfounded when it completed out of the blue. Gilberta is a messenger, someone who delivers letters and packages (we do have three "challenges" during the gameplay to deliver three packages with specific conditions like "don't run or jump") and her story is focused on one particular delivery that makes her encounter a tragedy story between two researchers studying a water filter.
It's something reminiscing of Shigofumi, an old anime about a mail carrier bringing letters from the departed to the living. Of course dumbed down for gacha audiences, but I still enjoyed it overall. Gilberta is quite a sweet character and a lot more innocent/pure compared to the more war-rugged people we encountered so far (except maybe Ardelia of those that come to mind). She's striving to do the best for everyone around her, but sometimes she feels down and being with Endmin helps relieve some of that pain.
There's technically Wulfgard's side story remaining, but I'll leave that for another day as I'm tired and focus on writing an article on the main blog now. I'll link it from here once I'm done. Next stop will be more Wuling!
Yvonne's character and personality
I just finished reading Yvonne's side story leaving only Gilberta to do before I can write up a new article about it in the main blog. Honestly I'm still processing my emotions about it and I won't go in detail. Instead I want to talk a bit about Yvonne's character and personality and how they were a complete divergence compared to my expectations from before getting to know her.
I remember seeing art of her online in the pre-release period and some excerpt about her role in the storyu and I was imagining a scientist, proud, arrogant and maybe a bit tsundere toward everyone. Well I was completely wrong.
Yvonne turned out to be a gal-like pal that you can spend the day chatting around, she goes along with jokes and likes to play doing things. She's approachable, direct and even affectionate in the way she interact with others. However, she also understands how other people see her and try to play along even though internally she is hurt. In the main story you can see everyone is walking around trying to avoid the topic and she goes along to keep her cheerful self always in front of others.
She's a good girl, plain and simple and I really really love her. Between the characters I've got to know within Arknights Endfield so far (haven't finished the Wuling storyline yet) she's definitely my favorite one by a long distance. I can't wait for her banner to come around in 9 days as I want to roll and start playing with her as main character.
I played a little bit as her during the battle segment and she seems to be fun, I also have Last Rite so I can probably do an ice team. Need to see what material to farm...
Endministrator's fears and worries
I started the Laevatain side story expecting it to be mostly about her character and past. Some sort of introduction of her character to the story (as she doesn't appear in the main narrative so far), but turns out it's really a side story focused on the protagonist Endmin so far (1 hour-ish in). It seems like the courageous and perfect character we've seen in the main story was just her acting strong to not disappoint all the people that were putting trust into her. Be it Perlica, Chen or the various other characters of Valley IV that fully trusted her despite her having no memories about why.
There are strong parallels between Laevatain and Endmin because both of them lack memories of their past and both are searching for them which makes them resonate as kindred spirits.
I can totally understand her fears and worries surfacing as visions in this special dimension. "What if what I do is wrong compared to what the old Endmin would do?" "What if I don't manage to reach the level of expectations that they have in me?"
I don't know if the visions that we've seen so far of Endmin's past are real or purely a materialization of his worries, but they were quite scary so much her personality was different. She seemed more of a dictator dominating other people than a savior trying to save them.
But then again, everyone else praising us so much in the main story already made me extremely suspicious of their motives. Perlica especially as she seems to be the most "devoted" to Endmin, but doesn't seem to want to elaborate about their past together.
I plan on doing a post on the main blog about the side stories as a whole once I finish all three side stories so stay tuned for it.
Date Scene with Zhuang Fangyi
I'm just continuing with the story of Wuling and I went through the scene where Perlica and Chen leaves us alone with Fangyi after the experiment with Xiranite and seriously this seemed like a date scene between Endmin and her. Walking around the city, watching the blooming flowers, buying a balloon each, her narrating about the old times (that protagonist doesn't remember) and even taking Endmin's hand when chasing a robot with clearly camera angles to show this in a romantic comedy way.
I mean they even had a firework show at the end of the date with some special illumination being set to please the crowd. Kind of a contrast considering the city is supposedly one step away from disaster.
I'm not sure what kind of relationship Endmin and Zhuang Fangyi had in the past (maybe they'll talk about it later), but it must've been quite a close one. Are they trying to ship her as a possible romantic interest? Curious also to know her age to be honest, I'm guessing late 20s / early 30s is the most likely bet considering the time skip since Endmin went to sleep, but they seem tight lipped when it comes to this.
On gameplay news, I haven't looked in detail at the new structures needed for Wuling yet, but the first few I've seen in action don't seem much more complicated than the Valley IV ones. The tube/fluid connection system is cool and could be interesting to see how to keep the interconnections working once the entire map is filled with facilities.
Zhuang Fangyi's character design is perfect!
The Vice-Roy of Wuling Zhuang Fangyi was just introduced and, just like many other characters, she knows the Endministrator pretty well. Apparently she was an intern back when they first met and look at her now becoming the most influential and powerful person in Wuling. When I first saw her defending the city with that special form, I honestly wasn't that impressed. She felt a bit generic, but the moment we enter the city and see her real form I was completely blown away.
She has a soft contours on her face that makes it easy to see that she's soft, calm and not the "stern leader" I was expecting. Add to the top the amazing voice of Houko Kuwashima (also known for her role of Lauma in Genshin Impact) and we have a really memorable character).
I'm absolutely gonna roll for her once the banner drops and yeah, she's definitely going to be a 6*, her design is way too perfect to be anything else. Hopefully can manage to accumulate enough rolls as I want Yvonne too...
The city of Wuling is gorgeous in both design and visuals. It seems like a modern city in terms of services while also retaining some of the chinese inspired elements from the historical standpoint making it blend almost perfectly that it doesn't feel jarring. They did an incredible job here and I'm quite excited to explore it in the future. At the moment I'm focused on trying to get the first PAC in the area so that I can gather the materials needed to uncap the characters to level80 as I upgraded my exploration level just recently and I don't want to be too low level for the areas, but I will get back to explore the city fully afterward.
There are various problems at the moment in Wuling with Aggeloi attacking the city pretty much nonstop and the supplies of Xiranite are running out so we have only three months to solve the situation before the city will fall. But surely they can wait until I set up my PAC right? *looks away*
Tangtang introduction! She's so cute!
Just arrived in Wuling and we almost immediately had after a meeting with Nefarith and her associate/boss named Ardashir (who also seems to know us from before memory loss). There seems to be way too many connections between Endmin and these for it to be coincidence, just what exactly happened the last time we awakened? Were we ally with them? The story seems to imply that we kept sleeping and awakening every x years to solve the issues of humanity and this time it may be the last time due to the damage we accumulated.
Either way, we just met the cutest new character being introduced so far in Tangtang. Apparently she's the leader of some bandit group called Qingbo Stockade roaming the area and had a past with Chen. She's extremely easy to please and manipulate and we're playing interested to join her group to avoid a direct confrontation. Honestly quite like these stupid skits with even the Endmin playing along.
Tangtang doesn't feel like a 6* character so I expect her to be the 5* released next patch. Curious to see what other characters are there as we're supposed to get two 6* characters. I would guess Rossi from Valley IV could be a good option too as her design is way too well made to be purely an NPC.
The visuals of Wuling are way higher quality compared to Valley IV and it feels like the first real big story arc is about to start. As expected this is the "chinese inspired" zone that almost all these gacha games like to put as second zone. Usually I have mixed feeling about these zones because historically they haven't been great (see Liyue in Genshin or Luofu in Star Rail), but I'm always open to be surprised about them. Let's see where the story goes!
Frontline Rush
After a bit of pause due to many other events in other games taking my time, I'm back to Endfield main story and I hope to finish at least the first arc today. This seems to be the final-ish chapter in which we charge against the Landbreakers and defeat them once and for all in Valley IV. Apparently UWST has a special protocol that allows us to get artillery support in battle to destroy the denstacks.
The pattern is the same as we saw in the previous quests, reach a particular objective mark and then destroy it. Nothing too exciting, but I guess it's the preamble before the inevitable super boss we'll have to face. At least they allow you to skip through most of the minor mobs without forcing you to fight the entire way through.
I'm curious to see if they'll let Nefarith escape after the inevitable showdown battle because the character design seems to be too good to waste it in this prologue of sort in Valley IV.
In the last few days I raised the levels of my characters a bit (lvl60 now), but still far away from maxing them. I also picked Last Rite from the free ticket they gifted us and Pogranichnik from the standard banner.
The factory business seems to be pretty straightforward to expand (even though I've still not fully used all the space available yet), but I find myself always in pain trying to get the rare materials needed to upgrade the characters. Some are placed in particular places hard to reach that require specific quests or other conditions.
Rossi Wulfgard introduction in Endfield
Rossi was just introduced in the story (member of the Wulfgard) and seems like she knows the Endmin since before the stasis and she idolizes her completely. Just how old is she? She looks in her teens, maybe 20 so it's likely she only heard stories from other people about Endmin.
I'm still a bit puzzled about the whole goal of the story so far, we're trying to expand the use of Originium in Talos-2, but that's exactly what Doctor from the first game was trying to avoid because of the consequences of using it (health related even if it seems they can mostly control the side effects in this world).
The Endmin lost his memories so we don't know the full details of his goals, but the two seems to be completely opposite. Many theories are surfacing online about the connections between Doctor and Endmin (alluding that Endmin might be connected with the villain of the original game), but nothing that is actually revealed in the story.
Huge Panda in my factories
In order to get more space to produce more factories I decided to get the Park settlement too and whoa, we have the same type of animal guys here too. He does look very...interesting. I guess it's the same of the original Arknights where girls are more human like with small animal traits and males are...pretty animal.
I'm starting the seed planting factories lines and honestly the main problem I have so far is the limited number of ports that are available in the PAC and the depots to connect to. I unlocked the splitter, but then I need to rebuild my lines to make use of it which will take me out even some more time.
I need to check if there are other useful tools in the tech tree because rebuilding everything from scratch every time a new tool drops in can be quite exhausting.
Factory building is quite addictive to be honest
I've been spending the last few hours going through to make a few production lines, but I also need to increase my exploration because I haven't unlocked nearly enough blueprints for building all the materials I need in my factories.
This kind of gameplay seems complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to go smoothly and you get a lot of fun out of it. Maybe it's just my OCD though as I love seeing well organized things.
I'm at rank 25 in the game so I have another story chapter unlocked that I should go through soon, but I'll probably spend a few more hours tinkering with this before. The story can wait, need to produce more!
Yvonne outfit from behind is...hot!
Yvonne’s outfit is really something, damn. Especially when you see it from behind like in that picture. The tight, low-waist jeans fit her design surprisingly well and give her a much more modern, almost casual vibe compared to what I was expecting. After listening to her voice a bit more, she also comes off as leaning pretty hard into the gal side of things, at least in the JP voice version.
Now it looks like she’s going to guide us deeper into the facility, and honestly? I guess I’ll just follow her and see where this goes. Apparently Laevatain’s event story unlocks after this section is done, which has me pretty curious. I want to see what kind of rewards they’re offering and, more importantly, how the event system in this game actually works in practice.
Yvonne waiting room for her release
Finally Yvonne shows in the story. Her character design is downright stunning, I can't wait for her to be released in the gacha in 34 days. Story keeps being very generic so far, but it's good enough that I don't get bored of it.
I just heard the stories about the Paypal issues that people had for the first few hours since the game was released. Apparently it was so bad that they had to refund all and leave the currency. This feels unfair to other players if they don't give enough compensation.
Who exactly is Nefarith?
So looks like the villain we faced in the first chapter (Nefarith) is actually someone who was part of the Endfield group and defected. Or at least involved with them during the GLOOM project, this smells like someone who could possibly become playable in the future with the right twisting of the story
Endmin amnesia is a convenient plot device and honestly I'm not 100% sure that all the characters around us are being fully honest about our past. Especially Perlica that seems to be overly keen in making us continue the colonization of this world.
Overall so far, the setting of this series seems to be quite leaning on the dark side, but I wonder how far will they go there.
Tutorial hell is real
The sheer amount of tutorials in this game is insane, but I understand the reasoning behind it. I can already see people saying that the factory building part is "too complicated" online. It's fun though, I'm probably going to get addicted to try and get a good lineup of production with very well defined geometries.
It's not like I have a choice anyway, need to get to level 15 to unlock the next main story and this feels like the best way to raise levels...
I'm somehow hoping they add a skip functionality somehow down the line as I don't want to go ahead through them to get the "special reward" for doing the extra objectives in the few where I decided to skip over.
Laevatain Gacha Victory - Both character and weapon
Completed the chapters needed to complete the tutorial and now I have a good grasp of the main gameplay loop. I also got Laevatain and her weapon from the gacha as well. I'm enjoying the game enough to accept paying for battle pass and the monthly packs like I do for Hoyoverse games. Now we start saving for the upcoming units and start exploring the game, but before doing that I'll write up a post on the main blog about it.
I need to sneak search what are the upcoming units...
Factorio gameplay basic explanation
They finally explained how the Factorio gameplay works in Arknights Endfield. You basically build your own production line and link the various elements together from the "provide materials to factory piece from the storage" to the "bring back the manufactured item back into the storage".
In this case I attached as a screenshot I linked a refinery to the main building so that it gets the materials and send back the refined items back to the warehouse. That's quite nifty, need to go and do the same for the other facilities I built elsewhere after I'm done here.
Eventually it'll become a matter of adjusting the various elements to fit in the limited space they give you and make the most efficient production lines to limit the time in transit.
Story has been quite mild so far...
Going through the story, but so far it's mostly very mild standard story of helping locals and learning about the various mechanics in the game like building outposts and positioning material gathering etc...
So far so good, but I wonder if there is a global way to easily gather all materials from all the facilities because otherwise it may become quite a hassle if you need to do a chase around your buildings every day for the dailies. But well maybe they'll teach me that in a future tutorial.
Arknights Endfield Journal start!
I started playing Arknights Endfield just a hour ago and it's honestly extremely polished, it works on smartphones and on my PC smooth as butter. I still don't have a strong opinion on the story itself right now as it's still very early, but gameplay wise it's enjoyable even the factory building content. I'll make a post on it once I get enough of a view on story and content. Probably later today. I'll keep using this page to talk about the series as a whole.
Release countdown (-5 days)
5 days-ish to the release of Arknights Endfield. I'm going to be in the first line playing it and I'm really curious about the story as I've tried to stay as spoiler-free as possible up to today. I know of the Factorio gameplay and the fact that they are trying to please multiple types of players, but that's pretty much it.
Hopefully it'll be a smooth launch without too many issues or instability. I know some may be inevitable, but I would like to avoid the disaster that Wuwa got in the first patch.
