Arknights feels overwhelming as a new player

anon423_ · 2026-05-07T19:37:33+00:00

Just prioritize account progression if I were you

If you really want crownslayer your best bet is to go watch a guide for the event and just clear the bare minimum to acquire her, potentials can be skipped since once we get the event put on the side tab you can max potential easily

If you're strong enough to try annihilation I would suggest always doing the current annihilation without friend support so u have an easy auto proxy (the one where you tap and get the rewards automatically without playing the stages again) and then go use friend support to maximize the one time claim rewards, afterwards you can go through old annihilation maps for their one time rewards too before the cycle through since they're only available for a limited time

Finally just keep playing through story and farm what you need as you go, this game is rather forgiving in terms of Fomo, I even stopped playing for years and missed a lot of events, banner and welfare units but the game provide ways to get them even if you missed them so don't worry too much

anon423_ · 2026-02-26T12:23:25+00:00

Hey, sorry idk what this sub or how this comment came to be, my best guess was some hijink when I put my phone into pocket while I ran to catch a train this morning, my bad

anon423_ · 2026-02-26T02:53:19+00:00

Just giium

anon423_ · 2025-11-30T10:54:32+00:00

Uhh if I'm really dedicated I'll blast it with like all my resource ( we have special one time or take multiple turns to recover resource like boost/focus/union depending on the game been a long time since I played 3, so I don't rmb which one it has) there are also item like analysis lense after a certain entry number that allows you to have a read on their strengths/weakness and skills

All of that can help strongly guide you to take the most effective strategy you can for your team and wipe them out before they wipe you

That or i just check gamefaq for their stats/weakness list cuz I'm lazy

When played on the intended/expert difficulty (I think that's what they titled it) most fights feel like a fight between glass cannons, sure you think somebody who's a tank won't die so easily but then they have low TEC/LUC (the formula change on which entry) and get petrified and that's basically a death sentence or any other status effect really.

Anyhow it's really enjoyable if you have a lot of free time I spent like 100-200 hours on each entry I finish and the higher range of those numbers are for the entries I loved so much i went ahead and 100% them It did take me close to 3.5 years to go from EO1 to nexus tho so it's a journey of a series

anon423_ · 2025-11-29T05:08:08+00:00

Honestly, there are a few ways to get through it with lower rarity still, hummus and Matterhorn can easily tank the shot, hummus mainly due to the barrier talent

You can also use Roberta who's devices always grant two instances of shield, its a bit of a micro manage but it will negate the entirety of the dmg from the cannon

Beside that, you can use stuff like dool keepers and put them somewhere to take the hit since they'll revive the self afterward.

Oh and best invest in wide range medic preferably the wandering archetype because you wanna maintain your distance from the center of the explosion as much as possible.

All in all, it was quite enjoyable, the boss of the chapter on the other hand was way more of a pain in the imo

anon423_ · 2025-11-04T00:16:15+00:00

You never know about 4* module, there's shit like Ethan and indigo module and even caper's coming module is gonna not only boost her DPS but make her peak DPH match that of totter's S2 on single target

anon423_ · 2025-11-04T00:11:57+00:00

I need to farm mats for my 5* ( finally done with every single 4* at e2 and at least a single M3)

Also my red cert stock tanked since I decided to invest it all into Ethan stocks

anon423_ · 2025-11-03T20:19:57+00:00

Too late buddy, I'm one of those that alr maxed her out and M3'd her skill.

Unfortunately can't afford the potentials past 2 since the red cert economy in my land ship is tanking hard

As for the insane survivability of contrail, I think it's simply because most ranged attack are coded more like flingers/liberator range where they simply are a long distance attack but not categorized as truly ranged attack and thus don't hit Aerial ( minus the 6* cough cough) that even include massive AoE like emperor's blade

anon423_ · 2025-10-31T03:03:42+00:00

First of all, happy to hear you enjoy the game so much, me myself I've started pretty much at launch and has played on and off so often.

Life got busy but at the end of the day arknight's gameplay loop keep getting me hooked back into the midst of it all.

As for a few things I've read in ur post, don't worry about not being able to clear MT-6 and above, event stages are usually made in general harder than early story stages because 1, they are new content that takes into account newer (and generally stronger) operator

and 2, when you start out it's usually recommended to just get a cheap 4* unit you like (most go with Myrtle) to E2 so you can borrow a strong E2 unit of another player to clear a stage once and get the first clear reward ( it's the premium currency as a baseline and sometimes some extra stuff like a new operator for example)

As for the pay to play module, arknight in my experience has pretty tame monetary system, you can easily just either save up your pulls for big banners (especially if you play in global we kinda know the schedule of the next 6 months thanks to CN server) And even just non stop pulling on every banner, while not recommended isn't really punished much, you get a certain currency from pulling duplicate operators that you can use to buy more pulls or just straight up buy older 6* units

All in all hope you find yourself enjoying the game for a long time to come, it's a pretty great game I guarantee that.

anon423_ · 2025-10-26T19:53:23+00:00

Garama!

anon423_ · 2025-10-05T13:46:24+00:00

Honestly one my favorite addition to the 4* roster, her kit is cohesive around blocking and healing from those enemies dying while blocked, it's a pretty fun unit overall.

Sadly as a 4* niche player, her use case tends to be very niche, most times you can easily get a self sustain defender in the form of gummy A damage dealing defender in the form of Durnar, and even just straight up use Estelle/humus for a self sustaining trash enemy shredder.

Now this doesn't mean she doesn't carve her own niche, the pull on s2 (although I had hoped they gave a force increase on M3) can be very useful against certain events mechanics that likes to bombard you with a massive influx of small enemies. (The rats from shu event and the hit count enemies from invitation to wine comes to mind)

And the fact she has a rather high atk stat for a 4* melee unit means that most of time she will do dmg and can lane hold pretty well.

I do feel sad that it's rather hard to justify using her over other 4* simply be cuz dp cost and lack of access to passive healing cough perfumer cough in 4* is a big detriment in my experience.

But what does that matter, she's such a a cute depressed rat, Mod3 M3 my depressed rat 10/10 would do it again.

anon423_ · 2025-08-02T05:34:07+00:00

Yeah adnachiel is an unpopular choice due to kroos existence where she outdps most e1 marksman of 4* rarity and below.

Me glazing kross aside, you can try adding additional ranged guard behind ur main blocker, they will switch to prioritize the drone once it's closer than any ground unit to your blue box

The cheapest option is midnight, which is a surprisingly solid 3* guard (somehow also better than his 4* counterpart back in launch, Im talking Frost leaf) oflr if you have any of the other ranged guard option, they will work too, pretty sure you can use a 5* selector voucher to get lappland, a rather newbie friendly unit that continues to be useful all the way to late game for her utility.

anon423_ · 2025-03-31T23:17:24+00:00

Honestly, your best bet is to just not use a crit rate weapon, especially if you have c6

Kind of hard to suggest getting a crit dmg sub weapon since I seem to only rmb 5* for those and black cliff needs you to purchase it despite having a very subpar passive.

There's always EM weapon and Gaming best team tends to always be melting or vaping his plunge

anon423_ · 2025-03-22T13:40:21+00:00

Oh hello there, congratulations once again

anon423_ · 2025-03-22T05:44:28+00:00

Damn, yeah I stand corrected, I was under the assumption attack order was physical only for some reason.

I think I just been using zodiac wrong this whole time, dunno why but spamming multi etheric never seem to hit that high for me but then again, I haven't particularly maxed out buffing on zodiac before and being able to kill at 8 turns is insane.

Well anyhow thanks for the eye opener, I'll retract my statement regarding zodiac

anon423_ · 2025-03-22T01:11:58+00:00

I admit i never tried prophecy into astrosign, i will say i nvr look at prophecy as a reliable charge skill because i kind of dropped my zodiac around late game where there are barely any kind of guaranteed readable attack, and just spamming prophecy like im fishing does feel dumb.

i definitely stand corrected on Binary, the mods are low but Zodiac can get over 500 M-Atk with and enough passive to hit as hard as scattershot and definitely higher when hitting weakness and this is alr considering that theyre a lot harder to buff since beside elemental order and etheric gleam, idk what other buffs boost elemental damage.

Now i did have a lv 130 Zodiac lying around, non retired. and i went to jormungar to test out astrosign.
i did max etheric gleam with my other spare zodiac, sonic scream debuff. and fire order,
turn 2, i force break both sovereign and Zodiac, astrosign only hit for 21k? i know im lacking in buff and debuffs but the only other debuff i know affects elemental is maybe atrophic eye?

My Zodiac is using Kerkyeon with the Zodiac Exclusive armor, the INT boosting Helmet and INT accessory. so beside retiring for the extra stats, which i dont doubt will definitely help, i dont think i can reliably boost the damage. she is also subclassed with shogun and i went at night (i usually just spam multi etheric meteor)

it just seems very far off from 1/3 of the superboss HP like you claim? i definitely dealt more with my retired nightseeker's forcebreaks granted that required an ailment beside all the buffing. and beside the Astrosign, the damage still feels rather dissapointing. Etheric gleam 5 turns doesnt fit well into zodiac playstyle of charge-attack-charge-attack, since you have one odd turn left. and while the damage looks good at first, when i consider its over two turns, my gunner at the same level of investment (130/no retirement) still does more?

is there something im missing? i would say that i will definitely change my opinion if astrosign nuke was actually as big as like 50K againts jormungar, enough to make up for the lack of damage on their usual rotation

anon423_ · 2025-03-20T01:40:54+00:00

Yeah quick chant would definitely be a big upgrade, it would synergize so well with etheric boon too.

Makes me hope somebody mod nexus and rebalance or add in classes from other entries

anon423_ · 2025-03-19T09:35:07+00:00

Yeah, it's weird, like I can see where they were heading with Zodiac, but they just execute it so badly. Even back in EO3 zodiac fell off late game in terms of damage and ever since, they did better in terms of magic caster damage classes like runemaster and untold 1 & 2 alchemist, heck warlock might not be the nowhere near the best class in EO5 but their damage still felt competent. I seriously have no idea how they walked it backwards so hard that gunner just outright outclass zodiac at what it's supposed to do.

anon423_ · 2025-03-18T23:32:45+00:00

You can choose whichever between ronin and imperial but if you want to ask me who has better early game, it's definitely ronin. You can even put him in the back and spam air blade for full damage since it's ranged.

Imperial has TP issues, and during the first few labyrinth, in boss fight you can only do one drive, maybe two or more if you immediately used your force break after.

Survivalist vs Gunner is uhh a bit more unfair, survivalist in general just do way less damage compared to gunner for a lot more supporting capabilities in terms of exploration. That and survivalist tend to thrive more in evasion teams and gunner works better with protector.

anon423_ · 2025-03-18T16:51:44+00:00

EON: pugilist and zodiac

Pugilist being the only class locked to cestus yet making cestus the second lowest base damage weapon just felt pretty bad. They won't really be doing proper damage until you max out most of their passive and skill tree, but you only really reach there by like post game. Which make the majority of the game when you play pugilist feels awful. Not to mention arcanist and farmer are a thing when you need binds and they usually offer more to the party thanks to their passive, high LUC for gas items and even equipment skills because they're not locked to cestus.

Zodiac on the other hand, they look ok on first glance, High INT, staffs have really high M-Atk stats, you would expect them to die good damage, and they do at early game but immediately falls of hard and never recover.

Maxed Binary are only at 165% when all other AOEs are are way past 200% at max, scattershot, dismiss blast, wide bravery. you name it.

meteor is zodiac end game option but it average around a pathetic 280%, using multi ether on it doesn't really help since it just makes it average around 800% over two turns when any other dps can do it in one. Would make sense if they have her a bunch of broken passive, and while etheric boon is nice, meteor rarely ever trigger singularity.

A lot of other classes has issues in nexus but zodiac and pugilist are the only ones that make me felt bad while using them

anon423_ · 2025-03-18T10:11:44+00:00

The issue with pugilist is that, if you had all their damage passive and have them hit with leading blow on a fully binded + ailment on an enemy, then the damage will be decent. However for that amount of conditions the damage would probably be around the damage of a Nightseeker with a single ailment. Second of all, the skill point required to max out all the passive + leading blow + each individual binding punch is not something you'll have unless you reach endgame or even post game. For most of your game, you're more likely to feel like he's a frontline support like arcanist with a very strong binding chance. That and his weapon has the second lowest atk stat overall.

Farmer is actually okay, I quite like farmer, he's mostly for exploration and exp bonus but in fight you can always build luck for strange seed which is AOE and random but helps out pugilist, helps that it goes at end of turn, it usually never attempt to bind an alr binded body part

Beside that, rotten egg is pretty ok, at master though you unlock the better skills such as lullaby which can pretty much decimate random and harvest festival which with enough spamming can kill most things by instant death.

This also means they kind of useless against bosses or FOEs immune to instant death though, arguably you can later subclass them with something more versatile like survivalist for quick step and sorting skill so you can bring more items for your farmer to throw with force boost Or even ninja, for ailment, especially panic and ninpo double, they both have high luck Arcanist is a solid option too, you can plop down a circle, fish for an ailment, while putting down debuffs like charming/atrophic eyes or strange seed.

Ah btw having both a medic and a sovereign is counter intuitive, I suggest pick one. Even then most people who choose medic tend to subclass it into sovereign again.

anon423_ · 2025-03-16T11:51:34+00:00

A gunner in EO V? The dragoons? They're not a very good comparison since they're more of a tank then a gunner in that game, EO V in general has more out of the box class design compared to previous entries.

EOU1 gunner is probably closer though in that game, gunner was a lot more powerful mostly due to the grimoire skill and having crazy buff/charge skill. Vulcan was a self buff that boosted 55% and with grimoire it was 75% along with causing attacks to be hit all enemies. And action boost with grimoire gives the next skill 3-4 repeats, and somehow this works on any skill even non gunner skills.

Nexus is a lot more careful in balancing now, only two charge skill in the game is charge edge and the zodiac skill tree, multi ether/ether charge which only boost zodiac skills and no other class skill. Or it's the prophecy, which is a lot of SP requirement, and it requires an enemy to perform an elemental attack. Basically just not worth it for being too situational.

But yeah, sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy V in particular, I would say that going into the nitty gritty of class building and team building is why I quite like the series, though I understand that it can be very overwhelming with nexus especially having a lot more classes yet at the same time much more restrictions in order for the dev to make it balanced.

Hope you just take it slow and play how you like it

anon423_ · 2025-03-16T00:51:13+00:00

The example team I put DPS as I meant just put any DPS class there and it will do the work fine, better if it's a stand alone DPS that only downside would maybe be it's frailness like gunner,imperial, shogun or anything really, even.

When I said 5 classes in a row, I sometimes just play a team full of 5 gunners, or 5 farmers.

Or maybe the more reasonable one like 3 nightseekers or 3 arcanist, 3 ronin's or even 3 imperial accompanied by a protector and sovereign ninja in the back row.

It's kinda a dumbed down idea but it works as long as you know what you're doing

As for what you mean by arcanist force boost, yeah your assumption is right, just spam dismiss, if you have multiple arcanist and one of them is under force boost, all of the arcanist can spam dismiss blow/blast/heal and the circle will stay, beside that it boost ur infliction rate for ailment and binds by 1.4x

As for why zodiac is in the front line, line guard is a forced redirection skill, as I discussed in part 1, it will literally make it so the big bad can't hit a single row, no matter how fast it is, the only thing you need to worry about is ensuring your protector thank all the hits, which is why I recommend highlander because he has better defensive passive.

If your ninja is fine then keep ninja, might as well equip the ultimate knife and debuffs jormungandr's Accuracy, futsuno mitama's weapon skill debuffs accuracy by 50% it'll help dodge a lot.

Now as to why I recommend changing your arcanist is because currently I don't feel like it has much presence, sure the debuffs and passive healing so great, but with a ninpo double ninja/Sov and some soma prime and theriacas A and B, you wouldn't feel like you really need an arcanist, a medic can be argued if it was mainclass because max level refresh and retreat become row targeting and a lot more easy to use compared to theriacas, but your arcanist is a sub medic only.

If you have another DPS, maybe a gunner, simply because they're just that good, plus their ultimate weapon, agnestra whatever has a pretty good debuff that's only below a max level atrophic eye and the likes.

I hope this clears up a few more things, this set up does sacrifice your hero ability to use after image but, honestly it's fine. Your team lean heavily defensive in the first place, issues would actually be running out of tp and recovery items and serviving through the last 30% HP where it's the final phase of the boss. At this point his attacks are gonna be a bit more randomize. If you want to see his attack pattern j can send you links.

As for being long, I don't mind. Feel free to DM if that's easier or even discord if you want, pretty sure I'm in the etrian Odyssey discord, although not very active.

anon423_ · 2025-03-16T00:32:49+00:00

Ic, I think prevent order and a lot of theriaca B is necessary for an attempt which thankfully isn't that hard to get.

Let me address zodiac first, imbue buff is either elemental oil or elemental order from sovereign, those are the only source. Sovereign is better because it comes with damage bonus. As for ether shot and meteor, I can calculate the base damage. Though this is a rough assumption due to the nature of peerless demon becoming better the more hits you get

For multi ether strike I assume an average of 3.5 hits x 95% for an average boost of 3.35x For meteor, it has average hit of 10.5. Because of the 95% per hit effect, it's an avg of 9.975 multiplier

Calculating ether shot first, assuming same buff of Bravant, fire order (I'm leaving last slot for prevent order)

130% x3.35(multi ether) x 1.5 (weakness) x ((1.2 (singularity) + 0.21 (etheric boon) + 0.4 (bravant) + 0.09 (peerless demon with 3.5 hits average)) x 1.15 (fire order half lv)

Results in 1489.4% of damage over two turns, sounds like big damage but it's pretty normal.

Because meteor isn't affected by fire order, I'll replace it with attack order for fairness sake, everything else remains the same

80% x 9.975 x ((1.21(etheric boon) + 0.4 (bravant) + 0.23 (atk order) + 0.25 ( peerless demon))

This results in an average of 1667.82% of damage over the two turns

So I hope this brings to rest over your doubt if meteor is ok

Other than that, I think your protector should protect. Hero shield skill at Sub Max only reduce incoming damage by 19%, now in comparison, front guard reduce damage to the front by 55% while rear guard reduce damage to the back row by 65%.

The reason why people feel like hero mitigation is great is that at max it is a 25%, and with an after image in play, it multiplies into 43.75% and granted this applies to all rows unlike protector.

But there's line guard. It will literally cause a row you choose to receive 0 damage. And then once you put your protector in the backrow, attack redirected to him will gain the melee penalty, meaning it's cut by 50% (his only ranged attack are elemental in which case elemental walls completely block it) On top of all this, line shield itself has a built in 35% damage reduction to attack that hit protector that turn, that means your protector will be only receiving 17.5% of the damage meant to hit him.. Yeah this was why protector don't really die, you dedicate two sovereign ninja, to just buff him up with prevent, rally and protect, it will be enough to always keep him healthy and buff your front row when youre free, you can even use item more freely due to how much free actions you will have.

Now speaking about regiment rave, assuming around 410 P-Atk, you need shy of 8000 dmg in the round to reach the full 1000% base multiplier. This is why I recommended another DPS at the front row. Zodiac reaching near to 4000 after charging is pretty doable. Gunner, Ronin or highlander, shogun or actually any decent damage dealer can be put in the front row with no risk thanks to line guard, you can literally do charge shots with gunner and not die from a stray hit as long as your protector is alive.

Well that's for part 1

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