Combat systems based on skill combos are fairly common these days, but Arknights Endfield's adopting such a style involves a bit more nuance compared to other titles. Combat is more methodical, and while it looks simple at first glance, there's actually a lot of complexity lurking beneath the surface. We'll walk through it in this guide Arknights Endfield's The Arts Infliction system, which covers the very basics of how it works, the various elemental reactions players can use, and all the fun stuff you can expect when fighting with your team of Endfield Operators.
How does elemental combat work in Arknights Endfield?
Combat in the game revolves around Inflictions, which cause enemies to react with elemental (and sometimes physical) reactions.. The operator skill can either apply, use or interact with them in various ways.
The disability usually doesn't do anything on its own. However, when the target is hit with another damage while already hit with one, a reaction occurs. The type of reaction you get depends on the element of the skill that triggers, as well as the nature of the skill itself.
For example, endadmin's battle skill is a Physical Damage Crush type skill. Since this is a physical skill, it will always apply vulnerable damage when enemies are hit. When he hits a vulnerable enemy, the Crush part of Endmin's Skill will trigger. Crush consumes Vulnerables to deal more damage to the target's Vulnerables stack.
Meantime, Chen's Battle Skill also deals physical damage, but instead of Crush, her skill is a Lift type.. Since it still deals physical damage, it will also use Vulnerable like Endmin does. However, Lift Skills don't consume vulnerable — instead, they cause multiple stacks of vulnerable while blasting enemies into the air.
Every damage type in the game uses this damage model. Dealing from the first damage will do nothing if the target is not already wearing another deal.
Artistic damage, explosions and reactions
Art is a term Arknights Endfield used to denote four different types of elemental damage: Heat, Cryo, Electric, and Nature. As mentioned above, none of these elements will do anything special unless the target already has some other effect. What differentiates them from the physical damage type is that Arts Inflictions have Burst and Reaction interactions.
What are Arts Bursts?
Arts Burst is a delayed damage event that triggers if you use the same arts damage on an enemy more than once.. If you hit a target with heat damage while they already have heat damage, you will trigger a heat blast that causes your target to take additional heat damage after a short time. The same thing happens with other elements.
Arts Bursts deal more damage based on the hit that triggered them. They are also affected by your operator's Art Intensity stat.
What are artistic responses?
Artistic reaction is what happens when two different artistic damage interact with each other. The reaction is determined by the element of the skill that triggers it, not necessarily by the combination of the elements themselves. For example, an enemy with Electric Infliction will always freeze when hit with Cryo Infliction, but if you reorder the Infliction, you'll get an Electrified reaction instead. The most important is the trigger skill element.
There are four artistic reactions Arknights Endfield:
|
Arknights Endfield elemental reaction |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Reaction |
Trigger element |
Effect |
|
Combustion |
Heat |
Enemies take damage over time |
|
Electrification |
Electric |
Enemies take more Art DMG from all sources |
|
Solidification |
Cryo |
Weak enemies are frozen |
|
Corrosion |
Nature |
Reduces the resistance of enemy elements over time |
When Artifact Reaction is triggered, all Artifact damage is consumed.
Reaction to physical damage
Physical damage does not count as art damage and, with the exception of Cryo, will not interact with other element types. However, there are various physical states that all interact with vulnerable damage:
- Crush consumes Vulnerable or Solidification to deal more damage
- Violation consumes Vulnerable to increase the damage enemies take from physical damage
- Lift knocks vulnerable enemies into the air
- Defeat slams vulnerable enemies to the ground
Lift and Knock Down are valuable for crowd control, while Crush and Breach amplify the damage your operators deal.
Such reactions are not necessarily limited to physical characters. Operators like Ember can deal a combination of physical and art damage with their kit.
Operator-specific interactions
Some operators in Arknights Endfield they have unique interactions with art and physical state systems. They still have the same Apply→Consume principle, but they also have special skills that behave in interesting ways based on the type of damage affecting your enemies.
For example, Wulfguard's Thermite Tracers Skill normally applies Heat Infliction on the last shot. However, if your target is affected by either combustion or electrification, Wolfguard instead consumes Arts Reaction and fires another, significantly stronger shot. There are many such interactions across Endfield list, so pay attention to what your characters can do.
