ARKNIGHTS ENDFIELD GEARING GUIDE

Gearing in Arknights: Endfield looks intimidating from the outside — five interlocking systems, three currencies that all draw from the same Stock Bill budget, a factory chain that has to be running in the background, and a Flawless Essence RNG layer that can eat months of pulls if you spend on the wrong piece. The good news is that the priority order is settled. Equip base gear first, raise character and weapon levels, push skill ranks, then chase Flawless Essences, and run artificing in parallel the whole time. Do those in that order and the squad's damage ceiling rises every patch without wasted Coolant Gel.

This guide walks the full v1.2 gearing flow end to end. You'll see the priority ladder with the reasoning behind each step, the two dominant sets (Xiranflow 3pc and Qingbo 3pc) with their actual stack tables, the new patch 1.2 Tier 4 off-pieces that finally fix the slot-locking problem for Intellect carries, the etching success rates and Coolant Gel cost-to-guarantee at every tier jump, the artificing role targets, and the Wuling factory chain that produces the Heavy Xiranite required for T4 gear. Every number cited here is from in-game testing on patch 1.2, not theory-crafting.

The intent is to keep your investment compounding instead of leaking. A mismatched T5 Essence loses to a matched T4. Artificing a support before the meta settles is the same money as artificing a carry you actually use, except the carry's gear stays relevant next patch. Spending Engraving Permits before Exploration Level 7 cuts your effective drop rate roughly in half. The version of this guide that helps you most is the one that tells you which corners to cut and which corners are the trap, so each section ends with the specific failure mode it prevents. For the upstream factory pipeline this guide assumes, the endgame blueprints series is the companion read.

What this guide does not cover: individual character build sheets (those live on each character page), full Wuling AIC layouts (those are in the blueprint series), and the upcoming v1.3 set previews. The focus here is the systemic flow — what to gear, in what order, with which currencies, and where to stop on each character. If you only read one section, read the priority ladder; the rest of the guide is the supporting detail behind it.

Quick Answer

Equip base gear from the factory before doing anything else — it costs zero Sanity and unlocks immediately when AIC production starts. Push your main DPS to Level 60 to unlock T4 Gold sets, then prioritize their weapon to 80–90 and skills to M3. Farm Severe Energy Alluviums for T5 Flawless Essences, and do not spend Coolant Gel on anything below Flawless with a 3/3 stat match. The set meta is Xiranflow 3pc for reaction-consuming DPS (up to +45% Electric/Nature DMG) and Qingbo 3pc for skill-tempo operators (+15% Combo CD, up to +40% Skill DMG). Pair Xiranflow with the Eternal Xiranite Auxiliary Arm off-piece for a team-wide +16% DMG window.

Artificing runs in parallel with everything above. It costs zero Sanity — only factory components, weekly catalysts, and Stock Bills — so start it the moment Bureau of Swordmancers unlocks. Main DPS targets Level 90, Weapon 90, M3 skills, etched 4/4/2 essences, and Artificing +3 on Good Match pieces. Supports stay at Level 80, Skill 9, +4/+4/+2 essence, and Artificing +0 to +2 until the team comp is stable enough to commit further.

The Priority Ladder: What to Build First

Every system in Endfield competes for the same limited pile of currencies — Sanity, Stock Bills, Coolant Gel, Engraving Permits, and weekly catalysts. The order you spend them in dictates whether you clear current patch content comfortably or stall halfway through a Severe Alluvium farm. The ladder below is the same order top players use across the v1.2 meta, and the logic is straightforward: stack the cheapest, highest-impact upgrades first, then layer the expensive RNG-heavy ones on top once the foundation is solid.

Equipment comes first because the factory pays for it without Sanity. Once base gear is on all four squad slots, character levels unlock the next tier of gear, weapon levels feed the multiplier every damage line scales from, and skill ranks deliver the highest damage-per-resource in the game. Weapon Essences and artificing sit at the top of the ladder because they're either RNG-gated (essences) or time-gated (artificing) — they cannot be sprinted, only accumulated, so they pay off best when the cheaper layers below them are already in place.

1. Equipment (Base Gear, No Artificing) — Factory produces components without Sanity. Equip everything immediately; defer artificing until later.
2. Character Level — Level 60 unlocks T4 Gold gear and Advanced Skill Nodes. Gold set bonuses often outweigh ten additional character levels.
3. Weapon Level — Weapon base ATK is the foundation all damage multipliers scale from. Main DPS weapons to 80–90; support weapons to 60–80.
4. Skill Level — The highest damage per resource. M3 on main DPS Battle Skill and Ultimate; Rank 9 for supports.
5. Weapon Essences — Farm Flawless 3/3 matches, then etch to 4/4/2. Essences beat perfect artificing on bad essences.
6. Artificing — Zero Sanity cost; time-gated by weekly catalyst limit (~80/week). Run concurrently with everything above, not instead of it.

The most useful framing here is that Endfield's hardest content is a skill check, not a stat check. Umbral Monument challenges are clearable on +0 artificed gear with the right rotation and boss positioning, and players who chase perfect stats while ignoring rotation timing routinely fail content that better-played accounts clear on worse gear. Treat the ladder as a long-term investment plan that compounds in the background while you actually play — not as a gate you need to clear before attempting content.

The corollary matters too. If a piece of content is wiping the squad, the answer is usually not "more artificing." It's more often a missing reaction window, a skipped dodge cue, or a support equipped with a set that doesn't match the team's damage type. Audit play first, gear second. The combat guide covers the rotation patterns that pay off across most v1.2 fights, and most players who feel stuck on gear are actually stuck on execution.

Equipment & Gear Sets (v1.2 Meta)

Gear tiers in Endfield run from T1 Gray at the bottom through T4 Gold and into T5 Tier-4 endgame pieces. T4 Gold sets unlock at character Level 60, and that unlock is more impactful than most players expect — the 3-piece set bonus on a Gold set frequently outperforms ten additional character levels for the wearer, especially for damage-dealers whose kits already key off elemental reactions or skill density. The decision to push your main DPS to 60 before doing anything else with their gear is the single largest power spike in mid-game.

Patch 1.2 introduced two sets that rewrote the meta and a handful of T4 off-pieces that finally solved the slot-locking problem for Intellect-scaling carries. The two sets — Xiranflow and Qingbo — are not direct competitors. They reward fundamentally different playstyles, and the choice between them is mostly a question of whether your operator consumes reaction stacks or whether their damage is weighted toward skill bursts. Most v1.2 hypercarry teams run one of each.

Xiranflow Set — Reaction Consumption DPS

Xiranflow rewards "cashing out" elemental statuses rather than simply applying them. The 3-piece bonus triggers when the wearer consumes Electrification or Corrosion stacks, granting DMG bonus stacks that persist for a generous 25-second window. That long window matters: it means a single reaction trigger keeps the buff live across multiple rotations, so the set scales harder than its raw numbers suggest for any DPS who can chain reactions consistently. The stack progression scales linearly with the status level you consume, capping at three stacks for +45% Electric or Nature DMG.

Status Level Consumed	Stacks Gained	Electric/Nature DMG Bonus
Level 1	1	+15%
Level 2	2	+30%
Level 3 (Max)	3	+45%

The optimal Xiranflow config is the 3-piece plus the Eternal Xiranite Auxiliary Arm off-piece in the fourth slot. The off-piece grants a team-wide +16% DMG window after status application, which raises the entire squad's damage floor beyond what the Xiranflow 4-piece would offer the wearer in isolation. That single decision — 3pc plus the right off-piece — is a recurring theme in the v1.2 meta and a major reason mismatched 4-piece sets are a trap. Always compare the 4-piece bonus against the best available off-piece before locking in.

Qingbo Set — Skill Tempo & Rotation Density

Qingbo does not require elemental reactions to function — it rewards frequency of skill use. Any operator whose damage profile is weighted toward skills rather than basic attacks benefits, and the 3-piece bonus (+15% Combo Skill cooldown reduction) means more frequent buff windows and higher Skill DMG uptime across the rotation. For skill-tempo specialists, Qingbo 3pc is the safer floor than Xiranflow because it does not depend on the team being able to apply and consume the right status type — the buff fires every time the operator casts.

The three canonical Qingbo wearers in v1.2 are Tangtang on Heavy Armor and Gauntlets with Agility for physical reduction and constant Cryo pressure, Perlica on Light Armor and Gloves with Intellect and Will for Electrification uptime on every burst window, and Wulfgard on Heavy Armor and Gauntlets with Ultimate Gain Efficiency for consistent Heat Infliction. Each of them gets more value out of skill cooldown reduction than they would out of a reaction-trigger window, because their damage is densest during the burst itself. Pair Qingbo supports with a Xiranflow main DPS for the cleanest v1.2 team archetype.

v1.2 Tier 4 Off-Pieces: Slot-Locking Solved

Earlier T4 sets had a structural problem: several operators who scale from Intellect were locked into sets whose primary stat didn't match. That cost real damage and forced ugly compromises like running off-set pieces just to get the right attribute. Patch 1.2 fixed it directly with three new off-pieces — Frontiers Extra O2 Tube and Gloves T1 with Intellect as the primary stat (the fix Alesh and Xaihi were waiting for), Bonekrusha Gloves T1 which enables a 3pc bonus via Gloves plus two Figurine kits and frees the armor slot for MI Security Overalls, and Swordmancer Dagger T1 with +51.80% Ultimate DMG that turns Lifeng into a DPS/crowd-control hybrid for Physical teams.

None of those off-pieces is a complete set on its own — they're slot-fillers — but each one solves a specific problem the v1.1 meta couldn't. The Frontiers gloves in particular are the change Intellect carries needed: every Alesh and Xaihi build sheet from before 1.2 is partially obsolete now, and the upgrade path is short enough that the new off-piece pays for itself inside a single Severe Alluvium farming cycle.

v1.2 Meta Team Compositions by Gear Set

The set choices above resolve into a handful of stable team archetypes. The Electro-Burst comp runs a Xiranflow 3pc plus Eternal Xiranite Arm main DPS alongside Qingbo Perlica and a Frontiers Arclight or Antal support. The Physical-Crush comp leans on Swordmancer or Bonekrusha for the carry, with Swordmancer Chen and Frontiers Pogranichnik filling out the support slots. The Cryo-Shatter comp runs MI Security or Tide Surge on the carry with Qingbo Tangtang and Frontiers Xaihi as supports. None of those is the only viable comp — they're the cleanest defaults for the v1.2 patch, and most experimental teams are variants of them.

The takeaway from the comp table is that gear sets follow damage type, not operator name. A Cryo-Shatter team's gear changes the moment you swap Tangtang out for a different Cryo applier, and the same MI Security carry shifts between Physical and Cryo archetypes depending on which supports are equipped. Track your team's damage profile first; the set assignments fall out of that decision naturally.

Weapon Leveling Strategy

Weapon base ATK is the foundation every damage multiplier in the game scales from, which makes weapon level the single most consistent return per Sanity at any tier. Two systems govern weapon power: Weapon Tuning, which raises the level cap and unlocks the max stat slot levels, and Weapon Potential, which is driven by duplicates and controls the passive skill cap independently of Tuning. The two systems are easy to confuse, and confusing them is one of the most common reasons players hit a weapon ceiling without understanding why.

The role-by-role target is straightforward. Main DPS weapons should reach Level 80–90 with full T4 Tuning — the 1,500 Sanity required to go from 80 to 90 is justified for hypercarries because every multiplier downstream of base ATK scales with it. Sub-DPS and support weapons stop at Level 60–80; support value comes from skill effects rather than raw base ATK scaling, so Weapon 80 is the correct stop for almost every support in the game. 4-star weapons settle at Level 60, where they're easier to max Potential on — which means their passive skill cap is more reachable than on a six-star signature without dupes.

The biggest source of weapon confusion is Slot 3, the passive skill, which is capped by Potential, not Tuning. A fully Tuned six-star weapon with zero duplicates still has a low-cap passive, and no amount of additional Tuning will unlock it. The partial workaround is high-quality Essences with a natural +3 Skill line — they offset the passive cap somewhat — but the underlying lesson is to prioritize getting the right Essence on a weapon before chasing more weapon dupes. A perfect Essence on a single-copy weapon outperforms a Potential-maxed weapon with a bad Essence in almost every case.

One more practical note on weapon investment: if you're running a four-star weapon on a five- or six-star operator because you don't have the signature yet, level the four-star to 60 and stop. The Sanity spent on a temporary weapon is recoverable if you pivot to a new operator next patch, but only if you didn't overspend on the slot. The weapons database tracks every weapon's stat profile and helps identify which four-stars are worth keeping as long-term sub-DPS options versus pure stopgaps.

Essence Etching: The Full Flow

Essences are the highest-impact optimization system in the game and the most RNG-dependent. A perfect 3/3-matched Flawless Essence on a main DPS can lift the squad's damage by a quarter or more, and a mismatched essence on the same weapon offers literally nothing for the non-matching stats. The two non-negotiable rules below exist because players who break them have lost months of Coolant Gel to upgrades that never paid off — and there is no rollback button.

Rule one: etch only Flawless (T5) essences. T1 through T4 essences are temporary and are designed to be replaced. Coolant Gel spent on them is permanently lost the moment a T5 replaces them. Rule two: a 3/3 stat match is mandatory. A mismatched T5 essence provides zero benefit for the stats it doesn't match, and a matched T4 outperforms a mismatched T5 across the board. Both rules feel obvious in writing, and both rules are violated constantly by players who treat their first Pure essence as the chance to "try out" etching. Don't.

The etching success rates and the Coolant Gel cost to guarantee an upgrade are below. The free-attempt levels (Lv.1 → Lv.2 and Lv.2 → Lv.3) are exactly that: spend the attempt because there's no permanent material cost, and the chance is high enough that most players hit Lv.3 without needing Gel at all. The Gel levels start at Lv.3 → Lv.4 — that is where Coolant Gel earns its keep, because the natural success rate has dropped under 11% and the guarantee cost is still manageable. Lv.5 → Lv.6 is hypercarry-only territory; it's a 2.7% natural rate at 450 Gel to guarantee, and it should only be attempted on the main DPS after every other line is finished.

Tier Jump	Success Rate	Coolant Gel Cost (Guarantee)	Priority
Lv.1 → Lv.2	60%	30 Gel	Free attempt
Lv.2 → Lv.3	24%	60 Gel	Free attempt
Lv.3 → Lv.4	10.9%	120 Gel	Use Gel here
Lv.4 → Lv.5	~5%	250 Gel	Use Gel here
Lv.5 → Lv.6	2.7%	450 Gel	Hypercarry only

The practical etch targets fall out of those rates cleanly. Main DPS should be pushed to 4/4/2 — that configuration captures roughly 85–90% of the essence's theoretical max and is achievable on a realistic Coolant Gel budget. Going to 6/6/3 is the hypercarry endgame, and it should only be attempted after every support's essence is finished and the Gel stockpile is genuinely deep. Supports settle at 3/3/2; that's the floor where the squad still sees meaningful uptime gains without dragging the carry's Gel budget down. The single best support outcome is a pure-match essence with a natural +3 Skill line, which skips etching entirely — those drops are rare enough that locking them as soon as they appear is non-negotiable.

The Engraving Permit math changes everything once you understand it. Locking three stat lines before a Severe Alluvium run gives roughly an 11% chance of a perfect drop on that run, which is high enough that a stockpile of Permits effectively converts directly into Flawless Essences. The endgame upgrade is the Multi-Line Engraving Kit from Valley IV Stock Redistribution Level 4 at 380,000 Bills — it guarantees 100% perfect essences and is the single most powerful deterministic upgrade in the entire gearing system. Save up for it and the RNG layer disappears from the equation.

Artificing: The Passive Power Upgrade

Artificing is the rare upgrade system in Endfield that costs zero Sanity. It runs on factory components, weekly artificing catalysts, and Stock Bills — three currencies that are time-gated rather than activity-gated, which means there's almost no reason to delay artificing once it unlocks, and equally no reason to prioritize it over the Sanity-gated upgrades on the ladder above. The right framing is "artificing runs in the background while you do everything else," and the players who get the most out of it are the ones who set the queue and forget about it.

The unlock conditions are a short checklist. You need to complete the Bureau of Swordmancers side mission, reach Authority Level 15, and have access to Wuling City for the advanced materials the chain produces. Once those three are cleared, the Good Match mechanic kicks in: the sacrificial item must have a higher base stat in the target attribute than the gear being upgraded, and Good Match dramatically improves the success rate of every artificing attempt. Failed attempts increment a hidden pity counter toward a guaranteed upgrade, so even bad RNG converges over enough attempts — which is exactly the kind of system that rewards running the queue patiently.

The artificing targets by role are below. Main DPS aims for +3 on Good Match pieces and +2 on Standard Match — that's the level where the damage gain plateaus and additional artificing starts costing more catalysts than the marginal stat lines pay back. Sub-DPS settles at +2 Good Match, +1 Standard, and should only be artificed after the main DPS is finished. Supports are the most patient slot: +0 to +2 is correct depending on the matchup, and the right call is usually to wait for the meta to settle before committing catalysts to a support's gear at all.

Role	Good Match Target	Standard Match	Priority
Main DPS	+3	+2	Fully artifice now
Sub-DPS	+2	+1	After main DPS
Supports	+0 to +2	+0	Wait for meta to settle

The weekly catalyst supply is the one bottleneck nobody escapes. Roughly 80 artificing catalysts are available each week from the Stock Redistribution shop, and the right policy is to buy all of them every single week regardless of whether you currently have a project in flight. The catalysts stockpile, and the backlog is what lets you sprint through three or four characters in a single weekend when the right Essence finally drops. Skipping a weekly buy because you "don't need them right now" is the most expensive false economy in the gearing flow — catalysts are far more valuable than almost every other item on that shop's wall. For the deeper artificing mechanics, the artificing guide covers the Good Match math and the advanced upgrade paths in detail.

Factory Requirements for Gearing

Endgame gearing in Endfield is an industrial problem before it's a combat one. T4 gear components require Wuling AIC production with very specific chains, and the factory's bottleneck — not your Sanity budget — determines how quickly you can artifice or replace gear pieces. The single most consequential decision in the entire factory layout is which battery you build the loop around in Wuling, because that decision feeds (or starves) the Heavy Xiranite line that T4 gear depends on.

The SC Battery loop is non-negotiable. Target 12 SC Batteries per minute as soon as Wuling unlocks. SC batteries produce Inert Xircon Effluent as a byproduct, and Inert Xircon Effluent is the mandatory input for Liquid Xircon, which in turn feeds Heavy Xiranite. HC Valley batteries do not produce Effluent. Players who built HC loops because the early-game tutorial pointed them that way find themselves needing to rebuild factory infrastructure once they hit T4 gear — the time cost is significant. Switch to SC early and the rest of the chain falls into place without rework.

Heavy Xiranite itself requires an Acid-Resistant Pump 3 plus the Revolution Copper intermediate produced from Red Copper and Acid Sediment via the Refiner. Eight hours of factory runtime produces enough components for a meaningful artificing session, and that throughput cannot be replicated by Sanity farming — there is no Sanity-purchasable shortcut for Heavy Xiranite. The factory is the bottleneck, period. The Wuling 1.2.1 megabase blueprint is the cleanest reference layout for hitting this target on patch 1.2; it produces 270 Heavy Xiranite per hour while still cycling SC Batteries and the other gear lines.

Stock Bills are the cross-cutting currency that funds both artificing catalysts and Engraving Permits, and early-game players are forced to pick one or the other because the weekly Stock Bill income at Valley IV outpost level 4 sits around 500,000 to 800,000 Bills per week. Once Wuling outpost income stabilizes, both expenses run comfortably in parallel — but until then, the right priority is usually artificing catalysts over Permits because catalysts compound (the stockpile keeps growing) while Permits are spent immediately. Hetonite Parts production at 3 parts per minute from Cuprium generates higher Stock Bill value per minute than Yazhen-based alternatives and should be the early Stock Bill backbone.

The general principle holds across the entire factory pipeline: if your factory can produce it, do not spend Sanity on it. XP records, T-Credits, and common crafting materials should come from the factory. Reserve Sanity for Skill Protocols and Severe Energy Alluvium runs — that's where Sanity returns the most damage per minute. A well-built Dijiang factory changes the entire investment equation by removing two or three Sanity sinks from the weekly budget. The AIC optimization guide walks the math on which factory upgrades pay back fastest.

Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

The mistakes below come from watching mid-game players stall on content they should be clearing comfortably. None of them is a rare edge case — every one of them is a default trap that the game's UI happily lets you fall into. Most of them cost weeks of progress; a few of them cost months. The fix in each case is short, and most of them are reversible if you catch them early.

1. Artificing Before Getting Good Essences

Good essences outperform perfect artificing on bad essences, and a 3/3 matched T5 Essence is the prerequisite for committing serious catalysts to gear enhancement. Players who artifice a piece of gear and then discover their essence doesn't match the weapon's primary stat have effectively wasted the catalysts — the gear is still strong, but the build is incoherent. The fix is sequencing: get the Flawless Essence on the weapon first, confirm the 3/3 match, then commit catalysts to that operator's gear.

2. Etching T1–T4 Essences

Coolant Gel and engraving materials spent on non-Flawless essences are permanently lost when the T5 replacement finally drops. There is no refund, no recycling path, and no rollback. The fix is patience: wait for T5 drops from Severe Energy Alluvium, lock every Flawless that appears in the depot, and disassemble everything below T5 for Stock Bills. The Stock Bill conversion alone is usually better value than etching a temporary essence — it feeds artificing catalysts and Engraving Permits, both of which compound.

3. Running 4pc Set When 3pc + Off-Piece Is Better

The Eternal Xiranite Auxiliary Arm adds a team-wide +16% DMG window and frequently outperforms the 4th Xiranflow piece. The default UI flow nudges players toward 4-piece sets because the set bonus is visible and the off-piece comparison isn't, but the math is usually clear once you check both numbers. The fix is the comparison itself: every time you're one piece away from a 4-piece, also evaluate the best available off-piece for the wearer's role before locking in. The 3pc + off-piece config wins more often than not.

4. Building the HC Valley Battery Loop Instead of SC

HC batteries don't generate Xircon Effluent, which is the Heavy Xiranite gateway material. Players who optimized for HC early game find themselves unable to produce T4 gear without rebuilding factory infrastructure — a process that costs several hours of in-game time and a lot of Cuprium Parts. The fix is to switch to SC Wuling Battery production immediately upon entering Wuling, even if the HC layout currently looks "fine." It will not be fine in two patches.

5. Spending Engraving Permits Before Exploration Level 7

Drop rates from Severe Alluvium improve dramatically at Exploration Level 7 — 3 Flawless plus 2 Pure per run versus the worse ratios at lower exploration tiers. Players who burn through Sanity Syrups and Engraving Permits at Exploration 5 or 6 are effectively paying double for the same essence yield they'd get at 7. The fix is to hoard Sanity Syrups and Permits until Exploration Level 7 unlocks, then start the farming cycle. The wait pays back inside a single farming session.

6. Artificing Supports Before the Meta Settles

Gear sets get replaced with each major version update, and support gear artificed in one patch may be entirely swapped out the next. The Frontiers and Bonekrusha additions in patch 1.2 are a textbook example — operators who had locked in earlier sets now have a strictly better option, and the catalysts invested in the old gear didn't transfer over. The fix is straightforward: fully artifice the main carry first, then wait until the team composition is stable across at least one patch cycle before committing catalysts to supports. The catalysts are better off in the backlog than locked into temporary gear.

7. Treating Artificing as Optional

Artificing costs zero Sanity — only factory time and Stock Bills — and the players who treat it as optional are leaving significant damage on the table for free. The "I'll get to it later" mindset compounds badly because the weekly catalyst limit makes it impossible to sprint back later once the queue gets behind. The fix is mechanical: start the artificing queue immediately after Bureau of Swordmancers unlocks, and buy every weekly catalyst without exception. Even a slow artificing flow beats no artificing at all.

8. Over-Investing in Gear Instead of Learning Mechanics

Endfield is a skill-check game more than a stat-check game. Players who understand rotation timing and boss attack patterns routinely clear content on +0 gear that better-geared, worse-played accounts can't beat. Over-investing in gear while play stays static is the most expensive mistake in the guide — every additional point of artificing is a minor improvement, while a single rotation fix can be a 30% damage swing. The right mindset is gradual investment alongside active play improvement, not waiting for a perfect setup before attempting hard content.

Gearing Checklist: A Stage-by-Stage Plan

The checklist below condenses everything above into a per-stage action list — First Gear, Mid Progression, Endgame Essences, and Full Optimization. Each stage's tasks are designed to be the cheapest, highest-impact moves at that point in the progression, and the order inside each stage matters as much as the order between stages. Treat the boxes as commitments rather than reminders: checking one off should mean the action is actually complete, not "I'll do that later this week."

The checklist persists in your browser, so you can come back to it across sessions. Most players run through First Gear in the opening week and reach Mid Progression once Wuling unlocks; Endgame Essences becomes the active stage once Exploration Level 7 is cleared, and Full Optimization is the long tail that runs for months. If you're partway through a stage and an item feels out of order, follow the priority ladder above rather than the checklist — the ladder is the source of truth and the checklist is the execution layer on top of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

If a question you have isn't answered above, the linked guides at the bottom of each section cover the deeper mechanics — artificing for the full Good Match math, AIC optimization for the factory-to-Sanity tradeoffs, and the endgame blueprints series for the specific factory layouts the v1.2 gear chain depends on.

That's the full v1.2 gearing flow — base gear first, character and weapon levels next, Flawless Essences once you've got the 3/3 match in hand, and artificing running quietly in the background the whole time. The set meta will shift again in v1.3, but the priority ladder is durable: every patch since 1.0 has rewarded the same sequencing, and the players who stick to it are the ones who clear new content the week it drops instead of two months later. For the next progression steps, the combat guide covers the rotation patterns that pay off across most v1.2 fights, and the character database has per-operator build sheets that key off the sets and essence targets in this guide.