LONG EAR INVITATION GUIDE

Long Ear Invitation is one of the friendliest puzzles in the entire Delver of the Cryptic rotation, and that is exactly why so many players bounce off it on their first attempt. There is no combat phase, no boss timer, and no environmental damage to learn around — the entire challenge is a six-rabbit herding game across a grassy outdoor arena. The catch is that the rabbits move on their own logic, the mounds are not labelled, and nothing in the room tells you which rabbit belongs in which hole until you start walking toward one.

This guide walks the full Protocol Space in order: how the rabbits behave when you approach them, the chasing technique that actually pushes them into mounds instead of scattering, where the exit opens after the sixth rabbit lands, and the first-clear reward stack you collect on the way out. Every detail here is tuned for the live Delver of the Cryptic build, which made this Protocol Space part of the permanent rotation rather than an event-only puzzle.

If you have not opened the broader Delver of the Cryptic hub yet, the Delver of the Cryptic guide indexes every puzzle in the update and explains how Long Ear Invitation sits inside the permanent Protocol Spaces economy. For the heavier puzzles in the same update — the grenade-based External Detonation and the code-input Industrial Labyrinth — those have their own dedicated walkthroughs.

What this guide does not cover: the Delver of the Cryptic combat Protocol Spaces, the wider Protocol Pass progression, or the broader Talos-II open-world content gating Delver. Long Ear Invitation is short enough that you can clear it in under five minutes once you know the routine, so the guide below front-loads the steps and finishes with reward expectations and the most common first-attempt mistakes.

Quick Answer

To clear Long Ear Invitation, find all 6 long ear rabbits scattered through the grassy outdoor arena and chase each one into a mound — the small holes dug into the ground around the map. Approach a rabbit to activate it, walk steadily behind it so it runs toward the nearest mound, and let it dive in on its own. Once every rabbit is accounted for, the exit portal unlocks and you can leave the Protocol Space to claim rewards.

No combat is required, the puzzle takes roughly five minutes once you have spotted all six rabbits, and the first-clear stack pays out Oroberyls, Credits, and upgrade materials through the standard Delver of the Cryptic reward channel. The whole challenge is observation and positioning; there are no skill checks, party requirements, or stat gates.

What Is Long Ear Invitation?

Long Ear Invitation is a Protocol Space challenge introduced with Arknights Endfield's Delver of the Cryptic update, sitting alongside the other permanent puzzle rooms unlocked through that storyline. Unlike most Protocol Spaces — which lean on combat encounters or environmental hazards — this one is a pure puzzle. The arena is a small grassy outdoor space dotted with mounds, structures, and patches of tall grass that hide the rabbits.

The mechanic at the centre of the room is straightforward to describe and slightly harder to execute. Six green, long-eared rabbits are scattered around the map. Each rabbit ignores you until you step inside its activation radius, at which point it begins running. Your job is to herd it toward a mound, which is a small hole in the ground that acts as a destination marker. Once the rabbit dives in, the game counts it toward your six-of-six clear total.

The room reads as easy because the rules are simple, but the difficulty hides in execution: rabbits will scatter if you sprint at them, mounds can be obscured by tall grass, and a poorly angled approach will push a rabbit away from the nearest hole rather than toward it. The rest of this guide walks each phase in order so you can avoid the common first-attempt mistakes and pick up the first-clear rewards on a single run.

Step 1 — Finding All Six Rabbits

Start every run with a slow lap of the outdoor area. The six long ear rabbits appear as small green creatures with distinctive long ears, and the developers have deliberately spread them across the full footprint of the arena rather than clustering them around the entrance. Some sit in the open near central structures, while others tuck into tall grass or hide behind low rocks where the camera angle has to be just right to spot them.

Rabbits remain dormant until you cross a short activation radius around them. That means you can walk close to a rabbit without spooking it, take a moment to note the nearest mound, and only then commit to the chase. Using this pre-scout phase is the single biggest time-saver on Long Ear Invitation: if you map out all six rabbits and their candidate mounds before activating any of them, you avoid the common failure mode of triggering one rabbit by accident and losing track of where the others are.

The long ear rabbits scattered across the grassy outdoor arena

Once you have noted every rabbit's rough position, work from one end of the arena to the other rather than darting between corners. The rabbits do not despawn when you leave their immediate area, and they will not warn other rabbits, so taking them one at a time is fully safe. Listen for soft movement audio cues when you suspect a rabbit is hidden in tall grass — the sound cue is the most reliable way to confirm a rabbit's position before you commit to a chase angle.

Step 2 — Chasing Rabbits Into Mounds

Once you have spotted a rabbit, the actual herding phase begins by stepping into its activation radius. The rabbit will turn and start running, and from that moment your only job is to stay behind it without crowding. Walk — do not sprint. Sprinting is the most common reason rabbits scatter unpredictably and end up bouncing off the wrong mound or doubling back past you. A steady walking pace keeps the rabbit committed to a single line of travel, which is what you need to land it cleanly in a mound.

Each rabbit pairs with a nearby mound — not a specific assigned one, but the closest reachable hole given the angle you start the chase from. Position yourself on the far side of the rabbit relative to its target mound, so that the rabbit is pushed in the direction of the hole rather than away from it. Look for mounds with grass tufts around the rim; those are the visual marker the game uses to distinguish a usable mound from background terrain.

The mounds where rabbits need to be chased into

The completion bar advances when a rabbit dives into a mound. You must land all six rabbits in mounds for the room to register a clear — there is no partial credit and no shortcut. If a rabbit slips past a mound and keeps running, do not panic and chase faster; let it slow down on its own, reposition behind it, and re-angle the next nudge toward the nearest mound. A second or third attempt costs nothing, so prioritise control over speed.

Two practical patterns help on the trickier rabbits. First, use the arena's terrain features as funnels: rocks, walls, and tall grass clumps will deflect a rabbit's run line, and a good chase angle uses those features to herd the rabbit toward a mound instead of fighting them. Second, when a rabbit gets close to a mound but veers off at the last moment, step laterally rather than charging forward; the lateral nudge usually re-centres the rabbit on the mound without spooking it back into open ground.

Step 3 — Reaching the Exit

After the sixth rabbit dives into its mound, the arena state changes and the exit becomes available. The exit indicator is marked clearly once it opens, so you do not need to memorise where it sits before completing the puzzle — the game flags it for you. Walk over to it and interact to leave the Protocol Space and trigger the reward screen.

There is no time pressure on the exit step. If you want to walk the arena one more time to verify all six rabbits are gone before heading out, you can. The room will not reset, the mounds will not eject rabbits back into the field, and your completion progress is locked the moment the sixth rabbit lands. The exit is purely a confirmation step.

Rewards For First Clear

Long Ear Invitation pays out the standard Delver of the Cryptic Protocol Space stack on its first clear, which is the only run that matters for resource progression. The first clear reward channel is the only one that gives the meaningful one-time payout, so make sure you actually finish the puzzle and step through the exit — leaving the Protocol Space without interacting with the exit does not register the clear.

The reward stack covers three categories: Oroberyls as the premium gacha currency used to recruit operators, Credits as the universal in-game currency used for upgrades and outpost purchases, and an upgrade-material bundle containing items like Circuit Boards and Crystallized Materials for character and weapon progression. The exact item counts match the Delver of the Cryptic Protocol Space tier, which is consistent across the puzzle rooms in this update.

Because the rewards are gated to the first clear, there is no farming routine attached to Long Ear Invitation specifically — repeat runs do not pay out the same stack. If you want a sustainable resource loop, the Protocol Spaces overview covers the wider farm cycle, and the Delver of the Cryptic hub lists every other first-clear puzzle in the update so you can plan a single session that knocks out the whole reward set.

Common Mistakes and Tips

The most common first-attempt failure is treating the puzzle like a combat encounter and sprinting at the rabbits. Sprinting trips the rabbit's flee logic into scatter mode, which sends it bouncing off mounds rather than into them and forces you to chase the same rabbit two or three times. A calm walking pace fixes the issue immediately and is the single highest-impact behaviour change you can make on a fresh run.

The second recurring mistake is undercounting the rabbits. Players who clear five mounds and then assume they are done frequently get stuck in the arena because the exit never opens. Always tally to six before you head for the exit indicator — the room contains exactly six rabbits, no more and no fewer, and one of them is almost always hidden in tall grass or behind a structure where casual scanning misses it. If you cannot find the sixth, walk the perimeter of the arena slowly and listen for movement audio rather than relying on line of sight.

A third gotcha is misreading the mounds. Some terrain features look superficially like mounds — small dirt patches, low debris piles — but only mounds with clear circular rims and a small surrounding grass tuft count for completion. If a rabbit appears to run "into" a mound but the counter does not tick up, you were almost certainly looking at a non-functional dirt patch; re-route the rabbit toward a verified mound nearby and the count will advance.

Video Walkthrough

For a visual reference on the rabbit positions and mound layout, the embedded walkthrough below shows a complete clear of Long Ear Invitation from entry to exit. Watching it through once before your own run gives you a feel for the chasing pace and the typical lines the rabbits take toward their mounds, which is hard to convey in text alone.

If you prefer reading to watching, the step-by-step prose above covers every action the video shows. The video is a useful sanity check rather than a hard requirement — most players who follow the chase pacing rule in Step 2 clear the Protocol Space on their first attempt without needing it.

Frequently Asked Questions

That is the full Long Ear Invitation walkthrough — six rabbits, six mounds, no combat, and roughly five minutes from entry to exit once you have the chase pacing down. If you are working through the rest of the update, the Delver of the Cryptic hub lists every sibling puzzle, and the heavier External Detonation and Industrial Labyrinth rooms each have their own dedicated guides. For the broader resource loop these Protocol Spaces feed into, the Protocol Spaces overview is the next page to read.