Skills are the core of combat in Arknights: Endfield. While weapons and gear define an operator’s baseline stats, it’s their skills that determine how they actually perform in battle. From basic attacks and combo chains to powerful ultimates and passive talents, skill progression shapes your damage output, survivability, and team synergy. Because skill upgrades require a wide range of materials and currencies, knowing what to prioritize can save you an enormous amount of time and resources.

In this guide, we’ll break down how skills work in Arknights: Endfield, for the beginners to this game. We will also explain elite tiers and talent nodes, and walk through smart upgrade priorities so you can build effective operators without wasting materials.

Note: All credit for the images in this article go to TheGameSlayer.

Skill Types in Arknights: Endfield

Aside from their own weapons and gear slots, every operator in Arknights: Endfield has four core combat skills that define their active gameplay. These skills form the backbone of each character’s combat loop and scale significantly as they are upgraded.

The Basic Attack is exactly what it sounds like: your operator’s standard attack chain. While it’s used constantly, it usually has the lowest scaling and impact compared to other skills.

The Battle Skill is typically the most important ability in an operator’s kit. This skill often delivers sustained damage, applies debuffs, generates resources, or enables the rest of the character’s rotation.

The Combo Skill is a conditional ability that triggers after specific actions, such as landing certain attacks or applying status effects. When easy to trigger, combo skills can add significant extra damage or control.

The Ultimate is the operator’s strongest ability, delivering burst damage or powerful team-wide effects. Ultimates usually define boss-phase damage windows and emergency responses.

Although all four skills are important, they do not provide equal value at all stages of progression. Understanding which ones matter most for each operator is critical.

How Skill Levels Scale

Skill levels in Arknights: Endfield do far more than slightly increase numbers. Each upgrade improves raw damage, buff strength, debuff duration, or resource generation. In many cases, higher skill levels dramatically improve how a character feels to play.

Skill upgrades require Protoprisms for early levels and Protohedrons for higher levels. These materials are farmed from Skill Up Protocol Spaces and become increasingly expensive at later tiers.

The final levels of each skill often require rare progression materials that are also used for elite promotions. Because of this overlap, pushing skills too high too early can slow overall progression if you’re not careful.

Elite Tiers

Elite Tiers act as progression gates in Arknights: Endfield. Each elite tier raises an operator’s level cap and unlocks access to higher-quality gear.

Elite Tiers are unlocked using promotion materials such as Protodisks, Protosets, and Boletes, along with character-specific materials at higher tiers. These materials are obtained from Promotion Protocol Spaces, Rare Gathering Sites, and Hazardous Protocol Spaces.

Between elite tiers, operators can also unlock Outfitting upgrades, which increase the rarity of gear they can equip. These upgrades only cost T-Creds and are always worth picking up, as they improve survivability without consuming rare materials.

Reaching the final elite tier allows operators to reach the current maximum level cap, making elite progression a mandatory step for endgame content.

Talent Nodes and Passive Power

Talent Nodes provide passive bonuses that significantly enhance an operator’s strengths. Every operator has two unique talents that amplify their core mechanics, such as increasing damage, boosting healing, or applying stacking debuffs.

In addition to talents, Talent Nodes also increase the operator’s main attribute, further improving their attack scaling. These upgrades are subtle individually but add up to meaningful power gains over time.

Talent Nodes are comparatively cheap to upgrade, requiring only T-Creds and Proto materials. Because of this, they are one of the most efficient ways to increase power and should never be neglected.

Operators also gain Base Skills through Talent Nodes, improving their efficiency when assigned to facilities on the OMV Dijiang. While not combat-focused, these bonuses contribute to long-term account efficiency.

Global Skill Upgrade Priority

While each operator has unique needs, there are some universal rules that apply to most characters in Arknights: Endfield.

• Battle Skills are almost always the top priority. These are the abilities you actively press most often and are usually responsible for the bulk of an operator’s damage or utility.
• Ultimates come next, especially for characters whose burst damage or team buffs define boss fights. A well-leveled ultimate can dramatically shorten difficult encounters.
• Combo Skills are situational. If your team consistently triggers the combo condition, upgrading it can be very valuable. If not, it can safely stay at lower levels.
• Basic Attacks are usually the lowest priority. While important, their scaling tends to be weaker compared to other skills, making them poor early investments.

A safe rule for most players is to push key skills to levels 5–7 early on, then only chase levels 8–9 for your strongest operators once resources become more abundant.

Skill Upgrade Priorities by Role

Skill priorities shift depending on an operator’s role within the team.

For main DPS characters, the Battle Skill and Ultimate should be upgraded first, as these drive most damage output. Combo Skills should follow if they trigger reliably, while Basic Attacks can be left for last.

For tanks, survivability-focused skills take priority. Damage reduction, shields, taunts, and stagger abilities are more important than raw damage.

For healers and supports, skills that buff team damage, apply debuffs, or provide group healing should be upgraded before niche or single-target abilities.

Regardless of role, it’s rarely efficient to fully max every skill on every character. Concentrating resources on a small core team yields far better results.

Where to Farm Skill Materials Efficiently

Skill materials are primarily obtained from Skill Up Protocol Spaces, which reward Protoprisms and Protohedrons. These spaces can be challenged freely, but rewards require Sanity to claim.

Rare progression materials needed for final skill levels are found in Hazardous Protocol Spaces, which are more difficult and tuned for well-built teams. These materials should be saved for late-game upgrades.

A common mistake is farming skill materials before securing elite promotions and EXP levels. Always ensure your operators can reach their next level cap before heavily investing in skills.

Smart Skill Investment Strategy

The most efficient approach to skill upgrades in Arknights: Endfield is restraint. Early and mid-game power spikes come from modest skill levels across a focused team, not from maxing everything immediately.

Raising core skills to level 5–7 provides the majority of their benefits at a fraction of the cost. Levels 8–9 should be treated as luxury upgrades for your best carries once your account is well established.

This approach keeps progression smooth and ensures you always have resources available for promotions, gear, and future characters.

Skills are the engine that drives combat in Arknights: Endfield. By understanding how combat skills, elite tiers, and talent nodes interact, you can make smart upgrade decisions that dramatically improve your team’s performance without wasting rare materials. Prioritizing the abilities you actually use and stopping at efficient breakpoints is the key to long-term success.

For the best experience managing skills, upgrades, and complex progression systems, Arknights: Endfield is best played on PC with BlueStacks. BlueStacks gives you smoother performance, precise controls, and a larger screen to easily track skill trees, materials, and operator builds. Jump into Talos-II, refine your operators, and take control of every battle by playing Arknights: Endfield on PC with BlueStacks.