Arknights: Endfield’s Beta Test II gacha system Full Breakdown

After spending time in the newest Arknights: Endfield Beta Test II — which kicked off on November 28^th, 2025— the gacha system ended up being the biggest surprise. It looks simple and friendly at first, but once I actually pulled inside the test, tracked pity, and watched how limited tickets behaved, the system revealed a much sharper personality—one that heavily rewards discipline and punishes hesitation.

Arknights: Endfield Gacha System Overview

When I first loaded into the latest Arknights: Endfield test, the thing that shocked me most wasn’t the 3D maps or the combat changes – it was the gacha (Headhunting). On the surface the rules look very “player-friendly”: low pity, clear guarantees, weapon system not eating the same currency. But once I actually played with it, did the math, and watched how the limited tickets behave, I realised this is a system that absolutely rewards disciplined hoarding and brutally punishes “just a few pulls for fun”.

For characters, the numbers themselves are easy enough to understand. Each pull costs 500 Oroberyl. The base 6★ rate is 0.8%, 5★ is 8%, the rest are 4★. If you go 65 pulls without a 6★, soft pity kicks in and the odds start rising. By 80 pulls, you’re guaranteed some 6★. That part feels familiar if you’ve played other gachas. The problem is what happens after the rainbow actually appears. On limited banners, every 6★ is a strict 50/50: either it’s the rate-up, or it’s some random off-banner unit. There is no “you lost once, next time is guaranteed” memory. Each 6★ is a fresh coin flip.

There is a separate, bigger safety net: every limited banner tracks a 120-pull counter that guarantees the featured operator once. If you somehow go to 120 without hitting them, that pull will force the rate-up. The catch is that this hard pity only works one time per banner. Once you’ve got that first copy, the 120 counter is “consumed” and you’re back to relying on 80-pull soft pity and pure 50/50s. From a spreadsheet perspective, 120 is actually pretty generous compared to games that can stretch you to 180; from a player perspective, it means one very strong message: don’t touch a limited banner unless you’re ready to go all the way to 120.

 

Arknights: Endfield Dupe Mechanics and 240-Pull Tokens

The system gets even sharper when you look at dupes. Endfield gives each operator five “Potential” levels, and then adds a dupe safety that kicks in every 240 pulls on that same limited banner after you’ve triggered the 120 guarantee. Hit that threshold and you get a special token you can exchange for one extra copy of the rate-up. Sounds nice, until you stack the numbers. In the extreme worst case, you’d be looking at 120 pulls for the first copy, then five lots of 240 pulls for five more copies – roughly 1,200 pulls to fully max a single limited character if your luck is cursed. In reality, you will pick up dupes naturally along the way, but the ceiling shows you exactly what kind of spender this system is built to accommodate.

This has a big impact on how I think about my pulls. In games like Genshin or Honkai: Star Rail, you can sometimes justify throwing 30–40 summons on a whim, because the pity and 50/50 guarantee carry forward: even if you miss today, you’ve advanced a future win. In Endfield, if you stop halfway, you’ve mostly just burned progress on a banner that will disappear, along with your limited-time tickets (Dossier/Permits). That’s why, after playing this test, I’ve adopted a very simple personal rule: I either sit on my currency and tickets, or I commit to hitting 120 on one target; there’s no in-between.

From that angle, Endfield feels less like a casual “spin the wheel” gacha and more like a long-term investment game. The system clearly prefers players who pick one or two favourites, plan ahead, and fire everything at them, rather than collectors who want a little bit of everything. If you’re the second type, the combination of one-time big pity, harsh 50/50s and banner-locked tokens can get punishing very fast.

 

Arknights: Endfield Weapon Gacha, Ticket Income, and F2P Pull Strategy Explained

Weapons are where the system looks much kinder at first glance. Endfield doesn’t make you spend the same currency on weapon banners. Instead, every time you pull a character you earn Arsenal Tickets, and those tickets are what you use on the weapon gacha.

Weapons have much better headline rates: 6★ at 4%, 5★ at 15%, and guarantees that any 6★ drops by 40 pulls and the featured 6★ is forced by 80, with milestone freebies sprinkled in (a choose-one 6★ box at 10th ten-pulls, then alternating featured/box every eight thereafter).

But just like the character pool, the weapon pool hides its own traps. The “pity” here isn’t truly safe either — there’s a 75% chance the 6★ you hit is not the featured one, meaning even a lucky 40-pull rainbow can turn into an off-banner result. The “hard pity” at 80 pulls is also strictly one-time and does not carry over across banners, mirroring the character banner’s one-shot nature.

On top of that, there’s a shop where certain high-rarity weapons can just be bought outright with enough tickets, and later milestones hand out boxes where you can choose a specific 6★ weapon without gambling at all.

In practice, though, I noticed that the “free” feeling has limits. The ticket gain rate is tied directly to how much you’re already spending on character banners. You don’t magically get a signature weapon just for pulling a single copy of a character; you get a meaningful discount toward it, not a guaranteed bundle. If you’re a light spender or pure F2P, you will get weapons over time, and it’s definitely less punishing than a separate, fully paid weapon banner. But it’s still a system where true comfort comes from rolling a lot of characters first and letting weapons ride shotgun.

Because I was playing on a test server, I also paid close attention to income. The early flow went something like this: a handful of limited-time tickets from mailbox and logins, one or two pulls’ worth of crystals from leveling and exploration, chests dropping 10 crystals at a time. After a couple of hours you can do a few multis, but you feel every single 500-crystal spend. Combine that with limited tickets that expire at the end of the banner, and the design intention is obvious: the game really wants you to save across patches and then slam everything into one or two operators, not scatter your pulls around “just to see what happens”.

 

Conclusion

So, after living inside this system for a while, my conclusion is pretty simple. If you’re the kind of player who picks one or two favourites, saves patiently, and only rolls when you have enough to hit 120, Endfield’s gacha is actually quite friendly: clear guarantees, low pity ceiling on both characters and weapons, no need to double-dip your premium currency. If you’re a collector, or someone who likes to chase high Potentials across multiple banners, it’s vicious. The math doesn’t lie, and this beta made it very clear to me: Endfield’s gacha isn’t here to stop you from spending.

After living inside this system, my takeaway is clear: Endfield’s gacha is great if you save hard and commit, but brutal if you wander across banners. And if you do want to stretch your budget a bit further when the game launches, topping up through LDShop can help make the gacha system feel a lot less painful.