Beginner Guide: Early-Game Priorities

Endfield's early game is gated by the Node menu — 12 sequential nodes, 6 missions each, that unlock new systems as you clear them. Don't skip ahead or grind side content before clearing the current node; almost everything you need (gear, healing items, TP Point rest mechanics, your first Promotion) is taught to you exactly when the node requires it. Follow this order:

Phase	Do this	Why it comes first
Day 1	Clear the prologue mission Process: Cold Start, rest at every TP Point you pass, equip whatever gear drops immediately, and push your Endministrator to Operator Level 10.	Level 10 is the literal gate for early Node missions — you cannot progress past it undergeared.
Day 1-2	Progress the main story until you unlock Chen Qianyu, Wulfgard, and Perlica as free story-unlocked operators, and your first AIC (factory) introduction.	These three are free, no-pull operators — level them alongside your Endministrator instead of waiting for gacha pulls.
Day 2-3	Open the Daily menu every session and clear tasks until you hit the 100-point cap, then stop — points beyond 100 don't convert into extra Pass reward. Use any Vacation Tags you hold on a 100-point day for bonus Protocol Pass experience.	Daily points are a hard cap, not a grind pool. Hitting exactly 100 in a few minutes and spending the rest of your Sanity elsewhere is strictly better than over-grinding dailies.
Day 3-4	Start clearing Protocol Space stages from the Index menu, sorted by the resource type you're short on (Level mats first, then Skill mats).	Protocol Spaces let you preview and leave/fail without losing Sanity — scout the stage first, then commit once you know it's worth the cost.
Day 4-5	Check your Mail/Inventory for a Designation Selection Permit (a one-time free 6-star pick from the standard pool) and redeem it — see the operator section below for which one to take.	This is a guaranteed 6-star with zero pull cost; claiming it late just delays your strongest free unit.
Day 5-7	Reach Exploration Level 4 to unlock Severe Energy Alluvium, but only enter it after you've drilled dodge timing, charge-up interrupts, and stagger against normal enemies.	Severe Energy Alluvium costs 50-80 Sanity per completed run for Flawless Essence drops — going in undrilled just burns Sanity on failed clears.
End of Week 1	Promote (Ascend) your single best-performing operator to E1, and make sure at least 4 operators in your roster are sitting at Level 10.	Node 12 explicitly requires 4 operators at Level 10 plus 1 operator promoted to E1 — build toward this instead of discovering it late.

Endfield runs four separate operator progression tracks in parallel, and they consume different materials — which is exactly why new players get stuck asking whether they're upgrading in the right order. Here's what each track actually does:

Concrete illustration of why Skill matters more than it looks: a Basic Attack multiplier that starts at 25% at Skill Rank 1 climbs to 45% by Rank 9 and 56% at Mastery III on a Cryo 4-star operator — more than double the output from one track, for less material investment than a single Promotion tier.

1. Level every operator you're actively using to the current cap.
2. Push the Skill of your primary damage dealer next — it scales the hardest per material spent.
3. Promote (E1, then E2+) only your 3-4 confirmed mains once you hit their Level wall.
4. Spend Weapon Level and Tuning materials last, and only on the same 3-4 mains.

Sanity is Endfield's stamina resource, and it gates both Protocol Spaces and Energy Alluvium. Get the math right early or you'll bleed it on the wrong content.

• Regeneration: 1 Sanity every 7 minutes 12 seconds, roughly 200 per 24 hours. It does not bank past your cap — sitting at full Sanity for hours is pure waste.
• Starting cap: 125, rising as you raise your Authority Level (account level); community tracking currently puts the ceiling as high as 360 at higher Authority Levels (reported, verify in-client as your Authority Level climbs).
• Instant recovery items (each restores 40 Sanity): Sanity Syrup, Emergency Sanity Booster (expires after 10 days — use it, don't hoard it), Strawberry Crepe, and Origeometry (usable up to 10 times per day at escalating cost).
• Sanity Usage Permit: doubles both the Sanity cost and the rewards of a single run. Powerful once you know exactly which stage to farm — a trap in week one when you're still scouting content, since you're doubling down on a run you haven't confirmed is worth it.
• Severe Energy Alluvium: unlocks at Exploration Level 4+ and costs 50-80 Sanity per completed run for a shot at Flawless Essence. This is the single biggest Sanity sink in the early game — don't enter it until your combat fundamentals (dodge, interrupt, stagger, status reactions) are solid, since failed runs waste the attempt even though incomplete/abandoned runs don't consume Sanity.

Valley / Wuling Engraving Permits — the resource beginners misuse the most: they let you pre-lock part of the stat pool on an Essence roll at Severe Energy Alluvium, turning a fully random drop into a partially controlled one. They are reported to cost 400,000 Valley Stock Bills each from the region's Stock Redistribution Terminal shop — expensive enough that using one on a build you'll respec later is a straight loss. Do not spend Engraving Permits before your operators are Level 60 and you're farming Flawless Essences for a finalized build. Save every one you earn or buy until then.

Pull planning: the standard banner follows a soft pity ramp starting at pull 65, a hard pity guarantee at pull 80, a 50/50 against the rate-up unit on every 6-star, and a deeper guarantee that locks in the rate-up unit by pull 120 if you lose the 50/50 back to back. Bank premium currency toward that 65-pull window instead of spending it in small, sporadic pulls — sporadic pulling is the single most common way new players waste currency before they even understand the pity system exists.

Every one of these is obtainable without spending on the gacha, and the tier shown is the operator's current standing on the live tier list — not a guess.

Operator	Rarity	Element	Tier	How you get it
Endministrator (both variants)	6-star	Physical	T1 · Excellent	Automatic — your protagonist, granted at the prologue mission Process: Cold Start. Cannot be pulled from any banner; gains extra copies through story/account progression instead.
Wulfgard	5-star	Heat	T0 · Meta-defining	Free story unlock shortly after your first AIC (factory) introduction. This is the best pure-free pickup in the entire early roster — a top-tier unit for zero pulls.
Perlica	5-star	Electric	T1 · Excellent	Free story unlock. Fits directly into any early Arts-focused team.
Chen Qianyu	5-star	Physical	T2 · Good	Free story unlock after the Talos II prototype sequence. Solid roster filler while you level your mains.
Ardelia	6-star	Nature	T0 · Meta-defining	Take this from your free Designation Selection Permit (one-time 6-star pick from the standard pool). It's the highest tier of the five options and currently the only 6-star Healer, filling a role your free roster is otherwise missing.

The Designation Selection Permit's other four options, for reference: Ember (T1 · Excellent), Last Rite (T1 · Excellent), Lifeng (T2 · Good), Pogranichnik (T1 · Excellent) — all solid, but none outrank Ardelia's combination of tier and role coverage.

Don't sleep on 4-star operators in the permit shop. Rarity does not equal power in Endfield's current meta:

• Estella (4-star, Cryo) — T0 · Meta-defining. Arguably the best value pickup in the entire game: a top-tier unit at 4-star investment cost.
• Akekuri (4-star, Heat) — T1 · Excellent.
• Antal (4-star, Electric) — T1 · Excellent.

Build your first team around Wulfgard or Estella as your carry, Endministrator or Ardelia as your anchor/support, and fill the remaining slots with whichever free story units you already have leveled — you don't need a single gacha pull to field a genuinely strong early squad.

1. Burning a Sanity Usage Permit before you know the target stage. It doubles both cost and reward, which means it also doubles your loss if the run wasn't worth it. Confirm the farming route first, then double down.
2. Spending Valley/Wuling Engraving Permits before Level 60. At a reported 400,000 Valley Stock Bills each, using one on a build you'll change later is pure waste — hoard them for your finalized Flawless Essence farm.
3. Letting Sanity sit at the cap. Regeneration doesn't bank overflow — every hour spent capped at 125 (or your current max) is regeneration lost forever. Spend it down before logging off for the day.
4. Grinding the Daily menu past 100 points. The cap is hard; extra time spent past it earns nothing. Hit 100 with the cheapest tasks, then move to story, Protocol Spaces, or Alluvium.
5. Over-promoting one operator instead of spreading Level 10 across your squad. Node 12 requires 4 operators at Level 10 and only 1 at E1 — hyper-focusing a single unit's Promotion while everyone else sits low will stall your Node progress, not accelerate it.
6. Entering Severe Energy Alluvium before drilling combat fundamentals. Interrupting charge-ups, dodging on read, and reacting to stagger and status effects (combustion, solidification, electrification, corrosion) should be second nature before you commit Sanity to a 50-80 cost run.
7. Ignoring your AIC factory and Regional Development queue. These produce materials passively in the background — queue them every session instead of only touching combat content, or you're leaving free resources unclaimed.