Possibly the most important thing to do in the beginning is to upgrade the base! The base provides you LMD (Money) and Battle Records (EXP) as well as giving you the chance to get materials that will be used all game.
Your Base and how it is setup is imperative to how well you’ll do in the game. The amount of Trading Post, Factory, and Power plants are what you’ll need to decide. This guide will explain how each facility works and how to best utilize them.
Arknights Base Tips
First off, you want to get to up to Stage 3-4 in the story mode. By doing so you will unlock all the content you need to upgrade your base and other various things.
Every part of the Base will have someone to operate it and every operator has their own special skills and where they like to be placed. Placing the appropriate operator in the correct place will be very beneficial.
Have a good rotation of units. Once a unit is fatigued switch them out for another one.
Visit your friends’ bases to collect more Credit especially when an exchange is going on you can gain a ton of credits fast. Check out the Reception Room section for more information on exchange.
All resources are refunded when destroying a facility, so you don’t have to worry about messing up.
Focus on leveling the left side (Trading Post, Factory, Power Plant) so that you can gain LMD, Battle Records, and even Orundum components. This will propel you further as opposed to the right side.
Control Center
The Control Center is where you manage and find out information about your entire Base. You want your Control Center to be at level 5 in order to unlock all the areas. For now, your goal should be to get to at least level 4 in order to unlock the first 3 rows so you can fill them out with Trading Posts, Factories, and Power Plants.
Upgrading your Control Center will have certain requirements that need to be met. Make sure you clear up to 3-4 or else you will not be able to get to level 4 Control Center. Don’t worry about which rooms to level as that will come once you know what setup you would like. This is discussed below in Base Setup Strategies where you find out your preferences and goals.
Make sure to fill out the Base Assistant and floor Assistants with operators that you want to gain a lot of trust.
Dormitory
When it comes to the Dormitory you want to place all your operators that are low on morale or fatigued here. If an operator is fatigued then their Base Skills will not be in effect which can really slow down production.
Make sure to decorate and buy furniture for these spaces. The better the furniture the better the Ambience. If Ambience is high then Morale Restoration/hr is increased. Higher Ambience also generates more Friend Credits which is great because it’s free items.
Some furniture tips would be that, furniture usually comes in sets and completing a set gives more Ambience. Also, each Dormitory has a max Ambience of 1000 so distribute your furniture evenly.
Save your furniture parts for limited Event furniture, so that you don’t have to spend actual money.
Power Plant
The Power Plant is where you will get the energy to power the other rooms in your Base. Important in the beginning because you will need to generate drones in order to be able to build and upgrade other rooms.
Depending on how many Power Plants you build is what will determine how developed your base is. Building 3 Power Plants will allow you to fully complete your base. This is not always the best because you might not need some rooms and building 3 Power Plants will be at the cost of another Factory or Trading Post.
Factory
The Factory is where you’ll be producing the good stuff such as Battle Records, Precious Metals (Money), Chips (Promoting), and Originum Materials (Orundum). This is the main building you’ll be collecting stuff from throughout the game. I suggest building 4 of these so that you can have a steady cycle of Battle Records and Gold. With 2 Factories making Battle Records and the other 2 making Gold Bars you can have a balanced production with just 2 Trading Posts.
You can also use the Factory to make Originum Materials which can then be traded to the Trading Post for Orundum. This way you can have a good supply of Orundum for pulling new units. Generally Orundum is not produced because of how much LMD and Sanity (Energy) it costs.
Trading Post
The Trading Post is where you will sell your Gold Bars obtained from the Factory in exchange for LMD. Depending on your setup you can really make a lot of LMD here, which is very important for leveling characters in the game. Try to keep a balanced output with your Factory so that you aren’t sitting on tons of Precious Metal orders with no way to fill them.
Reception Room
The Reception Room is one of the more confusing rooms because of the Clues aspect. To break it down, Clues are what you’re Operators are looking for and once you find all 7 clues it will trigger a 24-hour event called Clue Exchange. This is where friends can visit your base and you can visit thiers to get an increased amount of Credits. You can also send extra clues to a friend to gain more credits and help your friend along with their search. Clues have no other purpose besides this.
Sending extra Clues to your friends will give you credits and visiting your friends when they have a Clue Exchange going on will net you a lot of extra Credits.
There is a limit to 10 visits while a Clue Exchange is going on for your friends. Make sure to visit these people first!
The Reception Room also determines your friend limit. Level this place up in order to increase the limit. Friends are important because the more people’s base you visit, the more credit you’ll gain.
Credits can be exchanged at the credit shop for important materials and Gavial/Courier. Check out our Store Buying guide if you need help on what to buy.
Playing Arknights On PC
When it comes to playing Arknights on the PC, check out BlueStacks. This is what we use to play all of our mobile games on a 60 fps no lag setup. BlueStacks lets you play multiple games at once with its ability to run multiple instances.
Pro tip, use this when rerolling so that you can reroll a bunch of times at once instead of one at a time.
Click on this link to check it out and support us in the process!
Workshop
The Workshop is another place you’ll find yourself frequenting when trying to upgrade stuff. The Workshop is capable of producing Base Materials, Elite Materials, Skill Summary, Chip, and Furniture. Elite Material is where you’ll be getting the items necessary to promote and E2 your stronger operators. Make sure this room is leveled and don’t make things unless you need it.
Be careful when using the operators for this one. Each operator has their specific thing their good at. For example Shaw is great building Base Materials and will give you a greater chance of receiving a free byproduct. Also a bit costly when it comes to LMD, so be sure to stack up.
Human Resources Office
The Human Resources Office is where you can get refreshes on your Recruitment Tags and increase your Recruitment Slots. Level this up when you can so that you can recruit units more often and hopefully land yourself a 5 or 6 ★.
Training Room
The Training Room is a place for upgrading Skill Mastery past level 7. Don’t worry much about this place since getting above level 7 Skill Mastery is typically end-game stuff.
The level of this room correlates to the maximum a skill can be upgraded to. Station some units here for free trust as their morale cannot be depleted here.
Arknights Base Level Order
You want to Upgrade your Factory, Workshop, and Office as soon as you can. These are the most important rooms and have the most value.
Factory level 3 will allow you to produce higher level Battle Records and Originum Materials.
Workshop level 3 will unlock all the stuff you need to increase Base level and more importantly to increase your operator rank! Getting to E2 is hard and you’ll need this room maxed out to do so.
Office level 3 will net you more refreshes on your recruit tags. This is super useful because there is a way to get 6 ★ operators from recruit. Check out the Recruit tags guide to see how.
The rest of the upgrades are up to you and what you’re looking for.
Arknights Base Setup Strategies
Base Setup is important but the only section that can be adjusted is the left side. The Trading Post, Factory, and Power Plants will net you a lot of passive items.
2-4-3 – This is the easiest and least heachache inducing setup that you can have. This refers to 2 Trading Posts, 4 Factories, and 3 Power Plants. This will give you enough Power to unlock everything in your base and have your production run in a balanced way. The only flaw with this setup would be that the production output is lower than other setups.
Have 2 Factories make Battle Records and 2 make Gold bars to evenly match your Trading Post.
2-5-2 – 2 Trading Posts, 5 Factories, and 2 Power Plants. This setup has very high production and balanced but will cost you in terms of a lower level Reception Room and less friends. This is because of only having 2 Power Plants which limits the amount of energy your base gets. Having less friends will mean less credits and other free stuff.
3 Factories making Battle Records and 2 Factories making Gold bars will allow you to have a high but balanced production.
3-3-3 – 3 Trading Posts, 3 Factories, and 3 Power Plants. This setup lets you build the whole base while producing a ton of LMD. The flaw with this is that you will have no Battle Record output so you will need to spend precious Sanity to get EXP.
Have all 3 Factories make Gold Bars in order to keep up with your Trading Posts.
*All materials are refunded when destroying a room so you can experiment and mix and match until you find what you like.
Which Setup To Use?
The argument can be made that for early game progression 2-5-2 is the best since you don’t need all the rooms in the beginning of the game. It isn’t until you need to E2 your units that a 2-4-3 is more viable. If you have time and want to progress quickly I suggest running a 2-5-2 until you need more power and then switch to 2-4-3. Personally I use the 2-4-3 because of ease of use and time constraints. Have fun!
If you’re looking for more information about the game or just some more tips, you got to check out our must see beginner guide! It might have some information you don’t know yet!