Arknights Endfield Element and Damage Type System – Weaknesses, Resistances, and Breaks

Arknights: Endfield uses five damage types, Physical, Heat, Electric, Cryo, and Nature, with four of them classed as Arts, and most of the game’s weaknesses, resistances, and “breaks” come from how these elements interact through reactions and Physical Status. Enemies lean toward either high Physical defense or high Arts resistance, so swapping damage types and using the right reactions (Combustion, Electrification, Solidification, Corrosion, Shatter) is key to breaking their defenses.

Damage Types and Elements

Endfield damage is split into one non‑Arts type and four Arts types.

• Physical
  • Raw, non‑elemental hits; uses its own Physical Status system (Vulnerable, Lift, Knock Down, Crush, Breach, Shatter).
  • Generally strong against enemies with high Arts resistance but weak versus heavily armored foes.
• Heat (Arts)
  • Fire‑type damage; focuses on DoT and explosions via Combustion.
• Electric (Arts)
  • Lightning‑type damage; scales team DPS by making enemies take more Arts damage through Electrification.
• Cryo (Arts)
  • Ice‑type damage; specializes in control via Solidification and Physical Shatter follow‑ups.
• Nature (Arts)
  • Earth/organic damage; erodes defenses over time via Corrosion.

Physical sits mostly outside the Arts reaction web and interacts only in specific cases like Shatter, while Arts types constantly interact with one another.

General Weaknesses and Resistances

There is no rigid Pokémon‑style chart, but enemies clearly lean toward specific resist profiles.

• Many heavy units (e.g., Elite Armored Specialists) have extremely high Physical defense, making Physical DPS feel weak until you apply Breach, Corrosion, or swap to Arts damage.
• Other enemies show high Arts resistance but fall quickly to Physical and Shatter, especially when they are frozen or Solidified.
• Guiding principle:
  • If Physical hits are barely scratching, switch to Arts damage or Physical DEF‑down (Breach, Corrosion).
  • If elemental hits feel bad, rely on Physical builds and Shatter.

Theorycrafting posts emphasize that resistance modifiers from reactions (Electrification, Corrosion) and statuses (Breach) matter more than flat “element A > enemy B” matchups.

Physical Status and Defense Breaks

Physical status is the game’s main “armor break” and burst system.

• Vulnerable
  • The first time you hit with a skill that carries a Physical Status keyword, it applies Vulnerable instead.
  • Vulnerable stacks up to 4 times and is consumed by big Physical finishers.
• Lift and Knock Down
  • Both add one Vulnerable stack and deal bonus Stagger; Lift sends enemies into the air, Knock Down slams them to the ground.
  • Used to build toward a high‑level Crush/Breach and to control dangerous enemies.
• Crush
  • Consumes all Vulnerable stacks to deal a massive burst of Physical damage; more stacks = more damage.
  • If the target has no Vulnerable, Crush applies Vulnerable instead.
• Breach
  • Also consumes all Vulnerable stacks, but instead reduces Physical defense, making the target take more Physical damage for a duration.
  • If no Vulnerable, it just applies Vulnerable.
• Shatter (Physical vs Cryo)
  • When you hit a Solidified enemy (Cryo reaction) with Physical damage, you trigger Shatter, dealing a large burst of Physical damage and breaking the freeze.

Taken together, Physical status breaks enemies by stacking Vulnerable and spending it via Crush/Breach or leveraging Shatter to punch through both HP and armor.

Arts Reactions and Resistance Shredding

Arts elements “break” resistance through four main reactions that all depend on which element is applied second.

Corrosion is especially important: TheGamer notes that as Corrosion ticks, the enemy’s resistance to every Arts type falls, massively amplifying later elemental bursts.​

Building Teams Around Weaknesses and Breaks

Guides recommend building around either mono‑element pressure or two‑element reaction cores.

• Mono-element (Arts Bursts):
  • Focus on one Arts type and repeatedly trigger same‑element Bursts (Heat Burst, Electric Burst, etc.) for consistent damage, especially when enemies are naturally weak to that element.
• Dual-element reaction teams:
  • Pair Nature with any element to leverage Corrosion as a universal DEF/RES shred before your main damage hits.
  • Pair Electric with any element if your team is mostly Arts, using Electrification to “fake” an Arts weakness on high‑RES targets.
  • Pair Cryo with Physical to freeze and Shatter enemies that would otherwise shrug off neutral hits.

For heavily armored elites and bosses, Mobalytics and Icy‑Veins both stress using Breach, Corrosion, and Electrification to strip defense and resistance before committing big bursts; ignoring these tools makes those enemies feel far tankier than they actually are.

In short, Endfield’s element and damage system is less about fixed rock‑paper‑scissors and more about stacking the right reactions and statuses to turn resistant enemies into targets you can burst down with Physical, Arts, or a mix of both.