[Arknights] Important Concepts for Beginners

One other thing to mention: the power of iteration.

It's easy to look at a crazy clear and go "wow, there's absolutely no way I could do that, this guy is leagues better than me."
Chances are, whoever made that clear spent a long time fucking up on the clear to arrive at where they are. But it's because they learnt where they went wrong and where they could optimize that they eventually got the clear.
Plus, it's a lot more enjoyable and gives you more to reflect on once you do get the clear.

Good guide but I wouldn't say that it's a good "Beginners" guide for a couple of reasons.

1) Stall strategies are generally terrible beginner advice.
Everything you said about them was 100% true and great context for how to think about DPS. However, just approaching the game with a stall strategy mindset as a beginner is likely to be a struggle fest where you keep leaking since the game is generally offensive oriented rather than defensive oriented. I would say that stall strategies are better for people who have more than a beginner's level knowledge of the game.

2) Recommending not to rely on guides.
Again, 100% agree with what you said and the context you gave about veteran accounts was spot on. However, this is a beginner's guide, so you don't need to give advice for players with veteran accounts in it. You can learn a lot from guides, definitely some more than others, and I appreciate guides that provide context and detail and not just instructions on how to win. When I was a beginner I would get stuck and go watch a guide and learn something about the mechanics that helped me break my reliance on guides and play completely blind today.

My general advice to beginners is watch a lot of guides, or at least as many as you want to invest your time on, just make sure to select the ones that actually explain why they're doing what they're doing so you're not always dependent on guides. Also, lean offensively in your general strategy and approach to stages particularly when you're figuring out the game. Learning about stall strategies and other types of strategies is valuable so don't neglect it. Also understand that hypergryph likes to flip the script and make specific challenges for specific types of squads and operators so it's important to know how to do a variety of strategies and build a variety of operators.

I'm going to cry..

Honestly, the farther i go into the game, the more i realize that my problem isn't strategizing, it's the lack of Operator variety. I'm fairly new to the game and sometimes the only reason i have a hard time in a level is because i don't have the specific archetype that i need that would fit my strategy, but it does force me to get creative with my line-ups to create a decent replacement.

throw all of this out the window just borrow Texas Alter...

Latest strategy update: Forget about placement and orientation. Just use executors

Fun Fact: Sun Tzu's Art of War actually has a line that goes on the lines of "know your enemies and yourself"

started playing Arknights 2 weeks ago, been fun! after watching some guides it helped me get started bc i tend to get lost lol and right now when it comes to strategy idk what I'm doing LMAO i feel like i do sometimes tho?

I just finished clearing chapter 8 and i'm happy i've been able to clear lots of maps my myself. still can't clear patriot mephi bird or talulah with my sole brain thoughhhh

yeah, guides are not really healthy. I use them only when i reach the point where the stage is no longer fun, but just annoying and i just want to get it over with

Yeah, no. As a beginner playing the CC stages, there's no way they are designed without the use of guides in mind. The solution to them are too narrow and specific.

In short delete the game

I hate the fact that there are rarely any ways to just get tips on stages without getting the perfect setup handed to you. I usually have to resort to ✨Social Interaction✨ for it
(by that I mean going on Discord)

That will help me a lot! I have people in a discord who helped forge a team for general stuff but I already know it'll change for whatever I need to pass. If I subscribe, do I get a free W?

how do you do the pausing between placing ops thing

While I do like to win on my own when I can, I can't and won't suffer to the point of actually having stress attacks just to beat a map xD. I admit I don't have a well built roster, so I don't fit in to your recommendation in the first place but I also feel like sometimes you just want to take a break from brain storming.

Don't get me wrong, the more built my roster gets, the less I'll feel like grabbing a guide but it's been bruuuutal going through this as a month and a half old player (who also spends so I'm not completely behind). I have none of the sick limited characters and only a few truly top tier ones.

I just think it's important to remember that some people don't play games for the same reasons as other people.

Another problem is actually getting the units u need hahahha. Gacha kills me inside

or be me who over prepares for one stage so i could steamroll it

This game give me brain cancer

That wide weeb tho xd

The Vsauce jump scare got me

The main issue in "Forge your own path" approach for me
I don't have the TIME to get better T_T
I can only afford so much time for Arknights daily, usually an hour tops to spend sanity, with sometimes up to two on weekends to spend potions and do annihilation
So, when new content comes out, and I want the rewards - I will use the guide to get them NOW

Though over time by trying to see WHY and HOW are things done in a guide made me able to clear most of normal stages of events by myself after a little amount of tries
But EX stages and CM mode - I don't have the time to mald over that , I wish I had

as a professional AK beginner I can confidently say that I've learned quite a lot from this video

a 2 years player, but i click the vid anyway

I'm a new player, accidentally put shaw behind my defender, and it's my go to strat when there's a possibility of leaks. Kinda stupid but if it works, it works.

watching this begin stuck on 5-3 cm made it quite enjoyable

My account is pretty built, but I still struggle on harder content. I use guides to give me key hints or team set-ups.
What? If I can't clear shit on my own, I won't throw away hours of my little free time to clear a few stages, unless it's CC.

+100 for the Vsauce reference xD

nice video! agreed!

Just started, and yeah at first i thought it's going to be easy like PvZ lol. turns out its much more intriguing and requires bit more brainpower.

to be honest, like most of the time i watch guides, i skim through them so i know what enemies spawn and their rough spawn schedule, cuz the game wont tell me that until i go in
sometimes i also want to know "the trick" without knowing the answer. like, "oh, talulah will set your units on fire every so often, and it's the exact timing of fast redeploys cooldown, drop two the moment they are available and retreat them once they get set on fire," something like that would have made me go, "oh shit, so that's what that was!" but i'd still have to figure out everything else myself, yknow?

Some actual Beginner tips for you new players:

Don't neglect 3 stars and 2 stars, while they are effectively stunted, their Low dps cost is an op skill of it's own, and more expensive DP costing operaters may just be overkill. The beginning rush of a stage is often where most mistakes happen.

Pushers and pullers are more than just 'move person from life to deathpit', if there are locations that requiring stalling 'or you can benefit from' they do a great job at stalling as well as also providing a noticable sum of dps.

Ignore when people say: This operator is useless.

This is often applied to characters who are not meta in CC#18 strategies which is literally the hardest part of the game with an insane amount of restrictions to make work. If you enjoy a character and feel like they fit your defense strategies and styles, be the pioneer to give that character highlight.

Waifu or meta? The answer is. Both. But if you can't decide. Go Waifu(or husbando). Enjoying the game that's about collecting characters and see them perform shouldn't be ruined when you have to work on a character you don't actually enjoy using (or looking at). But if you have more freetime or are invested into the game and have put a bit of money, then mixing it up with some waifus and also getting a meta pick in there to help ease some of the more difficult challenges will give you a very fun experience.


Don't CHOOSE between comparable classes. Look, you're gonna see it a lot. 'I was upgrading this less good character but now I have a more good character I should ignore the less good character and just focus on the more good character'. Having multiple types of the same role is never bad. Since there are many maps who will sometimes require 2 or even 3 of that type of character to perform optimally. This is most noticable with Single Target Snipers like Jessica and Exusiai, but there are other situations where this occurs with other characters. Like healer defenders.

I do wish there were better “how this mechanic works” type guides, as often things are poorly explained in game. For example, how Talulah’s post-death fireballs damage is blocked despite visually continuing past the blocker, or targeting priority of the map-wide-debuffing enemies in CC#5. I feel bad having looked at guides for those but I don’t know how I would have figured out how that worked without them.

You are my favourite AK content creator.

every time the frost spider does the E X P A N D i always lose it

Nice

Idk bro I think copying strats is better, as you don’t have to keep replaying a level to memorise enemy spawns, and make your own strategy when you don’t have access to guides

Instead follow other people why dont you use the technique of that people use than chage some operator and then you can win a stage without copying other people

all I have to say on guides.
if I think I can clear a stage solo, I'll do it.
If I've been stuck on a stage for actually like a week because of frikin frost drones or dogs that have 500 defense at the VERY START OF THE LEVEL... then I'll use a guide. I'm casual, I'm not killing my brain on stages like that which feel intentionally designed to induce pain.

For me, I only use guides if I'm busy with life and need to complete a stage like event stages, but for campaign I strictly dont look up guides cause its so satisfying winning with my own brain

Information is key. Definitely agreeing to all your points. As a beginner, it's kind of exciting to play the game and watch your strats work. Building strategies and combos is half the fun!
✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧
I also agree that copying makes the game a bit boring. But there's no harm in taking ideas from a working strategy to fit your ops. Like seeing shift operators used to push enemies over a blockade then using your shifter on a different level to basically do the same thing. Information is information, wherever it may come from. I like your idea of giving tips instead of step-by-step guides though. Thank you for your ideas and advice!
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

"megawhale with built specialist team for stalling"

team on screen is Shaw (free op) Cliffheart (free op if you were early enough) Rope (you have her max pot, i know you do) feater (pink slip op if you were early enough, still easy to get), snowsant (not really sure how you get her but i do have her) and weedy (actually hard to get op)
the strat used all the op's autopush skills, which is their first skill


so

literally no investment except finding a weedy?


i don't even remember getting cliffheart snowsant and feater but i have them

Really wish there was an option for an in-game timer. Would make it easier to mess around with deployment and skill timings. Using an external timer is annoying

strategy #1: Surtr

Me: life is pain. the onla constant is suffering.

Also Me: OMG, Sagapog O///O

Omg. You played Fungimist at the end of the video. WE WANT FUNGIMIST BACK!!!