Enemy
Enemies in Arknights are units that must be defeated by the player in operations.
Currently, there are ten types of enemies: Apparition, Arts Creation, Collapsal, Drone, Infected Creature, Machina, Possessed, Sarkaz, Sea Monster, and Wild Beast, and they are divided into three classes: Normal, Elite, and Boss.
Enemies have three versions which affects their performance in specific operations.
- Level 0: The enemy's baseline version.
- Level 1: An enhanced version with greater stats and improved abilities, typically used in harder content such as Extreme Mode and extra event operations.
- Level 2: A highly enhanced version with even greater stats and further improved abilities. Only few enemies have a Level 2 version, which is used in high-difficulty content.
Mechanics
| Property | Information |
|---|---|
| Low-Altitude Hovering | Grants a ground enemy the properties of an aerial enemy (although they still cannot move through impassable tiles) and makes them unable to be shifted. Disabling the enemy (Stun, Sleep, Freeze) will cause them to lose the Low-Altitude Hovering. |
| Refraction | Greatly increases RES so long as the enemy is not Silenced. |
- Accuracy
- Ammunition
- Corruption
- Energy
- Identity
- Inspire
- Imprisonment
- Reborn Creation
- Straight Shot
- Waregeist
Special properties
| Note that most of the names used to refer to the mechanics are unofficial and will be changed to the official designation when one is given. |
Aerial
Aerial enemies, also known as flying units, have the ability to move over friendly units, high ground tiles including walls/obstacles, and hazardous terrain (e.g. holes, Heat Pump Passages), and can only be targeted by ranged attacks.
Marksman Snipers prioritize attacking aerial enemies (including Low-Altitude Hovering ones), while Skyranger Specialists are able to block aerial enemies on the Take Off state.
Ally
Allied units, known as friendly or neutral units in-game, will neither attack, be attacked/targeted, nor blocked by friendly units but will attack and be attacked/targeted by enemies instead.
Unlike other enemies, allied units' HP meter is displayed as a blue bar like that of friendly units and they will not count as an enemy for the purpose of missions' progression when defeated.
| Examples of allied units | |
|---|---|
| Normal |     |
| Boss |    |
Kreide, "Worldly Remains" temporarily becomes an allied unit while its The Final Rest is active.
Attached
Certain enemies are attached to a unit; should the unit the attached enemy is tied with leave the map, the attached enemy will be automatically defeated.
Channel
Certain enemies need to channel their abilities upon using it, which renders them unable to move and attack, and use other abilities until the ability ends.
If the ability is interrupted while being channeled, such as by Stunning or shifting the enemy, it will prematurely end and goes into cooldown in most cases.
Insignificant
Insignificant enemies will not keep the operation from ending if they are present when all other enemies have been defeated and are not included to the enemy counter.
Large
Large enemies occupy an area of multiple tiles, being stationary at all times (which also means any mobility-impairing effects are useless on them), and unable to be shifted. Large enemies also cannot be blocked, but this is redundant since they are always spawned on undeployable tiles.
All large enemies have the ability to reduce the Life Points by a large amount or to zero altogether if the player takes too long to defeat them to make up for their size and immobility which prevents them from going towards a Protection Objective.
| Examples of large enemies | |
|---|---|
| Boss |      |
Revival
Many enemies can revive themselves over a period of time when their HP reaches 0 (i.e. defeated), upon which the enemy will survive and fully or partially restore their HP over the revival period, during which they becomes invulnerable and unable to be blocked, but can neither move nor attack and use abilities. After the enemy is revived, the cooldown of their abilities are reset to their initial cooldown instead of the normal cooldown, if the ability has one.
Certain enemies also use the revival mechanic to turn themselves into a visually and/or statistically different enemy.
Trivia
- Before the release of Episode 08, the enemy count icon on the top of the operation HUD displays the Reunion logo. The release of Episode 08 changed this icon to a generic "target crosshair".
- This is due to the fact that Episode 08 marks the end of the Reunion Saga of the Main Theme, which meant that the eponymous faction will no longer be featured as the only prominent antagonistic group in future episodes. Additionally, enemies unaffiliated with Reunion are often encountered throughout various Intermezzi/Side Stories and even in Episode 08 (where most enemies are part of the Ursus Army), neccessating the changed enemy count icon.
- When an enemy spawns, usually if they are encountered for the first time during an operation, a tooltip will inform the player of what the said enemy does. Many later enemies' tooltip texts, however, are taken right from their description or ability in the Archives instead of summarizing their capabilities; those who do will not have their tooltip text included in the Overview section of their respective pages.
- After A Walk in the Dust, the tooltip can be paused upon being shown, but doing this will pause the game as well and the tooltip will disappear when the game is unpaused.
