Potential

In Arknights, Operators can have their Potential improved to grant them additional bonuses such as DP cost and/or redeployment time reduction, stat improvement, or improvement to their talent(s).

An Operator have six levels of Potential, denoted by white lines that gradually forms an inverted pentagram as seen on the right with a blue overlay indicating the next level.

Operator Potential can be increased by either using one Operator Token (awarded when obtaining duplicates of Operators the player already own) or four Class Tokens. For more information, see Tokens.

If the Operator's Potential is maxed out, excess tokens of the Operator can be exchanged in the Certificate Store for either Commendation Certificate or Distinction Certificate depending on the rarity of the Operator. Operators obtained from Kernel headhunting banners give out Kernel Operator Tokens instead, which is similar but are traded for Universal Certificate instead. For more information on the certificates' conversion rate, see their respective articles.

The Potentials of Amiya, Savage, and 3★ or below Operators can only be improved by their respective Operator Tokens.

Conviction, Luo Xiaohei, Nine-Colored Deer, and Integrated Strategies-exclusive Operators are the only ones whose Potential cannot be improved in any way.

Trivia

• Prior to Lingering Echoes, the UI for increasing an Operator's potential displayed a Success rate under the token of choice, but that number was always 100%. There is an unused sprite in the game files under the name "icon_potential_fail" displaying the silhouette of a person tripping while climbing a staircase. This combination of elements implies that it was originally intended for raising a potential to be able to fail, but this feature was cut before the game launched. In all likelihood, it was probably intended for players to use less than four class tokens to raise potential, however with a lowered rate of success.