Recruitment

Recruitment

Operators

Tag combinations

Recruitment is one of the two methods for players to get Operators in Arknights, aside from headhunting.

Overview

Recruitment is available after 0-2 is completed. Initially the player only have one recruitment slot (which means that one can only perform a single recruitment at a time), but building and upgrading the HR Office in the base increases the number of recruitment slots, up to 4.

Before carrying out the recruitment, the player should determine the recruitment time and tags to be used. Each recruitment costs LMD and one Recruitment Permit; building and upgrading the HR Office reduces the recruitment fee by 10% at Level 1, 20% at Level 2, and 30% at Level 3. An Expedited Plan can be used to instantly complete the recruitment. Rarely, if ever, a recruitment can have been "completed in advance" upon being expedited which will not use up the Recruitment Permit(s) and LMDs.

In the event the recruitment is cancelled (by clicking the Stop Recruitment button), the LMD and Recruitment Permit will not be refunded!

Recruitment time

The recruitment time can be set between 1 hour and 9 hours, in 10 minutes increments. The longer the time, the lower the chance that the tag(s) are dropped out (see below), but the LMD cost is also increased.

Setting the recruitment time to at least 4 hours will remove 1★ Operators and add 5★ Operators, while setting it to at least 7 hours and 40 minutes will remove 2★ Operators.

Tags

There are five recruitment tags available on each recruitment slot, which decides what can be selected to refine the traits of the Operator will be recruited. Each tag, if selected and confirmed, will ensure that an Operator that matches all the tags selected will be recruited. All five are selected at random and not all of them are always available (see Tips), and the player can pick up to three tags at a time.

Once the recruitment is completed, the Operator will have the chosen tags unless if they are dropped out, which can happen in the following situations:

• Randomly during the recruitment process, especially if the recruitment time is too short.
• If the player selects two mutually exclusive tags (e.g. Medic and Guard), either or both of them will be dropped out.
• Tags that are not applied to recruitment will not affect the result of recruitment. If a tag that was chosen is dropped, it does not preclude the Operator resulting from that recruitment to still possess the tag.

Note that the tags can still be dropped out if the player uses Expedited Plans to instantly complete the recruitment, but not if the recruitment is completed in advance. A player can always see what is the current state of each tag, as they are color coded: a tag with a dark grey background is confirmed, and will not be dropped. A tag with a light grey background is yet to be confirmed. If a tag still is not confirmed when the timer ends, it will drop.

The possible tags are listed below, color-coded green for common ones, blue for semi-common ones, orange for uncommon ones, and red for rare ones:

Qualification	Robot • Senior Operator • Starter • Top Operator
Position	Melee • Ranged
Class	Caster • Defender • Guard • Medic • Sniper • Specialist • Supporter • Vanguard
Specialization	AoE • Crowd-Control • DPS • DP-Recovery • Debuff • Fast-Redeploy • Defense • Healing • Nuker • Shift • Slow • Summon • Support • Survival

The available tags can be refreshed once a HR Office is built on the base. One refresh chance is generated every six hours, up to 3 maximum, but certain Operators can accelerate it when they are assigned to work in the HR Office.

Tips

Mechanics

While the exact rate of recruitment tags are yet to be revealed from official sources, it is apparent that tag pools' minimum guaranteed rarity is determined separately from the set of tags, which would mean that the tag generation process is done in two steps:

1. The game determines the minimum rarity of Operators that can hypothetically be guaranteed by the pool.
2. The game populates the tag pool with a set of individual tags congruent with the guaranteed rarity, presumably also having a different weight for each individual tag.

As such, if during a tag generation process the game decides to pick 3★ as the rarity, then the generated tags and their combinations will often "contain" 3★ Operators in the pool of possible results. This also gives the following implications:

• Multiple uncommon and rare tags that guarantees at least 4★ Operators tend to appear together (e.g. Support, Fast-Redeploy, and Shift at the same time) with or without common and semi-common tags that would guarantee specific Operators.
• Combinations of common and semi-common tags that guarantees specific 5★ Operators (e.g. Defender/Defense and Survival which guarantees Vulcan, or Caster and Healing which guarantees Nightmare) rarely appear together.

Because of that, recruitment more heavily relies on luck than headhunting, but there is a bright side: while certain tag combinations' rates are adjusted when the recruitment pool is updated to accomodate the new additions, the tag generation process as explained above remains unchanged, which means that the overall rate in which Operators of a certain rarity appearing in recruitment stays the same.

Furthermore, recruitment tag pools and recruitment itself determine their result independently. That is to say, a tag which does not preclude 3★ Operators (or no tag at all) can still result in a 4★. Tags merely refine the pool of possible results, and guarantee tags merely exclude ineligible Operators from being selected; if those Operators happen to be of a lower rarity, this results in a higher rarity guarantee.

It is unclear whether or not the timer affects the rarity of the end result. Assuming the player didn't pick tag combinations which guarantees 4★ or higher Operators and sets the recruitment time to at least 7 hours and 40 minutes, the rarity of the Operator which appears from recruitment are as follows:

• 3★: ~87%
• 4★: ~11%
• 5★: ~2%

General

• Try to choose a combination of tags that will guarantee at least a 4★ Operator or specific ones the player are looking. Remember to set the recruitment time to maximum (9 hours) to reduce the chance that any of the tags are dropped.
  • If the player wants to get Robot Operators (Castle-3, Lancet-2, and THRM-EX), they have to set the time to at most 3 hours and 50 minutes, as any more than that will preclude them from the search for being 1★ Operators, rendering the Robot tag inapplicable. This also means Robots are more likely to drop, as they do not benefit of a long timer.
  • If the set of tags did not guarantee specific Operators, the player can set the time to 7 hours and 40 minutes to save LMD, being the shortest possible to guarantee at least 3★ Operators and at most 5★ Operators.
• If the player is very fortunate enough to get the Senior/Top Operator tag, they should always select either of them and set the recruitment time to maximum! It is recommended to prioritize using Expedited Plans on these tags.
  • As long as the time is set to the maximum of 9 hours, the Top Operator and Senior Operator tags will never be dropped out unless a mutually exclusive tag (e.g. 'Starter') is also selected, making either one tag a valid candidate for dropping, including Top Operator.
  • After an update, to help the player not miss the Senior and Top Operator tags by accident, they are highlighted in yellow, and the game will give the player a warning before they comfirm if they do not select the tag or use a refresh chance while they are present.
• Early in the game, players should try to maximize their Operators' potential through recruitment, since as seen above, 3★ Operators are the most common sight in the recruitment process. Later in the game, recruitment is a great source for Commendation Certificate and Distinction Certificate, especially if the player were lucky enough to get 4★ Operators most of the time.
• All current tags will be refreshed when new Operator(s) added to the recruitable Operators' pool. One cannot "sit" on a tag in order to save it for an Operator that will be added in the future. Therefore, there is no value in not using tags as soon as the player gets them.