Arknights: Endfield Protocol Pass – Who It’s For and What You Really Get

The Protocol Pass in Arknights: Endfield is the game’s battle pass: a progression track that hands out materials, currency, and exclusive weapons as you play during a patch. It comes in three layers, only one of which needs real money, and none of them are required to finish the launch content or clear story as a free player.

How the Protocol Pass is structured

The Protocol Pass is built around three parallel tracks:

• Basic Supply – the free top row that every account progresses automatically.
• Originium Supply – a middle “freemium” track unlocked with Origeometry, the premium currency you can earn in-game or buy.
• Protocol Customized – the bottom premium track that costs around $10 per patch and must be bought with real money.

All three tracks share the same level ladder. You gain Battle Pass experience by doing your regular play: clearing story content, spending Sanity, and completing weekly and event missions. When the pass levels up, you claim the rewards from any tracks you’ve unlocked at that level.

Once Originium Supply and Protocol Customized are fully cleared, the pass keeps going with “overflow” levels that give loot boxes. Those boxes include random resources and can occasionally drop Oroberyl, the gacha currency, but the expected value is modest and better treated as a bonus rather than a core reason to buy in.

What each Protocol Pass tier gives you

The three tiers are tuned very differently. The free track focuses on basics, the Originium Supply track is a self-funding freemium option, and the premium track piles on progression resources and a second copy of an exclusive weapon.

Currency values use the in-game exchange, where 1 pull equals 500 Oroberyl and 1 Origeometry equals 75 Oroberyl.

Originium Supply: the “freemium” tier that pays for itself

Originium Supply is the middle track and is where the Protocol Pass starts to matter for long-term planning. It costs 29 Origeometry to unlock for a patch. Fully clearing it returns 32 Origeometry, leaving you 3 Origeometry ahead. In practice, that means:

• You can unlock this tier every patch using Origeometry earned from game play, with no need for real money.
• Once you buy it the first time, it effectively funds its own renewal if you keep finishing the pass.

The standout reward is a 6★ weapon selector box tied to the pass. That box lets you pick one of three exclusive battle pass weapons: a sword, a hand cannon, or an Arts unit. During beta, these were tuned as strong interim options for specific limited characters (Laevatain, Yvonne, and Gilberta), but they are broadly useful even if you miss the paired operator.

Alongside the weapon and Origeometry, Originium Supply includes:

• Upgrade materials for characters and weapons.
• Character and weapon experience items and T-Credits.
• Sanity boosters, roughly 320 energy total in the beta configuration.
• Double reward tickets that let you spend double Sanity for double drops.
• Crowns, which are used for skill mastery; each skill takes six Crowns to max in the current design.
• A few small cosmetics.

The middle tier does not meaningfully increase your gacha pull count on its own. The practical value is an exclusive 6★ weapon and a smoother early progression curve, at the cost of part of your premium currency stash for that patch.

Protocol Customized: the paid premium tier

Protocol Customized is the only part of the Protocol Pass you cannot unlock without spending real money. It has been priced at roughly $10 per patch in testing regions and adds a substantial stack of rewards on top of Basic Supply and Originium Supply.

On purchase, you immediately receive:

• 20 Origeometry.
• 12,000 Protocol Pass experience, which auto-skips around 12 levels.

As you then finish the premium track, you earn:

• Another 16 Origeometry, for 36 total from the premium tier.
• A second 6★ weapon selector, identical to the Originium Supply one.
• Two potential-unlock items that apply only to those battle pass weapons.
• 2400 Arsenal Tickets, a little over one 10-pull on the weapon banner.
• Multiple selector boxes for high-level breakthrough and progression mats.
• Selector boxes for skill upgrade materials.
• Selector boxes for XP and T-Credits.
• Additional Crowns for skill mastery.
• Sanity recovery items, including event-themed potions that function as collectibles.
• More double reward tickets.
• Profile cosmetics and camera filters.

In pull terms, the premium tier alone is worth 36 Origeometry, or about 5.4 character pulls, plus a full multi on the weapon banner from Arsenal Tickets. When combined with the small net gain from Originium Supply and the occasional Oroberyl from overflow boxes, the full three-tier setup lands a little under seven extra character pulls per patch for a paying player.

For comparison, many other 3D gachas price their $10 battle passes around eight to ten limited pulls plus some standard tickets. Endfield’s Protocol Customized leans harder toward materials and exclusive weapons than raw character pulls.

How much power are you missing as F2P?

The obvious concern is whether skipping the Protocol Pass locks you out of content. At launch, it does not. The main effects of buying the pass are:

• Progression speed – You level characters, weapons, and skills faster due to extra mats, Sanity items, and double-drop tickets.
• Weapon coverage – You gain access to one or two exclusive 6★ battle pass weapons per patch and can push their potential higher.
• Gacha head start – You pick up several extra limited pulls and some weapon-banner progress.

Free players still receive the full Basic Supply track and can unlock Originium Supply using Origeometry earned from regular game play. That middle tier returns more Origeometry than it costs and grants one copy of the 6★ battle pass weapon. The primary gap between someone running only Originium Supply and someone also buying Protocol Customized is:

• A second copy of the exclusive 6★ weapon plus two guaranteed potential levels.
• Roughly five to six extra character pulls per patch.
• Extra Arsenal Tickets for the weapon banner.
• Heavier stacks of late-game materials and cosmetic items.

There is currently no high-ceiling endgame mode that demands min-maxed potential or perfect signature weapons to clear. Story and early challenge content can be completed without any spending, including without rolling gacha at all if you are willing to grind hard. The pass translates into comfort and speed, not access to otherwise impossible content.

Value comparison with the Monthly Card

Most low spenders will look at two products first: the $5 Monthly Card and the Protocol Pass. The Monthly Card is simple. It gives:

• 200 Oroberyl per day for 30 days, totaling 6000 Oroberyl.
• 12 Origeometry up front, equal to 900 Oroberyl.
• One Sanity booster per day, roughly 1200 total Sanity per month.

That 6900 Oroberyl converts to about 13.8 character pulls per month. There are no weapons or cosmetics attached, only pulls and energy. Protocol Pass spending, by contrast, splits your benefit between pulls, progression, and battle pass weapons.

For a rough comparison over a single patch:

• Putting $10 into the Monthly Card (two months) yields close to 27–28 pulls and plenty of extra Sanity, but no exclusive gear.
• Putting $10 into Protocol Customized yields around 5–6 character pulls, a 10-pull on the weapon banner, and significant materials plus an extra 6★ weapon and its potential unlockers.

If you only care about limited characters, the Monthly Card delivers more gacha value per dollar. If you want weapons, faster upgrades, and like the idea of exclusive pass-only equipment, the Protocol Pass shifts more of the value into that space.

Who should buy which Protocol Pass tier

The Protocol Pass is flexible enough that different tiers make sense for very different player profiles.

Free players and very light spenders

For anyone trying to stay as close to free as possible:

• Always use Basic Supply – It is free and automatic.
• Strongly consider Originium Supply – Unlock it with Origeometry earned in-game, complete it each patch, and let it pay for itself. You gain a 6★ weapon and come out ahead in Origeometry.
• Skip Protocol Customized – The premium tier gives pulls and mats but at the cost of real money for relatively few extra character pulls.

This setup keeps your account competitive without opening your wallet, and it secures at least one solid weapon per patch that free players otherwise would not see.

Low spenders who prioritize characters

If you are comfortable spending a little but care most about character banners:

• Prioritize the Monthly Card – It offers the highest pull count per dollar.
• Use Originium Supply as a freebie – Fund it through gameplay Origeometry and treat it as a permanent, self-funding weapon track.
• Buy Protocol Customized selectively – Consider it only on patches where the battle pass weapon line-up or cosmetics line up with your favorite characters.

This approach front-loads your spending into raw gacha power, while still collecting the free 6★ battle pass weapon every patch through the Originium Supply tier.

Players who like building and experimenting with weapons

For players who enjoy fine-tuning builds and want strong weapons early:

• Originium Supply is very strong – It gives a weapon tuned to the current limited operators and lets you pick the type that matches your roster.
• Protocol Customized is more attractive – The second copy of the pass weapon and potential unlockers let you push one weapon quite far without touching the weapon gacha.
• The Arsenal Tickets matter – A free weapon multi each patch from the premium tier is useful if you intend to engage with the weapon banner at all.

In this case the Protocol Pass is closer to a “weapon bundle plus mats” than a pure gacha product, and players who care about kit strength more than collecting every limited unit may find it fair value.

Whales and heavy spenders

For heavy spenders, the Protocol Pass is almost trivial compared with the cost of maxing characters and signature weapons. The main considerations are:

• Battle pass weapons currently sit below signature weapons but above free options, making them useful stopgaps and sidegrades.
• Buying Protocol Customized early in a patch gives a front-loaded chunk of mats and skips several pass levels, smoothing day-one progression.
• The overflow loot boxes mean your ongoing weekly play continues to convert into some amount of extra gacha resources, even after capping the tracks.

At that point, the Protocol Pass functions as a baseline subscription rather than a major decision.

The Protocol Pass in Arknights: Endfield is not a mandatory purchase, and it does not fence off core content. Instead, it offers a layered set of trade-offs: more progression speed and exclusive 6★ weapons in exchange for either premium currency or cash, but fewer direct character pulls than many competing passes. The best move for most players is to treat Originium Supply as a no-brainer freemium track funded by gameplay, and to decide patch by patch whether the extra weapons and cosmetics in Protocol Customized are worth sacrificing some gacha pulls for.