Zhuang Fangyi sits at the center of one of Arknights: Endfield’s most interesting power structures. She is introduced not as a frontline operator but as a political and academic heavyweight, and that alone already sets her apart from much of the launch roster.
Zhuang Fangyi’s role in Wuling and Hongshan
Inside Endfield’s setting on Talos-II, Zhuang Fangyi holds two key positions. She is the Viceroy of Wuling, responsible for governing the Wuling region and overseeing Wuling City’s administration. At the same time, she serves as one of the Tianshi of the Hongshan Academy of Sciences, a major institution that anchors the Hongshan faction in the game’s world.
That combination of titles places her at the intersection of regional government and high-end research. As Viceroy, she represents formal authority in Wuling’s civil affairs. As a Tianshi under Hongshan Academy of Sciences, she connects local administration to Hongshan’s scientific and technological agenda. For players exploring Wuling, that makes Fangyi both a narrative gatekeeper and a symbol of how tightly Hongshan is embedded in the region’s politics.
Her association also links her directly to other Hongshan-aligned characters. Lifeng, a 6-star Guard at launch, is flagged as an Anasa race operator belonging to the Hongshan Academy of Sciences. Tangtang and Mi Fu, both tied to Wuling and Hongshan in different ways, round out what fans commonly refer to as the “Wuling trio” alongside Fangyi. As Endfield pushes deeper into Hongshan’s territory, Fangyi is positioned as the senior figure in that group.
How Zhuang Fangyi shows up in Arknights: Endfield so far
Fangyi first appears on-screen during the Wuling arc, where she interacts with the Endministrator in cutscenes rather than on the battlefield. Her design is immediately recognizable: tall horns, an ornate outfit with a red-and-aquamarine palette, and the now-infamous wide green trousers that players have compared to leeks.
Those visuals are not just aesthetic choices. Her clothes clearly echo local Wuling attire, underlining her status as a native or long-term resident with deep roots in the region’s culture. That fits her job: a Viceroy imposing an outside style would look out of place. Instead, Fangyi’s outfit merges ceremonial flair with the practical expectations of someone who has to move through both official halls and the field.
Her interactions with the Endministrator in the New Horizons promotional trailer reinforce that placement. She is briefly shown exploring Wuling alongside the player character, working as a partner and guide rather than as a subordinate. It frames her less as an employee of Endfield Industries and more as a regional leader negotiating with an off-world construction conglomerate.
From NPC authority to future operator
At launch, Zhuang Fangyi functions as a non-playable character. She is present in story scenes and promotional art but does not appear in the roster of operators available through headhunting or progression rewards. That matches the way Endfield treats several other key figures in its early chapters: they are introduced as NPCs first, then later promoted to playable status in future versions.
For Fangyi, the path to playability is already sketched out. During the Version 1.0 release livestream, Tangtang was highlighted as the next confirmed new operator following the initial banner cycle. Behind Tangtang’s key art, five silhouetted figures were shown and teased as upcoming characters planned for later in 2026. One of those silhouettes matches Zhuang Fangyi’s distinctive horns and silhouette, and she is listed alongside Tangtang, Rossi, and Mi Fu in official “upcoming characters” roundups.
Endfield-focused databases and character lists now mark Fangyi explicitly as an upcoming playable operator, flagged for a future version rather than the launch window. She is not part of any Version 1.0 banner schedule, and there is no announced patch number attached to her yet. The most concrete status is simply “teased” with an expectation that she will arrive after Tangtang in later updates.
That still leaves the exact date and patch undecided. No official banner name, class, rarity, or element has been confirmed for her, and there is no pre-announced gacha schedule with her portrait attached. For now, players can only plan broadly, knowing that she is in the pipeline but not locked to a specific version.
What the community expects from her kit and rarity
Because Fangyi is not playable yet, there is no verified information about her in-game stats, class, or role. However, players have built expectations around her based on how Arknights handles similarly prominent characters and on small hints from trailers and art.
First, her narrative importance in Wuling and Hongshan pushes many fans to assume she will arrive as a high-rarity operator. In both Arknights and Endfield, major political or factional leaders tend to land as 5-star or 6-star units when they become playable. A Viceroy and Tianshi with bespoke art and a central role in a regional storyline fits that pattern.
Second, some players speculate she will use Electric Arts and slot into an Electric-oriented team. This comes partly from discussions about her look alongside existing Electric operators such as Perlica and fans joking that she will “fit fine in an Electric team.” None of that is confirmed by the game itself. Until Endfield’s developers publish an official character sheet or asset for her, everything about her weapon, class, element, and exact combat role remains speculative.
That uncertainty has not stopped players from planning around her banner. On community boards, many mention skipping Version 1.0 banners or saving currency specifically for Fangyi and Rossi, or for the broader Wuling-focused lineup that includes Tangtang and Mi Fu. For long-term planners, she has become one of the key “future anchors” around which they build saving strategies.
The Dusk connection and ties to Arknights’ Yan
One of the most persistent talking points around Zhuang Fangyi is how closely she resembles Dusk, the limited 6-star operator from the original Arknights. Both share a similar face shape, long horns, and an ink-painting inspired color palette that leans hard into greens and reds. Dusk is canonically part of the Sui siblings and associated with Yan, an East-Asia-inspired Terran nation in the original game’s setting.
Endfield takes place on Talos-II rather than Terra, but Wuling evokes many of the same visual cues as Yan. Its architecture, clothing, and color schemes land firmly in that lineage. Fangyi’s design sits right in the middle of that aesthetic overlap, and her name itself echoes the Chinese-inspired naming convention seen in Yan-affiliated characters.
Some players take those parallels as a hint that Fangyi might be a version of Dusk or at least a deliberate echo of her. Others push back, pointing to differences such as horn color and game-universe separation. Officially, there is no confirmation that Zhuang Fangyi and Dusk are the same person, incarnations of one another, or related in any explicit lore sense.
What can be said with certainty is that Fangyi embodies the same broad creative lane: a composed, powerful-looking figure with Yan-coded fashion and horned silhouette, rooted in a region that mirrors Yan’s cultural footprint. For Arknights fans crossing into Endfield, that familiarity is part of her appeal, even if the canonical connection remains unresolved.
Where she sits in the broader Endfield roster
To understand why Fangyi has pulled so much attention, it helps to look at the current operator ecosystem. Version 1.0 launches with a full spread of 4-, 5-, and 6-star units across all six combat classes: Guards, Defenders, Supporters, Casters, Strikers, and Vanguards. Heavy-hitters like Laevatain, Ember, Yvonne, Ardelia, Pogranichnik, Lifeng, Gilberta, and others give players a strong backbone of options from day one.
On top of that, the launch banners use a rotating featured system. Laevatain leads the first major rate-up event, followed by Gilberta, then Yvonne. All three are permanent 6-stars that sit in the standard pool even after their respective featured issues end. There is no equivalent slot for Fangyi in that initial schedule.
After Version 1.0, Tangtang is the first confirmed new character, strongly linked to Wuling through her role as the Qingbo Stockade chieftain. In official previews of upcoming content, Tangtang stands in front of silhouettes that include Mi Fu, Rossi, Zhuang Fangyi, and two unnamed characters. That art works as a loose roadmap: Wuling and Hongshan storylines will not end with launch, and the region will continue to gain new operators over the course of multiple patches.
Within that context, Fangyi reads less like a side curiosity and more like a delayed cornerstone. Mi Fu appears to lean into a gauntlet-based, unarmed style; Rossi is implied to be a stealth-oriented fighter; Tangtang brings a handcannon and a chieftain’s persona. Fangyi, by contrast, embodies institutional authority and a higher-level view of Wuling. When she finally joins the roster, she is likely to complete that regional arc in gameplay terms as well as in story.
Practical implications for players planning around her
For players interested in Zhuang Fangyi specifically, the biggest constraint is simple: there is no fixed banner date yet. The only clear signals are that she is:
- Present in the story as Viceroy of Wuling and a Tianshi of Hongshan Academy of Sciences.
- Explicitly labeled as upcoming in Endfield’s character lists, separate from the launch roster.
- Visually teased in official promotional art as part of a group of future operators planned for the first year.
That leaves room for long-term planning without overcommitting to a particular version. Players who value her design or narrative significance can choose to be conservative with their pulls once they have secured core launch operators, saving headhunting currency for whenever her banner eventually appears. Others may prefer to invest fully into early banners and revisit Wuling-aligned characters later.
Tip: If you intend to save for Fangyi but still want to progress quickly in the early game, it helps to focus on permanent 6-stars like Laevatain, Ember, Pogranichnik, or Lifeng. These operators strengthen your account for the long term without creating fear of missing out in the way limited or narrowly timed banners do.
Until Endfield’s developer announces her class, element, and banner details, Zhuang Fangyi remains a promise rather than a spreadsheet entry. Even so, the combination of her in-world authority, strong visual identity, and clear designation as a future operator already makes her one of the most anticipated characters in the game’s early lifecycle.
