Arknights: Contingency Contract - How to Prepare

First things first.  If you don’t yet know what the CC event is, or if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “Contracts”, “Risk Level” or “Overall Risk Level”, then you need to start with an explanation of the basics, which can be found here:

Here are a few other things that you should know before we start:

• Your first goal should be to complete Risk Level 18 for the Permanent Stage, and Risk Level 8 for the Daily Stages, since these are the highest Risk Levels required to clear all the Event Missions, and thus get all possible Event currency.  
• You do not need to complete all missions to clear the limited portion of the Event Shop.
• Don’t Panic! Most of the guides or clears you see saying you need specific E2 Operators or M3 Skills are targeting much higher Risk Levels than are necessary for Event clear, in order to gain bragging rights or make videos.
• This guide is primarily for people who are interested in clearing CC stages themselves with their own knowledge and strategies.  This guide is NOT going to provide walkthroughs of specific clear strategies.  If you are looking for specific step-by-step walkthrough clears, you will not find that here.
• We are going to approach our preparation with the specific details of the first CC Event on CN as an example, but you should keep in mind that there is a chance that the contracts for the global CC Event might be different.

If you are still with me, here’s how we are going to approach our preparation.  We are going to group potential Contracts into categories that require a similar strategic approach, and talk about the best way to prepare for them.

For our discussion we will be using the Contracts of the first CC Event Permanent Stage on CN as our examples.

• Many of the Contracts are grouped together and only 1 can be chosen from that group, with harder contracts giving higher Risk Level.  We will call this a Contract Group.  At the top of the Contract Group is it’s name.  In this guide I will be referring to the Contract Groups that were used for the CN run of this event, and names can be found on the page I provided earlier.  Here is the “Increase Enemy ATK” Contract Group:

• Notice that the difficulty of the Contract more than doubles with each increase in Risk Level.  Thus, in general, the lower Risk Level contracts give us “more Risk Level Value” per “difficulty increase”.  This is, of course, a rather general and ambiguous statement, but the general takeaway is that using more lower Risk Level Contracts will likely be easier than fewer higher Risk Level Contracts.  Unless, of course, you are preparing a specific strategy to completely negate the effect of the Contract Group.  For example, if you are building a no-block crowd control strategy, then Enemy ATK doesn’t matter, and choosing Risk Level 3 would be best.  Be careful about building strategies specifically for the CN Contracts, however, since there is a chance that the Contracts could change for the global run.
• If we look at all the possible contracts available for the Permanent Stage, it is possible to clear Risk level 18 without choosing any Risk level 3 Contracts. In order to clear Risk Level 18 as easily as possible, this is something we might want to keep in mind.

Next we’ll discuss different Strategic Categories for Contracts and Contract Groups, what they mean, and how to prepare for them.  Keep in mind that some Contracts and Contract Groups might fit into multiple Strategic Categories, so you may see some of them more than once.  

Team Flexibility

I’m starting with this one because I think it is THE most important thing you can do to prepare to increase your chance at success.  Many Contracts limit or restrict the Class of Operator you can bring to battle, or severely punish some Classes or types of Operators.  Because the Contracts change from day to day, the Operators you can bring will also change from day to day.  If you have put all of your resources into highly developing only a few Operators, you run the risk of them being banned or punished, and you will be forced to field undeveloped Operators instead. 

Some examples of Contract Groups for this are:

• Class Restrictions
• Forbidden Grids
• Increased Enemy DEF

For example, in the case of the first CC on CN, players could choose “No Guards or Defenders” or “No Medics or Casters”.  If a player had primarily invested in Casters and Guards, then half of their team would be unusable no matter which contract they chose.  Similarly, if another player had primarily invested in ranged DPS but the forbidden grids ended up being primarily ranged grids, that player would also be in trouble. 

Because of this, the recommendation is to develop a balanced roster, and have options among the following:

• Different Classes
• Different attack types (Ranged and Melee)
• Different damage types (Physical and Arts)
• Different roles (Healing, DPS, Blocking, Damage Mitigation, Crowd Control)

To help you figure out what different Operators you have with these different attributes, you can use our Operator List, which is able to be filtered and sorted by some of these categories:

For recommendations on Operators that are good candidates to replace the missing utility of the banned Operators for Contracts we’ve seen on CN, check this page:

Hybrid Utility

Some Contracts limit the number of Operators you can assign to your squad, or lower the Deploy Limit.  Here is one example:

For these types of Contracts, Operators that can cover more than one role or provide extra utility can be extremely valuable.  Healing Defenders like Saria or Nearl can provide Blocking, Damage Mitigation, and Healing.  An E2 Angelina can provide multi-target Arts Damage, crowd control, and Healing. Lappland can offer both physical and Arts damage.  Basically, when you are restricted in the number of Operators you can use, being able to cover multiple roles increases in Value.

Also, Contracts that limit team size do not reduce the Deploy Limit (that is a separate type of Contract).  Therefore, Summoner Supporters can be used to potentially utilize any extra Deploy Limit space with their summons.

DP Efficiency

Some Contracts reduce the speed of Natural DP generation.  Others increase the Deployment Cost of certain Operators.  Here is one example:

For these types of Contracts, Operator DP Generation and DP Cost become very important.  The recent OF-EX5 CM was good practice for this type of Contract, as natural DP Generation was reduced by 66%.  The best counter to this, of course, is strong Vanguard use.  Make sure you have several good DP-Skill-Recovery Vanguards developed and ready for the event. Siege, Texas, Zima, and Myrtle are all fine choices.  DP-On-Kill Vanguards like Vigna and Grani can also have their uses, as they generate nice DP returns in some cases, and refund all DP when retreated.

It is also good to keep Operator DP costs in mind when choosing these types of Contracts.  Sometimes being a few DP cheaper to deploy is more important than having stronger abilities or higher rarities.

Brute Strength

I saved this one for last because, well, it is pretty obvious.  For many Contract Groups, the best (and sometimes only) way to prepare for them is simply to have high Operator Level and Skill Level development.  Some examples of this type of Contract category are:

• Increase Enemy ATK
• Increase Enemy HP
• Ally HP Reduced
• Buffs to specific types of enemies
• Smaller Team and Deploy Limit
• ...Well, clearly it helps pretty much all of them!

Now, of course having higher level Operators will make the challenges easier to tackle.  The problem is, we have limited resources and limited time, so the better question is “how high do they need to be?”  There is no hard-and-fast rule for the level Operators or Skills need to be to succeed.  Nor is it an absolute requirement that all Operators be E2.  Here are some basic recommendations:

For the goal of clearing Event Missions and Limited Store

Operator Level:

• Minimum Level: E1, between 60 and Max
• For as many primary DPS, tanks, and high-impact E2s as possible (without sacrificing a balanced roster): E2 Level 30

Skill Levels:

• Minimum Level: 7
• Look for high impact Masteries for primary Operators(masteries that reduce SP cost, increase targets, etc).

E2 promotion has a very high cost that may not always be the best use of your limited resources.  You can check this guide for help deciding which Operators you might want to consider E2ing, and which to leave at E1 for now:

So after reading this guide:

Right??

Ok, maybe not 100%, but I hope it helped, even if just a little.  Do your best, relax, and have fun.  You will have more chances to flex your CC muscles in the future, as the event has become a recurring event on CN.  For more information, you can check out our CC Event pages here: