Arknights: Module Upgrade Priority Guide - Il Siracusano

This update to the Module Upgrade Priority Guide focuses on the Modules added with the Il Siracusano event, including the Pioneer Vanguard branch, carryover modules for Lunacub and Texas the Omertosa, and second modules for Schwarz and Hoshiguma. You can find the main guide page below, alongside the relevant event page.

Please keep in mind this guide does NOT rate the direct meta power or viability of these upgrades or the Operators they belong to, and instead focuses on the relative strength of the individual Module Upgrade and the individual boost in performance of their Operator. In short, if you already use these Operators often, how prioritary are these endgame upgrades for their viability?

If you wish to quickly find the ratings given to a specific Module Upgrade, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F and search for the name or branch of the Module or the Operator they belong to.

Unlike in the Mastery Priority Guide, this list will not sub-grade upgrades in terms of how powerful they are relative to other investment sinks. Instead, only the following three ratings will be utilized.

[YES] - Upgrades given this grade will provide a substantial enough boost to the Operator's combat prowess that the before and after performances will be easily noticeable. The Module Upgrades in this tier are incredibly powerful and fundamentally change how the Operator plays or massively improve their combat performance. These boosts are to be considered stepping stones in fully realizing the combat potential of the Operator they belong to. Upgrades whose affected Talents are directly boosted via Skills are likely to end up here.

[CONSIDER] - While not as powerful nor prioritary as the upgrades in the tier above, these are still fairly strong and worthy of at least being considered. These upgrades will either enhance the Operator's strength in a noticeable but not game-changing manner, or open new niches for them to perform in. Regardless, these should not be considered a priority over the upgrades in the previous tier.

[NO] - Module Upgrades with this grade are generally disappointing boosts or not worth considering due to their extreme cost and low benefit. While no upgrade of this kind is ever going to be detrimental to your Operators, these will not provide noticeable enhancements in performance nor provide new niche use cases.

Module Upgrades with [NO] ratings all accross the board will not be listed in the main guide, but will still be featured in the individual update pages such as this one for clarity. 

Straightforward stat boosters like these are usually not all there, and Siege needs a little bit more love to gain any relevance in the game as it is today, but the Stage 2 of this Module can give her an extra 100 Burst DPS for her third Skill and a bit more DPH on her second one, which is decent enough that an avid Siege user might want to invest a little on this. Still, keep in mind her other Upgrade branch is significantly more useful.

These Upgrades focus exclusively on keeping Saga self-reliant for a while longer by extending the timer of her survivability Talent and the amount of HP she can recover from it. While the numbers on these Upgrades are not that bad, the usefulness of a longer timer is somewhat questionable as Saga wants other Operators to be deployed alongside her as soon as possible to take advantage of her other Talent, providing a sort of diminishing returns as the timer gets longer, past the point where the DP generation is enough to deploy the more expensive Operators in your party.

This Upgrade path focuses almost entirely on making Flametail’s third Skill noticeably stronger, providing around 1.5k extra on-Skill damage for her rather quick cycle with its Stage 2. The fact that it doesn’t boost her dodge capabilities even further is a tad disappointing, but at least she does get some interesting boosts out of it.

Pioneer Vanguards aren’t incredibly relevant in the current state of the game, and even back when some of them still saw extensive usage Zima really wasn’t among that group. This Module Path struggles by not capitalizing on the basic Talent that gave Zima her niche, and instead tries to encourage the usage of Pioneers in a state of the game dominated by Flagbearers and Agents.

Texas is not a DPS Operator (at least not this one). Boosting the damage of her second Skill is not impactful when the true strength of the Skill lies on its support abilities via long-lasting Stun. As a result, these Upgrades don’t help Texas perform her job as a Vanguard in any significant way.

Restrictive, conditional, and not very impactful on the unlikely scenario that you manage to make the effects of these Module Upgrades work. Considering how most of the Robot Operators tend to be quite mediocre, these Upgrades almost railroad you into building a worse team just for the sake of making Chiave better, which isn’t a good party composition idea even past the context of having to rely on Chiave as a carry.

The extra stats do benefit Scavenger’s unique presence as the offensively-oriented low rarity Pioneer, but they are not impactful enough to warrant the amount of resources they require. Additionally, since it’s just a simple Attack boost, these Upgrades provide no new options or niches for Scavenger.

Same as Scavenger but with the Defensive twist that characterizes Courier. This Upgrade path isn’t going to give him any new usage cases even against early rushes and even if you manage to meet the condition for the boost, so don’t bother.

Extra on-Skill damage for such a powerful, quick-cycling Operator is simply silly. Going to Stage 2, Texas the Omertosa gets a boost of 1.5 or 1.1k total damage per cycle depending on which Skill she has equipped, going up to an extra 1.2k or 950 on the next step. Considering how quick and powerful her cycles are, these Upgrades are practically no-brainers.

The Attack Speed modifications of this Talent are quite powerful, and give Lunacub a decent boost in her burst DPS and total on-Skill damage. Her cycling, however, is sadly not all there and leaves something to be desired, which knocks the ratings for these Upgrades from an easy Yes to a Maybe. You will probably get good use out of these boosts if you use Lunacub regularly, but keep the cycling issue in mind.

What Hoshiguma needs to gain presence even amongst other Defenders is not to become a sort of Siege for her own class. She neither needs nor benefits massively from the “support” abilities these Upgrades provide, nor the Defense boosts. Even if this was what Hoshiguma needed, though, Nian would have her beat in this regard as well.

This Upgrade path exclusively focuses on boosting Schwarz’s burst damage via even higher multipliers, with an incidental support bonus through her better Defense shred. Overall these Upgrades provide some of the highest increases in raw burst DPS out of all Modules, increasing it by about 300 going to Stage 3. Definitely worth getting if you use Schwarz’s third Skill often.