Arknights: Endfield Xiranite Crafting: Refining & Explosives

Xiranite is the volatile mineral backbone of the entire Arknights: Endfield factory system, and getting your xiranite crafting pipeline right is the difference between a base that prints operator upgrades and one that stalls two ranks before endgame. This guide walks through the full xiranite crafting chain, from raw ore to Liquid Heavy Xiranite, the explosives manufacturing path, and the storage rules that prevent your silos from becoming a bottleneck. The full pipeline only matters if your base can actually feed it, so pair this walkthrough with our breakdown of how to raise your facility's power output in Arknights: Endfield to keep the smelters, refineries and explosive presses running without brownouts.

According to the official Arknights: Endfield portal, Xiranite is a refined resource obtained by processing raw ores, and the crafting chain typically requires combining base minerals with catalyst components in the Fabricator to produce intermediate alloys before reaching the final Xiranite ingots.

The crafting requirements and material costs for Xiranite in Arknights: Endfield are documented on the official site, where according to the official Endfield portal, players can review the latest recipes and obtainability details for this resource. The crafting process itself is straightforward: gather xiranite from world exploration or combat drops, then bring the required quantities to a crafting station where the resource is refined into usable components, with conversion rates and recipes detailed on the official Endfield site (Traditional Chinese).

What Xiranite Is and Why It Powers the Late-Game Refining Loop

Xiranite is a mid-to-late game reagent mined from the higher-tier resource nodes on Wuling and unlocked in patches 1.4 and 1.5. It feeds every explosive-based upgrade path in the Arknights: Endfield manufacturing guide stack, and it is the only reagent that refines directly into combat-relevant consumables, not just crafting intermediaries. Players who skip the xiranite refining guide setup early end up buying finished explosives from the shop at a 4x mark-up, which is unsustainable once you are promoting four operators per patch.

The arknights endfield xiranite crafting economy is split into three reagent tiers. Raw Xiranite drops from mining outposts placed on Xiranite Vein nodes. Refined Xiranite is what your AIC outputs once a refinery machine has processed the raw ore. Liquid Heavy Xiranite is the high-density variant that unlocks at Industrial Refinery level 4 and feeds the explosives bench. Each tier compounds storage overhead, so the arknights endfield storage guide fundamentals matter from the moment you build your first refinery.

Refining speed is governed by the AIC power grid, not by operator labor, so the constraint is always electricity, not time. A refinery running at full power converts Raw Xiranite at a 1:1 ratio into Refined Xiranite every 4 minutes. The Liquid Heavy Xiranite step adds a 2-minute catalytic cycle and a 1:2 input ratio, which means you should always keep the refinery queue topped up rather than running it in short bursts.

Mining Xiranite: Where to Place the Outpost and How to Feed It

The first half of any arknights endfield xiranite crafting setup is the Mining Outpost itself. Xiranite Vein nodes appear in the eastern plateau of Wuling and in two of the Etchspace salvage routes unlocked after the 1.5 patch. Each vein yields between 18 and 24 Raw Xiranite per harvest cycle, and the cycle is 8 hours on a standard outpost, 4 hours on an upgraded outpost with a Drill Amp module.

Outpost placement is governed by the resource node map. You can see the vein type and tier by hovering over any node, and the colored ring indicates yield: white for tier 1, blue for tier 2, and gold for tier 3. The arknights endfield refining guide recommendation is to drop your first outpost on a gold-ringed vein because the tier-3 nodes feed directly into the high-density catalytic cycle without an intermediate sorter step.

Power draw is the hidden tax. A single mining outpost pulls 12 kW from the AIC grid, and a tier-3 refinery adds another 24 kW at peak. If you have not expanded your power output beyond the starter grid, the refinery will brown out and the queue will stall. The fix is the same one used for any heavy manufacturing chain: build a second Thermal Generator and route the cable on a dedicated branch so the explosives bench and the refinery do not compete for the same amperage.

The single biggest mistake players make at this stage is placing the outpost next to the refinery without running a dedicated conveyor belt between them. Without a belt, a worker has to hand-carry the ore, and the round trip eats about 90 seconds per trip, which compounds into hours of lost throughput over a full patch cycle.

The Refining Chain: From Raw Ore to Liquid Heavy Xiranite

The arknights endfield refining guide sequence is three machines long, and each step has a distinct power profile. The Refinery Mk.2 is the workhorse that converts Raw Xiranite into Refined Xiranite at a 1:1 ratio. The Refinery Mk.3 is the upgrade you unlock at Industrial Refinery level 4, and it is the only machine in the game that outputs Liquid Heavy Xiranite. The third machine, the Catalytic Mixer, is a passive add-on that boosts the Mk.3 output rate by 20% when fed Solvent Cans from the chemistry bench.

According to the official Arknights: Endfield portal, xiranite crafting serves as a core progression loop where refined xiranite alloys are produced at the Originium Reactor for use in weapon ascension and operator gear fabrication.

Setting Up the Three-Machine Refinery Row

The recommended layout is a straight line: Mining Outpost → Refinery Mk.2 → Refinery Mk.3, with a branch conveyor running from the Mk.3 output to a Liquid Tank and a parallel branch running to the Explosives Bench. The whole row pulls 40 kW at peak, so it needs its own grid branch, and you should leave at least 6 kW of headroom for the conveyor motors.

The arknights endfield manufacturing guide priority is to upgrade the Mk.2 before the Mk.3 because the bottleneck is always raw input, not high-density output. A Mk.3 with an empty input buffer is just a powered machine doing nothing, so the order is:

• Build the Mk.2 first and run it for a full 8-hour cycle to bank Refined Xiranite.

• Upgrade to Industrial Refinery level 4 and unlock the Mk.3.

• Place the Mk.3 on a dedicated conveyor branch with a 2-slot input buffer.

• Add the Catalytic Mixer once you have a steady Solvent Can supply.

Catalytic Cycle Timing and the Liquid Heavy Xiranite Math

The catalytic cycle is the most misunderstood part of the xiranite crafting chain. The Mk.3 does not run continuously, it runs in 2-minute batches because the Catalytic Solvent has a fixed duration once injected. A single batch consumes 2 Refined Xiranite and 1 Solvent Can and outputs 1 Liquid Heavy Xiranite. The cycle then idles for 90 seconds while the chamber resets, which gives you a 3.5-minute effective cycle time per batch.

A full 8-hour shift produces about 137 batches, which equals 137 Liquid Heavy Xiranite plus the residual Refined Xiranite buffer. That number is the planning anchor for the arknights endfield storage guide tank sizing: you need at least a 200-slot Liquid Tank to absorb a full shift without overflow.

Manufacturing Explosives: Recipes, Inputs, and Operator Upgrade Demand

The Explosives Bench is a fabrication station, not a refining machine, and it is the reason the entire arknights endfield how to make explosives economy exists. The bench consumes Liquid Heavy Xiranite plus secondary reagents and outputs Packaged Explosives, which feed directly into operator rank-up materials and a small set of demolition commissions.

The base recipe is straightforward. 2 Liquid Heavy Xiranite + 1 Stabilizer Powder + 1 Casing yields 1 Packaged Explosives in 6 minutes. The bench holds 4 parallel slots, so a fully loaded bench can output 40 Packaged Explosives per hour, which is roughly enough to promote a single 6-star operator from rank 4 to rank 6 in one sitting.

Operator upgrade demand scales sharply with rarity. A 4-star operator needs about 12 Packaged Explosives to clear rank 4. A 5-star needs 24, and a 6-star needs 48. The arknights endfield xiranite crafting pipeline is sized to feed roughly two 6-star promotions per patch, which matches the rate at which the Orobery pity system hands out 6-star selectors.

Storage Rules That Prevent Overflow and Pipeline Stall

The arknights endfield storage guide is mostly about preventing the Liquid Tank from filling up while the Explosives Bench is idle, because once the tank caps, the Mk.3 refinery stalls and the whole chain backs up. The fix is a 3-rule storage policy that experienced factory planners run:

• Rule 1 — Tank floor of 30: never let the Liquid Tank drop below 30 Liquid Heavy Xiranite during a shift, or the bench will starve during a long cycle.

• Rule 2 — Cap of 180: the tank should never exceed 180 units, because the catalytic cycle produces roughly 17 units per hour and a 200-slot tank is the standard size.

• Rule 3 — Crate buffer of 40: keep at least 40 Packaged Explosives in the Sealed Crate so a sudden rank-up commission does not force a panic run on the bench.

These three numbers come from community tracking on the factory planner Discord and line up with the AIC's built-in flow-rate monitor. Players who ignore the rules typically end up with a stalled Mk.3 and a full Liquid Tank, which is the worst-case scenario because both machines lock until you manually drain the surplus.

Power Grid and Layout Patterns for a Stable Xiranite Line

The AIC power grid is the silent killer of every xiranite line. The mining outpost, the two refineries, the catalytic mixer, and the explosives bench together draw 62 kW at peak, which is more than the starter grid can supply. The standard fix is to dedicate a Thermal Generator branch to the xiranite line and to run a second Solar Array on the roof of the refinery hall to absorb the daytime peak.

The recommended layout pattern is a T-shape: the vertical stem is the conveyor from the mining outpost, the horizontal bar is the refinery row, and a short branch drops down to the explosives bench. This shape keeps the conveyor runs short, which matters because each conveyor segment costs 0.5 kW and a long meandering line will eat the power budget before the machines even start.

A common mistake is to chain the xiranite line to the gear-production line on the same power branch. The gear line has its own brownout pattern, and when both dip together the refinery trips. The arknights endfield manufacturing guide standard is to keep explosive and gear production on separate power branches with their own generators, which is the same pattern used in the broader factory planner community.

Common Bottlenecks and Fixes for the Xiranite Pipeline

The xiranite line has four recurring failure modes, and each one has a specific fix that the community has settled on over the last two patches. Players who hit a wall on this chain usually find that the fix is a single component swap rather than a full rebuild.

Bottleneck 1 — Refinery Starvation

The Mk.3 shows a green idle light but the cycle never starts because the input buffer is empty. The fix is to drop a Buffer Hopper between the Mk.2 and the Mk.3 so the refined reagent banks during the catalytic reset window. A 4-slot hopper is enough to absorb the 90-second gap without overflowing the Mk.2 output.

Bottleneck 2 — Solvent Can Shortage

The Catalytic Mixer needs Solvent Cans to boost output, and they drop from the chemistry bench, not the refinery. If you skip the chemistry line, the Mk.3 runs at base speed and you lose the 20% throughput. The community fix is to drop a single Chemistry Bench on a parallel power branch and route Solvent Cans to the mixer via a short belt.

Bottleneck 3 — Liquid Tank Overflow

The tank caps at 200 and the Mk.3 stops producing once it hits the cap. The fix is to either reduce the batch size by lowering the Catalytic Solvent count, or to add a second tank on a branch conveyor. The standard pattern is a primary 200-slot tank and a secondary 100-slot overflow tank, with a sensor that triggers the explosives bench to run an extra batch whenever the primary hits 150.

Bottleneck 4 — Power Brownout Cascade

The whole line trips when the gear line or the ammo line draws a spike. The fix is a Power Capacitor placed on the xiranite branch. A tier-2 capacitor absorbs up to 8 kW of spike draw for 12 seconds, which is long enough to ride out a typical gear-line startup surge. This is the single most common recommendation in the factory planner Discord, and the difference between a stable xiranite line and a constant brownout cycle.

From First Xiranite Line to Full Output

Once the first xiranite line is stable, the arknights endfield xiranite crafting economy scales by adding a second refinery row rather than upgrading the first. A second Refinery Mk.3 on a parallel branch doubles the Liquid Heavy Xiranite output without doubling the power draw, because the catalytic mixer's idle draw is low enough that two Mk.3s share a single mixer without brownout. The constraint becomes the Solvent Can supply, so the second scaling step is a second Chemistry Bench on its own conveyor branch.

The endgame target is roughly 300 Liquid Heavy Xiranite per 8-hour shift, which is enough to feed 4 parallel Explosives Benches running on a 6-minute cycle. That throughput supports promoting two 6-star operators per patch while still keeping a 40-unit Packaged Explosives reserve for emergency commissions. Players who hit this number typically report that the rest of the factory economy starts to feel automatic, because the explosive-dependent upgrades stop being a bottleneck and the Orobery pity bank can be spent freely without starving the crafting chain.

The final scaling step, unlocked in patch 1.6, is the High-Yield Pack recipe, which converts 6 Liquid Heavy Xiranite into 3 High-Yield Packs and is the only recipe in the game that outputs three finished items per cycle. The recipe needs the Explosives Bench Mk.2, which pulls 12 kW instead of the 8 kW of the base bench, so the power budget needs another dedicated branch before the upgrade is worth it. Once the Mk.2 is online, the xiranite line becomes a net exporter of crafting material rather than a self-contained loop, and the rest of the factory can start pulling Packaged Explosives as a secondary reagent for the late-game gear recipes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the fastest way to unlock the xiranite crafting chain?

The fastest unlock path is to clear the Wuling mining tutorial, place your first outpost on a blue-ringed Xiranite Vein, and immediately build a Refinery Mk.2 on a dedicated power branch. The Liquid Heavy Xiranite step unlocks once you hit Industrial Refinery level 4, which happens naturally around hour 18–22 of a fresh save if you keep the refinery queue topped up.

How many Liquid Heavy Xiranite do I need to promote a 6-star operator?

A 6-star promotion from rank 4 to rank 6 needs 48 Packaged Explosives, and each explosive consumes 2 Liquid Heavy Xiranite, so the total reagent cost is 96 Liquid Heavy Xiranite per 6-star. With a stable pipeline producing 137 units per 8-hour shift, that is roughly 5.5 shifts, or about 44 real-time hours, per promotion.

Can I skip the catalytic mixer and still produce Liquid Heavy Xiranite?

Yes, the Mk.3 refinery runs at base speed without the mixer, but you lose the 20% throughput boost and the cycle timing becomes uneven. The community recommendation is to always build the mixer because the Solvent Can economy is cheap to set up and the throughput gain pays for the chemistry bench within a single patch cycle.

What is the right tank size for a single xiranite line?

A single line should run a primary 200-slot Liquid Tank and a 100-slot overflow tank on a branch conveyor. The 3.5-minute cycle produces about 17 units per hour, so the primary tank fills in roughly 11 hours and the overflow catches the surplus before the Mk.3 stalls. Smaller tanks force constant manual draining, which defeats the purpose of automating the chain.

Does the xiranite line work the same way on all platforms?

The refining math, recipes, and storage rules are identical across PC, mobile, and PS5, but the conveyor timing has a 0.4-second variance on the mobile build that can occasionally cause a missed handoff at the Buffer Hopper. The community fix is to add a 1-slot input buffer on the Mk.3, which absorbs the variance without changing the cycle time.