ARKNIGHTS: ENDFIELD DEPOT NODES GUIDE

Depot Nodes are the quiet bottleneck that governs your entire economy in Arknights: Endfield. They sit at the intersection of exploration, factory automation, and the outpost trade, and they decide three things at once: how much of each item you can store, whether you can run profitable delivery jobs, and how cleanly your AIC factories feed the rest of the game. Neglect them and your production lines stall against storage caps while your income ceiling stays low.

This guide maps all four nodes, breaks down the upgrade costs and what each tier unlocks, and explains the storage and factory-integration systems that confuse most new players. The single most important idea up front: the Level 2 upgrade is the highest-return purchase in the depot economy, because it unlocks delivery income that pays the cost back almost immediately. Everything else is about widening the pipe once that income is flowing.

One reason the topic feels muddy is that the word depot gets used for three different things, and guides routinely blur them together. Before the locations and numbers, it is worth a minute to separate them, because it changes how you read every menu in the game. As of v1.3, the new Regional Overview screen surfaces Depot Node and Stock Redistribution info and map locations in one place, which makes managing all of this far easier than it used to be.

Quick Answer

There are 5 Depot Nodes: three in Valley IV (Originium Science Park, Origin Lodespring, Power Plateau), one in Wuling City south of Tianjing Courtyard, and one in the Wuling Test Area added in the v1.2 update. Each upgrades through paid tiers using the regional Stock Bill currency: Level 1 costs 4,500, Level 2 costs 40,000 and unlocks Goods Delivery, and Level 3 costs 240,000. That is 284,500 per node to max, and roughly 853,500 Valley Stock Bills to max all three Valley nodes.

Storage capacity is per item type, not a shared pool, starting from an 8,000-unit default stack. A fully maxed Valley IV reaches 80,000 units per item type across its three nodes, while the Wuling City node caps at 48,000, with the Test Area node adding its own capacity on top. Delivery unlocks at Level 2 in Valley IV but one tier earlier, at Level 1, in Wuling.

What a Depot Node Actually Is

Endfield uses the word depot for three distinct systems, and getting them straight matters because they connect but are not the same. The Depot Node is the overworld facility you physically find and activate in the world, part of Regional Development Management. Upgrading it raises your regional storage cap and unlocks Goods Delivery. This is the facility this guide is about.

The in-factory Depot is the shared regional warehouse that every AIC factory in a region reads from and writes to. It is the same storage pool the Depot Node UI shows you, just viewed from inside your base. The third term, the Depot Bus, is a logistics highway researched through the AIC Index that adds Bus Loaders and Unloaders to move items in and out of that storage, supplementing the six output ports each node provides. When a guide says depot, check which of these three it means, because the upgrade you need depends on it.

All Four Depot Node Locations

Five Depot Nodes exist as of v1.3. Three sit in Valley IV and run on Valley Stock Bills, while the two Wuling-area nodes (one in Wuling City and one in the Test Area added in v1.2) run on the separate Wuling currency. Each must be individually discovered and activated, and two of the Valley nodes are easy to walk straight past during exploration.

The first Valley node is unmissable because it is part of the tutorial, but the Origin Lodespring and Power Plateau nodes only appear as you progress their respective missions. The Wuling node is gated behind the Destination Wuling main mission and costs 12,500 Wuling Stock Bills just to activate, on top of any upgrades. The table below lists where each one is and how to unlock it.

Make a point of activating the Origin Lodespring and Power Plateau nodes the moment you reach their areas. Even a cheap Level 1 upgrade on a second node meaningfully raises your total regional storage, and leaving a node dormant is free capacity you are choosing not to use. The v1.2 update also added a fifth Depot Node in the Wuling Test Area: it can be upgraded all the way to Level 3 and acts as a primary source of delivery jobs for extra Wuling Stock Bills, so it is well worth activating and leveling once you reach the area. Its exact map location is best confirmed in-game.

Upgrade Tiers, Costs, and Storage

Each node upgrades through three paid tiers, and every tier raises storage while some also unlock new functionality. The costs are the most reliable numbers in the system and they hold across regions: 4,500 bills to reach Level 1, 40,000 to reach Level 2, and 240,000 to reach Level 3. That totals 284,500 Stock Bills to fully max one node, which works out to roughly 853,500 Valley Stock Bills to max all three Valley IV nodes.

Storage added per tier and the exact node level cap have shifted across patches, so treat those as version-dependent. The v1.2 and v1.3 updates both raised the maximum level for select Wuling Depot Nodes and other Regional Development systems, and some sources report different per-level storage increments than others. Lead your planning with the costs, which are well corroborated, and confirm the precise storage gains against your own save. The table below shows the commonly cited schedule.

Read this table as a priority ladder, not a shopping list. Level 1 is cheap and essential, Level 2 is the critical unlock that turns a node into an income source, and Level 3 is expensive but delivers the most storage per upgrade and the highest-value delivery crates. If bills are tight, a Level 1 on a second node often beats pushing your first node to Level 3, because it adds capacity for a fraction of the cost.

How Storage Capacity Works

The capacity system is not intuitive, and misreading it is one of the most common early mistakes. The limit applies per item type, not as a shared pool across everything you own. A regional cap of 80,000 does not mean 80,000 total items, it means each individual item type can stack up to that limit independently. Before any upgrades, items cap at an 8,000-unit default stack, which mass-produced trade goods blow through quickly.

Multiple nodes in the same region contribute to a shared regional cap, so more upgraded nodes raise the per-item ceiling for the whole region. A fully maxed Valley IV reaches 80,000 units per item type across its three nodes, while Wuling tops out at 48,000 from its single node. If a factory keeps hitting the cap on a specific item, that is a signal production is outpacing consumption: drain it through Outpost Orders, convert the surplus into delivery income, or upgrade another node to lift the ceiling.

AIC Factory Integration

On the factory side, the Depot is the central storage every AIC line in a region reads from and writes to, so the connection points decide how smoothly your base runs. Each Depot Node provides 6 PAC ports for direct belt connections, and items routed by conveyor to a PAC port transfer straight into the Depot. Six is enough for simple chains, but a growing factory quickly needs more than six connections.

That is where the Depot Bus comes in. Researched through the AIC Index, it creates a shared resource highway between your factories and the Depot, extending past the PAC port limit. Bus Loaders push items from production lines onto the bus, and Bus Unloaders pull them off into storage. For high-throughput loops, the Protocol Stash is a smarter routing choice because it transfers items directly to the Depot without consuming bus slots, which keeps congested lines (like a continuous Sandleaf Powder chain) from bottlenecking.

If items stop flowing into the Depot, the cause is almost always one of three things: a building lost power, a belt is not snapped cleanly to the depot interface, or the target stack for that item is full. A full stack for one item silently blocks the entire belt feeding it, so when a line stalls, check the destination stack before you tear apart the layout.

Upgrade Priority Strategy

With limited Stock Bills, the order you upgrade in matters more than the total you spend. Start by taking your first node to Level 1 for basic storage, then immediately to Level 2 to unlock delivery jobs, because that is the purchase that starts paying you back. From there, a Level 1 on your second node is the cheapest way to add regional capacity before you commit to the steep Level 3 jump on your first node.

Favor Valley IV early, since it has three nodes and lower entry costs, and the Wuling node alone costs 12,500 just to activate. The Level 2 upgrade deserves special mention as the best single investment in the system: at 40,000 bills it pays for itself in roughly one clean delivery run, and every run after that is profit. Once your first node is earning, spread remaining upgrades across nodes to maximize regional capacity per bill spent.

Unlocking Delivery at Level 2

Reaching Level 2 on any node opens the Goods Delivery system, the most lucrative active Stock Bill source in the game. Level 2 grants Light Miscellany and Small Crates packing, and Level 3 adds Raw Materials and Medium Crates for higher-value runs. In Valley IV that unlock sits at Level 2, but in Wuling deliveries open one tier earlier at Level 1, so you reach the best-paying delivery economy sooner there.

Delivery is a deep enough system to deserve its own walkthrough, covering cargo integrity, the teleport penalty, buyer selection, zipline routes, friend transfers, and the real Wuling payout numbers (which average roughly 90,000 to 110,000 Stock Bills per run). For all of that, see the full Delivery Jobs guide, and pair it with the optimized map routes so you never lose integrity getting cargo to a buyer.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Most depot problems trace back to a few avoidable habits. Watch for these and your economy keeps flowing instead of seizing up at a full stack.

• Ignoring node upgrades. A maxed production line feeding a capped depot is wasted output, and Outpost Orders cannot pull from a full Depot. Storage limits throttle everything downstream.
• Skipping Level 2. The 40,000 bill cost pays back in a single delivery run, so delaying it is delaying free daily income.
• Confusing capacity with total storage. Capacity is per item type, so 80,000 capacity means each item stacks to that limit independently, not 80,000 items combined.
• Bottlenecking on six PAC ports. Once your factory outgrows simple chains, research the Depot Bus (20 AIC Index points) for additional Loader and Unloader I/O.
• Routing high-throughput lines through the bus. Protocol Stash transfers directly to the Depot without consuming bus slots, which prevents congestion on continuous loops.
• Upgrading only one node. Spreading upgrades across nodes adds more total regional storage per bill than pushing a single node to its ceiling.
• Forgetting the Wuling nodes. The Wuling City node alone caps the region at 48,000, and the Test Area node added in v1.2 is a primary delivery-job source, so neglecting either caps your Wuling progression and income.

Frequently Asked Questions

Depot Nodes are the foundation the rest of the economy stands on, so the moment your first node hits Level 2, the priority shifts to using it. Turn your storage into income with the Delivery Jobs guide, keep crates flowing with the factory automation guide, and reinvest your earnings through Stock Redistribution.