Once you start building out your AIC in Arknights: Endfield, you'll hit the same annoying bottleneck most of us do: industrial materials, and especially Carbon. It's not glamorous, but it's the stuff everything seems to lean on, so your whole base feels slow without it. If you're trying to get your production rolling while you're still learning the maps, a little planning (or even a quick look at Arknights endfield boosting) can help you stop wasting hours on awkward stop-and-go crafting.

Starting Carbon Without Overthinking It

You can't just loot "Carbon" like it's ore. You have to make it, and that starts with the AIC planning tree. Make sure you've got Refine I unlocked, then drop a Refining Unit where your belts and storage won't become a mess later. For early fuel, plant matter is the easy win. Buckflower and Sandleaf are both reliable because you can grab them fast and scale them up. Feed plants into the refiner, and you'll get Carbon back at a clean one-to-one ratio. It's simple, and that's the point—get it running early and leave it running.

The Mid-Chain That Trips People Up

This is where players usually get irritated, because the game doesn't let you jump straight to the good stuff. Raw Carbon is only step one. Next, you need a Shredding Unit to break it down into Carbon Powder. Then a Grinding Unit takes that and turns it into Dense Carbon Powder. A lot of folks build the shredder and stop there, then wonder why Tier 3 recipes stay greyed out. Dense powder is the gatekeeper, so treat it like a real product, not a side output. Give each machine enough buffer space so one hiccup doesn't stall the whole line.

Stabilized Carbon and Keeping the Line Alive

For late-game crafting, Stabilized Carbon is the target. It's what you'll care about when you're pushing into higher-tier material chains and looking at things like Xiranite. The twist is you loop back: Dense Carbon Powder goes into a Refining Unit again to become Stabilized Carbon, and it takes a short processing time per unit. If you don't balance that loop, you'll get a pileup—too much powder sitting around, not enough refinement throughput, and suddenly your belts are full and nothing moves. The fix is boring but effective: match your shred/grind rate to your final refining rate, and expand in small steps.

Automation That Saves Your Sanity

Hand-feeding plants works for a minute, then it becomes your full-time job. Set up Planting Units and Seed-Picking Units so Sandleaf (or whatever you chose) flows in automatically, and keep an eye on storage limits so you don't clog the chain with intermediates. I like to think in terms of "starvation" and "choke"—either the refiner runs dry, or the outputs back up and stall everything. Once you've got a steady loop and a sensible buffer, your Carbon stops feeling like a crisis, and you can focus on the fun stuff—though if you want to speed past the grind, weaving in Arknights endfield boosting buy alongside a cleaner factory plan can make the whole progression feel less punishing.