Search a Delver of the Cryptic stage name and the results are thin. Xiranflow Rapids gives you a name, a category label and one line of flavour text. Nothing says which set the stage belongs to, what the mode around it is for, or what finishing it pays out. This page fills that in. Everything below comes from our own stage and item data (299 stages, 2,655 items) plus the official version notes, and where the data runs out the page says so instead of guessing.
What Delver of the Cryptic is
The mode was announced in the release preview notes as a permanent puzzle mode rather than a limited-time event: "New Permanent Puzzle Gameplay: [Delver of the Cryptic], a permanent puzzle-based challenge mode will be introduced. This gameplay consists of various Protocol Spaces primarily featuring puzzle stages, with rewards available for completing the challenges."
Two things follow from that. The stages live inside Protocol Spaces, so the mode is entered through the same rift system as the rest of the challenge content, and the content arrives in spatial sets rather than a single stage list. Since launch the official notes have opened two named sets, and the update for a new set always reads the same way: a set name, a server time, and a reward line.
How to spot a puzzle stage in our data: all 21 of them open with the sentence "An extremely unstable Protocol Space. Expect the unexpected." No other stage in the database uses that line, which makes the puzzle stages the easiest group to filter out of the 299 entries we hold.
The five kinds of Protocol Space, by their opening line
Protocol Space descriptions in our data start with a stock line that states what kind of space it is. Five variants exist, and they map cleanly onto the stage categories.
| Opening line of the stage description | Stages filed under it in our data |
|---|---|
| An extremely unstable Protocol Space. Expect the unexpected. | Challenge โ 21 |
| An extremely dangerous Protocol Space. Be fully prepared if you wish to dive into it. | Boss Rush โ 19 |
| A lost Protocol Space fragment. Be fully prepared if you wish to dive into it. | Boss Rush โ 4 |
| A Protocol Space containing the unknown. Explore it properly and you might find ... | Resource โ 30, Ss โ 5 |
| An unknown Protocol Space where dangers seem to lurk. Complete this challenge to reach Exploration Level 4-7. | Worldlevel โ 4 |
Only one of those five lines is used by the puzzle stages. If you are trying to work out whether a stage in the game is a Delver puzzle or a boss rush, that opening sentence is the fastest tell. Season Tower descriptions skip the stock line entirely and open with a lore line instead, which is why that group shows up separately on the stages hub.
Three spatial sets, three engraved medals
Our item data holds 17 engraved medals of the kind the game hands out for completing challenge sets. Three of them belong to the puzzle sets, and each one is filed twice in the database, once under an achievement id and once under a duplicate id ending in _plate. The names are the interesting part.
| Engraved medal | Internal id | Id bucket | Region matching that bucket |
|---|---|---|---|
| "In the Cryptics of the Valley" | achv_event_tundra_challenge_dung_2 | tundra_ | Valley IV |
| "Delver of the Grottoes" | achv_event_wuling_challenge_dung_2 | wuling_ | Wuling |
| "Artful Realm of Six Cardinals" | achv_event_wuling_challenge_dung_02_2 | wuling_ | Wuling |
Those id buckets line up with the two regions the official notes name directly. Valley IV appears in the Homecoming notes as the region players return to for Chapter I content, and Wuling is the newer region the same notes send players into. The puzzle stages split the same way: the Valley group carries dung01 ids, the Wuling group carries dung02.
Our read on the two Wuling medals, flagged as a read rather than a fact: the Wuling group holds 12 puzzle spaces and two medals, which suggests two sets of six, and the official entry for Artful Realm of Six Cardinals describes three spaces at first with three more a week later, so exactly six. The stage data never labels a stage with its set name, so we cannot prove which six belong to Grotto Survey and which six to Six Cardinals. Anyone who tells you otherwise from datamined files is inferring too.
The set timeline
| Spatial set | Opens (server time) | Source | Rewards stated in the notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| "In the Cryptics of the Valley" (Valley IV) | Launch content | Release preview notes | Not itemised; the notes only promise rewards for completing the challenges |
| [Grotto Survey] (Wuling) | 2026/03/29 12:00 | Old Deep Water update notes | Oroberyls, Mark of Perseverance, Protohedron |
| [Artful Realm of Six Cardinals] (Wuling) | Aug. 19, 2026 12:00, then three more on Aug. 26 at 04:00 | Homecoming update notes | Oroberylร1200, Mark of Perseverance |
The Grotto Survey and Six Cardinals entries both talk about clearing the whole set, not one stage, so the medal and the currency are set-completion rewards. That matters if you are deciding whether to start a set you have already half-finished in a past version.
Every Valley IV puzzle space (9 stages)
Our data numbers these 01 through 08, then 10. There is no dung01_puzzle09 record on our side, and the official notes never name the stages, so we cannot tell you whether that entry exists in the game and we missed it or the numbering simply skips. Nine is what we can see.
| Puzzle stage | Flavour text | What the text signals |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure Sensitive | ...Fine. If you want an analysis, I'll give you one. This is the manifestation of a cargo crew mate's furious grudge against overtime work. | pressure plates, an overtime grudge |
| Crane Support | Careful. These crane lifters might be dangerous. Now that you've been warned, getting hurt will not be categorized as work injury. | crane lifters |
| Ride the Wind | And this is the very moment when I'm lighter than the wind itself. | wind currents |
| Industrial Labyrinth | I believe this rift is a manifestation of some Endfielder's dreams. Perhaps it was Director Qin herself. She wanted something way bigger for her little Hub Base. | a Hub Base layout, Director Qin |
| Heat Interception | These beams will cut you to pieces. They are without mercy. | cutting beams |
| External Detonation | You may toss explosives however you like in the rift, but never do that in the real world. | thrown explosives |
| Long-ear Invitation | Awww ... you're so cute. Wanna take us to your tiny kingdom, wuv-wuv? | long-eared creatures |
| Ode of Bombardment | You call this a rain of shells? Pfft. This is a mere spittle from an ordinary artillery battery. It's nothing compared to the nightmares of battlefields from the past. | artillery fire |
| Beam Dodger | Do not let your desires govern your actions. | beams again |
Every Wuling puzzle space (12 stages)
The Wuling group is complete as far as the numbering goes: 01 to 12, no gaps. The flavour text also gets more specific here, and several lines tie the spaces to places you can visit in the open world.
| Puzzle stage | Flavour text | What the text signals |
|---|---|---|
| Irrigate Thy Path | Purge the turbid trail to ensure success in your every step. | a turbid trail to purge |
| A Thirsty Array | Are you sure this isn't the dark grudge of an angry algorithmic engine designer? | an algorithmic engine array |
| Wheels and Bridges | One bridge after another. One turn to go further. One link to go home faster. | bridges and turns |
| Fording the River | Isn't it a lovely sight? Plants floating upon rivers, swollen by the autumn rain. | floating river plants |
| Homecoming | These little hydrocubes seem lost. | lost hydrocubes |
| Tiny Buggy's Trip | A tiny bug has started a great adventure. You are its witness. | a tiny buggy on a trip |
| A Jaunt in the Miasma | The Protocol Space allows the Blight Miasma to wantonly manifest itself and spread. You have faith and courage... It will not pierce your soul. | the Blight Miasma spreading |
| A Bridge Too Invisible | Perhaps it is confused about survival, or craves it too much. Within the Protocol Space close to the Very Large Rift, the path within is only manifested in the form of a bridge. | invisible bridges, the Very Large Rift |
| Pillar Driver | Drive the Pillar and watch the road. Be careful, though. Something heavy and angry still lingers in this place. | a pillar you drive, something heavy nearby |
| Escape from Kiddyland | RUN! The children and all their eagerness for fun are almost upon you! | children of Kiddyland |
| Spherical Orbit | This Protocol Space can be categorized as a projection or manifestation of some complicated industrial facility being invaded by some lifeform. There is a chance that it will continue to grow and become an Aberrant... Is it affected by the original Science Station? | an industrial facility, an Aberrant, the Science Station |
| Xiranflow Rapids | The Xiranflow cascades rapidly in this place. The gloomy flickers in the dark are just like the hibernating entities it awakens. | Xiranflow cascades, hibernating entities |
Two of those lines point at map content we can link properly. A Bridge Too Invisible says it sits "close to the Very Large Rift," which is a story stage in Wuling, Wuling Very Large Rift. Spherical Orbit describes a facility overgrown by something that "has a chance to continue to grow and become an Aberrant," which ties the puzzle spaces to the Aberrant Zone material loop covered in the enemy drops guide.
There are no solution steps on this page. Our stage data carries a name, a category, an id and a description line. It does not carry puzzle layouts, timers, recommended levels or per-stage drop tables, and inventing those would be worse than leaving the gap visible.
What the rewards are
The set notes name the same short list of currencies and materials, so it is worth knowing what each one actually does before you grind a set for it. All three have entries in our item database.
| Reward | Rarity | Type in our data | Description in our data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oroberyl | 6 | Currency | An artificial material often used for recruiting operators. |
| Mark of Perseverance | 5 | Valuable | A rare material that upgrades operator skill mastery. |
| Protohedron | 4 | Operator Material | A material that upgrades operator skills. |
Note what kind of reward this is. Mark of Perseverance upgrades skill mastery and Protohedron feeds skill levels, so the puzzle sets pay into operator progression rather than gear or weapons. The same medal family also covers the Umbral Monument challenge sets, where the notes list the same materials alongside an Arms INSP Set, so engraved medals are the shared reward vocabulary across the permanent challenge modes.
Changes that touch these stages
The version notes have adjusted Protocol Space behaviour often enough that a few of these changes affect puzzle runs directly.
- Release preview: enemy levels in Protocol Spaces were reduced, and more early progression materials were added to the sources around them.
- Old Deep Water notes: mission guidance and the gameplay experience were optimised for certain Delver of the Cryptic stages.
- Old Deep Water notes: for spaces tied to Operator Progression, Weapon Progression, RE-Crisis and Crisis Drills, the team now enters with a separate status set to full HP and full Ultimate Energy, resettable at any time, reverted when you leave.
- Old Deep Water notes: materials you fail to collect in time, including certain items in Protocol Spaces, are sent to the Mail Cache.
- Homecoming notes: the reward selection screen for spaces with selectable reward sets was redesigned, and the default display order for Level 5 reward sets changed, with rarer materials shown as option A.
- Homecoming notes: the default controlled operator when entering and leaving a Protocol Space now follows a better selection rule.
- Homecoming notes: a bug where certain actions during Protocol Space challenges could stall progression was fixed, along with a case where the controlled operator could not move after a failed attempt.
What this page cannot tell you
Three gaps worth stating plainly. First, our data does not map a puzzle stage to its spatial set, so the grouping on this page is by internal id bucket and region, not by official set name. Second, we hold no per-stage reward or drop data for these 21 stages; the reward lines above are copied from the set-level notes. Third, our stage pages show name, category and description only, and the recommended level and stamina fields are empty for every Challenge stage in the file, so any level figure you see quoted elsewhere did not come from us.
One more thing worth knowing if you play with our stage list open: the guides site is not an official source. When a note and our data disagree, trust the note.
Where this data comes from
The stage, medal and reward entries above come from our own data files, and the dates and reward lines come from the official version notes reproduced in full on the news archive.
- 2026-01-17 โ Arknights: Endfield [Official Release Preview] DEV Comm: introduces [Delver of the Cryptic] as a permanent puzzle mode.
- 2026-03-12 โ [Old Deep Water Dies, by Rising Tide It is Denied] Version Update Notes: opens the spatial set [Grotto Survey] and lists its rewards.
- 2026-07-16 โ [Homecoming] Version Update Notes: opens [Artful Realm of Six Cardinals], three spaces then three more.
Related reading: Season Tower stages for the other permanent challenge mode, enemy drops for the Aberrant Zone materials, and AIC blueprints if the reward materials go into your production lines. You can also jump straight to the Challenge filter on the stages hub.