Revision history: Headhunting

Headhunting is Arknights' gacha. A single headhunt costs 600 Orundum or one Headhunting Permit; a 10-pull costs 6,000. Its design predates the HoYoverse pattern and solves the bad-luck problem differently: instead of a hidden ramp and a hard wall, the escalation is printed in the rules text. [1]

Rates and escalation

Parameter	Value
Base 6-star rate	2% per pull
Escalation	after 50 pulls without a 6-star, the rate rises 2 points per pull: 4% at 51, 6% at 52, reaching 100% by pull 99
5-star floor	a 5-star or better is guaranteed within a banner's first 10 pulls
Cost	600 Orundum per pull

Because the escalation is official, the expected cost is computable exactly from published rules: about 34.6 pulls per 6-star on average, a widely cited community computation. The worst case is 99 pulls. This makes Arknights one of the few games where no part of the pity math relies on community measurement; compare the unpublished soft pity ramps in the HoYoverse games on the pity system page.

The escalation counter carries over between successive standard banners, but limited, collaboration, and Kernel banners track it independently. [1]

Featured guarantees

The featured side is weaker than the rate side. On standard banners each 6-star has a 50% chance of being one of the two rate-up operators, with no loss protection and no carry-over: a plain fractional rate-up, not a 50/50. Limited banners guarantee that the first 6-star after 150 pulls is a rate-up limited operator, once per banner, and collaboration banners guarantee the featured 6-star within 120 pulls. [1]

Since 2024, limited banners add a real ceiling through Headhunting Data Contracts, the game's spark system, which caps a limited operator at 300 pulls.