/akg/'s newcutie primer for Arknights Intermezzi and Side Stories

It's a dead week and I'm new, what do.

I've sorted currently available side events in roughly ascending difficulty order, so you don't accidentally find yourself vored by seaborn.
I've also noted the amount of OP awarded by fully clearing them using the numbers from the fandom wiki for quick reference, these should include the story and tutorial nodes, as well as the restorable welfare ops.

The list

babby's first event tier

Grani and the Knights's Treasure (Grani) 15OP
Heart of Surging Flame (Ceylon) 28OP

easy tier

Under Tides (Gladiia) 28OP
Darknights's Memoir (Sideroca) 22OP
Mansfield Break (Robin) 27OP
Code of Brawl (Bison) 29OP
Gavial the Great Chief Returns (Tomimi) 28OP

medium tier

Guide Ahead 27OP
Break the Ice 30OP
Twilight of Wolumonde (Folinic) 32OP
Who is Real (Lava The Purgatory) 30OP
Dossoles Holiday* 40OP

hard tier

Maria Nearl (Whislash) 28DP
A Walk in the Dust (Heavyrain) 27OP
Near Light 41 OP
Lone Trail 40OP
Stultifera Navis 36OP

Some recommendations:

You can unlock permanently one event per week and can store up to two such unlocks ("Event Crystals" as the game's tooltip calls it). You gain nothing by letting them overflow when Monday reset rolls around so if you're indecisive just unlock whatever. You'll have them all open soon enough.
Before focusing on side stories, clear 4-7 for the final keel. This will allow you to fully upgrade your command center, which extends the time your base operators can work. It is sorely recommended you also completely max out at least the left side of your base before focusing on side stories, so you can maximize your passive income. Unless you're really desperate for pulls and can't get the primes anywhere else. ~~Real doctors luckshit every banner and buy skins instead.~~
- You might not want to completely build your base at first. Look into 243 or 252 setups first - those are out of the scope of this guide.
Save these for dead weeks, not only you'll have something to do then, you should complete current events while they're ongoing.
Some of these events, in particular the older ones, can be restored (known ingame as Record Restore). Restoring an event involves completing all of it's operations with 3 stars. As you do it, you fill a ladder with the stars you've gained, unlocking rewards like event furniture, icons, and most importantly, its welfare operator and potentials, which i've listed between parentheses above. As the game is updated, more and more old events become restorable. I will be adding their welfare ops to the list above as they do.
- The full list of record restorations already on CN can be found here: https://arknights.fandom.com/wiki/Record_Restoration to give you an idea of how long it will take for an event to be restorable, but it typically amounts to "too fucking long"
- DO NOT use generic tokens to raise the potential of restorable welfares (or any welfare for that matter). The operator letter obtained from fully restoring the event SETS the operator's potential to max regardless of current potential, so any generic tokens spent beforehand are wasted.
Several operators with modules have the specific mission for a map inside one of these events. If you're new, by the time you'll be caring about modules you should have most if not all side stories open. However, it doesn't hurt to plan ahead if you're rushing your'e waifu as one of your first E2s and she happens to have modules. Even then, it's a better idea to build a full roster first.
Grani and the Knight's Treasure can be stomped easily including any year2+ operator, and is a breeze even with launch E1 operators for the peak arkboomer experience, but you don't get that much OP out of it. Grani is workable with vanguard and dodge memes though.
Heart of Surging Flame is infamous for its 0-sanity cost story stages, which can be used to fulfill dailies/weeklies/module missions with autos so it's a recommended unlock.
Under Tides was released before wandering medics existed and it was already easy then. If you bring one such as the free Honeyberry it's a complete joke. Several high impact operator modules have missions in here, and Gladiia is an absolute monster for a welfare unit which can be unlocked here, so it's highly recommended.
Stultilfera Navis may have a lot of OP, but they notably overhauled the UI to hide the fact none of the story nodes actually award any. You're going to have to fight for every single one, and if you ask around you'll find it's a helluva fight. I recommend Wolumonde first if you really need primes.
Dossoles Holiday introduced stickers, which are buffs for your party and which counter some event specific mechanics (corrosion damage, high tide, etc). Because the EX and S stages are balanced around them, the difficulty is heavily backloaded and you might only be able to deal with the story stages at first, which is why I marked it. It also has a 0-sanity cost pseudo annihilatio which you might want to exploit for dailies/weeklies but good luck autoing that one (many oldstinkies still couldnt and settled for the bugged 400 clear).

What about vignettes where doombear

You might also want to know you can also restore vignette stories, but you'll have to pay with Information Fragments bought at the red cert store outside events.

Other than that, most restorable welfares from these events are somehow even more questionable than side story/intermezzi welfares, and you get nothing else besides them and plaques/furniture for your trouble.
You get to actually >read the stories in-game I guess but you already have https://akgcc.github.io/cc/story.html for that.
All in all, farming red certs specifically for restoring vignettes is extremely poor bang for your sanity. If you're a completionist and really want them unlocked in your account, it's better to wait for a new vignette event and dump sanity then to buy Fragments in the event shop.
At face value, the unlimited Fragment shop in such events looks less efficient than the red cert store purely for Fragments. Red cert stages, however, do not have side drops. Vignette events are the perfect opportunity to farm the materials you actually need in the moment from most stages in the game while getting currency for Fragments on the side. Or even double-dip and farm red certs during Vignettes to purchase fragments in both places.

Restorable Operator Review

Ordered from most to least useful. Your mileage will vary, and I do not care.

Gladiia, from Under Tides is the best welfare unit, widely considered one of the best welfares released in any mobage period. Great CC, damage against light units, regen, can be put on high tiles, has the most broken module in the game, enables AH comp. Unlock her, E2, M6+, max nyodule, you won't regret it.
Tequila, from Dossoles Holiday (not restorable yet), has long been sent permanently to the bench ever since Młynar's debut, but he's still worth E2 purely because of his base skill - one of the extremely few base skills that will pay themselves back within a reasonable timeframe, as the lynchpin of Shamare comp. He's also fun to actually use: has good damage, survivability, is cheap to deploy, and having manual S2 deactivation available makes uptime management a breeze.
Bena, from Preluding Lights is a most interesting option for a new player because of her niche. Her talent allows her doll form to resist a lot of phys/arts damage, on top of her block lowering to 0 as per her subclass, making her very difficult to completely kill. Because of this, she makes excellent renewable bait and a crash course on the aggro system. She also does decent damage in a pinch, just keep in mind her skills are built to get herself killed and activate her branch's trait. She will require medic babysitting if used as a laneholder.
Sideroca, from Darknights Memoir, is a surprisingly workable arts guard with superb survivability thanks to her high HP pool, innate RES and regeneration skills. For a welfare, she has few flaws, namely relying on being fed kills for her ASPD talent, an inexplicable range reduction on S2, and not being Surtr.
Lava The Purgatory, from Who Is Real, is a fine choice if you feel like you want a stronger Gitano and do not have Mostima or Dusk. Just keep in mind that Splash Casters aren't in a very good spot overall. As a fun aside, Lavalt with module and S1 has the honor of being one of the very few non-Blast casters with range 5, and the only Splash Caster with that capability.
Robin, from Mansfield Break, revolves around binding and pushing back enemies with her traps. Unfortunately, modern map design practices have rendered her already mediocre CC potential moot thanks to heavy proliferation of undeployable tiles. Levitate can alleviate this allowing a short window to place mines under a floating enemy, but it's generally considered too much work for minimal gain. However, she found a new niche in her capability to abuse event mechanics that rely on deploying melee ops on specific tiles, since her traps usually count for that purpose while not counting against the deployment limit. Notable examples include Twilight of Wolumonde's gramophone charge tiles, What The Firelight Casts's burning reeds, and Hortus de Escapismo's wooden planks. For that purpose, she will work just fine at E0 if she's kept away from danger. She's not worth raising if you have Dorothy unless you really, REALLY like traps.
Absinthe, from Children of Ursus, has an interesting targetting priority with S1, going for the target with the lowest HP%. Coupled with her talent, she's pretty good at lowering enemy counts on your chokepoint and preventing leaks. On boss fights, she will usually wind up targeting the boss over intact mooks walking in range, which is usually what you want to happen. S2 is powerful but too much of a hassle. Unfortunately, she competes with a LOT of 5-star casters and in particular with Amiya, who has True damage and will need to be raised to fully clear CH8 ~~unless you're a heartless SMACKer~~

The other restorable ops I haven't mentioned aren't any good and are only worth prioritizing for waifu reasons. You can perfectly use 4-stars or even 3-stars for the job while you wait to pull something better.

Integrated Strategies

Playing these modes is entirely sanity free and good to do during events after you've dumped all your sanity in the farming stages but still want to actually >play the game. There are currently 4 known Integrated Strategies events, known ingame as Themes:

Ceobe's Fungimist (IS or IS1)
Phantom & Crimson Solitaire (IS2, Shalem)
Mizuki & Caerula Arbor (IS3, Highmore)
Expeditioner's Jǫklumarkar(IS4, Valarqvin, not yet available)

The mode plays similarly to "roguelites" like The Binding of Isaac or FTL:Faster Than Light. You choose a squad type with specific buffs, similarly to the character of the former or the ship of the latter, and a set of vouchers to get your initial operators. You spend Hope, earned from combat missions, to recruit (at max E1) and unlock E2s of operators from your current roster. You may randomly find Temporary Recruitments which allow you to recruit a random, completely maxed operator, even if you don't own it, which is usually recommended to take (One of the voucher sets is for random classes, but guarantees one such temporary recruitment). You also find or spend ingots for relics, which grant you permanent buffs for the current run of various types.
Regardless of if you win or lose, clearing stages during a run advances an exp bar when it ends, which gives you materials when you gain a level on it. Most importantly, gaining levels eventually gets you the welfare operator mentioned in the list above, as well as potential tokens for them in further levels.
Compared to other welfares, these are actually pretty decent and worth raising, just not the absolute best in class. They also have a second buff talent that only applies while inside their original IS theme, but they are still competent elsewhere.
There's also a secondary progression system which gives you minor buffs within the theme itself that will apply to every run in the default mode.
Also, every month, while the theme is being updated, a Monthly Squad of prepromoted units is available to play, and gives further rewards when you take it to 3F, which is a cinch. If you do miss a monthly squad, though, all of them are unlocked when the mode is discontinued. Old themes remain always open even after being discontinued (besides Ceobe's which is gone forever. RIP), so there's no rush if it stops receiving updates.
Speaking of, they also added an option to discontinued themes which allows you to skip the gameplay and buy the level rewards, at a cost of 1OP per level. Of course, this is absolutely not worth it. Even without considering the cost per level doesn't increase, just take a look at random IS2 level rewards. Does 1OP seem a good price for 3 skill books? 50K LMD? T3 sugars? All while removing incentive to play a free mode? Obviously fucking not. If you're that desperate for mats and still hate the mode so much, just afk Mountain S2 in hard mode up to 2F or 3F, quit and repeat.

Stationary Security Service

Not worth actively grinding for a new player, but you'll want to be able to do them eventually. Just be mindful that, while also sanity free to play, it does not award anything a new player urgently needs. The only reward from playing this mode regularly are module upgrade materials, which you can only put to use after promoting an operator to E2 AND after unlocking its module. All of this costs a ton of resources you want to put towards a balanced roster first.
Most importantly, it does not award Module Data Blocks except as a first clear reward, which you need to unlock the modules in the first place. And most tragically, the only renewable source of Module Data Blocks comes from the red cert shop, with only 4 available per month at a whooping 500 red certs. If you're even remotely interested in modules, you should at the very least hit AP-5 regularly and build a healthy stack of reds - you're going to need them.
After the rework, the mode is significantly easier and has a set of seasonal rewards for completing specific missions. These are mostly comprised of high tier materials and are worth shooting for.