Arknights First of A Thousand Autumns — Wang, Ch'en Dawnstreak & Free Roll

Arknights is running First of A Thousand Autumns, its 6.5th anniversary Festival event, and the calendar has a trap in it. The event itself runs until August 13, but the Ashes to Ashes, Ages on Ages banner and every free pull attached to it close on July 30. Doctors pacing themselves by the later date will quietly hand back a free ten-roll and a daily free pull on a Festival Limited banner, which is the most generous recruitment window Arknights offers. Here is everything running, and the order that actually matters.

📅 Two Deadlines, One Week Apart

• Ashes to Ashes, Ages on Ages banner: closes July 30
• Free ten-roll and daily free pulls: also end July 30
• Kernel #58 rotation: closes July 28
• First of A Thousand Autumns event: runs to August 13

Internalise that split before anything else. The event stages, the currency grind, and the free 5-star sitting behind them all have three weeks of runway, while the recruitment side has one. Everything below is ordered by which clock is running out first.

🎟️ The Free Pulls Nobody Should Miss

Two separate free-pull sources are live, and both expire with the banner rather than with the event.

The first is the Moon Night Homecoming Headhunting Permit, claimable from the event page and worth a full ten-roll on the Festival banner. The second is a free single pull every day from July 16 through July 30. Neither costs Orundum or Originite Prime.

In plain terms: Arknights rarely hands out free pulls on limited banners, because Festival banners are where the game's rarest Operators live. Getting a free ten-roll plus fourteen days of free singles on one is unusual generosity, and it means even Doctors with no saved currency get meaningful attempts at Wang. Log in daily until July 30 whether or not you plan to spend, since a missed day is a pull that cannot be recovered.

♟️ Wang — Limited 6★ Trapmaster Specialist

Wang is the banner's headline and its only Limited Operator, meaning he appears exclusively on Limited Headhunting Festival banners rather than entering the standard pool later. He is the second eldest of the Sui siblings and a primary antagonist of the Through the Ages arc, finally playable after being built up across several events.

Mechanically he is a Trapmaster, a Specialist subclass that places stationary traps rather than fighting directly, and his traps are weiqi stones from the board game the event is named around. Two talents define him:

• Mold Stones links stones placed on adjacent tiles so they activate one another, with the first enemy stepping onto a tile triggering the effect.
• Every Move Anticipated makes every stone in a straight chain with a triggered stone deal additional damage and ignore a portion of enemy RES, stacking up to three times.

Because damage scales with how long your chains are and whether they run straight, placement decides his output far more than it does for most Specialists. His three skills branch that identity in different directions: Arts damage over time with a Slow debuff, a large cross-pattern burst with an attack-speed reduction, or a mode where he halts his own attacks to load ammunition and deploy stone clusters across an expanded range.

Two numbers matter for budgeting. Wang carries a 70% rate-up, well above a standard banner, and he is guaranteed free after 300 pulls on this banner. That second figure turns an open-ended gamble into a bounded one, so the question is not whether you can get him but whether 300 pulls is a price your account can pay. He is also redeemable in the Headhunting Data Contract Store at the same cost.

⚔️ Ch'en the Dawnstreak — 6★ Arts Guard

Sharing the banner is Ch'en the Dawnstreak, a Guard who deals Arts damage rather than the physical damage the class usually leans on. That alone gives her a niche, since Arts damage bypasses the physical defence that many high-value targets stack.

• All-Seeing Eye converts her attacks into Weakness damage, with the damage type shifting depending on what she is hitting.
• To Know Time's Flow restores HP equal to a percentage of her ATK while she is not taking damage, and lets her dodge the next incoming attack.

The combination makes her unusually self-sufficient for a damage dealer, because the sustain and the dodge reduce how much medic attention she demands. Unlike Wang she is not Limited, so she will return in future standard rate-ups if you skip her now.

🌱 Taraxacum, Ju, and the Sui Reruns

Taraxacum is a new 5★ Watchman Medic from Sargon with a mobility gimmick that turns defensive. She heals allies conventionally, but she can also enter a Take Off state to reposition across the map on her burdenbeast, and her talent Calming Dandelion grants allies in that state a Sanctuary buff and one extra Block. That converts what looks like a movement tool into a squad-wide defensive uplift, which is rare at 5★.

Ju is the event's free 5★, earned through event currency rather than pulled. Since she costs no recruitment resources at all, she is the single best-value Operator of the whole celebration for newer accounts.

The banner also reruns the rest of the Sui siblings on secondary rate-up: Chongyue, Shu, and Yu. For collectors this is the window that completes the set alongside Wang. Note that Ling has been removed from the Festival secondary rate-up pool, so the off-target odds here are not the same as on previous Festival banners.

🍂 The Event Itself — Running to August 13

First of A Thousand Autumns is the seventh Festival event in Arknights and the latest chapter of the Through the Ages arc. It splits into three stages: Record of an Autumn's End, Forgotten Prospect of Spring, and Unwritten Chapters of Yan.

Clearing stages and completing Proofreading of the Past missions awards Draft of History, the event currency, which you spend at the Sky Mirror Teahouse. The shop stocks Ju's recruitment tokens, the Sky Mirror Pavilion Reception Hall furniture set, and assorted materials. Because Ju is gated behind that currency rather than behind luck, the event grind is the reliable half of this celebration while the banner is the gamble.

The update also adds specialised Operator Modules for Primal Protector Defenders, alongside new outfits for Ling, Dusk, Yu, Surfer, and Philae. Modules are the long-term upgrade layer for existing Operators, so if you already run a Primal Protector this is a quiet but permanent power increase that outlasts the event.

📋 What to Do Before July 30

The order follows the earlier deadline, not the later one:

• Claim the Moon Night Homecoming Permit from the event page immediately if you have not, since it is a free ten-roll sitting behind one button
• Log in daily through July 30 for the free single pull, because missed days cannot be recovered
• Decide on Wang honestly. The 300-pull guarantee means the cost is knowable, so work out whether you can reach it before spending piecemeal toward a target you will not hit
• Clear Kernel #58 business by July 28 if that rotation matters to your roster, as it closes two days before the Festival banner
• Farm Draft of History steadily rather than urgently, since the event has until August 13 and Ju is guaranteed rather than random
• Check your Primal Protector Defenders for the new module, which is permanent progress unaffected by either deadline

Doctors returning after a break will find this a forgiving re-entry point. The free pulls lower the cost of catching up, the free 5★ comes from missions rather than luck, and a Festival event is written to be approachable rather than gated behind current endgame progression. For how we weighed a similar limited-Operator decision, our SilverAsh the Reignfrost analysis lays out the same reasoning, and our Joint Operation banner breakdown covers how we rank pull priority across a shared banner.

🛒 Build Your Arknights Roster

Reaching Wang's 300-pull guarantee takes a stocked account, and the free rolls go furthest on a roster that already has the supports and Defenders to build around him. Doctors who want to enter the anniversary ready rather than rebuilding from scratch can explore trusted Arknights Accounts with limited Operators and progression already in place, accelerate material and LMD farming with expert Arknights Hourly Services, or clear the toughest event stages and endgame content through reliable Arknights Boosting.

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