Zenless Zone Zero Beginner Guide: Tips Every New Agent Should Know

Zenless Zone Zero dumps a lot on you in the first couple of hours. There's a video store to run, a robot bunny whispering directions in your ear, three different upgrade menus, and a whole city full of side stuff, and most of it gets explained exactly once. The good news is the early game is pretty forgiving. The free agents you get from the story will carry you through the opening chapters without much fuss, so you can afford to slow down and learn the systems before the game starts asking real questions of you. Here's what's worth knowing before you get in deep.

Understanding Proxies, Agents, and Bangboo Roles

You don't actually fight in this game. You play a Proxy, Wise or Belle (your pick at the start), and together the two of you are Phaethon, a legendary Proxy team hiding behind a video store front. Your job is to sit outside the Hollow and guide a combat squad through it over comms. The story makes a big deal out of this, and mechanically it's true: you're the operator, not the fighter.

The ones doing the punching are Agents. That's the gacha cast, and you field three of them per squad. Every agent has two things that define them: an Attribute and a Specialty.

The five core Specialties

Specialty is basically your class. There were five at launch and they still cover most of the roster:

• Attack - your carry. Raw damage, the whole team gets built around them.
• Stun - fills the enemy Daze bar fast (that scales off the Impact stat) so you get a break window for your carry to unload.
• Anomaly - stacks elemental buildup until a status effect pops off. Steady damage plus team buffs, depending on the element.
• Support - buffs, energy regen, defense shred. Boring on paper, decides your damage ceiling in practice.
• Defense - block and counter types. Soak pressure so your rhythm doesn't fall apart.

Two newer Specialties (Rupture and Armorer) showed up in later patches, but a fresh account won't touch those for a long while. Learn the five first.

A standard team is one Attack carry, one Stun or Anomaly, one Support. That formula gets you through nearly everything early. So who does the game hand you? Anby (Electric Stun), Nicole (Ether Support), and Billy (Physical Attack), all free through the prologue. Anby and Nicole in particular stay useful well past the early game - Nicole pulls enemies into a blob and shreds their defense, which is a genuinely great button for months.

Attributes and what they proc

Attributes are your elements: Physical, Fire, Ice, Electric, and Ether at base, with a couple more layered in later. Deal enough of one element and you fill the enemy's Anomaly gauge. Fill it and you get the status:

| Attribute | Anomaly effect | |---|---| | Physical | Assault (burst hit) | | Fire | Burn (damage over time) | | Ice | Freeze (stops the enemy cold) | | Electric | Shock (periodic zaps) | | Ether | Corruption (damage amp) |

Early on, just know that matching elements across a team makes the gauge fill faster, and a popped Anomaly is free damage you didn't have to work for.

Bangboo: the free fourth slot

Bangboo are the little robot helpers, and every squad gets one Bangboo slot that doesn't cost you an agent spot. It's straight-up added power. The equipped Bangboo fires its active skill on cooldown, pokes at enemies, and even joins in on Chain Attacks.

The catch is that most of the strong ones have a condition attached, usually two agents sharing an element or two sharing a faction. Read the Bangboo's passive before you slot it. If your team is two Ice agents, an Ice Bangboo gets its full kit online; a random mismatched one is mostly a mascot.

You've also got your own personal Bangboo, Eous, who you ride around as inside Hollows. Eous is exploration-only, not a fighter. Pulling new Bangboo uses Boopons, a currency the game only gives out for free - more on that in the last section.

Navigating Hollow Exploration and Video Store Sim

Hollows are zones of corrupted space full of monsters called Ethereals. Regular people can't survive in there, which is why Proxies exist. You dive in through the HDD - the Hollow Deep Dive system - which is the monitor sitting inside Random Play. Project your consciousness into Eous, walk around, find the objective, get out.

Fair warning if you've seen old footage: at launch, Hollow exploration was a TV-grid puzzle mode where you shuffled between screens. Patch 1.4 ripped most of that out of the main story, so now you mostly just run around in third person. Don't let old videos confuse you.

What's actually in a Hollow run

A few things show up over and over:

• Observation Data - three hidden pickups per stage. Grab all three for a better commission rating, which means better rewards.
• Gear Coins - spent inside the run to open blocked paths.
• Gold Resource Crates - treasure chests, basically.
• Resonium - run-only buffs. Grab the ones matching what your squad does.
• Pressure - some stages have a corruption meter. Hit 100 and your squad takes a random debuff and the meter resets. Stack five debuffs and your team's HP starts draining, which ends the run. Safety zones along the route bleed pressure back off, so plan your path a little.

Hollow Zero

Hollow Zero is the roguelike mode built on this, and it's where a lot of your weekly income comes from. Each run you pick one Bangboo companion, then move node to node across a map - fights, events, shops, chests - toward a boss at the end. Resonium stacking is the whole game here: buffs from the same family compound hard, so picking a focused lane beats grabbing random shinies. It has a weekly point cap with rewards on the other side, including Polychrome and Boopons. Don't sleep on it once it unlocks.

Running Random Play

The video store is your cover business and, weirdly, one of your better Denny income sources. Once a day on a real-time 24-hour cycle, you open the shop:

1. Pick three videotapes to put on display. Three genres are popular that day - match them for bigger profits, and higher-level tapes earn more too. Early on your tape collection is thin, so match what you can and grab new tapes as you find them.
2. Appoint a Promoter for the day. Each one has a bonus to earnings. Agents can get recruited as promoters later, usually by raising their Trust level and owning a tape they like.
3. Walk away. Dennies tick up passively and you claim them the next day.

Customers occasionally show up at the counter wanting a recommendation, and picking the right tape gets you bonus rewards. The Nostalgic Girl wants Return to Giallo City, since it's got footage of the old world her grandfather talked about. Small stuff, but it adds up.

The store itself levels from 1 to 6, gated by your Inter-Knot Level (account level) and story progress - Level 2 wants Inter-Knot 20, Level 3 wants 25, Level 4 wants 30, Level 5 wants 35 plus the Family Education commission, Level 6 wants 40 plus another commission. Higher level means more customers and more income, so it's worth pushing the story along for this alone.

Core Combat Basics: Dodge Counters and Chain Attacks

Combat here looks like a brawler and plays more like a rhythm game. Everything hangs off one loop: build meters, break the enemy, unload. Miss the timing on defense and you'll still win early fights, just slowly and with more healing.

Basic attacks are the engine. They generate Energy (the purple bar, per character), fill the enemy's Daze bar, and build the team's Decibel Rating. So even your mashing is doing three jobs.

Dodge, Perfect Dodge, and Dodge Counters

When an enemy's about to hit you, it flashes gold. That flash is your cue. Dodge as the attack lands and you get a Perfect Dodge - brief slow motion, and a window to hit basic attack for a Dodge Counter. You're invulnerable during the counter and it generates Energy, so a good dodge is worth more than a blocked hit ever is.

If you see a red flash instead, that means the same thing but you're out of Assist Points. You can still dodge it, you just can't call for help.

Daze, Stun, and Chain Attacks

Under each enemy's HP bar is a Daze bar. Hit them and it fills. Fill it and they get Stunned - locked in place and taking a big chunk of extra damage. Stun-specialty agents fill this bar way faster thanks to high Impact, which is why Anby's on your early team.

Now the important bit: hit a Stunned enemy with a heavy attack and you trigger a Chain Attack. Heavy attacks are your Special, your EX Special, or the last hit of a basic attack string. The chain lets every agent take a turn doing their big move. Order matters here - the game walks you through squad order one at a time, and you want your carry hitting last so their shot lands while the stun damage bonus is still running.

Ultimates run off the shared Decibel meter at 3000. Note the word shared: burn one ultimate and the meter zeroes for the whole squad, so don't fire two back to back expecting both to be up.

Assists

Press the switch button right as an attack lands and you get a Perfect Assist - a teammate jumps in and handles it. Two flavors: Defensive Assists parry the hit, Evasive Assists dodge it. Both need Assist Points, which you earn from Chain Attacks and ultimates. There's also a Quick Assist that triggers on its own when your on-field agent gets staggered, auto-swapping to the next character in line.

That's why squad order matters outside of chains too. Putting your carry right after your support means they slide in off those quick swaps already buffed.

EX Specials and Anomaly

Special Attack is one button. Get the purple bar past the threshold and the same button becomes an EX Special - much stronger, usually with an extra mechanic riding on it. If the bar's greyed out you'll just do the weak version, so glance at it before you lean on the button.

Anomaly we covered in the roles section: keep hitting with one element, fill the gauge, get the proc. It's free damage riding on stuff you were doing anyway.

Managing Energy, Stamina, and Daily Commissions

Quick disambiguation because the naming's a trap: character Energy is the purple combat bar. Battery Charge is your account stamina, the stuff that limits farming. Totally different systems that unfortunately share a word.

Battery Charge, the real speed limit

Battery refills one point every 6 minutes, topping out at 240. That's a full day to go from empty to cap, so 240 a day is your budget. Sitting at 240 is pure waste - regen just stops while you're parked there. You don't have to drain to zero, you just need to get under the cap so it keeps ticking while you're offline.

Two wrinkles:

• Rewards and codes can push you over 240, up to 1000. Regen stays paused the whole time you're above cap, so spend that surplus down.
• Once you're capped, a second tank called Backup Battery starts filling at one point per 18 minutes, up to 2400. You convert it 1:1 into regular Battery whenever you want. It's a cushion for missed days, not a replacement for them - three days away is not three days of Backup.

Here's where the Battery goes:

| Activity | Battery cost | What you get | |---|---|---| | Combat Simulation | 20-100 (scales with difficulty) | Agent EXP and promotion materials | | Expert Challenge | 40 | W-Engine upgrade materials | | Routine Cleanup | 60 | Dennies and Drive Discs | | Notorious Hunt | 60 | Boss materials for Core Skills |

Rough priority when you're short: Notorious Hunt first (only three bonus clears a week, and Core Skill materials gate your damage), then Combat Simulation while your carry's under-leveled, then Expert Challenge once the W-Engine needs feeding. Routine Cleanup only when you're broke.

Coffee is stamina you forgot you had

Coff Cafe by the Godfinger Arcade sells you one coffee a day for 2500 Dennies (the New Eridu Special's 1500). Every cup gives +60 Battery Charge, which is a quarter of your daily cap for pocket change. On top of that, each coffee doubles the drop rate of a specific material for one Combat Simulation or Routine Cleanup run.

So the move is: check which materials you actually need today, then buy the coffee that boosts them. Buying a random coffee then farming something else wastes the whole buff. The menu rotates daily, which is why some options show up locked.

Dailies and the ten-minute loop

Daily Errands unlock after you clear the Explosive Last Train commission in the Cat's Lost and Found series. From then on you've got a task list worth 400 activity points total:

| Points | Reward | |---|---| | 100 | 20 Inter-Knot Credit, 10 Polychrome, 3000 Dennies | | 200 | 20 Inter-Knot Credit, 10 Polychrome, 3 Bangboo Algorithm Modules | | 300 | 20 Inter-Knot Credit, 20 Polychrome, 3 Investigator Logs | | 400 | 20 Inter-Knot Credit, 20 Polychrome, 3 W-Engine Power Supplies |

That's 60 Polychrome and 3000 Dennies a day, plus materials. Rewards don't auto-collect - hit the green progress bar at the top of the screen to claim them, because plenty of people leave those sitting there for weeks.

The actual daily loop, in order: log in, buy coffee, do the free scratch card at Howl's Newsstand, open the video store, spend Battery down below 240, knock out Errands. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Do that consistently and the account grows itself.

Early Resource Priorities Before Your First Pulls

The single most common rookie move is pulling on day one. Don't. The story trio clears the early chapters fine, the early enemies are soft, and every pull you spend now is one you won't have for a limited agent you actually want later.

What a pull actually costs

One Signal Search is 160 Polychrome. Hard pity on the character banner is 90 pulls, so guaranteeing an S-Rank agent runs about 14,400 Polychrome. Your first S-Rank is a coin flip between the featured agent and a standard-pool one. Lose that 50/50 and your next S-Rank is guaranteed to be the featured agent. So worst case is 180 pulls, around 28,800 Polychrome. Grim math, but soft pity kicks in before 90 for most players, so the real number usually lands lower.

Here's the part that saves people stress: pity carries over between banners. Pulled 30 times with no S-Rank before a banner ended? You only need 60 more on the next one. Lost a 50/50? The next banner's featured agent is locked in for you. Saving partway is never wasted.

The banners don't share pity, though. Standard banner uses Master Tapes (its own tickets, 90 pity, plus a 300-pull selector), the W-Engine banner has separate pity entirely (80 hard pity, friendlier 75/25 odds). Skip the W-Engine banner as a new player - an A-Rank engine bridges the gap fine, and agents matter way more.

Boopons are the Bangboo-only currency, and they're the friendliest pulls in the game: 80 hard pity, no 50/50 at all, and you can't buy them with money or Polychrome even if you wanted to. They only come from playing (Hollow Zero, commissions, events, the battle pass). Just bank them and spend on the Bangboo that matches your best team.

What to actually level

Stamina's tight early, so order matters. For most of the early game:

1. Agent level and promotion - levels raise ATK, DEF and HP directly, the most visible jump per point spent. Your carry first, always.
2. Core Skills and your carry's main damage skill - these multiply what the level bought you.
3. Drive Discs last - get a sensible set with correct main stats on and call it done. Chasing perfect substats is a late-game money pit, and rolling discs early means rolling bad discs.

One more Dennies note, since everything above bills you in Dennies too: the video store and Routine Cleanup are your income. An unopened store is money you threw away, and it takes thirty seconds a day.

So the whole early game in one line: run the store, drink the coffee, clear dailies, spend Battery on your one real team, and sit on your Polychrome until a limited carry shows up that you actually want. That routine alone is about 60 Polychrome a day, which is a 10-pull a month before you count events, codes, and Hollow Zero - free money for ten minutes of clicking.