Zenless Zone Zero Beginner Tips

If you’re new to Zenless Zone Zero and want to get off to the best start, check out these Zenless Zone Zero beginner tips.

We’ll cover the best way to level your Agents, how to use your Battery Charge wisely, and the fastest way to raise your Inter-Knot level.

Commissions (Quests) are the best way to increase your account level (your Inter-Knot Level) in Zenless Zone Zero. Higher Inter-Knot Levels not only unlock more gameplay features that you want to access ASAP but they also allow you to further level up your agents, bangboos and w-engines.

Unlike other Hoyoverse games, doing a certain number of side missions is essential as well. After a few hours in the game, you will hit your first “Intermission Chapter” where you will have to do several Commissions to raise your Inter-Knot Level to 20 to unlock the next main mission. There will likely be several intermissions throughout the main story. You should do main missions when available but do side missions whenever there are no main missions available.

Observation Data, the yellow and pink orbs collected during missions, are also essential for levelling up, so make sure to always grab the three yellow orbs the first time you do every story mission, so you don’t have to redo them later.

Fairly early in the story you will unlock the coffee shop and the HIA training simulator. You have a maximum cap of 240 Battery Charge, and you will regenerate 1 charge every 6 minutes, meaning you will fully recharge every 24 hours. On top of this, you can get one cup of coffee per day which can restore an extra 60 Battery and give you a bonus in your next HIA training session. Spending Battery Charge is your best renewable source of Inter-Knot Credit (account experience) … Commissions are limited, Battery is 4ever(!)

The most important thing to do with your Battery Charge every day is to complete your daily Errands for some juicy rewards such as extra Inter-Knot Credit and Polychrome. After that, the next best way to spend your Battery Charge early on is on training for levelling up your Agents, increasing their Ranks, and improving their skills—then doing the same for your W-Engines and Bangboos. (More on this in the next section.)

Early on, it is worth delaying spending your battery until the end of the day if you will pass Inter-Knot Reputation Rank-Up missions (e.g. Inter-Knot level 20, level 30, etc.) since you can then get better rewards. There is no need to hoard too much though, since slowing down your account level will slow down your overall progression.

One thing you will notice when you upgrade an agent’s rank for the first time is that you will get some nice rewards at certain levels: at levels 20, 40, and 60 you will earn an extra master tape (a standard pull) per agent. The cost to level agents increases drastically with their level, but level 20 or 40 are well worth doing for those extra tapes so you can get more agents, w-engines, and work towards your 300 pull selector. Level 60 is too expensive for the rewards early on. 

That being said, while it’s safe to level all of your agents to 20 and then 40 over the first weeks of the game, you should focus most of your attention on your 3 favourite agents and their w-engines and skills. You only need 3 agents for most of the missions in the game, so you want your chosen 3 to be as powerful as possible so you don’t get roadblocked by any early challenges. 

In short, feel free to experiment with different agents early on to find your style, but once you start approaching level 40 you should really consider limiting yourself from then on until you have your first team of 3 maxed out. 

Everyone is guaranteed their first S rank agent within 50 signals in the Standard Channel using Master Tapes. For early F2P players, you should build your first team around that S rank agent (check out our ranking of the standar S-rank agents to find out more!). 

To build a good team, you should combine agents with the same element or from the same faction. For example, if you pull Grace Howard as your first S-rank, she is an electric element agent from the Belobog Heavy Industries faction. Combine her in a team with Anby and Anton, two A-rank agents, for an accessible early game mono-electric team. 

The other big consideration here is your first limited S-rank agent. At the start of the game, Ellen is available as the first limited agent for 20 days on her exclusive Mellow Waveride channel. After this limited time channel ends, she will be unavailable for several months until it is re-run and another limited channel will take her place (next up is Zhu Yuan). You are guaranteed an S-rank within 90 signals and have a 50% chance to get the limited one. If you get a standard S-rank instead, you will have a 100% chance to get a limited one the next time. 

Limited agents are almost always stronger than standard agents (Ellen, for example, is the best damage agent on the game’s launch) and you should build teams around whatever limited agents you have. 

The Signal Shop is where you should go to get great rewards for the freely earned currency in the game. 

First up, and most straightforward, is the Master Tape Exchange. Here you can trade in your Polychrome for Master Tapes or Encrypted Master Tapes. Polychrome is the most important resource in the game and you can earn a limited amount from nearly every activity. It is extremely important to ONLY buy the Encrypted Master Tapes and NEVER BUY the regular Master Tapes. It might be tempting to chase the 300 pull selector but remember that you will get there in just a few months for free. Encryped Master Tapes, on the other hand, are the only way to get limited agents and w-engines which are the most powerful agents and w-engines in the game. 

Next up is Fading Signal. Here you can spend Fadings Signals which you get from any signal searches that you do. You will get a lot of fading signals thanks to all of the free Tapes you will get at the start of the game, but bear in mind that these will slow down drastically after a week or two. The most important things to buy here are the 5 discounted Encrypted Master Tapes and 5 discounted Master Tapes. These refresh each month, and you should always buy them all. If you have extra fading signals left and will have enough for the following month too, then you can buy anything else you need in this shop. 

The Bangbuck tab works much the same way: buy the discounted monthly items first, then save up for the most premium items. 

Finally, for now, is the Residual Signal Shop. Here you can trade in Residual Signals which you earn from recruiting S and A rank agents and W-Engines. Note that when you have an agent fully maxed out (i.e. you have them plus 6 extra copies for their cinema-scape) then you will get extra Residual Signals instead. You should never buy A-rank agents from this shop (unless you really want to and don’t mind being inefficient!). Much like the Master Tape Exchange you should never buy the regular Master Tapes, only the Encrypted ones. The big question right now is whether it’s worth saving up for the standard S-rank W-engines for 600 signals. For now, we recommend saving until more testing has been done to figure out which W-engine is the best one to choose.