Discover the world of Zenless Zone Zero, a new RPG from HoYoverse set in the post-apocalyptic city of New Eridu. As a Proxy, you’ll navigate through dangerous hollows, manage teams, and utilize deep character customization for strategic gameplay. Our guide will cover key character types, stats, and progression mechanics to help you excel in combat and upgrade your roster effectively.

Let’s dig in!

Understanding Character Stats in Zenless Zone Zero

In Zenless Zone Zero, each character’s effectiveness in battle is determined by a set of core stats. These stats not only influence how a character performs during combat but also dictate the strategic choices players must make when assembling their teams and choosing their upgrades. Here’s a breakdown of each stat and its impact on gameplay:

• HP Represents the total amount of damage a character can withstand before being knocked out. High HP is crucial for characters that need to withstand a lot of damage, especially those serving as front-liners in your team.
• DEF: Reduces the amount of damage a character takes from enemy attacks. Characters with high defense are typically less susceptible to being quickly defeated, allowing them more time on the field to perform actions.
• ATK: Measures the damage a character deals with their attacks. A higher ATK stat means more damage per hit, which is essential for quickly eliminating enemies.
• Impact: Determines how much Daze an attack adds to an enemy’s meter. Higher Impact speeds up the rate at which you can stun enemies, making it a vital stat for controlling the flow of combat.
• CRIT Rate: This is the probability that an attack will result in critical damage, dealing significantly more damage than a regular hit. Increasing this stat enhances your chances of triggering critical hits.
• Crit DMG: Increases the damage multiplier of critical hits. When paired with a high CRIT Rate, a high Crit DMG can drastically increase a character’s damage output during critical strikes.
• PEN Ratio: Indicates the percentage of an enemy’s armor that is ignored when attacking. This stat is crucial for dealing effective damage to heavily armored opponents.
• PEN: Provides a flat reduction to the enemy’s armor value during an attack, complementing the PEN Ratio by ensuring that some damage bypasses defenses entirely.
• Energy Regen: Determines how quickly a character’s energy bar refills during combat. Energy is essential for executing skills and EX skills, so a higher regeneration rate can significantly boost a character’s ability to use these powerful moves more frequently.
• Attribute Mastery: Enhances the damage dealt by Attribute Anomalies, which are special conditions applied by certain attacks, similar to elemental effects in other games.
• Anomaly Rate Bonus: Increases the effectiveness with which a character applies elemental or other attribute effects on their attacks. This is crucial for strategies that rely on quickly stacking these effects for maximum impact.

Each of these stats plays a crucial role in shaping how a character performs in various combat scenarios in Zenless Zone Zero. Understanding and optimizing these stats according to your play style and the challenges you face will be key to mastering the game. As you progress, selecting the right enhancements and upgrades for your characters based on these stats will allow you to tailor your team to your strategic preferences and overcome tougher opponents. It’s worth mentioning that the best characters in the game will often have better stats and skills, which is why it might be worth considering rerolling in Zenless Zone Zero, at least if you’re interested in minmaxing your start.

Character Rarities

Agents in Zenless Zone Zero come in two basic rarities, just like in Genshin Impact:

• S Rank: These are arguably the strongest and most difficult characters to unlock. The rates of obtaining these from the gacha are only 0.3% to 0.6% per pull, making rerolling in Zenless Zone Zero a challenging ordeal. They are equivalent to 5-star characters in Genshin.

• A Rank: These are more common and, therefore, often weaker than their S-Rank counterparts. Regardless, due to their accessibility, these will be your go-to Agents in the early and mid-game.

A rarity in ZZZ determines how difficult a character is to obtain, but it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the agent’s actual power and utility. Some S-rank Agents can be weaker than A ranks, and vice versa, though this isn’t often the case. Regardless, until the game releases this July 3, we won’t know for certain how these rarities will compare to each other.

Agent Elements and Attack Types

Each character in Zenless Zone Zero has a specific type of element and attack type, which are defined in the following manner:

• Elemental Attributes 

Just like in Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, every character in Zenless Zone Zero is aligned with a specific elemental attribute, which can be one of the following:

• Fire
• Electric
• Ice
• Physical
• Ether
• Enemy Weaknesses

Aside from the aesthetics of the character’s attacks, some enemies are weak to certain elements. The three interactions we know of at this moment are the following:

• Ether attacks deal additional damage to Ethereal enemies.
• Fire attacks deal additional damage to Organic enemies.
• Electric attacks deal additional damage to Machine enemies.

Attack Types

One last aspect to consider when it comes to Agent elements are the types of attacks, which can come in three varieties:

• Slash
• Pierce
• Strike

While knowing the basics of combat in Zenless Zone Zero is important, coordinating similar attacks and elemental types in your roster is also important. Simply having certain combinations can activate passive bonuses that can greatly enhance your team beyond the sum of its parts.

Elemental Anomalies

A character’s elemental attribute determines, in great part, the elemental affinity of their skills, as they can inflict damage aligned to the said element in combat. In turn, inflicting continuous damage on any given element will cause anomaly buildup of the corresponding element. Once this buildup is complete, a specific debuff will be inflicted on the enemy:

• Electric: Inflicts the Shock debuff, causing subsequent attacks to unleash arcs of electricity that inflict extra damage and interrupt enemy actions. Machine enemies are paralyzed while inflicted with this debuff.
• Physical: This ability inflicts the Assault and Armor Break debuffs. The former deals massive damage to the enemy, while the latter temporarily reduces the target’s physical defense.
• Ice: This ability inflicts the Freeze and Frostbite debuffs. The former paralyzes enemies for a duration and triggers a Shatter effect upon expiration, dealing extra damage. The latter reduces ice resistance for a brief duration.
• Fire: Inflicts the Burn debuff, inflicting continuous fire damage for a duration. Organic enemies are paralyzed for the duration of this effect.
• Ether: Inflicts the Corruption debuff, inflicting ether damage when attacked. Ethereal enemies inflicted with this debuff will attack both enemies and allies alike.

Character Progression

For those who are familiar with Genshin Impact, the character upgrade systems in Zenless Zone Zero will be quite familiar. Agents in this game can be upgraded in the following manner:

• Leveling Up: Upon gaining enough experience, a character will level up, increasing their stats permanently. Players can use Investigator Logs to grant their characters experience instantly.

• Character Ascension: Upon reaching the level cap, a character must ascend to continue leveling up. Ascension requires materials corresponding to their attack types and grants permanent stat boosts, which vary from Agent to Agent.

• Skill Upgrades: Using in-game currency and upgrade materials, players can upgrade their Agents’ skills, increasing their effectiveness. All skills can be upgraded, including basic attacks, dodges, special skills, chain attack skills, and core passives.

• Agent Talents: Passive bonuses that can only be unlocked by unlocking duplicates of the characters in question. This would be equivalent to the Constellations in Genshin Impact, to the point where Agents have up to six different talents, just like the number of Constellations in GI.

• Disk Drives: Equippable items that add stats to your Agents. Equipping Disk Drives of the same sets activate set bonuses on the character. This is similar to the Artifacts in Genshin Impact.

• W-Engines: These are equippable weapons that grant a flat ATK bonus and an additional stat bonus that varies depending on the weapon itself. This system is similar to the weapon system in Genshin Impact.

With a solid understanding of character stats, elemental and attack types, and the progression mechanics of Zenless Zone Zero, you’re well-prepared to build and optimize your squad for the challenges that await in New Eridu. Stay tuned to its release date this July 3, and remember to play on PC with BlueStacks to enjoy the best experience with this awesome RPG when it launches.