Zenless Zone Zero Beginner's Guide: Polychrome, Battery and Your First Team

TL;DR

Three decisions decide your first month. One: build Anby and Nicole before anything else — stun and defence shred make every future agent hit harder, and both are free. Two: Polychrome buys agents on the Exclusive Channel and nothing else; never Battery refills, never W-Engines. Three: do not farm Drive Discs before Inter-Knot 40, because the Dennies you spend on A-rank discs are the Dennies you need for S-rank ones.

What the game doesn’t tell you

ZZZ is the most generous of HoYoverse’s games with free characters and the least clear about what makes them work. Three systems go unexplained.

Stun is the game. Every meaningful amount of damage you do happens inside a Daze window, when a Stun agent has filled an enemy’s Daze bar and the enemy is staggered. If you are mashing attacks outside that window, your numbers will look terrible no matter how high your agent’s level is. This is why Anby — an A-rank you are handed in the prologue — is a permanent fixture rather than starter filler. Her job is making the window; your damage dealer’s job is filling it.

Core Skills are where your damage lives. ZZZ separates character level, Skill levels and the Core Skill track. The Core Skill track is the expensive one and it is also the one that actually multiplies your output. New players level everyone’s character level to the cap, wonder why nothing died faster, and never touch the Core tab. One agent gets maxed Core Skills. The rest get whatever the story requires.

Battery Charge is the real clock. It caps at 240 and regenerates 1 every 6 minutes — about 240 a day if you clear it. Unspent Battery is gone. The important corollary: Hollow Zero costs no Battery Charge. When your Battery is empty, Hollow Zero is where the rest of your session goes. New players log off instead.

And the thing new players waste the most: Drive Discs. These are your artifact system. They come from Routine Cleanup, they cost Battery to farm and Dennies to level, and below the mid-Inter-Knot levels you are farming A-rank discs with poor substats. The correct week-one approach is to equip whatever gives you the right set bonus at level 0 and ignore substats completely. Set bonuses work immediately; substats are an endgame optimisation.

The steps, explained

Why the story is the priority

Main story progression unlocks Shiyu Defense, Hollow Zero, Notorious Hunt, Routine Cleanup and Combat Simulation. It also gives the fastest Inter-Knot EXP in the game and hands you Ben Bigger around Inter-Knot 26. There is no exploration reward in ZZZ comparable to pushing the story, so push the story.

Why Anby and Nicole, specifically

Nicole’s kit shreds enemy defence and pulls enemies into a cluster. Both of those effects scale every other agent in your team, which is why she appears in high-end compositions long after players have a roster of S-ranks. Anby generates the stun your damage depends on.

Here is the practical consequence: you do not need to pull for a support. You were given the best free one. Your Polychrome has exactly one job, which is a damage dealer.

Billy is not bad. He is just a third slot you will replace, and Core Skill materials spent on him are materials you do not get back.

Why Battery goes to promotion materials first

Below Inter-Knot 35, story rewards flood you with character EXP material, so buying more of it with Battery is the worst trade available. What you are short of is Agent promotion material (the gate on your level cap) and W-Engine material. Those come from Combat Simulation and the attribute-specific nodes. Clear your level caps first; damage follows.

Between Inter-Knot 35 and 45, add Notorious Hunt for the agent-specific materials your Core Skills need. Above 45, Drive Discs finally become the right answer.

Why one agent gets everything

The Core Skill track and the agent-specific materials behind it are weekly-limited. You cannot max two agents at once on a free account, so attempting it leaves you with two half-built agents instead of one finished one. Pick your damage dealer, finish them, then start the next.

Why Shiyu Defense and Hollow Zero are non-optional

Shiyu Defense is the largest repeatable Polychrome faucet available to a free account and it resets on a cycle. Hollow Zero is the second, and it has the enormous advantage of costing no Battery Charge — meaning there is no such thing as “nothing to do today” in ZZZ. Both should be in your routine from the moment they unlock.

What not to spend

Polychrome on Battery Charge refreshes. The price escalates inside the day. 160 Polychrome is one pull. This is the single most common way free accounts bleed pulls.

Polychrome on the W-Engine Channel. A well-chosen A-rank W-Engine covers most of the gap to an S-rank signature. Your Polychrome is for agents.

Polychrome on the Stable Channel. The standard banner takes Master Tapes, which you earn free from Inter-Knot levels, achievements and events. It also has a cumulative-pull selector that will eventually hand you a standard S-rank for nothing. Spending premium currency there is paying for something the game gives away.

Dennies on levelling every agent you own. Dennies are tighter than they look because Drive Disc levelling eats them in bulk. Level an agent only when they are in your active team.

Dennies on A-rank Drive Discs. The disc you level at Inter-Knot 25 is the disc you delete at Inter-Knot 45. Equip for set bonus at level 0, spend nothing.

Materials on B-rank W-Engines. They exist as stopgaps. Equip, never upgrade.

Your Ether Batteries casually. Ether Battery items restore Battery Charge and they are a real resource. Save them for when an event with limited-time material rewards is live and your Battery cannot keep up, not for a slow Tuesday.

Starter tier list

Agent rankings in ZZZ shift every version — new factions and S-ranks change which attributes and which supports matter. What does not shift is the shape of the advice: stun and support hold their value, damage dealers get replaced.

S — Nicole. An A-rank agent in the S tier, and not as a gimmick. Defence shred and enemy grouping raise your entire team’s output, and she is free in the prologue. She is the first agent you should finish.

A — Anby and Soukaku. Anby creates the stun windows the whole game is built around. Soukaku is a free buffer who makes any Ice damage dealer you eventually pull substantially better. Both are A-rank rarity and both outlive most of your early S-ranks in usefulness.

B — Billy, Corin, Anton. They clear the story. They are not where your Core Skill materials go.

C — Ben Bigger. A free body for a third slot in a game that rewards aggressive play more than tanking. No investment.

Your first week, day by day

Day 1. Main story through the prologue — Anby, Nicole and Billy join. Clear every Battery Charge point on Agent promotion materials. Start the daily errands routine; it is a few minutes and it feeds Polychrome.

Day 2. Story again, toward Chapter 2. Push Anby and Nicole to their current level cap and promote them. Learn the parry and dodge-counter timings in Combat Simulation — ZZZ rewards defensive timing more than any other HoYoverse game.

Day 3. Shiyu Defense unlocks through story progress. Clear the standard tiers for Polychrome and stop where it stops being comfortable. Start Hollow Zero runs once Battery is empty.

Day 4. Notorious Hunt for agent-specific materials. Begin the Core Skill track on your chosen damage dealer. Claim Inter-Knot level rewards — they are a quiet Polychrome source new players forget.

Day 5. W-Engine day: pick the best A-rank W-Engine your damage dealer can use and finish it. Equip Drive Discs by set bonus at level 0.

Day 6. Hollow Zero deeper runs and the side content the story opened up. Check whether a free-agent event is live; they appear regularly and they are the cheapest roster expansion available.

Day 7. Audit: Inter-Knot 25 to 30, Anby and Nicole promoted and levelled, one damage dealer with Core Skills started, Battery cleared every day, Hollow Zero run on empty days, Polychrome untouched. If the last item is true, you have a limited agent coming.