How Good is Zenless Zone Zero’s Gacha System?

Before you dive into its stylish brawler action, you might be wondering how good the Zenless Zone Zero’s Gacha system is.

There’s no way around it: poor monetization practices have plagued free-to-play games for seemingly forever… especially Gacha ones! The moment-to-moment action and world of ZZZ are top-notch, sure. But it’s all for naught if it has a poor greedy Gacha system on top of it all.

In this article, we’ll dive into everything we know about the game’s Gacha, how it works, and help you see whether it’s a good or bad system!

A Look At Zenless Zone Zero’s Gacha System | How Good Is It?

Gacha Types & Currencies

The Gacha system in Zenless Zone Zero is officially called the Signal Search It works pretty similarly to how it does in other modern HoYoverse games, such as Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.. If you’ve already played those games, you should already have an idea of how it works and whether or not it’s good for you.

Anyway, let’s take a quick look at the various Signal Search banner types in the game:

• Stable Channel – The standard permanent Gacha. You can roll using either 1 Master Tape or 160 Polychromes per roll. However, we highly advise that you save the Polychromes for limited banners instead!
• Exclusive Channel – The special time-limited Gacha, usually starts at the same time as major patches which add new characters. It features two A-Rank characters with a rate up as well as an exclusive S-Rank character that’s the focus of the banner. A single roll requires either 1 Encrypted Master Tape or 160 Polychromes.
• W-Engine Channel – Zenless Zone Zero’s weapon Gacha, basically. You can use 1 Encrypted Master Tape or 160 Polychromes to roll for W-Engines, which are equipment that boosts your characters’ various stats. It works the same as the Exclusive Channel does for characters, overall.
• Bangboo Channel – The most unique Gacha in the game, this permanent banner lets you obtain pets known as Bangboo. They’re one of the most important parts of the game! This banner requires Boopons to roll, which you can get through events or the Signal Shop.

With the basics laid down, it’s now time to take a look at the pity mechanics!

Signal Search Pity Mechanics & Rates

It wouldn’t be a good Gacha system without a pity system of some sort, right? Zenless Zone Zero has pity mechanics that are very similar to previous HoYoverse games, as follows:

Stable Channel

You’re guaranteed to get one A-Rank Signal every 10 rolls, with the counter resetting anytime you get an A-Rank Signal. Similarly, you’re guaranteed to get an S-Rank signal every 90 rolls, with the counter resetting when you get an S-Rank Signal.

The default rate for S-Rank Signals is 0.600%, and the rate for A-Rank Signals is 9.400%. Note that a Signal counts as both a W-Engine (equipment) or Agent (characters).

New players are guaranteed an S-Rank Signal every 50 rolls instead of 90, and their first 5 sets of rolls have a 20% discount. That means they can get 10 rolls for the price of 8 for their first 5 sets of rolls.

Lastly, you can get a one of five different S-Rank Agents as a guarantee every 300 rolls. The Agents available for this choice currently are Grace, Rina, Koleda, Nekomata, Soldier 11, and Lycaon.

Exclusive & W-Engine Channels

The Exclusive and W-Engine Channels work mostly the same as the Stable Channel, with just a couple of exceptions.

You have a 50% chance to get one of the two featured A-Rank Signals every time you get an A-Rank Signal. For example, a banner with Nicole and Ben featured means you have a 50% chance to get either of these Agents whenever you get an A-Rank Signal.

Similarly, you have a 50% chance to obtain the singular featured S-Rank Signal whenever you roll any S-Rank Signal. For example, a banner with Zhu Yuan as the featured S-Rank gives you a 50% chance to obtain that Agent whenever you get any S-Rank Signals.

Additionally, you’re guaranteed to obtain the featured S-Rank Signal whenever you do a total of 180 rolls in the banner. If you’re looking forward to any particular Agent or W-Engine, save up enough to do 180 rolls if you want to ensure you get them.

Bangboo Channel

Rolling for a Bangboo in Zenless Zone Zero is similar to the other Gacha system banners, but it’s a lot more lenient. The main reason for this is that you can select which S-Rank Bangboo you want to get while rolling. Also, there are no Agents or W-Engines in this banner, only Bangboos. This makes it extremely good, as it’s easy to get what you want!

But for more detailed information, know that you’re guaranteed to get an A-Rank Bangboo every 10 rolls. Similarly to the other banners, this guarantee is reset anytime you get any A-Rank Bangboo.

As for S-Rank Bangboos, you’re guaranteed to get one every 80 rolls. As always, the roll counter resets whenever you obtain one S-Rank Bangboo. The fun part, however, is that you’re 100% guaranteed to get your chosen S-Rank Bangboo every time. As long as you get an S-Rank roll, you’ll get what you want!

In Summary | Is Zenless Zone Zero’s Gacha System Good?

Now that we’ve laid out all of the info out, you can see that the rates and pity mechanics in Zenless Zone Zero are extremely similar to previous HoYoverse games. Whether that makes it a good system or not is, truthfully, up to you.

That said, we consider this a decent enough system in the current game, as we can get a good amount of Master Tapes and Polychromes even as F2P players. What’s more, as we covered in our guide about mistakes to avoid, you can even get 20 free pulls just from pre-registering!

However, this is only for now. We can’t predict the future, sadly. Whether the gacha system in Zenless Zone Zero will remain good will depend entirely on how many Master Tapes and Polychromes players can keep earning. It also will depend on how the game’s difficulty is balanced in the future. Will power creep start to set in and force people to whale for S-Ranks to play? Or will things stay fair even for casual F2P players? We wish we knew the answer to these questions…

Nonetheless, there you have it, that’s everything there is to know about the Gacha system in Zenless Zone Zero. It’s decently good in its current iteration, as far as free-to-play Gacha games go. We just have to hope that things stay fair in the long run!