Complete Combat Guide for Zenless Zone Zero

What makes Zenless Zone Zero a fun game to play is its unique combat system. But for new players, it might be a bit confusing. Especially if they are new to the ARPG genre.

But not to worry as I will explain every mechanism of the combat system in this guide. So let’s hop into it!

Complete Combat Guide

Understanding how the combat system works is necessary if you want to excel in this game. The first and most basic thing to learn is the status bar of the player.

Status Bar

You will find your status bar located at the top left side of your screen. It shows your total HP and remaining HP. Underneath the Health bar, you will find the energy bar.

The energy bar fills up over the course of the battle. Once it crosses the red marker, you can use your EX Special Attack. On the right side of your status bar, you will find the status bars of your team members.

Basic Kit

On the bottom right side of your screen, you will find various buttons. Their explanation are given below:

• Basic Attack
  • This is pretty self-explanatory, it is used to execute your character’s basic moveset.
• Dodge
  • With this button, you can dodge. You are invincible during the dodge animation. You can use 2 dodges consecutively after which the dodge button will go on a short cooldown.
  • Dodging at the right moment when the enemy attacks you will trigger a perfect dodge which will make you invincible for a short while.
  • Immediately attacking after a perfect dodge will let you execute a dodge counter which will interrupt the enemy and deal more damage.
• EX Special Attack
  • This is your character’s special move and you need energy to use this. When you do not have enough energy, this button will be grayed out. You can still use it when it is gray, but it will do less damage (similar to basic attacks).
  • When you have enough energy to execute your EX Special Attack, the button’s color will change.
• Switch Button
  • You can use this button to switch out with your team members in a fixed cycle.
  • This button is also used to execute Perfect Assists which will be explained in more detail later on in this guide.
• Ultimate
  • This is your character’s ultimate skill. You can use this when the Decibel is at 3000.

Decibel

At the left side of your screen, you will notice a number, this is called Decibel. Attacking the enemy, assists, etc. will increase its value. It can go from 0 to 3000. When it reaches 3000, you can use your character’s ultimate skill.

The Decibel score is shared among your team members. Using any of your character’s ultimate skill will deplete it back to 0. To make the most of it, use the ultimate skill of a character on your team that can deal the most amount of damage.

Chain Attacks

Attacking a stunned enemy with a heavy attack, it will trigger a chain attack. And by heavy attack I mean the final attack of basic combo, Dodge Counter, EX Special Attack, Ultimate or Chain Attack itself.

The chain attack lets you select a teammate to swap out with and deal damage to the enemy. Normally, you can trigger 3 consecutive chain attacks on bosses, 2 on elite enemies and 1 on small enemies.

Perfect Assist

When an enemy is about to attack you, they will show a flash. If the flash is yellow then it means it is blockable. If you press the switch button when the enemy is about to strike you with a yellow flash, you will trigger a Perfect Assist. There are two types of perfect assist:

• Defensive Assist
  • This assist type will parry the enemy’s attack and massively increase their daze meter.
  • Normally triggered by characters that use melee weapons.
• Evasive Assist
  • In this assist type, your character will dodge the enemy’s attack and time will be slowed down.
  • Normally triggered by characters who rely on ranged attacks.

Assist Points

After a perfect assist, immediately attack to trigger a counter attack. Using a perfect assist depletes your assist points which are shown around your switch button. The total amount of assist points you can have at a given time is 6. Most perfect assists will use 1 point but some perfect assists require 2 points (stronger enemies).

You can recover assist points by using your ultimate (it gives you 3 assists points) or by using chain attacks (1 assist point per each chain attack).

Unblockable Attacks

When an enemy is about to attack you and shows a red flash, it means that attack can not be blocked. Which further means that you can not use perfect assist on that attack.

Your best bet here is to avoid the attack by dodging. If you get hit and knocked back then you can press the switch button to trigger a Reactive Assist which lets you swap with another team member.

Daze Meter

Below the health bar of the enemy, you will find the Daze meter. Attacking the enemy increases this meter. When it reaches 100, the enemy will get stunned and immobilized for a short while. They will also receive more damage (the damage multiplier is present underneath their health bar).

Anomaly Build-Up

When you deal damage to an enemy through your attribute attacks (such as fire, ice, etc.), you build up anomaly on that enemy. When the build up is complete, the enemy will suffer from an anomaly effect. The effect varies with the attribute you use.

All Anomaly Effects

Below are the 6 anomaly effects you can inflict on an enemy:

• Burn
  • Caused by the Fire attribute.
  • Deals continuous fire damage to the enemy. If the enemy is Organic, they will get interrupted when this effect is triggered.
• Shatter
  • Caused by the Ice attribute.
  • This will immobilize the enemy and deal ice damage when the effect ends. The enemy will also receive more critical damage when the effect is still active.
• Shock
  • Caused by the Electric attribute.
  • The enemy will receive additional electric damage. If the enemy is a Machine, they will get interrupted when this effect is triggered.
• Assault
  • Caused by the Physical attribute.
  • This effect interrupts the enemy and deals a huge amount of damage to them. That enemy’s daze meter will also fill up faster for a specific period of time.
• Corruption
  • Caused by the Ether attribute.
  • The enemy will receive additional ether damage. If the enemy happens to be Ethereal, they will also be interrupted by this effect.
• Disorder
  • This is caused when you inflict an anomaly effect on top of another anomaly effect.
  • The first anomaly effect is replaced by the second anomaly effect and when this happens, the enemy receives a massive amount of damage and their daze meter also goes up.

Attributes

There are a total of 5 attributes in the game right now and they are as follow:

• Fire
• Ice
• Electric
• Physical
• Ether

Agent Specialty

There are 5 classes in which an agent can specialize in and they are as follow:

• Attack
  • These agents are good at dealing a lot of damage and defeat enemies much quicker.
• Defense
  • Agents with this specialty are proficient in surviving for longer periods of time during battles.
• Support
  • As the name suggests, these agents help out their team members by buffing them.
• Stun
  • These agents are good at filling up the daze meter pretty quickly and stunning the enemies.
• Anomaly
  • Anomaly specialized agents build up the anomaly on an enemy much faster allowing for anomaly effects to be triggered.

Agent Stats

Here are the different stats that you will find on your agents and what they mean:

• HP
  • Your maximum health, the amount of damage you can take.
• ATK
  • This stat affects the amount of damage you will deal.
• DEF
  • This determines how much damage you will receive from enemy attacks.
• Impact
  • This stat determines the rate at which you build up daze meter on an enemy. The higher the impact stat, the faster you will be able to stun enemies.
• CRIT Rate
  • This is the probability that determines if your attack will be a critical hit or not.
• Crit DMG
  • The damage done by your critical hits.
• Anomaly Mastery
  • This determines the rate at which your agent builds up anomaly on an enemy.
• Anomaly Proficiency
  • This stat affects the damage dealt by anomaly effects.
• PEN Ratio
  • This stat means the percentage of the enemy’s defense that your attacks will ignore.
• PEN
  • A set amount of enemy’s defense that is ignored by your attacks.
• Energy Regen
  • The amount of energy your agent will recover each second.
• Energy Generation Rate
  • The amount of energy received from attacking enemies.
• Energy Limit
  • The total amount of energy your agent can have.

This was everything you needed to know about the combat system of ZZZ. I suggest practicing the different mechanisms I talked about in the actual game. If you are looking to squeeze more power from your agents then give our agent development guide a look!