ZZZ: How to Farm Character Ascension Materials?

When I first started Zenless Zone Zero, the thing that bugged me wasn't losing fights. It was my agents stuck at level 20 with no way up, a bag full of materials, and no clue which one I was actually missing. It took a while to figure out that level breakthrough only needs a handful of things, and what really holds you back isn't the materials themselves but the order you farm them in and how you spend your Battery. Plenty of people grind Certification Seals for a week, only to realize the weekly boss mats were the real bottleneck and their energy went to waste. So here's the full rundown of what to farm, where to farm it, and in what order to take an agent from 0 to 60.

Get Clear on the Few Materials You Need

New players most often blindly grind a messy pile of materials and end up short on the three things level breakthrough actually demands.

• Certification Seals, three tiers. To go from level 1 to 60 you need a total of 4 basic, 32 advanced, and 30 top-tier seals. They're the core of breakthrough and they split by role, so Attack, Stun, Anomaly, and Rupture agents each farm their own type.
• Denny, around 800,000. Level breakthrough alone burns that much, and once you add skills, core skills, and the W-Engine, a fully built agent runs you close to 3.7 million.
• XP books, around 300. The higher you push, the harder they burn, and whatever you saved up early disappears fast.

Of these three, seals are the main event of breakthrough while Denny and XP books get burned alongside. I've watched people farm only seals and then run dry on Denny, having to double back and waste two rounds of effort. Lock these numbers into your head first and every step after gets a lot steadier.

Where to Farm Certification Seals Most Efficiently?

Seal farming funnels almost entirely into the VR Device, and how much Battery you save comes down to how many enemy cards you line up per run.

• Agent Promotion is the main stage. In the VR Device, pick Combat Simulation, then Agent Promotion. It's 20 Battery a run and it drops the seals for your agent's role.
• Always line up 5 enemy cards. Five cards per run gives the best returns. One run can drop 5 A-rank plus 5 to 10 B-rank seals, way better than grinding them one at a time.
• Top-tier seals are the real choke point. Those 30 top-tier seals are the hardest to stockpile, and they drop directly from your role's higher-level drill, so farm those stages first instead of dumping all your Battery into basic seals.
• Fill the gap with synthesis. Don't waste surplus advanced seals. They combine upward at a 3:1 ratio into top-tier seals, which is a handy backup for whatever you're still short on.

I've run this method for a long time, and pulling a full 5 cards is a completely different ballgame from single runs. Especially the top-tier seals, one careless stretch and an agent sits stuck at level 40 for days, and I know that stuck, helpless feeling all too well. Don't sleep on synthesis either. Saving the extra advanced seals and trading them up beats grinding from zero when you're only a few short.

The Time-Gated Materials Are What Actually Stall You

Seals can always be farmed back up with enough runs. The things that leave an agent frozen in place are the time-gated materials you simply can't brute-force.

• Weekly boss mats only drop so many times a week. Notorious Hunt gives 3 free clears a week, and core skills need 9 total, so it's the slowest leg and you should hit it the moment a version drops.
• Expert Challenge's Higher Dimensional Data. Core skills need 60 units at 40 Battery per run. You can grind it endlessly, but the volume is big, so don't leave it for the end.

With time-gated materials the whole point is one word: early. Letting your weekly clears sit unused is the biggest waste, because no amount of money or grinding turns 3 runs a week into 6. I've seen plenty of half-built agents stuck on core skills, and every time it's because someone forgot the weekly boss and had to sit idle for a week.

Don't Get the Pre-Farm Order Wrong

With this many materials and always-limited Battery and Denny, the order you farm in decides how many days it takes to build an agent.

• Weekly boss materials always come first. They're the only resource capped by count, so clear them before the weekly reset.
• Expert Challenge second. Higher Dimensional Data can be farmed endlessly, but core skills are a huge chunk of an agent's power, so topping them off early pays off.
• Certification Seals third. Once the time-gated stuff is handled, circle back and fill the three seal tiers, starting with top-tier.
• Chips and Denny last. Skill chips and Denny are long-term spending, always replenishable, so there's no rush to front-load them.

At the end of the day, breakthrough isn't about who farms the most but about who doesn't waste energy in the wrong place. Get the weekly boss, Expert Challenge, and seal order sorted, and a new agent flows smoothly from arrival to level 60. Especially around version updates, pre-stocking materials means a new agent hits the ground fully maxed, and that payoff is worth planning a little ahead for.

Building an agent comes down to a Battery-allocation problem. There aren't many materials, the hard part is not mixing up the order and priority. Farm seals in the VR Device's Agent Promotion, treat the weekly boss and Expert Challenge as your time-gated and long-haul materials, and follow weekly boss first, Expert Challenge second, seals last. That order skips most of the level gates. If you're leveling a new agent right now, first confirm their role-specific seals and this week's weekly boss. That's more useful than anything. For any material source you can't pin down, check back here on mmom, and we'll keep updating the farming routes as new versions roll out.