ZZZ Early Game Resource Guide

The most stressful thing about the early game in Zenless Zone Zero isn't the combat — it's the constant fear that you'll dump resources into the wrong agent and regret it later. EXP books are scarce, Dennies are always near zero, and your daily stamina is capped at a fixed amount. Every single time you click that upgrade button, you're borrowing from your future self. I bricked two accounts before I figured this out — the first one I spread materials evenly across four agents, all stuck at level 40, unable to clear anything past mid-game content. The second one I spent all my stamina farming drive discs, only to realize my characters' levels were too low to equip anything decent. Eventually it clicked: early game resource allocation follows a very clear hierarchy, and it's not something you need to guess at. Here's what I learned the hard way about spending materials smartly in the early stretch.

Your Agent Levels Come First — Build One Team, Not Four Half-Baked Characters

The single biggest mistake new players make isn't picking the wrong character. It's trying to build too many at once. ZZZ throws a fair number of pulls and agents at you in the early game, and it's tempting to test everyone out. But your first two weeks of resources are only enough to fully support three, maybe four agents. Every material you feed a fifth is being pulled away from your core squad. The golden rule for early game is simple: concentrate everything on one main team, and leave everyone else at a functional minimum until you have surplus.

When it comes to execution, this priority list will keep you from going off track during the first couple of weeks:

• Your main DPS gets first dibs on everything — levels and core skills. Among all resources, your DPS's level is the absolute highest priority. The jump from 40 to 50 is much smaller than from 50 to 60, so your first two weeks' goal isn't to hit 60 — it's to get your DPS to 50 with core skills maxed. Your other two team members can sit at 40 for now. Power up the DPS first, then go back for the rest.
• The second slot goes to a stunner or support — pick based on your DPS. If your main DPS relies on stun windows for burst damage, build your stunner second. If you're running an anomaly comp, build the corresponding support second instead. Don't try to level both at the same time. Pick one, bring them to a solid level, and leave the other for mid-game.
• Your third and fourth agents can hang out between 30 and 40. In the early game, these slots exist mostly to activate team bonuses and provide passive effects. They don't need heavy investment. Wait until your DPS and your second slot are in good shape before you circle back to upgrade them.

This "build one team only" mindset feels wrong at first, because you look at your roster of unbuilt characters and feel like you're wasting potential. But unbuilt agents aren't wasted — they're just waiting. When your resources catch up later, you can build them properly.

How to Spend Stamina — It Changes As You Level Up

Stamina is the single scarcest resource in ZZZ, and there's nothing else even close. The most common early-game mistake is not knowing what to farm and just clicking whatever shiny dungeon is on the screen. The truth is that stamina priority shifts depending on your Inter-Knot level, and farming the wrong thing at the wrong level can set you back significantly. Good stamina planning can multiply your effective gains by a factor of several times over the first few weeks — stamina allocation should be treated as a per-level-phase decision, not a one-size-fits-all plan.

Broken down by level ranges, here's the stamina rhythm I've settled on:

• Before level 30: farm character EXP and Dennies. At this stage, the high-level drive disc dungeons aren't unlocked yet, and skill material drops are inconsistent. Instead of running low-value dungeons, put your stamina into EXP materials and Dennies to push your core team's levels up. If your levels fall behind, nothing else you farm will matter — you won't be able to equip or use it anyway.
• Level 30 to 40: start farming promotion materials for your key agents. By this point, character promotion dungeons start dropping reliably. Look up what materials your main agents need and spend a focused day or two farming them. Don't wait until you're stuck with a level-capped character and no promotion materials. You can mix in some skill material farming here too, but don't overdo it.
• Wait until level 40 to touch drive discs. Before level 40, the gold drive disc drop rate in disc dungeons is too low to justify the stamina cost. Wait until 40, then farm discs with real efficiency. And even then, remember that drive discs don't matter if your character levels and skills aren't caught up first.

Skill Points — Don't Spread Them Evenly, Pick the Important Ones First

Skill materials are brutally scarce in the early game, and every agent has multiple skills — basic attack, EX special, ultimate, dodge counter, chain attack. New players look at that skill tree and instinctively try to keep everything balanced. But in ZZZ's skill system, different skills contribute to combat performance at wildly different rates. Splitting materials evenly across all five skills is effectively the same as not maxing any of them — skill investment is not a charity fund. You have to concentrate on the skill that actually carries your agent's role in the team.

The upgrade priority varies by agent role, but here's the general framework:

• Main DPS: basic attack and ultimate first. Your DPS deals damage through basic attack chains and their ultimate. Maxing these two gives the most direct damage increase. EX special and dodge counter can stay at functional levels until you have surplus materials.
• Stunner: EX special and chain attack first. A stunner's job is building up daze as fast as possible, and EX specials and chain attacks are the most efficient tools for that. Basic attack contributes relatively little to daze build-up and can be deprioritized.
• Support: core passive and chain attack first. Supports exist to provide buffs and healing, and those effects are tied mostly to their core passive level. Chain attack buffs are also worth prioritizing. Basic attack and dodge counter go last — you're not bringing a support for their damage output.

Drive Discs — Don't Touch Them Until Mid-Game

Drive discs are the most over-farmed resource in ZZZ. You can run disc dungeons ten times and get nothing but garbage, whereas levels and skill upgrades are guaranteed progress. Yet I still see new players grinding discs at level 35, running in place for a week while their character levels stay frozen and their inventory fills up with unusable discs. Drive discs are endgame content. In the early game, "good enough" is the standard. Come back and min-max later.

A few practical rules about drive discs that will save you a lot of wasted stamina:

• Don't touch disc dungeons before level 40. The story and events give you enough. Main quests and events hand out a fair number of purple and even some gold discs. These are more than enough for early game content. You do not need perfect set bonuses to clear the story.
• If you absolutely must farm discs, prioritize slot 4 and slot 6 main stats. These two slots have the biggest impact on your character's output — slot 4 is crit rate or crit damage, slot 6 is ATK or energy regen. A disc with the right main stat but bad substats still outperforms one with the wrong main stat.
• Stop enhancing at +6. Don't push everything to +15. Early game materials are limited. Enhancing a disc to +6 reveals two substats and gives the best cost-to-value ratio. Pushing a disc to +15 only to roll bad substats is a waste you can't afford in the first few weeks.

Early game resource management in ZZZ comes down to a simple choice: do you want one team strong enough to clear all the content, or a roster of half-built agents that can't handle anything past the first few chapters? Resources are never enough — but "enough" isn't about how much you have. It's about whether you're spending them on the right things. Two or three fully built agents will take you further than six agents stuck at level 40 with scattered skills and garbage discs. Every single time.