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As a gacha game, Zenless Zone Zero has soft pity and hard pity for pulling on the banners. These terms are used to describe your odds of getting the item or character you want from a specific banner, which you can use in-game currency or real money to do so. Each character and weapon on the banners, called Signal Search in ZZZ, has a drop rate, and the pity system in Zenless Zone Zero guarantees you a character after a number of pulls on said banner. For Limited Character Banners and the Standard Banner, you will get a guaranteed five-star after 90 wishes. Let’s break down soft and hard pity in Zenless Zone Zero.
Hard pity in ZZZ
Hard pity in ZZZ is there to ensure you will get a featured five-star Agent or W-Engine depending on the banner you pull on a certain number of times. The game explains this as getting a guaranteed S-Rank Signal in 90 pulls. Let’s use Ellen’s 1.0 banner to explore this: if you perform a Signal Search on her banner 90 times, you will be guaranteed to get an S-Rank Agent from Ellen’s banner within those 90 times you pull. This is known as hard or standard pity.
If you are extremely unlucky, it might take you all 90 pulls to reach that pity. On your 90th Wish, you will get a guaranteed S-Rank no matter what. The pity count for the Star-Studded Cast Permanent banner and limited Exclusive Agent banners is 90 wishes; the pity count for the featured W-Engine banner is 80. Once your Pity count is maxed out and you pull the guaranteed S-Rank Agent or W-Engine through its banner, the count resets. At this point, you can again start investing your Polychrome to pull on the banner or you can save your currency for the next banner.
Soft Pity in ZZZ
Soft pity is a term used to refer to a hidden system that is present in Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero. Soft pity in ZZZ works by increasing the percent chance you have of getting an S-Rank when doing a Signal Search 74 times. After 74 pulls, each pull on the banner will increase your chances of getting an S-Rank, which means you seldom have to pull the full 90 times to get the character you want. Zenless Zone Zero actually keeps track of all your pulls, letting you know exactly how many you need to do to get to an S-Rank or your next A-Rank.
For the W-Engine banner, the soft pity cap begins after 64 pulls. Soft pity is present in ZZZ – while unconfirmed to be there – to make it easier for you to get an S-Rank without having to spend all 90 or 80 Master Tapes to get the character or weapon you want. While we can’t be entirely certain soft pity is in Zenless Zone Zero, our experience is causing us to believe that it is. After we breached 74 pulls on Ellen’s banner, we got an S-Rank at 76 pulls on the banner. As you can see, we didn’t have to get to 90 to get our S-Rank.
On an exclusive banner for a limited character like Ellen’s, you have a 50/50 chance of getting Ellen, the featured S-Rank, or one of the other six standard S-Rank characters in the game. You will always get a character on the exclusive agent banner, as S-Rank W-Engines are not in the drop pool. As with Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, this is the exact same process. If you get the featured S-Rank, this is known as winning the 50/50; if you happen to get one of the standard S-Rank Agents, you’d say you lost the 50/50. While you have an increased chance to get the characters you want on the banner, getting the four-star items is never guaranteed.
In case you end up with a standard S-Rank Agent (not the featured Agent) when you get to pity, the 2nd time you reach pity is guaranteed to be the featured S-Rank Agent. In other words, if you got Koleda from Ellen’s banner, the next time you pull an S-Rank from the same banner is guaranteed to be Ellen. This will change depending on who the featured S-Rank is on the Signal Search.
The W-Engine banner is the weapon banner in Zenless Zone Zero. This banner uses the same Encrypted Master Tape as the exclusive Agent banner and always features the signature weapon for whoever is featured. In the case of 1.0, the game launched with Ellen’s banner and the W-Engine banner features her signature and the best weapon for her. Generally speaking, pulling on the weapon banner is never advised in these games. There are plenty of alternatives you can get and you should focus on getting Agents to build out your team comps over anything else. The 50/50 works exactly the same here as it does for the Exclusive agent banner.
Bangboo Signal Search pity
The final banner in ZZZ is the Bangboo Signal Search – An Outstanding Partner. This is a permanent banner that features all the Bangboos in the game so far. This Signal Search is unique in that it lets you chart a course to the Bangboo you want and you will always get the one you choose. The Bangboo banner uses a unique currency too, so you don’t have to spend your hard-earned Polychrome on this banner.
Pity in Zenless Zone Zero does carryover between event banners of the same type. For example, if you pull 20 times on Ellen’s banner, your 20 Signal Searches on that banner will carry over to Zhu Yuan’s banner when they change over. Pity does not carry over between character and weapon banners. This means that if you have pulled 60 times on the character banner and you have never pulled on the weapon banner, the weapon banner will be at 0 pity. This is the same with the Standard Banner.
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