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Zenless Zone Zero Hollow Guide
The Zenless Zone Zero Hollows are supernatural realms full of horrible monsters - and it’s up to you to clear them. Conquering Hollows is key to Zenless Zone Zero’s progression and is rewarded with character upgrade materials, experience points, and Dennies. In other words, if you want to play Zenless Zone Zero, you’ve got to learn more about the Hollows.
From commission types to monitor navigation, here’s everything you need to know about the Hollows in Zenless Zone Zero.
How to enter the Hollow
Hollows are the most central gameplay feature in Zenless Zone Zero. You can see them as a type of dungeon; after getting dropped in a Hollow, you must navigate to the end while picking up buffs, collecting items, and defeating enemies.
As many quests include a Hollow run, you can open your Inter-Knot menu and choose a quest to track - this should eventually lead you to a Hollow. Alternatively, you can enter the Random Play store, go to the Video Archive (staff room), and interact with the computer there. This computer, called the Hollow Deep Dive System or HDD, has a choice of three commission categories: story commissions, combat commissions, and exploration commissions.
Here’s what to expect from every type of Hollow commission:
- Story commissions: these are part of Zenless Zone Zero's main quests. They include combat, a monitor board, and plenty of dialogue scenes. Story commissions should take priority to new players as they unlock new gameplay content, such as the music store on Sixth Street, new map areas, and Mewmew's Challenges.
- Exploration commissions: these commissions are similar to story commissions, including combat sections, a monitor board (usually featuring a puzzle or investigation objective), and some dialogue. Instead of main quests, exploration commissions are typically linked to side quests.
- Combat commissions: these commissions can be linked to side quests, just like exploration commissions, but they're fully focused on combat, without monitor screens.
- Rally commissions: this is another type of combat commission. Rather than several short battles, you must clear a single, massive Hollow area of all enemies.
- Hollow Zero: a combat challenge located in Scott Outpost. It's very similar to 'normal' Hollow challenges, but it has a few unique gameplay features and is typically harder to clear.
Hollow Preparation
Before diving into the Hollows, you must choose a team as well as a Bangboo assistant for the combat sections. You can do so after selecting a commission and clicking the 'next' button in the lower right. Be sure to check the enemy weaknesses first though! This info is shown on the commission selection screen. In the example below, the enemies are weak to physical and fire damage, so it's best to choose characters with those attributes.
To learn more about enemies and rewards, click the 'key enemy info' and 'commission details' buttons respectively.
How to Clear the Hollows
So, you’ve entered a Hollow - now what? Each Hollow is different, but they follow a similar pattern. If it’s a story or exploration commission, you’ll land on a ‘monitor board’ consisting of many small TV tiles, also known as a Proxy screen or TV screen. Playing as the Proxy, you must move from tile to tile to progress. Note that the Hollows feature all kinds of tiles, each with different effects: enemy tiles can start a battle, yellow and pink boxes give resources, green tiles restore HP, and teleporter tiles will take you to another monitor screen. For a full overview, take a look at our Zenless Zone Zero Hollow tile guide.
On the first Hollow screen, you typically need to find a teleporter tile (blue arrow), shown in the example below:
If there's no teleporter present, you must typically step on a 'ZZZ' tile, also referred to as Fairy tile. This is an objective tile, and will surely help you progress. In the example below, the Fairy tile is close to the Proxy:
Once you've made it through every monitor screen, you can step on a finish line tile to escape. Before you leave, however, make sure you've grabbed all Hollow rewards, especially the Hollow Observation Data. In story and exploration commissions, you may collect up to three sets of Hollow Observation Data as optional objectives. It's no disaster to miss a few, but try to grab as many as you can since they'll be needed to progress the main story later on. In the example below, you can see a Hollow Observation Data tile (the yellow tile with the circular icon) directly above the Proxy.
While navigating the monitor screen, you may be able to avoid some enemy tiles, but usually not all. Enemy tiles look like red bunnies, as shown below:
Stepping on such a tile will switch the screen to a combat arena, where you must defeat enemies using a team of three playable characters. A single Hollow run usually involves a few combat sections with minor enemies before ending with a combat section against a larger boss enemy. Here's what that typically looks like:
For more info, take a look at our detailed Zenless Zone Zero combat guide!