ZZZ W-Engine Modification & Overclock — Enhance, Refine & Should You Pull Dupes? | Zenless Zone Zero

Every W-Engine has three things, and each upgrade path touches a different one — knowing this stops you wasting materials:

• Base ATK: the main stat, raised by Enhancing (leveling up).
• Advanced Stat: the secondary stat such as CRIT Rate, Impact, ATK%, PEN or Energy Regen; it only goes up when you Modify (ascend to lift the cap).
• Effect: the engine's signature passive skill; it only gets stronger when you Overclock it with duplicate copies.

You can quickly see which W-Engines are equipped on your account with our UID lookup tool.

Enhancing means leveling the W-Engine to raise its Base ATK. The max level for both S-Rank and A-Rank W-Engines is Lv60. The materials are W-Engine Power Supply and W-Engine Energy Modules (bought, exchanged or dropped from activities), plus Dennies.

Simple advice: an engine you plan to keep long-term should go straight to Lv60, since Base ATK is the biggest, most reliable slice of your damage. Don't spread materials thin across many engines at once.

You can't Enhance all the way to Lv60 in one go. Every 10 levels the W-Engine hits its cap and you must Modify it to unlock the next tier. The caps sit at Lv10 → 20 → 30 → 40 → 50 → 60. Each Modification needs the matching Components, Dennies, and a high enough Inter-Knot Reputation level.

The part people miss: the Advanced (secondary) Stat ONLY rises through Modification, never from Enhancing. So if your engine's CRIT Rate or Impact looks stuck, it's almost always because you're parked at a cap you haven't modified past.

Overclocking means using a duplicate copy of the exact same W-Engine to push it to the next Phase, strengthening its Effect (the unique passive). You can Overclock a maximum of 5 times — running from Phase 1 to Phase 5. At Phase 5 the Effect is fully maxed and can't go higher (players often call this "P5" or "maxed").

Unlike Base ATK and the Advanced Stat, this path uses no farmable material — it demands another identical W-Engine, meaning you have to pull or buy more copies. That's exactly why "should I go for dupes" is worth thinking about — see below.

Before you sink dupes into Overclocking, remember one core rule: a W-Engine's Base ATK and Advanced Stat always apply no matter who holds it, but the Effect only activates when the W-Engine's Specialty matches the Agent's Specialty. S-Rank engines carry a Specialty like Attack, Stun, Anomaly, Support, Defense or Rupture.

So Overclocking an Attack W-Engine and then equipping it on a Support Agent wastes the entire Effect — you keep only the Base ATK and secondary stat. Always match the engine's Specialty to the Agent first, then think about pushing Phases.

A-Rank W-Engines: generally YES, take the dupes to Phase 5. Why: many A-Rank engines can be bought or exchanged very cheaply from the Signal/Gadget Store, and A-Ranks are designed to be "good enough" at P5. For F2P players, a Specialty-matched A-Rank at P5 is often superb value on a secondary Agent.

Signature S-Rank W-Engines: usually not worth it. Each duplicate is nearly a full weapon banner to pull again (80 hard pity). The guide consensus is that two different S-Engines (each at P1) usually beat one S-Engine at P5 for total team power — unless you're a heavy spender with a full roster already. Before committing to a dupe, check where you sit in the pity cycle with our ZZZ pity counter so you know the real cost of that copy.