Quick answer: With eight days left before Version 3.2's Phase I channels close on 2026/09/30 at 11:59 server time, an endgame account can still bank roughly 3,200 Polychrome without spending a cent — almost exactly 20 pulls at the Signal Shop rate of 160 Polychrome per Master Tape. A mid-progression account that clears Critical Node to A-grade instead of S lands nearer 2,690, about 16 pulls. The two numbers most farming guides miss: Deadly Assault rotates on Friday 2026-09-25 at 04:00, which means two separate 300-Polychrome rotations are claimable inside this window, not one — and the Version 3.2 compensation mail is worth 600 Polychrome if you still have not opened it.
This guide covers Version 3.2 "Their Secret Histories", live since 2026-09-09. HoYoverse states the version length outright in its own Version 3.2 update announcement: "Version 3.2 will run for 42 days, ending on 2026/10/21 06:00 (UTC+8)." Every payout below is labelled by where it came from — first-party notice, in-game reward table, or community-derived estimate — because the difference matters when you are budgeting toward a specific banner.
How much Polychrome can you still bank before Roxy's banner opens?
Phase I of Version 3.2 — Claret on Bloodmoon Rising and Nangong Yu on Axiom of Captivation — closes at 2026/09/30 11:59 server time, per HoYoverse's own banner notice. Roxy's Cindernight Respite channel opens immediately after. So the farming window is today's daily reset through that Wednesday morning: nine daily resets, two weekly resets, one Critical Node rotation and two Deadly Assault rotations.
Here is the full window, source by source.
| Source | Cadence | Payout in this window | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily Errands (Engagement 400) | Daily, 04:00 reset | 540 (9 days x 60) | In-game reward table |
| Ridu Weekly | Weekly, Monday 04:00 | 120 (2 weeks x 60) | In-game reward table |
| Hollow Zero Bounty Commission | Weekly, Monday 04:00 | 320 (2 weeks x 160) | In-game reward table |
| Deadly Assault | Every 14 days, Friday 04:00 | 600 (2 rotations x 300 cap) | Rotation date derived from cadence |
| Shiyu Defense: Critical Node | Every 14 days, Friday 04:00 | 780 (one rotation, all-S) | In-game reward table |
| Newsstand scratch card | Daily | ~47 expected, 0-210 actual | Probability table, high variance |
| Twitch Drops, 120 minutes watched | One-off, ends 2026/09/30 | 50 | First-party notice |
| Vyrium Vacation Album | One-off, ends 2026/10/10 | 30 | First-party notice |
| Version 3.2 compensation mail | One-off, if unclaimed (Lv. 4 gate on 300 of it) | 600 (300 + 300) | First-party notice |
| Active September codes | One-off, if unredeemed | 160 | Verified redemption |
Endgame ceiling: about 3,200 Polychrome, or 20 Master Tapes. That assumes you take all six scoring stars in both Deadly Assault rotations and reach S-grade on all five Critical Node frontiers. Swap in A-grade Critical Node (520) and three-star Deadly Assault runs (150 each) and the realistic figure is about 2,690, or 16 pulls.
Neither number is a rounding error against a banner budget. Hard pity in Zenless Zone Zero sits at 90 pulls on the limited Agent channel, so eight days of unglamorous daily clearing is worth roughly a fifth of a guaranteed S-Rank.
What are the renewable Polychrome sources in Zenless Zone Zero, and what do they actually pay?
There are exactly six things in the game that hand you Polychrome again and again. Everything else — story chapters, Inter-Knot levels, achievements, HIA VR training, Agent Trust — pays once and never again. If you have played since 1.0, those are already drained, which is why a returning player's wallet fills so much slower than they expect.
Daily Errands, via the Compendium's Engagement track — 60 per day. This is the single biggest renewable source in the game and the one people skip. The Engagement rewards are 10 Polychrome at 100 Engagement, 10 more at 200, then 20 at 300 and 20 at 400. Four daily commissions get you to 400. Over the 42-day version that is 2,520 Polychrome, or nearly 16 pulls, from a task that takes about six minutes.
Ridu Weekly — 60 per week. The 3x3 bingo board pays 15 Polychrome at each of 200, 400, 600 and 800 accumulated points, and nothing above that; the 2,100-point ceiling is Denny and Inspiration packs. So you do not need to fill the board. Hitting 800 of 2,100 points captures 100% of the week's Polychrome. Resets Monday at server reset.
Hollow Zero Bounty Commission — 160 per week. Four tiers of 40 Polychrome at 2,000, 4,000, 6,000 and 8,000 Shadow Crystal Data earned that week. Refreshes Monday 04:00. Pound for pound this is the best weekly in the game and the reason Hollow Zero stays in the rotation even when you have no interest in the mode.
Newsstand — one scratch card a day, wildly variable. The cycle runs 30 days and only advances on days you actually scratch. On cycle days 3, 8, 15, 20 and 27 Polychrome is guaranteed, at 20 (63.99%), 40 (30%), 60 (6%) or 100 (0.01%). On every other day you are mostly pulling Denny, with a 6% shot at 10 Polychrome. Expected value across a full cycle is roughly 157 Polychrome, about 5 a day — but where your personal cycle sits decides whether this window pays you 10 or 150. Scratch daily regardless: skipped days do not advance the counter, so they push your guaranteed days further out.
Deadly Assault — 300 per rotation, hard capped. Detail below.
Shiyu Defense: Critical Node — 780 per rotation. Detail below.
Why Deadly Assault pays exactly 300 — and why stars 7 to 9 pay nothing
This is the most common Polychrome miscalculation in the game. Deadly Assault's Trial Mode reward track pays 50 Polychrome per star for the first six stars only. Stars 7, 8 and 9 pay Investigation Merits and 25,000 Denny each — zero Polychrome. The mode's own maximum-reward table confirms the ceiling: Polychrome x300 per rotation, no more, no matter how hard you push.
That does not make the last three stars pointless. Nine stars in Trial Mode is the unlock condition for Adversity Mode, which pays a title, the Starforged Sword Song, the Tempered Crown and 700 Investigation Certificates. Just do not budget Polychrome against them.
The timing is what matters this week. Deadly Assault "features rotating boss challenges that refresh every two weeks, alternating with Shiyu Defense: Critical Node." Both modes run on 14-day cycles, but they are staggered seven days apart rather than running back to back — which is what "alternating" means here, and what makes this specific week unusual. Critical Node's current rotation opened Friday 2026-09-18, so it runs to 2026-10-02, while Deadly Assault flips at the midpoint on Friday 2026-09-25 at 04:00 — squarely inside the pre-Roxy window. Clear the rotation that is live right now before Friday, then clear the fresh one after it, and you take 600 Polychrome out of a mode most people treat as a single 300. That rotation date is derived from the published 14-day alternating cadence rather than a dated notice, so confirm the countdown in-game before you plan around it; the mode's own timer is authoritative.
Our full Deadly Assault guide covers scoring and team requirements per boss.
Why Shiyu Defense: Critical Node pays 780, not 720
Several large sites publish 720 as the Critical Node maximum. The in-game reward table does not agree, and the reason is a stacking rule that is easy to misread.
Critical Node has five Frontiers, and each Frontier pays Polychrome at B-grade, A-grade and S-grade separately — 40, 40, 50, 50 and 80 across the five Frontiers, which is 260 per grade tier. Clearing a Frontier at B pays 260 across the set, improving to A pays another 260, and reaching S pays a third 260. That is 780 total. The S+ column pays no additional Polychrome at all — only Investigation Merits and Denny — so chasing S+ is a leaderboard flex, not income.
Two practical consequences. First, an account that tops out at A-grade still collects 520, two-thirds of the maximum, which is why Critical Node is worth attempting even on a weak roster. Second, the Quick Sweep rule means an S on the fifth Frontier auto-grants S on the first three next season, so one good rotation permanently cheapens every rotation after it.
Critical Node refreshes every 14 days at 04:00, and the notice is blunt about the cutoff: players still mid-challenge during the update fail the stage. The current rotation runs to Friday 2026-10-02, so there is exactly one Critical Node payday inside the Roxy window — bank it early rather than on the 30th.
Which limited Polychrome sources expire before Roxy?
Four, and two of them are pure mail-box money.
Version 3.2 compensation: 600 Polychrome. HoYoverse issued Polychrome x300 for the server update and a further Polychrome x300 for an issue fix. The update compensation is not universal — the notice sets the requirement as reaching Inter-Knot Lv. 4 before 2026/09/09 06:00 (UTC+8), and it can be claimed until the end of Version 3.2. The issue-fix payment has a harder cut-off of 2026/10/09 23:59 (UTC+8), and in-game mail expires 30 days after delivery regardless. If you have not opened your mailbox since the 3.2 patch, this is the highest-value 30 seconds available to you today.
Twitch Drops: 50 Polychrome at 120 minutes. The campaign runs to 2026/09/30 23:59:59 (UTC+8) — it outlives Phase I by half a day. Twelve thousand Denny lands at 15 minutes; the Polychrome only unlocks at the two-hour mark, so leave a stream running.
Vyrium Vacation Album: 30 Polychrome, guaranteed, auto-mailed, running to 2026/10/10.
Active codes: 160 Polychrome. ZZZ31REMIELLE pays 60, ZZZ2YEAR pays 50 and ZENLESSGIFT pays 50; ZZZMEIJI is live but pays materials rather than Polychrome. Several codes circulating on aggregator sites this month cannot be verified against a first-party post or two genuinely independent sources, so they are not listed here. Our Zenless Zone Zero codes page is refreshed every patch rather than rewritten, and expired codes move to a dated table instead of quietly disappearing.
One new arrival lands mid-window: Surprise Screening Plan opens 2026/09/23 at 10:00 server time and runs to 2026/10/20, paying login-day rewards that include Polychrome plus a free outfit choice between Nangong Yu: Heartfelt Support, Aria: Cuteness Loading and Sunna: Delusions in Business — claimable even if you do not own the agent. Requirements are Inter-Knot Level 5 and the Prologue.
What HoYoverse does not tell you about event Polychrome
Here is the honest limit of every Polychrome farming guide, this one included. HoYoverse does not publish per-event Polychrome totals in its in-game event notices. Across the eleven Version 3.2 event notices, the reward line reads "Polychromes and more" — no figure. The exactly-quantified sources are a small set: compensation mail, Twitch Drops, the Vyrium album, the City Fund, and the fixed reward tables inside permanent modes like Deadly Assault and Critical Node.
Every other number you see attached to a 3.2 event — including the tidy per-event totals on the big aggregator sites — is community-derived from in-game screenshots, not published. That does not make them wrong. It does mean you should not build a pity plan on them. The figures in this guide's window table are either first-party or read directly off an in-game reward table, and the one derived item (the Deadly Assault rotation date) is flagged as such.
Worth adding: nine of the eleven Version 3.2 in-game events close before the version itself does, so "I will do the events later in the patch" quietly deletes a chunk of this income.
Is paid Polychrome worth it before Roxy?
Two purchases are live, and they behave very differently against an eight-day deadline.
New Eridu City Fund pays the Growth Plan's Polychrome x680 instantly, with the Premium Plan adding a further Polychrome x208 instantly on top. The period ends 2026/10/19 03:59 server time, with purchasing closing an hour earlier. Because it is front-loaded, it converts to pulls immediately — 888 Polychrome is five and a half tapes in your inventory the moment you buy.
Inter-Knot Membership is the opposite shape: 300 Monochrome instantly, then 90 Polychrome per day for 30 days, for 2,700 total. Inside a nine-day window it delivers only 810, and only if you log in every single day — a missed day is forfeited, not banked. Bought today it is a Roxy purchase for about a third of its value and a Phase II purchase for the rest.
Stacked on the free ceiling, a fully-bought account reaches roughly 4,900 Polychrome, about 30 pulls, before Phase I closes.
What does all of this convert to in pulls?
The Signal Shop exchanges 160 Polychrome for one Master Tape, with no limit. So the arithmetic is simply Polychrome divided by 160.
| Account type | Polychrome in window | Master Tapes |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-progression, free | ~2,690 | ~16 |
| Endgame, free | ~3,200 | ~20 |
| Endgame, City Fund plus Membership | ~4,900 | ~30 |
One correction worth internalising before you start converting: Polychrome cannot buy Bangboo pulls. Boopons are purchased with Bangbucks, a separate currency, so a Bangboo banner you want has to be budgeted entirely outside this pool.
If Roxy is your target, cross-reference the number above against Roxy's confirmed release timestamp and the full Version 3.2 event calendar, which lists the closing date of every event feeding this window.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much Polychrome can you farm per day in ZZZ? About 60 from daily Errands via the Compendium Engagement track, plus a Newsstand scratch worth roughly 5 on average. Weeklies and 14-day rotations add the rest: across a full 42-day version, an endgame account clears roughly 8,000 to 9,000 Polychrome from renewable sources alone.
What is the fastest Polychrome source in Zenless Zone Zero? Per minute spent, the Compendium Engagement track. Four daily commissions to 400 Engagement takes around six minutes and pays 60. Hollow Zero's weekly Bounty Commission pays more in absolute terms — 160 — but takes far longer.
Should I save for Phoenix instead of pulling Roxy? Neither Phoenix Reffaella nor Severian Lowell has an announced version, Attribute or Specialty — both were revealed as Agent Records on 2026-09-12 and nothing further has been published. The community consensus this week, on r/ZenlessZoneZero, is to save if Phoenix is the priority and only spend the pulls you hold above a guaranteed-pity buffer. Any claim about their banner slot is a leak, not a schedule.
Does going past 6 stars in Deadly Assault give more Polychrome? No. Stars 7 through 9 pay Investigation Merits and Denny only. Six stars is the full 300 Polychrome; nine stars unlocks Adversity Mode, which pays no Polychrome either.
Is Shiyu Defense Critical Node really 780 Polychrome? Yes, when every Frontier is cleared at S-grade, because the B, A and S reward tiers stack at 260 each. The commonly cited 720 figure does not match the in-game reward table. S+ adds no extra Polychrome.
Do Polychrome expire? The currency does not, but the mail carrying it does — in-game mail expires 30 days after delivery, and the Version 3.2 issue-fix compensation has its own hard cut-off of 2026/10/09 23:59 (UTC+8).
Can I buy Bangboo pulls with Polychrome? No. Boopons are bought with Bangbucks. Polychrome converts only to Master Tapes and Encrypted Master Tapes at 160 each.
What nobody knows yet
The Version 3.2 Phase II notice has not been published as of 2026-09-22 — we checked HoYoLAB's notice feed directly rather than assuming. Across the last ten versions HoYoverse has posted the Phase II banner notice about two days before the switch, which points to roughly 2026-09-28. Until that post exists, Roxy's exact channel dates, her rerun partner and any Phase II event Polychrome are unconfirmed, and this page will be refreshed rather than rewritten the moment it lands.
Figures verified 2026-09-22 against HoYoverse's Version 3.2 announcement and event notices on HoYoLAB, and against in-game reward tables. Rotation dates derived from published cadence are labelled in the table above.
