Zenless Zone Zero Operation Bagel: The Six Best Assault Teams in Season 3

Operation Bagel — the permanent "Enigma of the Labyrinth" mode that landed with Version 3.1 — is now in its third season, running alongside Version 3.3. It is not Shiyu Defense with extra steps. Nothing in it rewards you for standing still and out-damaging a health bar, and the squads that dominate Season 3 all solve the same three problems: getting across the map fast, staying alive while the corruption climbs, and deleting a priority target before it deletes you.

This is a ranking of the assault comps that actually hold up in Season 3, why each one works, and where each one breaks. Every comp below is a three-Agent squad built around one damage core; the supports around them are what turn a strong Agent into a run you can finish half-asleep.

What "Search, Fight, Extract" Actually Demands From Your Squad

The Loop: Loot, Escalation, Extraction

Every run follows the same shape. You pick a trio, kit them out with the mode's own run-specific gear, drop into Papago Hollow, clear crates and enemies, bank your haul, and then find an extraction point before the clock runs out. The timer is tight — 25 minutes per run — and looting is not free: every crate you open and every fight you take pushes your Ether Level up, which raises the corruption around you and eventually drags in the roaming super-Ethereal that ends runs for greedy squads.

Fail to extract and you lose everything you were carrying. That single rule is what separates Bagel from every other endgame mode in Zenless Zone Zero, and it is why the "best" team here is rarely the team with the highest damage ceiling. Progress is also pooled rather than mode-locked — Bagel shares its weekly progress pool with Hollow Zero and Operation Matrix, so you can rotate between them and still claim your weekly rewards.

The Three Things That Decide a Run

Almost every strong Bagel comp covers three jobs. Miss one and the run gets harder in a way that no amount of extra damage fixes.

Two smaller things decide the difference between a good run and a great one: whether your support's buff lives on your Agent or on the enemy (buffs that sit on a target die with it), and whether your traversal can be interrupted. Both come up repeatedly below.

The Season 3 Assault Team Ladder

Here is the short version before the detail.

Meta placement backs most of this up: Mobalytics' ZZZ tier list keeps Ye Shunguang, Remielle and Velina at the top of the roster, with Phoenix arriving straight into that tier on release and Claret, Roxy and Pyrois sitting a tier below as strong but more specialised picks.

If your account is missing one piece of a core — the last Ye Shunguang copy, Phoenix on her debut banner, or the Polychromes to finish a Claret team — a Zenless Zone Zero top-up at Topuplist before the banner closes is the fastest way to close the gap, and you can handle it through the official Topuplist storefront with just your UID and server.

Ye Shunguang Comps: The Undisputed Ceiling

Dialyn or Zhao + Sunna + Ye Shunguang

This is the comp the community agrees on, and it is not close. Ye Shunguang is a Void Hunter — the game's own designation for its strongest Agents — and the first dual-form Agent in Zenless Zone Zero. She is an Attack specialist on the Honed Edge attribute, and her kit does something no other Agent does: her Ether Veil: Verdict lets her damage bypass the enemy's Stun damage multiplier entirely, so she does not need a stun window to hit like one.

In practice that means three things at once. Her baseline damage is the highest in the game. She spends enormous stretches of her rotation inside invulnerability frames, which is the single most valuable stat in a mode where death costs you the whole run. And her empowered form gives her aerial sword-flight traversal, which turns the maze from an obstacle into a shortcut.

The supports are what make it unreasonable:

• Sunna (Physical Support) is the amplifier. Community testing puts her damage buff at roughly 80%, and it is one of the few buffs in the game that is large enough to matter on its own.

• Dialyn (Physical Stun) is the enabler. She is not here for Daze alone — she extends enemy Stun duration and raises the Stun vulnerability multiplier, and her signature trick upgrades the next Agent's Chain Attack straight into an Ultimate. In a mode where Ultimates are your panic button, getting one for free, repeatedly, is what the CN community means when they call her resource generation "free".

• Zhao (Ice Defense) is the safe alternative. She converts Frostbite Points into Ether Veil: Wellspring, handing the squad Max HP, ATK, healing and Quick Assist chains — a defensive shell that keeps the team upright when the corruption spike hits.

Why This Comp Has No Visible Hole

Most comps trade something. This one does not: Ye Shunguang covers traversal and burst, Sunna covers amplification, and Dialyn or Zhao covers resources or survival. The only real cost is roster price — three limited S-Ranks before signature W-Engines. If you own all three, Season 3 is a formality.

Rupture Comps: Lucia, Yixuan and the Self-Sustain Engine

Dialyn + Lucia + Yixuan / Starlight – Billy Kid / Banyue

Rupture agents scale off HP, self-heal as part of their loop, and attack in patterns that line up cleanly with parries. That combination is almost purpose-built for Operation Bagel, where you are constantly fighting shielded elites while your corruption meter climbs.

Lucia is the reason the archetype works here. As the dedicated Rupture support she does her normal buffing job, then does two things that matter more than the buffs: she substantially slows your corruption build-up, and she strips enemy shield bars fast — a single EX-into-Ultimate rotation takes a huge bite out of a heavy shield. In a mode where shields gate every elite encounter, that is effectively a damage buff disguised as utility.

Your choice of Rupture core is mostly a question of what you own and how you like to move:

Traversal, Shields and the Rupture Payoff

The trade-off is honest: this comp's damage is Tier 1, not Tier 0. You will not match Ye Shunguang's numbers, and on maps with tight timers you may extract with less. What you get instead is a squad that almost never wipes — Banyue in particular can sit in front of a control attack and shrug it off indefinitely, which is the closest thing to a safety net the game offers.

Armorer Comps: Claret's DEF-Scaling Core

Koleda / Roxy / Trigger + Rina + Claret

Armorer is the newest specialty, introduced in Version 3.2, and Claret is its first Agent. The headline is that Armorer damage scales off DEF, not ATK — so Claret builds tanky and hits hard, which is exactly what a high-pressure extraction mode wants. She stacks Gash on enemies and consumes it for Maim, her crits convert into Laceration DMG, and her core passive converts CRIT DMG into CRIT Rate, so pushing CRIT Rate past 100% triggers additional crit instances instead of wasting the stat.

Her other defensive gift is Counter Assist, which lets the squad shrug off control attacks outright — a genuine quality-of-life win for anyone who struggles with the timing on those.

The supporting cast is unusually specific, which is worth knowing before you invest:

• Koleda is more than a stunner here: her reworked Potential buffs Laceration DMG for Armorer Agents, making her a direct damage partner rather than just a Daze bot.

• Roxy (Wind Stun) applies Contamination, a rare multiplier in a meta saturated with CRIT and DMG%, and holds enemies in place with her persistent tornadoes.

• Trigger works as an off-field Stunner and matches Claret's Electric attribute.

• Rina supplies PEN Ratio, which is one of the only support stats that actually helps a DEF-scaling carry — most buffers hand out ATK or HP and do nothing for Claret.

That last point is the practical trap in this comp: two of the three slots are doing work that only Claret can use. Build it deliberately. EarlyGG's Claret build guide lays out the DEF and CRIT Rate thresholds if you want the numbers.

The Catch: A Resource That Lives on the Enemy

Claret's Gash stacks sit on the enemy, not on her — the same structural weakness Soldier 0 – Anby players know well. When a target dies, phases, or starts its own invulnerability mechanic, the resource you built goes with it. In Bagel this bites hardest on elites that survive your opener: fail to one-shot a heavy, let it enter its mechanic, and you are suddenly fighting with a stripped kit and no stacks to cash in.

The fix is discipline rather than gear. Hold Claret's burst for targets you can actually finish, and do not commit Gash to an elite that is about to phase.

Anomaly Comps: Remielle, Phoenix and Velina

Remielle carries an unusual amount of this comp on her own: traversal, damage and survival all sit on one Agent. Her flight is fast enough to route around the maze (though it is interruptible, which is the comp's one real annoyance), and her burst pattern — Ultimate into a fully charged Basic — is the heaviest single hit in the Anomaly archetype. Her Luminize mechanic is also the reason Anomaly teams perform at all at the top end: it is what lets Anomaly damage crit.

Velina (Wind Anomaly) is the engine underneath her and, per most parses, quietly steals the damage panel — which is fine, because the comp does not care who gets credit.

Why Revive Pushed Anomaly to a New Ceiling

Phoenix, the Fire Anomaly Agent who debuted in Version 3.3 Phase 1, is the piece that changed this team's floor. Her kit lets her survive a fatal hit and return to the fight, and her signature W-Engine (Plume of Rebirth) is built around that revival effect. She also brings Abloom and extends the "Anomalies can crit" property that makes Remielle's Luminize so strong.

Revive sounds like a luxury until you play Bagel. Losing one Agent mid-run does not just cost you damage — it collapses the squad's ability to clear the elite that killed them, which is how a good run becomes a zero. With Phoenix and Remielle both able to bring the team back, Anomaly stops being the glass-cannon archetype and becomes a genuine top-tier pick. Note the dependency though: Phoenix's performance is at its best alongside Velina and Remielle specifically, and she can underperform on other shells.

Ellen and Pyrois: The Two Value Picks

Ellen + Norma + Sunna / Zhao / Astra Yao

The oldest Agent on this list is still holding a slot, and her Potential upgrade is the reason. Ellen's rework added a large amount of invulnerability to her kit — her charged Dash Attack now blocks the hit that interrupts it and completes the charge instantly, and both of her new Ice Blade follow-ups are fully invulnerable windows. Her CRIT DMG passive was pushed to +100%, and her Additional Ability now triggers alongside any Stun Agent rather than demanding an Ice or Victoria Housekeeping partner.

Two Bagel-specific reasons she punches above her numbers: her kit does not depend on EX Special or Ultimate uptime, so she functions on empty resources; and her in-Hollow gear perk reduces corruption build-up inside polluted zones, which is where a Season 3 run spends most of its time. Pair her with Norma (Fire Stun), then round out with Sunna, Zhao or Astra Yao depending on whether you want damage, safety or both.

Pyrois + Dialyn / Norma + Sunna: Free and Fully Built

Pyrois is the best value in the mode, full stop. The Ether Attack Agent is given away through the Version 3.0 main story, and the Mindscapes that would normally cost you duplicates are sold in the Labyrinth Store for mode currency. That means a completely free Agent who can be taken to full investment without spending a single Polychrome — competitive with older carries sitting at M2 with their signature W-Engine, the "2+1" benchmark most players measure against.

He also has the single most useful utility perk in Season 3: his gear reveals every large safe on the map before you enter, so you can plan a route in advance instead of discovering a missed chest or a missed elite when the payout screen tells you your shard haul took a haircut. His dash-cancel animation skip gives him real traversal tech on top of that. Run him with Dialyn or Norma and Sunna and you have a Tier 1-capable squad for zero gacha cost.

How to Build Your Own Bagel Squad

If none of the six comps above match your roster exactly, build to the slot checklist instead. The pattern is stable across every strong team in the mode.

Slot-by-Slot Priority Checklist

Two habits matter more than any single Agent. First, decide your run length before you enter — a one-minute smash-and-grab and a full sweep need different gear and different risk tolerance, and mixing them is how squads die with a full bag. Second, bank early: the shared weekly pool means a modest successful extract beats a greedy failed one every single time.

FAQ

What is Operation Bagel in Zenless Zone Zero?
Operation Bagel is the running season of "Enigma of the Labyrinth", the permanent extraction mode added in Version 3.1. You enter Papago Hollow, loot supplies and crates, deal with escalating corruption, and extract before the 25-minute timer ends. Anything you are carrying when the run fails is lost.

How do I unlock Enigma of the Labyrinth?
You need Inter-Knot Level 40, then take the introductory Labyrinth commission from Shepherd at Coff Cafe on Sixth Street. The mode has been open since August 5, 2026 and is permanent, not a limited event.

Which Agent is the single strongest pick for Season 3?
Ye Shunguang. She combines the game's highest damage output with long invulnerability windows, aerial traversal, and an Ether Veil that lets her ignore the enemy Stun damage multiplier — so she performs at full power outside burst windows too.

Is the Rupture comp still worth building in Season 3?
Yes. Lucia's corruption slowdown and shield shredding plus the archetype's built-in self-healing make it the safest comp in the mode, even though its damage ceiling sits below Ye Shunguang's. Banyue in particular is close to unkillable.

Can I play Operation Bagel without spending Polychromes?
Easily. Pyrois is free from the Version 3.0 story and his Mindscapes are bought with mode currency from the Labyrinth Store, so he can be built to full investment for free and performs around the level of an older carry at M2 with signature.

Why does my Claret team feel weak against elites?
Because Gash stacks live on the enemy, not on Claret. When a target survives your opener and starts its own mechanic, everything you built disappears with it. Hold her burst for targets you can actually finish, and bring Koleda for the Laceration buff plus Rina for PEN Ratio.

Do I need to run Operation Bagel every week?
Not specifically — it shares its weekly progress pool with Hollow Zero and Operation Matrix, so you can complete whichever of the three you prefer and still claim the weekly rewards.

What is the biggest mistake new Bagel players make?
Looting past their timer. The Ether Level rises with every crate you open, and the super-Ethereal it eventually summons ends runs. Set a time budget before you drop in and extract on it.