What is the fastest way to level up in Anime Zero?

Run Story on the hardest difficulty you can clear quickly. XP scales much faster than clear time across the four difficulties, so the hard tiers returned two to three times the XP per hour of the easy ones in the session that measured them. The exception is a too-slow clear: if Nightmare takes you past three or four minutes, a fast Hard run beats it.

How much XP does each Story difficulty give?

One recorded session measured Easy at 489 XP per clear, Medium 888, Hard 2,065 and Nightmare 4,390. Clear times were 1:17, 1:32, 1:47 and 2:13, which puts the hourly rates at roughly 22,900, 34,700, 69,500 and 118,800 XP. Those are one account's numbers from October 2026, not a published table.

Is Infinite mode good for XP?

Infinite measured slowest of every mode for XP per minute, so it is a poor active leveling choice. Its value is that it is the mode you can leave running, which makes it passive progress rather than a route. Published claims about per-wave scaling on deep runs have not been reconciled with the measured comparison.

How do you get skill tokens in Anime Zero?

Leveling up grants them, and using a weapon in runs adds to that weapon's own progress. The tree is per weapon, so tokens earned on one weapon cannot be spent on another. Open the skill screen and spend them rather than banking them, and read the live node text before you commit, because node values have changed in past patches.

Anime Zero Leveling Guide: XP per Mode & Fastest Route

Anime Zero Leveling: XP per Mode and the Fastest Route

Prerequisites

None

Checked

October 12, 2026

Anime Zero pays XP for Story clears, raid clears, Infinite waves and quests, and the same Story chapter pays more the higher the difficulty. In one October 2026 session, Story Nightmare paid 4,390 XP per clear at 2:13, about 118,800 XP per hour, while Story Easy paid 489 XP at about 22,900 per hour. Raids pay a lot per clear but are capped, and Infinite is the slowest mode of the three even though it is the only one you can leave running. This page gives the per-mode numbers, the skill-token route and the level gates.

What Actually Pays XP

Four things move your account level:

Story chapters, repeatable with no cap.
The two Nightmare raids, which pay a lot per clear but run out.
Infinite waves, the only mode you can leave running.
Daily and weekly quests, including the guild weekly board.

Story is the only one of the four you can run as often as you like, so the route below is built on Story and treats the others as top-ups.

Story Difficulty: XP per Clear and per Hour

Same chapter, four difficulties, timed in a single October 2026 creator session on one account with an EXP bonus active.

Story difficulty	Clear time	XP per clear	XP per hour
Easy	1:17	489	~22,900
Medium	1:32	888	~34,700
Hard	1:47	2,065	~69,500
Nightmare	2:13	4,390	~118,800

XP per clear rises steeply with difficulty while the clear time barely moves, so the hard tiers pay far more per hour. Medium is a trap in the other direction: it costs only 15 seconds more than Easy but pays about half of Hard’s rate.

The exception is a slow clear. The hard tiers assume your damage is enough for the fight; if a Nightmare run stretches past three or four minutes, its hourly rate falls below a fast Hard run. Judge the difficulty by your own clear time, not by the difficulty label.

Raids Pay Well per Clear but Run Out

Raid (Nightmare)	Clear time	XP per clear	XP per hour
Spirit’s Bathtub	3:34	3,866	~65,000
Shadow Gate	3:05	1,806	~35,100

Both raids take longer than any Story tier. Shadow Gate measured the lowest XP per hour of every mode in the session, and Spirit’s Bathtub pays less per hour than Story Hard despite paying more per clear.

Attempts are capped as well: the recorded session states ten raid runs, refilling one every three hours. With that cap, the raid slot in a leveling plan is best spent on the drops you came for and the XP treated as a bonus. Note that the cap itself is reported from a single session, and older sources give different refill figures.

Infinite Is the AFK Mode, Not the Fast Mode

Infinite measured the slowest XP per minute of every mode in the session, and the session’s conclusion is that it is a poor active leveling choice. Its value is that it is the mode you can leave running, so it is passive progress while you are away from the keyboard.

One tracker page claims each Infinite wave after 50 pays about 1.35× the last and calls the mode the best XP per minute once you can survive it. That contradicts the measured comparison, and neither side publishes the full derivation. The disagreement is recorded below rather than resolved.

Skill Tokens and Where They Go

Leveling up is how you earn skill tokens, and the tree they buy is per weapon, not per account: tokens spent on one weapon do not carry to the next. Choose a main early for that reason.

The tree has four branches — ATK, CRIT, DEF and SPD. Published crit values for the branch run 3%, 6%, 10% and 15%, and the account stat caps are 60% crit chance, 275% crit damage and 40% cooldown reduction. Points that push you past a cap do nothing.

The usual order is one ATK node first, then CRIT node by node until your combined crit chance approaches 60%, then DEF if you are dying in Nightmare, and SPD last for farming. A token sitting unspent is the most common reason an account feels weak for its level.

Level Milestones Worth Knowing

Code gates. Some codes refuse redemption below an account level. The codes page lists which codes are locked and at what level.
Guild entry. Guilds set their own minimum level; the guild browser in the recorded session showed a Level 150+ requirement on the vendor’s own guild.
Rank ceiling. The session opened on a LEVEL 500 IMMORTAL-III rank plate, so level 500 is reachable in the current build. No source publishes the total XP behind it.

Conflicts and What No Source Settles

Infinite scaling. A published 1.35× per-wave claim above wave 50 and the recorded session’s slowest-of-all result contradict each other.
Party XP. Whether a group clear splits or duplicates each player’s XP is not stated, so no duo route can be planned from these numbers.
The EXP bonus behind the numbers. The recorded session carried a +30% EXP status icon and never said where it came from. Read the hourly rates as belonging to an account with an XP bonus, not as bare-account figures.
XP per level. No source publishes it. A time-to-level figure cannot be calculated from this page.
Raid refill. The three-hour refill comes from the recorded session; older third-party figures differ, and none of them show the in-game timer.