Sea of Conquest vs. Zenless Zone Zero: which gacha deserves your pulls right now?

Two very different gacha games just joined our coverage: Sea of Conquest: Pirate War, FunPlus's mobile pirate-strategy hero collector, and Zenless Zone Zero, HoYoverse's action-RPG character collector. Readers keep asking the same practical question about both — "is this worth pulling on?" — so instead of two separate tier lists, this is a direct comparison of what your pulls, and your money, actually buy in each.

Methodology: why this isn't a 1:1 comparison

Be upfront about the limits here. Sea of Conquest is a turn-based fleet-strategy game where heroes fill Captain/First Mate/Gunner roles in formation battles; Zenless Zone Zero is a real-time action-RPG where agents are directly controlled in combat. There's no shared combat system to benchmark damage numbers against, so this isn't an apples-to-apples "which character hits harder" exercise. What is comparable, and what this piece focuses on, is the stuff that actually determines whether your pulls (and your wallet) are well spent: how transparent each game is about its odds, what a premier unit costs to get and build, how aggressively each game is monetized, and where each currently sits in its own content cycle. Figures below are cross-referenced against official sources where they exist, and against multiple independent community guides where they don't — with any gap between sources flagged rather than smoothed over.

Genre and core gameplay

Gacha system and pull rates

This is where the two games diverge the most, and it's worth stating plainly.

Zenless Zone Zero publishes its actual gacha math. Per HoYoverse's own in-game disclosure (cross-checked against Game8's Signal Search breakdown), the base probability of pulling an S-Rank agent or W-Engine is 0.600% per pull, with pity building up starting roughly around the 70th–80th pull and a hard pity at 90 pulls — if you haven't hit an S-Rank by your 89th pull, the 90th is guaranteed. A-Rank pity is tighter: 10 pulls without an A-Rank or higher guarantees one on the 10th. Each pull costs 160 Polychrome, and baseline top-up pricing puts real-money cost per pull in the roughly $1–1.5 range depending on the package, in line with other HoYoverse titles.

Sea of Conquest is a different story, and we want to be honest about it rather than invent a number: after checking FunPlus's own official game page, AppGamer's heroes guide, BlueStacks' recruitment coverage, and general community searches, no official percentage odds for hero recruitment could be found. FunPlus does not appear to publish a base drop-rate figure the way HoYoverse does. What multiple community guides do agree on is the structural pity system: standard recruitment guarantees an Epic-or-higher hero every 10 pulls, and Limited Recruitment banners guarantee a Legendary hero within 80 pulls. So while the exact odds behind those guarantees aren't public, the guarantee thresholds themselves are consistently documented — that's the honest comparison point here, not a fabricated percentage.

Premier pick in each game

• Sea of Conquest — Sharky. The shark-headed Artillery First Mate remains a functional, cheap-to-invest Legendary (540% Attack spread across 5 random hits via Master Blaster), but his standing has genuinely slipped. AllClash's season-tracked history shows him dropping from A+ at launch down to C+ as of the most recent season, even while several tier-list sites that haven't refreshed their pages still list him S-tier. Our own build guide covers this in detail — see the Sharky build guide.
• Zenless Zone Zero — Miyabi. The Frost Anomaly on-field carry remains a top-tier pick heading into the 3.2 patch (launched September 9, 2026); Game8's 3.2 tier list still places her among the strongest DPS agents in the current meta, alongside newer releases like Yixuan. Unlike Sharky, no major tracker has her trending downward. Full build breakdown in our Miyabi build guide.

Monetization pressure

Independent App Store reviews and community write-ups (mobilegamingtrove, App Store review threads) describe Sea of Conquest as heavily pay-to-win: premium currency packs range from roughly $19 up to $1,999, and multiple reviewers report a widening power gap for non-paying players with each content update, plus heroes occasionally locked behind paid-only purchase rather than the gacha pool. Zenless Zone Zero's monetization follows HoYoverse's now-standard, well-documented model — paid battle passes, a monthly subscription, and premium currency top-ups — which is still real spending pressure on a gacha game, but it's transparent, predictable, and doesn't lock characters behind purchase-only paywalls the way some Sea of Conquest reviews describe.

What's changed recently

Zenless Zone Zero's 3.2 update, "Their Secret Histories," launched September 9, 2026, adding the new Armorer specialty along with agents Roxy and Claret — a sign of an actively expanding roster and regular content cadence. Sea of Conquest's meta, by contrast, is described by AllClash's tracking as steadily reshuffled by newer Firepower/hero releases that have pushed early Legendaries like Sharky down the rankings, which is consistent with a live-service game leaning on frequent new-hero monetization rather than reworking existing ones.