Zenless Zone Zero celebrates its first anniversary – again – but we’re not going to say no to a new story chapter

The last four weeks have been pretty hot for Zenless Zone Zero. The game kicked off its first anniversary celebrations almost exactly a month ago with its long-awaited release on Xbox, as well as the major 2.0 update.

Anyone who’s been playing (or following) the sci-fi RPG, however, knows that the game’s actual anniversary wouldn’t be until July. Nobody was going to complain about a big new patch, and the kick-off of a new arc of the game’s story.

Time flies, though, and today – July 4 – is Zenless Zone Zero’s real, actual one-year anniversary. HoYoverse is celebrating yet again with another sizeable patch. Unfortunately, today only marks update 2.1’s reveal, as it won’t be released until Wednesday, July 16.

It’s called The Impending Crash of Waves, and its main narrative centres around a new faction, while introducing two new areas to the game. The new Spook Shack faction should go well with the aquatic theme of 2.1, as would Sailume Bay, and Fantasy Resort – the new areas.

This marks the start of Season 2 Chapter 2 of the game’s ongoing story, and the aforementioned Sailume Bay will be the main area where the events will take place. Fantasy Resort, on the other hand, is when the summer story – and summer event – will take place.

There are new Agents, too, of course. Ukinami Yuzuha is an S-Rank Physical Support Agent, who relies on a tankui companion named Kama to… throw bombs made of candies at enemies. Then there’s Alice Thymefield, another S-Rank member, though with the Physical Anomaly role instead. Thymefield is a swordmaster capable of fast maneuvers, which charge up her Blade Etiquette. When consuming that, Thymefield powers up her strikes.

When update 2.1 is released later this month, it’ll also do so with a new new Bangboo named Miss Esme, another S-Rank. Finally, re-runs of Void Hunter Miyabi (S-Rank Frost Anomaly), and Yanagi (S-Rank Electric Anomaly) will arrive with the update.

Catch up on our refreshed list of Zenless Zone Zero July codes, if you haven’t already.