Chaos Zero Nightmare Leveling Guide: Captain Level, Grades & Combatant Caps

Read This First: Two Ladders, One Missing Number

Combatant and Partner levels are capped by Captain Grade: 20 at Beginner, 30 at Intermediate, 40 at Veteran, 50 at Expert and 60 at Elite Captain (GameWith). Level 60 is the highest Combatant cap any source checked documents. By contrast, no source checked — Prydwen, GameWith or Game8 — publishes a maximum Captain Level, so this guide does not print one; any site stating an exact Captain cap as fact is going beyond its sources. What can be planned precisely is the XP income and the grade table below.

The frame: you are the Captain, and Coordinates of Record are account XP — Prydwen’s game-modes guide lists them among story rewards, and its beginner guide gives the conversion the whole system runs on: 1 Aether spent = 20 EXP. Story progression is gated by Captain Level, battle chapters end in Promotion Missions, and Prydwen’s progression guide states the lock directly: every 10 account levels you must clear a Promotion Stage before you can continue gaining account EXP. Captain Level is therefore not a background number — it is the gate on story, on modes, and on how far your roster can be raised.

Combatants level separately, on materials: a Combatant’s level sets their base ATK, DEF and HP, and is raised with Battle Memories and Units, both farmed from Tactical Training stages with Aether (Prydwen). Partners — the weapon-equivalent companions who bring a class-locked passive and an Ego Skill — level and promote on their own parallel track. The sections below take the Captain ladder first, then the roster it unlocks.

Captain XP: Where the Account Levels Come From

The repeatable engine is Aether spent in Simulation. Prydwen’s rate — 1 Aether = 20 EXP — is corroborated stage-for-stage by Game8: Simulations pay 400 XP per 20 Aether spent, or 600 XP per 30 Aether, whichever stage you run. Prydwen’s beginner guide works the first gate as an example: reaching Level 10 to Promote takes 1,100 EXP beyond the tutorial, story, battle missions, dailies and Growth Guide — about 55 Aether of Growth stages, spent as 60 because stages do not divide cleanly.

Above that engine sit the one-time injections. Story missions pay Coordinates of Record per clear and cost no Aether (Prydwen); battle missions pay on both Normal and Hard (Game8); Trauma Codes pay experience per stage (Game8); and Chaos first clears pay Captain EXP once — GameWith is explicit that the second run onwards pays none, so Chaos is a first-clear ladder, not an XP loop. The Growth Guide ties it together: Game8 describes its missions paying items and experience, with each completed section also rewarding Tears of God, Rescue Anchors, a Signal Amplification Anchor and Crystals — and a Tear of God replenishes 60 Aether, feeding the engine above. Prydwen’s beginner verdict is that following the Growth Guide early removes the roadblocks entirely, reaching Level 20 on day one or two.

Daily & Weekly XP: The Capped Sources

Two daily sources are worth naming with their figures, attributed separately because the sources name them differently. Game8 states the Daily Missions reward 1,500 experience upon completion, and that spending about 120 Aether on Simulation runs usually earns enough mission points to claim them all. GameWith describes the Achievement Schedule — the daily-missions equivalent — as paying up to 1,500 Coordinates of Record per day, alongside its 60 Crystals (see our farming guide). Either way, the daily mission set is the largest single daily XP payment, and it is earned by the same Simulation play that pays XP per Aether — the two stack.

The weekly source is Chaos Manifestation’s boss loot. Game8: winning a boss encounter lets you spend a Loot Certification Card to claim 1,200 experience plus Combatant and Partner leveling materials; you earn four cards a week, for 4,800 experience, and once the cards run out the same Chaos Loot costs 60 Aether for the same 1,200 experience. Tactical Training’s Challenge tab adds the other weekly cap Prydwen documents: 3 boss drops per week, spent on advanced Potential nodes. Weekly caps, like daily ones, reward consistency over marathons — a player who logs in across the week out-levels a player who binges one day and skips six.

Captain Grades: The Cap Table

Captain Grade rises when you raise Captain Level and clear the Promotion Mission in each chapter of the Battle Missions (GameWith). The Promotion Mission for each grade unlocks at a set Captain Level, and each grade raises the maximum level of Combatants and Partners and opens new Simulation content:

GameWith’s own targeting advice is to aim first for Veteran Captain (Level 30): Memory Fragments — the gear system — become farmable in Simulation there, and the Path of a Captain event pays Anchors every 10 levels on the way (the table is in our farming guide). Game8 adds the mode unlocks riding on the same levels: the Basin of Hyperspace unlocks at Captain Level 30 and the Zero System at Captain Level 40. Each Captain Level also pays its own level-up rewards, which Game8 lists as ranging from Combatant and Partner leveling materials to Rescue Anchors and Signal Amplification Anchors.

Combatants: Levels, Promotion & Potential

A Combatant’s level determines base ATK, DEF and HP, and is raised with Battle Memories and Units from Tactical Training’s Growth stages (Prydwen). Every 10 levels the Combatant hits the current cap and needs a Promotion: the material type depends on the Combatant’s class and comes from the class Tactical Training stages, and how far you can promote is set by your account level and story progress — the grade table above. Units, the basic currency paying for all of this, are earned across the game; an official developer note reported in the research for this guide cut level-up Unit costs by 80% in the December 3 update, so treat any older Unit-cost table as stale.

Levels are only the first system. Potential is a skill tree running linearly from Potential 1 to 7, with branching paths at 3-1 and 5-1 (Prydwen): early nodes shape Epiphany card picks and buff card multipliers, later nodes add stat boosts and threshold mechanics. Nodes cost Growth Stones, Units and, later, boss drops; the Growth Stone type is set by the Combatant’s Attribute — Passion, Instinct, Order, Justice or Void — and harder Tactical Training stages pay higher-rarity stones, with the weekly Challenge bosses (3 drops a week) gating the advanced nodes. Prydwen’s beginner advice is to unlock the first Potential node on every Combatant you use: it is cheap, and it lets you choose your first Epiphany instead of the game choosing for you. Manifest Ego is the duplicate system: each Combatant has 6 Manifest Ego upgrades, from stat increases to mechanical changes, fed by duplicate copies from Rescues or bought with Moments of the Radiant Hero in the Memory Archive shop (Prydwen).

Partners, Memory Fragments & Save Data

Partners progress alongside Combatants and are capped by the same Captain Grades. Prydwen describes a Partner as equipment-like: stat bonuses, a class-locked passive and an Ego Skill for the Combatant carrying them, with their own EXP material (story pays Advanced Support Data) and their own promotion materials from Tactical Training. Prydwen’s beginner guide adds a free-to-play note worth following: upgraded 3-star Partners are worthwhile early, because they reach maximum duplicates quickly and at maximum duplicates stand on par with, or above, some 4-star Partners.

Memory Fragments are the gear layer — stat-bonus equipment farmed from Memory Fragment Tactical Training stages with Aether (Prydwen), entering Simulation at Veteran Captain (Level 30) and becoming craftable at Expert (Level 40), per GameWith’s grade table. And Save Data is the roguelike layer: finishing a Chaos run generates a Save Data chip for the Combatant who ran it, carrying the run’s cards, Epiphany upgrades and equipment into other modes (Prydwen). Leveling a Combatant without Save Data leaves half their power in the mode that built it — the Chaos runs in the weekly section above are progression, not a side mode. None of these systems has a shortcut in the sources: they are Aether, weekly caps and Promotion gates all the way down.

Buying Leveling & Accounts

There is no legitimate leveling shortcut to buy. Piloted boosting — someone playing your account to raise its Captain Level — requires handing over your STOVE or Google login, and the account market itself is whole-account sales: PlayerAuctions (4.3/5) and Eldorado (4.1/5) list Chaos Zero Nightmare accounts priced partly on Captain level and roster, under the Operation Policy enforcement the buying guide documents, including the October 2, 2026 ban of 4,443 accounts for organized abnormal play. A bought account’s Captain Grade was earned on a login its seller created and can recover. The full picture is in our Chaos Zero Nightmare buying guide; see also the Chaos Zero Nightmare page and the farming guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Checked October 18, 2026. Game systems change with patches, so confirm numbers in game.

• Prydwen: Chaos Zero Nightmare character progression (Battle Memories, Promotion every 10 levels, Potential, Manifest Ego)
• Prydwen: Chaos Zero Nightmare game modes (story rewards, Tactical Training, Garden Cafe, Chaos Manifestation)
• Prydwen: Chaos Zero Nightmare beginner guide (1 Aether = 20 account EXP, Promotion at Level 10, weekly boss limits)
• GameWith: Chaos Zero Nightmare Captain Grade (grade caps 20/30/40/50/60, Path of a Captain Anchor rewards)
• Game8: Chaos Zero Nightmare — how to level up fast (Simulation XP, daily missions, Chaos Loot, Basin and Zero System unlocks)
• GameWith: Chaos Zero Nightmare daily tasks (Achievement Schedule: up to 60 Crystals and 1,500 Coordinates of Record per day)