Leveling in Anime Zero comes down to two things: picking the mode with the highest XP per hour and keeping your clear times short. The difference between the slowest and fastest route is more than fivefold, so the mode you grind matters far more than how many runs you squeeze in.
Quick answer: Run Story Mode on Nightmare difficulty. It produces roughly 118,800 XP per hour, the highest active rate of any mode, provided your clears stay close to two minutes.
XP per hour by mode in Anime Zero
Solo testing across Story difficulties and both raids gives a clear ranking. Each run was timed from start to clear, and the XP earned was converted to an hourly rate so the modes compare directly.
| Mode | Clear time | XP earned | XP/hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story (Nightmare) | 2:13 | 4,390 | 118,800 |
| Story (Hard) | 1:47 | 2,065 | 69,500 |
| Spirits Bathtub (Raid) | 3:34 | 3,866 | 65,000 |
| Shadow Gate (Raid) | 3:05 | 1,806 | 35,100 |
| Story (Medium) | 1:32 | 888 | 34,700 |
| Story (Easy) | 1:17 | 489 | 22,900 |
Easy and Medium clear the quickest, but their reward is so low that the hourly total trails every harder option. Nightmare takes the longest single run, yet the XP payout per clear is large enough to leave the rest behind.
When to farm Hard instead of Nightmare
Nightmare only stays on top while your clear time stays near the Hard mode pace. The hourly figure assumes you finish in roughly two minutes. If your character dies, stalls on bosses, or drags a Nightmare run past three or four minutes, the rate collapses and Hard becomes the better grind.
Story Hard runs at 69,500 XP per hour with a clear time under two minutes, so it is the safer pick until your damage is high enough to clear Nightmare at speed. Push to Nightmare once you can keep those runs short; drop back to Hard the moment survival slows you down.
Raids are for materials, not XP
Spirits Bathtub and Shadow Gate both pay XP, but their hourly rates sit below Story Nightmare because the clears take longer. Spirits Bathtub lands at 65,000 XP per hour and Shadow Gate at 35,100, so neither is worth running purely to level.
Run them for their drops instead. These raids hand out evolution and crafting materials you cannot get from standard Story stages. Shadow Gate also caps you at 10 attempts, with the pool refilling every three hours, so treat those entries as a material supply rather than an XP source.
Infinite mode for AFK leveling
Infinite mode has the lowest active XP rate of any option, so it is pointless to grind by hand. Its value is hands-off farming: it keeps running while you are away, turning idle time into slow but free progress toward milestone rewards, materials, and levels.
The common setup loops an Endless Waves lobby on Nightmare. You open the mode, trigger the respawn prompt, and line up an auto-clicker on the Retry button so the game restarts each wave on its own while your character auto-casts area attacks. A recorder tool set to continuous playback can repeat the input sequence indefinitely.
On mobile, place auto-clicker points on multiple spots so attacks keep firing, or run the game through a cloud Android device to keep it farming in the background around the clock.
Cut clear times with your build
Because XP per hour depends on how fast you clear, raising your damage is the same as raising your XP rate. Focus your investment on offense before anything else.
- Upgrade the weapon’s Skill Tree, taking Attack first, then Critical.
- Roll for a damage trait such as Deadeye for long runs or Supernova for fast farming.
- Fill every accessory slot (Head, Face, Neck), with the Blast Archer Crown as a top Head pick.
- Evolve or Awaken your character to unlock its Ultimate for faster boss kills.
The Attack branch scales to +60% damage at its final node, and the Critical branch adds up to +15% crit chance, so those two paths do the most to shorten clears. Each weapon carries its own tree, which means you earn tokens fastest by actively using the weapon you want to strengthen.
Combat tips to clear Nightmare faster
How you fight decides whether Nightmare stays at its 118,800 rate. Herd enemies into a group and hit them all at once with area-of-effect skills rather than chasing single targets. Clearing a pack in one cast cuts entire seconds off every wave.
Playing in a team also speeds things up. More damage on bosses shortens the longest part of a Nightmare clear, which is where most of your time goes. Once your runs stay near two minutes per clear, the leveling rate in the table above is what you will actually see, and Nightmare remains the fastest route to higher levels.
