Chaos Zero Nightmare Critical Rate and Break Mechanics Overview

Critical hits in Chaos Zero Nightmare are a late multiplier on your damage formula, while Break (Tenacity/Ravage) is a separate mechanic that controls tempo, Stress, and AP. Crit builds revolve around stacking Crit DMG once you reach decent Crit Rate, whereas Break builds revolve around shredding Tenacity to loop AP and keep Stress under control.​​

Critical rate and crit damage basics

Crits are chance‑based bursts on top of your normal damage calculation.

• How crits work
  • Critical hits multiply your final damage by $1+\text{Crit DMG}$1+Crit DMG, applied at the very end of the formula.​
  • Players reverse‑engineering the formula show that with 200% Crit DMG you effectively get a ×3 multiplier at the end (normal hit ×3), while 160% Crit DMG gives ×2.6.​
• Base values and scaling
  • Base Crit Rate is low (around 3%), and base Crit DMG is about 125%, lower than the 150% common in many gachas.​
  • Crit Rate is mainly gained from:
    • Pendant/Memory Fragments (e.g., 27% Crit Rate main stat).​​
    • Potentials (around 10% Crit Rate total).​
    • Substats on gear, where rolling +8–10% Crit Rate per piece is possible but rare.​
• Community rule of thumb
  • Analysis threads and math posts consistently suggest:
    • First aim for ~50% Crit Rate, then push Crit DMG over 200% before investing further in Crit Rate.​
  • Because Crit DMG is a late multiplier, once you have decent chance to crit, each extra % of Crit DMG scales all your other buffs and multipliers.​

In practice, Crit Rate is hard to stack and not worth sacrificing too many flat/multiplier stats for; you typically balance “good enough” rate with high Crit DMG.​

How crit plugs into the damage formula

Crit is just one term in the final damage equation.

• Position in the formula
  • The game computes damage roughly as:
    • Final Damage = (Card Multiplier × Final ATK/DEF × 0.35 × element/mechanic multipliers × enemy DEF multiplier) × $1+\text{Crit DMG}$1+Crit DMG if crits, otherwise no crit term.​
  • This means all your early buffs (ATK, DEF, card buffs, Vulnerable, Morale, etc.) get multiplied first, then Crit applies.​​
• Expected value of Crit
  • Expected damage $=\text{Non‑crit damage}\times [1+\text{Crit Rate}\times \text{Crit DMG}]$=Non‑crit damage×[1+Crit Rate×Crit DMG].​
  • Community calculations use this to show that once Crit DMG is high, small increases in Crit Rate can be less efficient than more flat ATK or %DMG.​

So Crit builds are about setting up all the earlier layers, then adding a big, probabilistic multiplier at the end.

Tenacity, Break, and Ravage explained

Break is a separate system based on the Tenacity Gauge under enemy HP.

• Tenacity gauge
  • Many strong enemies have a Tenacity bar under their HP that functions like a Break bar; attacks deal both HP and Tenacity damage.​
  • Hitting with Weakness attributes (matching the enemy’s element) and high‑AP cost cards deals significantly more Tenacity damage.​
• Break / Ravage state
  • When Tenacity hits zero, the enemy enters Break/Ravage (Breakthrough) and:
    • Is effectively stunned or heavily disabled, becoming ideal for burst damage.​​
    • Has its “action count” increased by 1, delaying its next turn.​​
    • Takes increased damage for the rest of the fight according to stress/Break guides, making Break a DPS amplifier.​
  • The Tenacity bar fully recovers next turn, so you can aim for repeated Breaks in long fights.​

Break is both a control and damage mechanic: you gain tempo and a window to unload high‑impact cards, including crit‑based bursts.​​

Rewards for causing Break

Breaking an enemy directly benefits your team’s tempo and Stress management.

• AP and Stress effects
  • When Break occurs:
    • You gain 1 AP, giving you effectively a free extra card that turn.​​
    • The Combatant who caused the Break has their Stress reduced, helping prevent Mental Breakdown.​
• Synergy with kill confirming
  • Guides explicitly recommend timing your hits so you break an enemy on the finishing blow, letting you both kill and still gain the AP and Stress reduction.​
• Build archetypes
  • Some builds and Partners are designed around Tenacity damage and Ravage; for example, one beam‑based build generates and recycles “homing lasers” whenever Tenacity is broken, chaining Breaks across enemies.​

This makes Break a core mechanic for long fights: you get survivability (Stress relief), extra AP, and more damage in one package.

Crit vs Break: how they interact in gameplay

Crits and Break affect different parts of the system, but they synergize heavily.

• Crit within a Break window
  • Because Break states cause enemies to take more damage and lose actions, crits during Break are significantly more valuable: all your multipliers (Vulnerable, element, Morale, Break bonuses) stack before Crit.​​
  • The optimal pattern is often:
    • Use high‑AP weakness cards to Break → gain AP and Stress reduction.
    • Dump your strongest DPS cards (and crits) into the broken enemy that turn.​
• Builds that prioritise Break over Crit
  • Some teams focus mostly on Tenacity shred, even at the cost of Crit Rate, because Break loops generate enough AP and safety that raw crit stacking is less necessary.​
  • Especially in Chaos and Zero System, controlling Stress via Break can be more important than marginal DPS gains from more Crit.​​
• Balancing stats
  • High‑end players caution against “just stacking Crit Rate/Crit Damage” without respecting Tenacity tools; you want:
    • Enough Crit stats for good burst.
    • Enough weakness/high‑cost cards and Tenacity gear to reliably Break and create those bursts.​

Put simply: Crit makes your hits bigger, Break tells you when those big hits matter most and keeps you alive long enough to use them.