Phantom Blade Zero New Game Plus: What Carries Over

Phantom Blade Zero’s New Game Plus is not a lazy stat multiplier, but it is also not a content pack — director Soulframe Liang has been explicit that nothing story-related hides behind it. What NG+ actually offers is a harder second run through the Wulin with your finished arsenal intact, a Cycle system that keeps scaling, and the key to the 66 Days mode. Here is exactly what carries over, what resets, and what to wrap up before you start Cycle 1.

How to Start New Game Plus

NG+ becomes available once you finish the game and the credits roll. There is no pop-up or menu button:

1. From any Bell, use Traverse to fast travel to the Puppet Cell on the Mountain of Imprisonment.
2. Speak to Inanis to begin the new run.
3. The game shows its confirmation — “An even more perilous journey through the Wulin is about to begin” — along with the carryover and reset lists, then offers the difficulty picker. On a second run, 66 Days joins Wayfarer, Pathbreaker, and Hellwalker as a selectable option.

Your save list labels the second playthrough as Cycle 1; the first playthrough shows no Cycle number at all.

What Carries Over (and What Resets)

The in-game confirmation screen spells this out, and PCGamesN’s hands-on reporting matches it:

The practical effect: your build arrives intact and the story starts clean. Weapons keep their upgrade levels, and reporting on the launched game adds Phantom Edge tempers and permanent shard upgrades to the carried list — so work done through Soul Tempering is never wasted.

Two open questions the sources do not agree on: whether your Remnant Dust balance and your rung Bells carry over. The confirmation text only names the categories above, so treat currency and fast-travel carryover as unconfirmed and plan as if they reset.

How Cycles Scale the World

Each new Cycle raises the ceiling rather than just the numbers:

• Enemy levels: an enemy’s level is its area level plus offsets, plus 25 per Cycle number. Cycle 1 enemies are roughly 25 levels up, Cycle 2 adds 50, and so on — documented scaling continues past Cycle 6. Enemies flagged not to level up keep their level.
• Ability Training: the three nodes that level to 30 show a Required Cycles value — levels 6-10 need Cycle 2, 11-15 need Cycle 3, and so on, so maxing them out is inherently a multi-run goal.
• Weapon level cap: weapons and Phantom Edges cap at level 30 on a first run. A +N marker after the weapon’s name raises the cap by 5 per step, up to +6 (level 60).
• Accessory polish: accessories gain extra polish steps stored as later-Cycle levels, and merchants carry new Cycle stock with per-Cycle purchase limits.

If you are sizing up the time investment, our how long to beat breakdown covers first-run length.

Does NG+ Add New Weapons or Boss Moves?

This is where launch-week misinformation is thickest, so here is what is actually verified:

• NG+ exclusive weapons — unconfirmed. A fan wiki claims drops like “Soulrender,” “Ashen Reaper,” and “Twin Fangs” exist only in NG+. No hands-on outlet or developer statement corroborates any of these names; the claim conflicts with the director’s on-record position that NG+ contains no new content. Community mapping in progress — we will update this section the moment a drop is verified. The confirmed arsenal lives in our best Phantom Edges and weapon guides.
• New boss moves — that is Hellwalker, not NG+. Bosses gaining extra skills and attack patterns is a documented feature of Hellwalker difficulty, which becomes selectable from the start of a second run. NG+ itself scales enemy levels; reports of “NG+-only attack strings” trace back to the same unverified fan wiki.
• What NG+ genuinely adds: the Cycle scaling above, 66 Days mode, and the chance to carry late-game weapons into early boss fights — the use case the director himself highlighted in pre-launch interviews.

NG+ and 66 Days Mode

Finishing the game once unlocks 66 Days, the mode named after the premise — Soul has 66 days to live, and here the countdown is mechanical. It plays at Hellwalker-level difficulty with a hard budget of deaths, runs on its own separate save file, autosaves at Bells, and allows no manual save or reload. When the days run out, the run ends with a short closing scene and the offer to start again. No trophies are tied to it — every achievement is earnable within the three standard difficulties.

What to Finish Before Starting NG+

Because quests, maps, and key items reset, some things are strictly easier on your first run:

1. Finish the side quests you care about. Quest states wipe, so complete chains like the Quick Hand Zhang treasure hunt — and its Lost and Found achievement — before you reset.
2. Target your ending. Which of the eight endings you reach depends on side quest completion; if you want a different one, NG+ is the clean slate, so bank the one your current run is set up for first.
3. Temper and upgrade your build weapons. Weapon levels, tempers, and accessories carry over; a maxed blade makes the +25-level early zones dramatically smoother.
4. Spend down perishable wealth. With currency carryover unconfirmed, convert loose Remnant Dust into upgrades and merchant stock — our Remnant Dust farming guide covers what is worth buying out.
5. Collect every Phantom Edge. The collection achievement tracks base-game versions, and a full inventory gives NG+ builds more options from minute one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is New Game Plus required for the platinum trophy? No. The director has stated all achievements can be earned in a single run on the three standard difficulties. NG+ and 66 Days are for challenge and completionists.

Does the story change in NG+? No new story scenes or endings are locked behind NG+, per the director. Quests resetting means you can make different choices and reach different endings — the change is yours, not the script’s.

Sources: PCGamesN NG+ guide and hands-on, RPGamer and Inven Global interviews with director Soulframe Liang, DualShockers director interview, and launch-week player testing (October 29-31, 2026). Cycle scaling and Cycle-gated progression per community documentation; currency and bell carryover unconfirmed; claimed NG+ exclusive weapons unverified — community mapping in progress.