NTE bond gifts: the daily best-gift table, the math behind maxing, and what's verified

By DayOneFix Editorial · August 17, 2026

The system players search as “affinity” or “favorability” has an official name: Bond. Knowing that matters, because half the confusion around this system is three names pointing at the same number.

Sources for that table are at the bottom — every term in the right column is quoted from an official notice, not community usage.

What does Bond Level unlock in NTE?

Each new S-rank’s Invitation date — the character story content inside Home Time — is gated behind her Bond Level. That is official across two consecutive versions, and it is the concrete reason to raise Bond. The clearest official statements are the unlock requirements HoYo-style guides rarely quote:

• Shinku’s Invitation (1.2, official English): “A new Invitation mode featuring Shinku. Unlock Requirement: Obtain the character Shinku and reach the required Bond Level.”
• Zankou’s Invitation (1.3, official Chinese): the CN update notice lists her 邀约玩法 under 居家时刻, unlocked by owning her “並達到指定羁遇等級” — the same structure, one version later.

Same structure, two consecutive versions — that is what makes it a pattern rather than a one-off. The character stories people actually pull for sit behind Bond.

Community guides also consistently report an outfit reward at Bond level 10. We have not verified that milestone in-game ourselves, so treat the specific number as community-reported rather than official.

The gifting rules before the table

• Up to 3 gifts per character per day, 10 across the roster — every community source agrees, so all “days to max” math assumes 3 a day.
• Rarity does not determine bond points. Expensive does not mean efficient; buy the cheap preferred item, not the shiny one.
• Level Esper Zero’s life skill “Five-Star Paragon” before you gift anything: it adds +5% gift affinity per skill level while a character’s Bond is below the threshold — free value on every early gift.
• The one universal freebie: Fluffy Clouds from the Compressed Boom Boom Cloud — 400 bond points each, farmable weekly, output scales with property comfort.

Best daily gifts per character

The table below is game8’s per-character recommendation set (all 100-point items, cheapest reliable dailies; updated 30 July, so pre-1.3 roster). We did not just relay it — the numbers cross-check exactly against an independent Taiwanese chart in a different language: maxing Bond takes ~56,100 points, and on every overlapping row price × 561 gifts reproduces the Taiwanese chart’s total cost to the fon (details in Sources).

Zankou and Linko (1.3) are not in either source yet — their preferences get added after launch-week verification, not guessed.

How many bond points does it take to max a character in NTE?

About 56,100 bond points — a community-charted total our own math reproduces: on every row where game8’s prices and the independent Taiwanese chart overlap, price × 561 gifts matches the charted total cost to the fon.

What that means in practice, at the 3-gifts-a-day cap:

• Cheap route: 100-point daily gifts × 3 a day is ~187 days per character, costing 170k–370k Fons.
• Fast route: the Taiwanese community’s routes use 400-point gifts to cut that to ~46 days, at 3–7× the cost (up to ~2M Fons). Fast-route item names are charted in Chinese; we will add their verified English names as we confirm them in the global client rather than translating them ourselves.
• Free supplement: Fluffy Clouds (400 points each, farmable weekly) shave real days off either route.

The thing CN players are actually arguing about

If you have seen the discourse: Zankou’s Bond story sequence sparked a genuine argument on CN — players who spent on gifts to raise her Bond watched story scenes they felt humiliated the character, and the debate did 700k+ views on Bilibili. Whatever your read on it, it is worth knowing the Bond stories are not uniformly cozy — this game’s affinity writing takes swings.

Her kit and materials are a separate question: Zankou — materials, kit and whether to pull →

Quick answers

Related

• Zankou: materials, kit and whether to pull
• NTE 1.3 release date & the maintenance window
• NTE codes: what’s live
• NTE 1.3 housing: the detached villa and how to get it

Sources

The official English terms — Bond Level, Invitation, Home Time, City Hangouts — are quoted from the official global Version 1.2 “999 Nights” patch notes. The official Chinese term 羁遇等级 and Zankou’s gated Invitation are from the official CN 1.3 update notice of 12 August.

The daily-gift table is from game8’s bond guide (30 July). Our cross-check: maxing Bond takes ~56,100 points per an independent Taiwanese breakdown, and on rows where the two communities overlap, game8’s price × 561 gifts reproduces the Bahamut chart’s total to the fon — Hathor’s Colorful Light Salad (450 × 561 = 252,450), Skia’s Bob’s Tea Garden (300 × 561 = 168,300), Sakiri’s Crave Bites! Milk Flavor (360 × 561 = 201,960). Two sources that do not cite each other agreeing to the digit is the strongest check available short of in-game verification, which is in progress since global 1.3 launched. Checked 19 August 2026.