Genshin Impact Guide

Gacha games had a small following for a long time before Genshin Impact came along, but none of them had been this popular (except Fate/Grand Order, but that’s a story for another time). For those of you who may not be familiar with the idea, gacha refers to a vending machine that people put money into in the hope of winning one of the many prizes on offer. In Genshin Impact terms, this means paying money for a chance to add one of many characters and weapons to your team.

Released by development studio miHoYo in 2020, Genshin Impact offers players an open-world experience in the gacha genre, as opposed to the side-scrolling of more conventional titles. The game itself consists of several mechanics, the most important of which is the way elements interact, a vital concept to understand in order to master combat.

Getting Started

Before we begin, you need to decide which platforms you want to play on. Genshin Impact is available on PC and mobile devices, as well as on PS4. However, you can only share save data between PC and mobile. This is something to keep in mind if you plan to play on PS4.

In true gacha fashion, shortly after completing the beginner quests and earning some free gems, you should have enough to do a few pulls for a new character. In the long run it doesn’t matter much, but if you want to start strong, you’ll want to aim for 5-star characters. Diluc is generally the best choice if you’re using the standard banner. More on that later. Genshin Impact also has exclusive banners for specific characters, and if you like, you can choose to pull from those banners as well. Standard banners offer characters from the general pool, and you also have a chance to pull 5-star weapons from them. However, you’ll want to avoid weapons, especially if you’re just starting out. This is because you can always use a character, but a weapon without a character who can equip it is nothing but clutter in your inventory.

In the beginning, you should aim to reach Adventure Rank (AR) 12 as soon as possible. This unlocks Daily Commissions, which provide a significant chunk of EXP and Friendship points every day. The following can be unlocked at different rank thresholds: Expeditions (AR 14) and Co-Op Mode (AR 16). Expeditions let you send characters to gather materials on your behalf. Not much, but better than nothing. Co-Op Mode lets you connect with friends and simply go on adventures together. Keep in mind that you can only join players whose World Level is the same as or lower than yours.

Wishes and Banners

Like any other gacha game, assembling a team of characters is a major selling point of Genshin Impact. This is done through the Wish system, which uses Fates as currency. There are two types of Fate currency in the game: Intertwined Fates and Acquaint Fates. Each Fate equals one Wish and can be redeemed with Primogems. The difference between Intertwined Fates and Acquaint Fates comes down to the banners they can be used on.

In Genshin Impact, there are always two or more banners running at any given time. During an event, there is a standard banner, a weapon banner and an exclusive banner. Acquaint Fates are used only on the standard banner, which lets you summon from the primary pool of characters and weapons. Intertwined Fates, on the other hand, are used on the weapon and exclusive banners. These banners feature characters and weapons that are only available for a limited time, so they are usually more popular among players than the standard banner. You’ll also get higher rates for specific characters and weapons on these banners, so it makes sense to spend your Primogems on them if you want something or someone in particular. Keep in mind that your pity counter does not carry over between different banner types.

There are various ways to earn Primogems in Genshin Impact. The simplest option would be to buy them from the in-game shop. If you’re a free-to-play player, you can also choose to earn them exclusively from quests, Daily Commissions, completing certain achievements and defeating special mobs. If you don’t mind spending a little, you can opt for the Blessing of the Welkin Moon, which gives you about 3,000 Primogems (including Genesis Crystals) for USD 4.99 a month.

Progression

To make active progress in the game, apart from following the story and exploring, you’ll want to knock out your dailies if you can. Prioritize spending your Resin first, whether by farming Domains, hunting bosses or converting it into Condensed Resin. Then you should clear your Daily Commissions. Don’t forget to collect the materials gathered from Expeditions and send your characters on new ones. Reputation requests are also a decent source of Mora, even if you’ve already completed them. Remember: you can never have enough Mora. Keep track of your Adventurer Handbook progress and work on clearing the daily or weekly tasks. If you’re farming materials for specific characters, you should also check gathering spots, as they usually respawn every 1-2 days.

As for exploration, you’ll want to focus on finding as many Statues of The Seven, Teleport Waypoints, Geoculi and Anemoculi as possible. Statues of The Seven and Teleport Waypoints will help you speed up your travels and open up the map, while Anemoculi and Geoculi, among other rewards, increase your stamina reserves. Always keep a record of the items you find by marking them with icons on the map, to save time on duplicates and checking later, especially with Anemoculi, Geoculi and, later on, Crimson Agates.

Team Building and Characters

If you’re a free-to-play player, you should always be careful about which characters you choose to invest in. It might be tempting to level up everything you can, but this becomes very resource-intensive later on, especially for talents, artifacts and weapons, so save all the Mora and materials you have for the characters you really like. However, if you do want to level up your characters, try not to go beyond level 20, as it is still fairly cheap and manageable. It also gives you free gems for wishes, so the benefits outweigh the overall cost. After that, you can level up characters at your own discretion.

As for team building, it largely comes down to personal preference, as long as you can consistently pass DPS checks when fighting mobs and bosses. Genshin Impact is a PvE game at its core, so you don’t need to worry too much about gear or characters if you can kill most enemies fast enough. Elemental Resonance is one factor worth paying attention to, as it provides certain buffs depending on your team’s elemental composition.

The characters that make up a team can be divided into certain roles. These are not strict in-game terms and there could be more niche roles, but in general you should have a Carry, a Healer and a Support on your team. Your Carry will be the main character you use in combat and usually stays on the field the longest. Carries usually come with high DPS potential and low cooldowns to support that DPS. Examples of powerful Carries would be Diluc, Ganyu and Klee. You also have Healers, who help keep your characters alive and reduce your reliance on healing food. For example, Qiqi and Barbara. Your Support is the one who boosts your team’s combat abilities, whether through elemental reactions, energy charging, attack buffs, etc. Examples include Sucrose, Bennett and Mona.

Keep in mind that this is just a simplified view of the roles, based on what we think is the optimal way to use these characters’ skills and talents, and that they can be built differently to suit your preferences.

Combat

Combat in Genshin Impact focuses on its 7 elements, specifically on the way they interact with each other. They are Pyro, Cryo, Geo, Anemo, Electro, Hydro and Dendro. Dendro is currently only found on enemies, so as a player you’ll build your team around the other 6 elements. As a general rule, you should aim to build a team that can consistently damage enemies of most, if not all, elements, rather than a team built around a single element. See the difference?

The elements themselves can be classified into 2 types: Aura elements and Trigger elements. This classification helps determine which element takes priority in an elemental reaction, which in turn determines the resulting reaction effect. For example, using Hydro on an enemy after Pyro will deal 2.0x damage on the attack that causes the reaction, while the reverse only gives a 1.5x damage increase, even though it’s the same reaction.

Aura elements are elements inherent to any given object, while Triggers are elements that can activate an elemental reaction on contact with a different Aura element. For example, a Pyro Slime will almost always have an active Pyro status, so any elemental attack you hit it with will most likely be the Trigger element, with a few notable exceptions. Anemo, Geo and, at the time of writing, Dendro are the only elements that are exclusively Aura elements, meaning they cannot be used to trigger any elemental reaction. Take the Pyro Slime example again. Although you can spread the Pyro effect from the Pyro Slime using Anemo, in reality the Pyro element is the one acting as the Trigger element here.

You should be prepared enough to face most enemies once you have a decent understanding of Aura and Trigger elements and the effects of the different elemental reactions.

Like the elements themselves, reactions can be divided into 2 types: Transformative reactions and Amplifying reactions. Amplifying reactions are very simple; an attack infused with the Trigger element will deal additional damage after catalyzing the reaction. The two Amplifying reactions currently in the game are Melt and Vaporize.

Transformative reactions, on the other hand, cause different effects, generally dealing additional elemental damage, and consist of Frozen, Overloaded, Electro-Charged, Superconduct, Shatter and Swirl. With Transformative reactions, the level of the character who triggers the reaction and, more importantly, their Elemental Mastery, as well as the target’s elemental resistances, are the only variables taken into account. Unlike Amplifying reactions, Transformative reactions cannot crit, are not affected by ATK stats and are not reduced by enemy DEF. As such, they are not limited by a character’s individual DPS potential, nor affected by the stats of the character who applies the first element, if any.

Ideally, your characters should launch elemental attacks in a predetermined sequence to maximize your DPS potential. It will undoubtedly take a lot of trial and error to figure this out, and it involves a lot of math, so try creating a spreadsheet for yourself to track different team comps and find out which one suits you best.

Optimizing Builds

Weapons, artifacts and talents are a very nuanced topic in Genshin Impact. We won’t go into them in detail now, but keep in mind that what you choose to invest in could benefit you in the long run.

Weapons are relatively simple. Each character can only use a specific weapon type (Tartaglia technically wields a bow, though that one is debatable), and the two most important attributes to pay attention to are the weapon’s Base ATK and its bonus effect. In Genshin Impact, any multiplier you get from artifacts and talents is usually calculated from your character’s Base ATK combined with your weapon’s Base ATK. For example, the ATK bonus from Bennett’s Elemental Burst is based on the sum of his Base ATK and the Base ATK of the weapon he has equipped, not on his total ATK, which is the sum of all his artifact and weapon bonuses. The weapon’s bonus effect, on the other hand, can affect your playstyle in a few different ways.

A few hours into the game, you should have an understanding of artifacts. These are accessories equipped on your character that provide various bonus stats. They also give certain set bonuses if you equip 2 or 4 pieces of the same artifact set. Different artifact sets will give you different bonuses. Artifacts are also divided by rarity. The higher the rarity, the higher the artifact’s level cap, which means bigger stat bonuses when you max them out.

Artifact stats come in two forms: main stats and substats. Some artifacts have fixed main stats, while others can vary between several different bonuses. The substat rolls on an artifact will differ both in the stat bonus provided and in the range of that bonus. A higher-rarity artifact will have more substat slots and a wider stat bonus range, giving your characters a greater overall impact. Needless to say, you’ll spend a lot of time farming for the right artifacts. But keep in mind that the right substats could potentially have an equal or greater impact in combat than certain set bonuses, so it’s not always a deal-breaker if you don’t get the artifacts you want, as long as the stats you’re looking for can be found on another artifact set.

Each artifact Domain has a chance to drop several artifacts of different rarities, from at least 2 different artifact sets. We recommend waiting until at least AR 35 before attempting artifact Domains, as this will be your first decent chance to get a 5-star artifact drop. It may also be worth investing in 4-star artifacts if they have good stats. You can always use them to upgrade your 5-star artifacts later once you have them. 80% of the total EXP will be transferred during the upgrade, so it’s a pretty decent trade-off between available resources and combat potential.

As for talents, it largely depends on your playstyle. After all, there’s no point in leveling up a character’s talents if you only keep them in the back line. You’d just be wasting resources. Focus on upgrading your Carry’s talents first, depending on which ones give you the biggest advantage in combat. For example, with Keqing it might be a good idea to level up her Normal Attack talent, given how often it is used.

Tips and Tricks

Count Your Wishes and Make Your Wishes Count

If you want to get a 5-star character or weapon, the published pull rate is 0.6%. You are guaranteed one on your next pull if you’ve made 90 pulls without getting at least one 5-star character or weapon. This brings the average to about 1.6%, which is still extremely low by industry standards.

Even so, Genshin Impact has a soft pity mechanic, which drastically increases your chances of getting a 5-star. Soft pity usually kicks in around 75 pulls, during which your chances of pulling a 5-star item increase to over 70%. Miss this, and your best bet will be the 91st pull. All in all, it’s still not the best, but it could be worse.

It’s also worth remembering that the pity counter does not carry over between the standard, weapon and limited banners. So think about what you want to wish for before spending your efforts on a banner.

Stamina Management

Stamina is a vital resource in Genshin Impact, especially if your characters are mainly attack-focused in combat. One trick to reduce stamina loss is the double jump. Jumping continuously lets you move faster than walking normally, and it can be done even after your stamina is depleted, which helps you keep up sprint speed when you otherwise couldn’t.

In the heat of combat, you can manage stamina using character swaps and Elemental Burst animations, which has more to do with dodging attacks than managing stamina, as we’ll see in the next section.

iFrames

iFrames, or invincibility frames, are brief moments in an animation sequence where damage is not registered. This means you cannot take any damage, making them an excellent tool when fighting a powerful enemy. The concept of iFrames is not limited to Genshin Impact, but one thing it shares with other games is that it takes a fair amount of micro skill and timing.

Fortunately, iFrames in Genshin Impact are quite forgiving, especially with Elemental Burst animations. You can also achieve this by swapping characters, although it’s a bit harder to get right. That said, we recommend practicing iFrames a little during character swaps, as this is more sustainable than relying on Elemental Bursts. It will serve you well in the long run, especially when fighting a boss while on low health.

Get to Know Internal Cooldowns

We mentioned earlier that elements can be applied to a given target using characters’ elemental skills or attacks. When another element interacts with that target, an elemental reaction occurs. After that, both elements are cleared from the target’s status. Internal cooldown is the time after which the status element is cleared from the target before another element can be applied. This is not the same as an internal cooldown on elemental reactions (which doesn’t exist), but it has a cause-and-effect impact on reactions.

Internal cooldowns are based only on individual characters’ skills and attacks, and each of them works independently of the others. For example, each of the three Pyro hits in Diluc’s Elemental Skill has its own separate internal cooldown, so they can apply the Pyro element or trigger reactions independently of each other’s internal cooldowns. Similarly, Mona’s Elemental Burst has a 2-second internal cooldown after the Illusory Bubble status is applied to enemies before Pyro can be used to successfully detonate the nuke.