12 tips to help you get started in Genshin Impact

Looking for a Genshin Impact guide? The free-to-play Action-RPG has risen to astounding popularity over the last year, and now more than ever, new players are flocking to Teyvat to start their very own journey with the Traveler. But Genshin Impact isn't as simple as it might seem.

Sure, it's easy to understand once you've played it for a while, but with so many different elements, it can be a little overwhelming when you first start: What should I invest it? Should I level these characters? Is there a quicker way to earn Adventure Ranks What's this resin stuff? Well, this Genshin Impact guide answers all those questions and more.

If you've already been playing for a little while, but still don't feel things are quite falling into place, there are plenty of tips that might help you push things a little further, too. Stumbling blocks are a natural part of any game and overcoming them is all part of the journey. But if you want to set out into Teyvat with your best foot forward, this Genshin Impact guide is a great place to start.

Tips and tricks

Exploration is fun, but quests are how you unlock areas

One of the big appeals of Genshin Impact is its massive open world full of hidden secrets, puzzles, mini-games, and bosses. But in order to unlock new content you'll often have to complete quests. These might be Genshin's central Archon quest, which is how you get to Inazuma, or the Dragonspine questline, which lets you unlock the path to the mountain's summit, and the Peak of Vindagnyr domain.

Other quests, such as Seirai Stormchasers in Inazuma, or Orobashi's Legacy on Yashiori Island, actually make it easier to explore new areas by eliminating environmental threats, such as Balethunder or deadly lightning storms. If there's a new area, chances are miHoYo has also added a questline to introduce you to it, so it's always worth checking first. Quests are also a great way of increasing your adventure rank, which unlocks new features.

Increase your Adventure Rank to unlock new features

Adventure rank is an important part of Genshin Impact, and effects what's available in-game, and whether you can do certain quests. You can increase your adventure rank by opening chests out in the world, completing quests, doing daily commissions, as well as beating bosses and claiming their rewards using resin. 

Here's what you'll unlock as you raise your adventure rank:

• AR 8: Blossom of Revelation. Find this challenge in the world and defeat enemies to earn experience items for levelling characters.
• AR 12: Blossom of Wealth and Daily Commissions. Blossom of Wealth is same as above, but grants mora, while Daily Commisions earn you adventure rank exp and primogems for wishing for characters.
• AR 10: Codes. You can now redeem Genshin Impact codes.
• AR 14: Expeditions. Head to the adventurer's guild to send characters out to farm mora, minerals, or food. Certain characters have expedition time reductions depending on region, such as Keqing, Bennett, Fischl, Chongyun, and Sara.
• AR 16: Co-op and Domains of Forgery. Co-op lets you play with others, while domains of forgery are challenges that earn you materials for ascending weapons.
• AR 20: Spiral Abyss and Battlepass. The Spiral Abyss is a dungeon that represents Genshin Impact's seasonal challenge, as you fight through it with your best characters to earn rewards which are regularly reset. The battlepass also grants you rewards through play for achievements such as cooking meals, using resin, beating bosses etc.
• AR 22: Domains of Blessing. As with forgery, these domains allow you to earn and farm artifacts.
• AR 25: Reputation. By completing quests and certain tasks, you'll earn reputation in each region. Reaching certain reputation levels grants rewards, the best of which is arguably the condensed resin recipe you get for reaching level 3 in Liyue.
• AR 26: Story Keys. By completing daily commissions, you can earn story keys and unlock quests for specific characters. A lot of these quests do have a requirement of adventure rank 40, though.
• AR 27: Domains of Mastery. These domains offer materials for ascending characters to new level caps and levelling their talents.
• AR 28: Serenitea Pot. This unlocks the "A Pot Called Home" quest, which gives you a teapot item that contains its own realm, letting you build a house, grow plants, and keep fish.
• AR 45: Mystic Offering. Lets you combine five-star artifacts at an alchemy bench to create a strongbox containing a five-star artifact of a specific type. 

Adventure Rank also increases world level, changing the difficulty of enemies, and the quality of the loot they drop.

Pity is what matters when it comes to Wishes

Wishing for characters or weapons in Genshin Impact is always a gamble, considering you never know what you're going to get. But this is where Pity comes in: a system that basically guarantees you will get a four or a five star within a certain number of wishes. 

When people say it's better to wish ten times as it gets you a guaranteed four star, that's true, but what gets you the guaranteed four star is pity, and that happens whether you wish ten times individually, or with ten wishes at once. This means that what is more important is consistently wishing on the same banner until you hit your pity count, especially if it has a featured weapon or character you want.

Here's how pity works for each rarity of character or weapon:

• After nine wishes without a four star, the tenth wish is guaranteed to be four star.
• After 89 wishes without a five star, the 90th is guaranteed to be a five star. From 75 wishes onwards the chance to pull a five-star is increased every wish until it hits 100% on the 90th.
• After 79 wishes on a weapon banner without a five star, the 80th is guaranteed to be five star. From 65 wishes onwards the chance to pull a five-star is increased every wish until it hits 100% on the 80th.

It's also important to consider that these counts reset to zero whenever you roll a character or weapon of that particular rarity.

Save your Primogems for characters you want

In Genshin Impact you use Primogems to purchase either Intertwined Fate or Acquaint Fate, which are what you use to wish for more characters. You can purchase Genesis Crystals (which convert into Primogems), but you can also earn plenty of Primogems in-game by opening chests, completing events, as well as doing Spiral Abyss, and daily commisions. You can also earn Fates by ascending characters, and purchase them in Paimon's Bargains with Starglitter or Stardust, which you get when you wish.

Even with all of that, you might potentially need 80 wishes to get yourself a five-star character. This is why, if you don't want to spend money, it's worth saving up your Fates for a character you really want, then going all in to get lucky or hit that 80 wish pity level. That still won't guarantee you get the five-star you want, but if you're wishing on a new banner, it will have boosted rates for whoever the featured five-star is.

Spend your Original Resin as you get it, or convert it to Condensed Resin

Original Resin is the be-all and end-all in Genshin Impact, as it basically functions like the game's reward currency. If you defeat a boss or complete a domain, you'll need to use resin to claim the reward. Now, you have 160 Original Resin, and this replenishes at a rate of one every eight minutes. This means it takes 21 hours and 20 minutes to replenish your resin fully. 

But you can also turn Original Resin into Condensed Resin, allowing you to store it for use later. To do this, you'll need to reach reputation rank three in Liyue, and then head to an alchemy bench. Though Condensed Resin can only be used on domains and not bosses, it does grant twice the rewards, making it ideal for farming artifacts and materials. 

You can also get Fragile Resin from the battlepass and from adventure rank rewards. When you use this, it replensishes sixty resin, so it's worth holding onto until you really need it.

Learn how to build characters and create a balanced party

This might sound obvious, but Genshin Impact's combat centres heavily around elemental abilities, and how you combine them to create powerful reactions that can freeze, melt, or electrocute enemies. How you build and achieve these reactions depends on the combination of characters you have in your party, and how you use their elemental skill, burst, and attacks.

You also need to know how to build characters towards their role in your party. Every good team has a healer, a damage-dealer, and some support, whether that  means shields, abilities that boost attack, or even create more powerful reactions, as with Anemo characters. Choosing a decent weapon and artifact set isn't too hard, though, you just need to think about the character's role in your party. It can also help to read through their talents, as this gives you an idea of what stat their abilities level with, which allows you to prioritise. 

Every artifact has a random stat role, so while they provide consistent set-based abilities, they don't always grant you the most useful stats otherwise. This is why it's better to invest in levelling artifacts that have good attack-based stat rolls, or are five-star. Weapons are far more straightforward than artifacts—you just want to choose one that has an ability that complements your character's role. Rely heavily on your elemental skill? Then go with the Sacrificial weapons. Need energy recharge? Go with the Favonius ones. 

There are also a good number of decent four-star weapons you can make at the blacksmith, or get through other means, as with The Catch in version 2.1.

Use the map to mark everything 

The world of Teyvat is full of secrets, but occasionally you'll run into one that doesn't have a clear solution. You might need a certain elemental ability or better stats, or you're just not smart enough to figure out the puzzle. Whatever the reason, make use of the pins on your map to mark that location for later. You can also use these pins to mark the location of fishing or hunting spots, and rare resources like character ascension materials, so you can venture back that way after the 48 hours it takes them to respawn. You can lay down up to 99 pins, so there's no reason not to use all of them. 

Spend all your damn sigils 

It's easy to forget Sigils even exist. They're a type of regional currency earned from chests or sometimes found while exploring and, if you're like me, you probably are hoarding them for some inexplicable reason. Stop that. The sigil store (there's one in Mondstadt and Liyue) offers a finite selection of ascension materials, mora, weapon blueprints, and constellations for the Traveler. Don't be like me and horde your sigils for no good reason.

Inazuma doesn't have a sigil store, but it does have the Sacred Sakura. If you offer your sigils there, it will upgrade the level of your electrogranum, allowing you get through higher-level barriers and explore even more of the islands. Like the Frostbearing Tree in Dragonspine, this is also one of the few places you can earn a Crown of Insight—a super rare material that's required to max out the level of combat talents. 

Invest wisely and don't try and max every character 

One of the problems with Genshin Impact is that, at higher levels, you need more and more experience items and ascension materials for characters, yet you only have a certain amount of resin to use for claiming these rewards each day. By the time you hit level 60, you'll be grinding to get what you need to push your characters further. It'll be even worse if you try and level every new character you get. This is why it's generally better to focus on building your chosen team to a decent level, first.

Saying that, if you have no problem with a bit of grinding, you can level as many characters as you want. The only real barrier is resin, since you need it to claim mora and experience items from Ley Line Overflows, and to get character ascension materials from defeating bosses. But having two teams around is no bother at all, as you'll actually need at least 8 decent characters if you want to do the later levels of the Spiral Abyss. Genshin is all about collecting new characters, after all, and if you actually want to use any of the ones you pull, you're going to have to level them to match your world level anyway.

Remember you can lower World Level

In Genshin Impact, the difficulty of enemies, bosses, and the quality of the rewards they drop, is determined by world level. But as this scales with adventure rank, and not the actual level of your characters, difficulty can sometimes catch you off-guard. If you're finding things tough, you can lower world level by one in the menu overview. This will make enemies and bosses easier, but be warned, it will also decrease the level of potential item drops you get from enemies.

There are eight world levels overall, but for adventure rank 25, 35, 45, and 50, you'll also have to complete a quest to raise it, meaning that you can personally choose when you're ready for things to get more difficult. World level also determines how high you can level your characters, so when the game tells you the level cap has been reached, you know its time to upgrade, or earn adventure rank until you're ready to upgrade.

Cooking isn't just for fun

Though cooking might seem like a bit of a novelty, food is very powerful in Genshin Impact. Eating meals is one of the only ways to revive characters, but food can also increase stats, grant immunity to status effects like the cold in Dragonspine, or just straight-up heal you. This is why it's always useful to pick up recipes from restaurants across Teyvat and keep a stocked larder. We recommend farming ingredients using expeditions, but in terms of starting locations, you can buy meat from Draff at Springvale during the day, and there's a great place to hunt boar just east of Stormterror's Lair.

Learn how to evade and tap sprint instead of holding it

Genshin Impact doesn't have a dodge or roll functionality, but if you time it well, you can use sprint to quickly evade through attacks. This is quite hard to learn, but it's one of the most useful skills, especially in terms of fighting high-level bosses like Stormterror or Azhdaha in the Trounce Domain. Stamina is a valuable resource in its own right as you need it to perform charged attacks, so it's better to use it lightly when moving around in combat by tapping sprint instead of holding it. You can also increase your stamina by upgrading statues of the seven in each region.

Some other things you should know 

Always stop to collect any Amenoculus, Geoculus, or Electroculus you see floating nearby. These collectibles can be traded into the Statues of the Seven scattered around the world to upgrade them. Doing so gives you a bunch of rewards, including more stamina so you can climb higher or windglide for longer. These guides for Anemoculus and Electroculus locations should help you out.

Complete all the mini objectives in your Adventurer Handbook. It gives you a ton of resources and helps boost your adventure rank. If you're lost and unsure of what to do, this is always a great place to look.

A character who uses the greatsword will break rocks way quicker. If you're going to go mining, bringing a greatsword-wielding party member will help a lot. Failing that, Amber's Explosive Puppet ability will destroy most ore veins almost instantly.

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