Genshin Impact is miHoYo Limited’s brand new title for mobile RPG enthusiasts and within a month after its launch, has already made a name for itself and topped charts around the globe. Often compared to 2017’s game of the year, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact has both graphics and gameplay quality that is set to shake the world of gaming into new standards.
Beyond its availability in multiple gaming platforms, players can enjoy cross play as well across PC, PS4, iOS and Android. While Genshin Impact can be played and enjoyed all on your own, there are plenty of content that becomes a lot more enjoyable with the company of other players.
Genshin Impact sets you on the role of The Traveler, one of twins from another dimension whose sibling was captured by a deity in Teyvat shortly after their arrival. As your powers have been sealed by the god as well, you are left to go on an adventure in the mysterious world, as you try to discover more about it to save your sibling. The long journey is not a lonesome one as you will be accompanied by Paimon who will serve as your guide, and a wide cast of characters who will accompany you through various quests.
The vast open world of Genshin Impact can be overwhelming and the plethora of concepts introduced to you as you begin your journey may appear to be intimidating as well. Fortunately enough, your companion Paimon’s guidance makes it a lot easier to bring you up to speed as far as the basic goes, and the in-game environment’s lush and vibrant ambiance makes every bit of exploration highly entertaining.
If you have just started diving into the world of Genshin Impact and you are looking to improve your heroes and adventure levels, then check out our comprehensive Genshin Impact beginner’s guide, as it has plenty of tips and strategies to jumpstart your adventure!
1. Follow The Main Quests
Diving into Genshin Impact’s vast, open world can both be a very exciting and intimidating experience as your character has a lot of liberty to venture on your own even if the immediate objective points towards a specific area. With the innate ability to climb and swim, you are able to travel across any terrain, discarding limitations to your interest to explore the world around.
Beyond graphics and gameplay, however, Genshin Impact holds a unique and immersive story that is worth progressing along with the main quests. Beyond actually getting to know more about the world of Tevyat and its various nations, the main quests serve as your key to unlocking additional features and game modes as well as earns you most of the basic resources you will need to develop your heroes and boost your progression.
The main quest will be very straightforward during the prologue and will earn you enough characters to form a basic team. At the same time, completing the prologue and securing a full party should bring your adventure level high enough to be able to summon more heroes from the gacha. One of the basic features in Genshin Impact to take note of is the difference between each hero’s levels and your adventure level. While each hero earns experience points in combat to level up and improve their stats, the adventure level grants improvement on stamina as well as grants you access to more areas and quests within the game.
From the screen, you can summon Paimon with the icon at the top left corner of the screen, and it pulls up the main menu. From there, you can click on the quests icon to check all available quests. Note that while Archon Quests are linear and must be complete in sequence provided that you meet the required adventure level, there are numerous story quests that can be pursued in a less linear manner.
Related: Genshin Impact Advanced Guide: More Tips & Strategies to Boost Your Progress
As much as you can, it is best to continue pursuing and accomplishing quests and only venture into other things once the adventure levels bars you from progressing any further. There are also world quests that pop up as you explore the continent further, so be sure to check its tab for ones that are close to you.
2. Maintain A Balanced Team
Genshin Impact can be sufficiently enjoyable even with just the main character on his or her own but having a full party of 4 unique characters in your adventure makes for a wide range of possible combinations that makes combat all the more unique and exciting. You will instantly gain access to 3 more characters after the prologue and Genshin Impact currently has more than 20 characters, some of which you can earn through the gacha system.
Once you reach adventure level 5, you can click on the star icon at the upper right side of the screen. This will take you the “Wishes” feature, which is where you can spend Acquaint Fates and Intertwined Fates to wish for more heroes or weapons. Note that you can instantly purchase fates using primogems, which are the premium currency in Genshin Impact. It is always better to perform a 10x wish as it guarantees a 4-star or higher item or character.
The initial 4 characters you will have in your roster are actually decent and you can do well enough in the game without spending real money in microtransactions. As you accomplish certain feats and reach certain milestones, though, treating yourself and testing your luck in the gacha can be helpful in your journey moving forward.
The most important point to consider in your 4-person party is each member’s elemental affinity. Each hero has one of seven different elements in the game and these elements combine and react differently with one another. The usual consideration of elements in most RPGs that employ the proverbial “rock-paper-scissors” in dealing and receiving damage. Elemental affinities that impact a hero’s skills in Genshin Impact are a little more complex than the usual mechanics and serve as one of the game’s most exciting features.
Exposure to different combinations of elements create various effects in combat and mastering each one is crucial to gaining an advantage in battle. The 7 elements are anemo (wind), pyro (fire), cryo (ice), electro (lightning), geo (earth), and dendro (life). Each one has special effects in combat and the various combinations of these elements open up various strategic possibilities that you can utilize in every battle.
Beyond that, each party has an elemental resonance that provides the team with certain buffs based on the general elemental composition of its members. For starters, any 4 unique elements grants the party a protective canopy buff, which increases each hero’s elemental resistance by 15%. Having 2 characters of the same elemental affinity can also unlock different buffs, so if you are not utilizing a party of 4 heroes each with different elements, you might as well go with 2 pairs of heroes with the same elemental affinity.
With 7 different elements and a maximum of only 4 heroes in your party, it is best to explore various elemental combinations as you unlock more heroes. It is likely to happen that a different elemental combination will be more suitable in some scenarios and against some enemies than others.
3. Equip Your Heroes With The Right Weapons And Artifacts
Beyond elemental affinities and skill sets that make each hero in Genshin Impact unique, each hero specializes in 1 of 3 types of weapons: swords, bows, or catalysts. As most of the stronger or higher-grade weapons can be obtained through wishes, it will most likely mean that the best ones you get may not necessarily be the most suitable for your chosen hero.
Suppose you obtain a 4-star Lion’s Roar sword, which has bane of fire and thunder and boosts damage against enemies affected by pyro or elektro by 20%, you might be inclined to equip it on any hero who can wield a sword. If, however, the only ones in your roster who can use a sword are the traveler and Kayea, who are anemo and cryo elementals, then you may want to consider equipping them with a different sword instead.
In a way, either hero can still earn some benefits from the options provided by Lion’s Roar, during attacks following a setup by their pyro and elektro teammates. There may be lower grade swords in your inventory, however, that they can benefit more from unconditionally.
On top of being able to equip a different weapon, each hero can be further strengthened and customized by equipping them with artifacts. Each of your heroes have 5 different artifact slots that each give a basic stat boost as well as set effects. Like weapons, artifacts also come in different rarities and star grades but just the same, lumping together the rarest ones on a hero does not necessarily yield the best results.
While most artifacts provide basic stat boosts such as outright increases in HP, attack, defense, critical damage, or even energy recharge, some provide damage boosts to certain elements. Be sure to take this in consideration when choosing the best artifacts for each character. On top of the basic stat buffs, each artifact has set effects that unlock additional perks when two or more of the same set are equipped on the character.
The adventurer set has a 2-piece set effect tgat increases the max HP of the wearer by 1,000 and a 4-set effect that regenerates 30% of max HP over 5 seconds when opening a treasure chest. The lucky dog set can boost defense by 100 if 2 pieces are equipped and will heal the user by 300 HP whenever the character picks up mora.
The traveling doctor set provides a 2-piece buff that increases incoming healing by 20% and a 4-piece effect that restores 20% HP whenever the character uses an Elemental Burst. There are 22 other different sets in Genshin Impact to unlock but for beginners, raising your adventure rank is important to widen the variety of artifacts you can obtain.
4. Be Selective When Upgrading Your Heroes And Gears
Each hero as well as each piece of equipment you can have can be further strengthened through different enhancement and upgrade methods. Given that you will eventually be recruiting additional heroes and continuously gain more equipment, the limited resources you need to perform enhancements will hardly suffice if you choose to spend them across every hero and gear you come across with. As such it is only wise to be a little more prudent when performing enhancements and focus mainly on the ones you feel will be beneficial for a long time.
Although each hero will gain experience points with every enemy they defeat in combat, it is hardly enough to get the whole party’s level up to the growing level of enemies in subsequent ordeals. Fortunately, there are various character EXP materials you can earn from treasure chests and quest completions that you can use to grant each character instant EXP points.
It is important to note that each hero can only be initially levelled to level 20 and you will need to ascend the hero to boost his level cap to level 40. Given that you will still earn EXP from combat, be sure to keep the hero’s level and experience below the maximum until after you are ready to ascend him or her.
Once you reach adventure rank 15, you can ascend a level 20 hero. Ascension requires various materials to be initiated and some of these can currently be only earned as adventure level rewards. Ascension unlocks a new talent for the hero and enables the hero’s skills to be levelled up as well. Each hero will further earn more stat boosts and skill improvements from constellations that can be unlocked following linear progression.
You will need a rare resource called Memory of Roving Gales for each constellation to unlock for the main character, which can be earned as quest or adventure rank rewards. For all other characters, you will need their specific Stella Fortuna, which can only be gained through the wish feature.
Weapons can be upgraded in 2 ways. The most basic means of doing so is through enhancement, which will consume other weapons as well as weapon enhancement materials to level up your weapon and increase its effectiveness in combat by raising its base attack power and bonus stats. Refining is a little more difficult to do as it requires an extra copy of the same weapon to sacrifice. Refining improves the passive effects of the weapon. Artifacts, on the other hand, can only be enhanced the same way as weapons.
5. Manage Your Stamina Carefully
While walking and fighting various enemies do not consume each character’s stamina in Genshin Impact, running, climbing, and swimming does. Travelling by feet maybe fun for exploring every nook and cranny you chance upon in your adventures, but doing so without dashing can sometimes take a long while. Genshin Impact has a stamina feature that delimits some of your actions in the game. Although stamina replenishes rather quickly when you are at rest, running out of it in critical moments can be fatal.
For starters, there are no ways of blocking an attack from enemies in combat and the only way to avoid damage is by dodging incoming attacks using bursts of speed by your dash. Without stamina, though, it will be trickier to avoid taking damage when you are unable to dash. As such, ensuring you have sufficient stamina before engaging enemies in combat and managing your stamina within each encounter is important to practice, especially if you have underlevelled heroes who may take in a lot more damage from hits.
Outside combat, you will be traveling long distances even if there are teleporters unlocked. Additionally, following the conventional path to your destination can often be boring especially given your ability to climb walls. Notice that every bit of climb you make reduces your stamina and jumping up while climbing a wall depletes a huge chunk of it. There is fall damage in Genshin Impact and some long drops can instantly kill your character. Although you have a glider with you at all times, it can only be activated when you are at rest and not while hanging from a wall.
Lastly, some travels in your adventure will require you to cross a body of water and as simple as that feat may seem, it can prove to be deadly. It can happen that your entire supply of stamina will not even be enough for you to swim slowly to the other side of a lake. Swimming faster will just deplete your stamina faster and once it runs out, you will find your hero drowning.
It will not be instant death, though, especially if you have a full HP. You will lose a fraction of your health and be transported back to your original position. If you drown in the water with low HP, however, your hero will perish, and in a very unheroic way.
6. Accomplish Feats Within The Adventurer Handbook
Once you complete the prologue, you will be directed towards the adventurer’s guild where you will unlock the adventurer handbook. As we mentioned earlier, you earn adventure experience on top of each hero earning experience and level up your adventurer rank as well. As adventurer rank is key towards unlocking the rest of the game’s feature, accomplishing quests and exploring ias as important as engaging in combat.
At the adventurer’s guild, you should remember to claim rewards for each new adventurer rank you reach. This can help you progress faster as each rank up reward hold a variety of resources you will need to strengthen your heroes and gears. More rewards can be claimed by accomplishing feats in your adventurer handbook, which you can access through the book icon at the upper right side of the screen. Tasks in the handbook are divided into chapters and on top of earning rewards for completing each objective, an extra set of rewards can be earned after completing all investigations.
Adventure EXP is a typical reward for completing investigations in the adventurer handbook, so if you have some pending tasks within it that are well within your reach, feel free to prioritize its completion especially if you are close to its location.
7. Interact With Unique Objects You See On The Map
While we recommend pursuing the main quests to progress as fast as you can, it should not deter you from exploring unique objects you see around you, especially those within close proximity to the path you travel. There are important landmarks such as teleport waypoints and statues of the seven that you need to activate and interact with as well as hordes of resources and treasure chests to claim along the way.
Although travelling by feet or by gliding can be a fun way of exploring the continent, there are teleport waypoints scattered across the world in Genshin Impact that you should activate. This will hasten travelling from one point in the map to the next and will be very useful if you are in a rush to travel. The statues of the seven are like resting spots that heal your entire party when you interact with them.
You can spend anemoculus to upgrade them and doing so will earn you great rewards like increased stamina, adventure EXP, and primogems. Note that the healing you receive from the statues can be set differently than its default. As you approach a statue of the seven, make sure to check the statue’s blessing and set it up according to your preferences.
With regard to the anemoculus you need to upgrade the statues, you can see them on the mini map at the upper left corner of your screen. They are like white floating objects that stay in place and while some are in plain sight, some are somewhat hidden above the grounds or even atop tree branches. If you spot one within the path towards your destination, make an effort to approach and obtain it.
There are also a plethora of treasure chests to be obtained across the map, with some even respawing over time. Some chests can be claimed as is while others require you to accomplish certain feats to unlock them. There maybe a group of monsters guarding the chest and if you see one with an aura close to a mob of enemies, then chances are that you need to clear the enemies to remove the aura from the chest and claim its rewards. Some chests can only be unlocked after solving puzzles around it.
Lighting switches using elemental attacks can be a typical puzzle that comes your way when it comes to chests in the field. Relative to this, there are creatures that float very much like anemoculus you will regularly see on the map, these creatures will start moving when you go near them and staying by their side until they reach their destination will reward you with a treasure chest.
There are numerous resources scattered about and it is always best to grab whatever you can in your travels. You do have a limit to the number of items you can hold but for starters, it will take a lot of looting to fill your inventory. The raw materials you can gather across the map range from awakening materials, upgrade materials for your gears, and food items, which can also serve as ingredients for better food.
Another important feature in Genshin Impact you should make a habit of taking advantage of is cooking food. If you noticed, there are no potions in the game and the only way to replenish lost health, outside of healing skills, is through eating. There are, of course, food items you can readily eat without cooking but the HP you can recover from them is very minimal. Cooked food, however, drastically improves the healing capacity and may even throw in some temporary stat boosts for your party.
You will easily spot areas where you can cook in the map as indicated by an NPC cooking beside the typical outdoor camping cooking site. Although intimidating, having the necessary ingredients is the only real challenge in cooking. You simply have to time your tap right in the smallest box moving across the bar. The bar moves slow especially on lower tier recipes and you will most likely have perfect result on the first meals you cook.
Although the initial battles you will engage in are very easy, it is always best to be prepared with a bag full of food items before venturing forward. Likewise, consuming food items to ensure each character in your party has sufficient HP is a must as well.
8. Accomplish Achievements For More Rewards
There are items that you immediately earn for every enemy you kill and some may even drop some additional loots. There are also plenty of resources you can gather across the map in Genshin Impact. Completion of quests as well as clearing investigations in the adventurer’s handbook provide you with extra rewards as well but beyond all that, there are also achievements to accomplish for extra bonuses.
Achievements in Genshin Impact can be accessed through its icon on the main menu. Achievements serve as milestones of your progress considering the various aspects of your adventure and exploration. Achievements are divided into 14 categories and while it may take a while before you see an indicator on each group, you can freely browse through each list to see how close or far you are from clearing an objective.
Primogems are rewarded for each accomplishment objective that you clear and while some may require characters to reach a certain level or strength, some are fairly easy to achieve provided you are aware of the objective. As such, be sure to read through each one and let the list serve as your guide towards trying different things in your adventure. Receiving primogems as rewards are always best done sooner than later.
9. Spend Time To Check Your Inventory
The enormity of content in Genshin Impact relates well to the wide array of items you can earn or pick up in your long journey. Although you may easily remember what some of the items can do through using them, there are plenty of items that end up in your bag that you will most likely not have an idea about. As some of these items can give you some insight on other aspects of the game you may not be that familiar with, be sure to read through what each one can do.
You can access your inventory from the main menu or through a shortcut at the upper right side of your screen. Items you have in your bag are grouped into different categories and newly obtained ones are marked accordingly. As far as knowing what each one is for, what you should focus on learning early on are items that are best consumed sooner than later, like rewards that boost adventure EXP or various currencies you can exchange for valuable resources at the shop. In any case, consider browsing through your items as a rest stop from all the adventuring.
While Genshin Impact certainly holds a lot more than what we can cover in one guide, this is where we will end our beginner’s guide. We will certainly be back with another guide and we hoped that you learned a lot from this one. If you have played Genshin Impact extensively enough and stumbled upon a neat trick or strategy in addition to what we have discussed, be sure to share them with us through the comment section below!