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Genshin Impact: Starter Guide Before You Start [Don’t Make These Mistakes!]

Genshin Impact Cover Image
Read time: 10 min.

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You have seen the banners at the subway stations, the occasional not so annoying ads that pop up before while watching YouTube. Genshin Impact, a game developed and published by Chinese company miHoYo, has only been released for around a month and has already taken the world by storm. This ‘free-to-play’ gacha RPG game has redefined the gold standard of mobile gaming. How so? It is a cross-platform title, available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows (sorry Mac users). On top of that, Genshin Impact boasts a single player but co-op ready open-world game that heavily focuses on an action-based battle system. With all that said, Genshin Impact is a very fresh and original title, with occasional bugs and freezes happening from time to time; although we sincerely hope miHoYo fixes their Unity engine game. Without further ado, here are the top tips and tricks for new players, both F2P and pay-to-win alike, to grind like a pro right away!

Always pin your map.

Ever come across something peculiar in the world, but unable to check it out or unlock it at that moment? 

Not to worry, Genshin Impact allows players to pin locations of interest on their map. You can and should also customise your pins with labels and icons. This is a must-have habit to have when playing in such a vast open world environment.

Genshin Map
Flowers, mobs, chests and mining locations. Pinning them will definitely save you some time!

For example, searching for Anemoculus and Geoculus (essential for worshipping the Statues of The Seven to increase stamina) can be a too tedious and lengthy process if you didn’t pin the ones that you have came across previously while exploring the map.

Note: You can only have up to 99 pins on the map.

Use the interactive map to aid your map exploration.

Already started playing and didn’t pin your map at all? Don’t worry. There’s an interactive “Tableau-like” map just for that available online.

It’s never too late to use the Genshin Impact interactive map.

A tool built by AppSample, the interactive map gives a searchable map for users to farm for specific materials. From animal (living) materials to artifact and grind routes, this map has it all.

interactive map

Although there were slight deviations for the pin locations on the map (seem to vary depending on the screen resolution of your monitors), the pins are mostly accurate for efficient farming.

Farming Artifacts is a waste of time (when you are new)!

Yep, you heard us right. 

New players will not notice the scarcity of resin only until much later on. But resin is hands down the only resource in Genshin Impact that is limited by a considerable degree. Even pay to win players can only replenish resin 6 times a day. 

Thus, farming for the best artifacts or completing artifact sets when you are early on the game, i.e. below AR 35, isn’t the best usage of resin at all.

Artifacts of blue grade and above can have up to 4 bonus stats on top of the primary stat. Most artifacts will, however, not come with all 4 bonus stats upon drop.

A new stat will be unlocked every 4 levels if it has less than 4, or upgrades an existing stat if the artifact already has 4.

Artifact RarityMax Level
Base number of Sub Stats
Number of UnlocksNumber of Upgrades
Icon_1_Star4010
Icon_2_Stars40~110
Icon_3_Stars121~22~30~1
Icon_4_Stars162~31~22~3
Icon_5_Stars203~40~14~5

Hence, there’s a lot of probability/RNG for blue (and less so, purple) artifacts as compared to gold artifacts, which usually comes with all 4 bonus stats intact.

What’s more? Upon reaching AR 35, completing domain challenges, such as the Domain of Guyun in the Liyue region, could give players up to 2 purple artifacts per run. 

Gold artifacts have a chance of dropping at AR 40 and guaranteed to drop at AR 45. They can also drop easily at the Wolf of the North Challenge and the Stormterror Domain Challenge.

gladiators finale

So, our advice? 

Transferring experience from artifact to artifact is possible, but experience loss seems to be balanced around 15-16% for levelled Artifacts. So change your focus on weapon ascension and talent level-up materials instead.

It’s a lot more efficient using your resin this way at lower ARs. 

If you are farming artifacts, try to have attack, crit and energy recharge stats as far as possible.

Are you turning a deaf ear to our advice on artifacts? 

Sure, focus on having attack and critical rate stats for your DPS character then.

Flower of Life and Plume of Death will always have HP and ATK as the primary stat, respectively.

Critical damage is also useful, provided that your characters have high crit to begin with (above 30%).

For ability spam and support characters (characters which you swap out right after using the abilities), energy recharge is the primary stat when building them.

How about stats like defence and HP? They are not useful – you’re supposed to be great at dodging damage (read below).

Artifacts gain a massive upgrade every 4 levels, use it to your advantage!

Since blue and purple artifacts unlock new bonus stats at every tranche of 4 levels, you can level the artifacts to 4 and stop right away if you get a terrible stat. 

Dash makes you invulnerable for a split second.

Did you know dashing renders you invulnerable for a slight moment?

It is unknown whether this is intended by miHoYo or will be fixed in the near future.

The invincible animation frames, also known as iframes, are the first few frames of the dash before transitioning into the running motion.

To see an example of this in action, watch 1.03 of the Dvalin tutorial, where the fireballs have hit Xiangling, but no damage was taken due to the iframes.

Wishing 1 or 10 wishes in a row doesn’t make a difference

Okay, there is still a slight difference between pulling 1 or 10 wishes in a row, where wishing 1 at a time gives you the option to stop right after getting the guaranteed 4*.

That being said, it is confirmed that the drop rates do not differ at all between the 2 options.

You will always get at least a 4* every 10 wishes from the last 4*/5*.

Wishes

Don’t believe us? Check your wish history to see it for yourself

Intertwined fates are kind of better than Acquaint fates

Besides having increased rates for the featured 5* and 4* on the banner, intertwined fates currently have no 5* weapons in the wish pool.

Always check the details of the wish banner! E.g. Venti is currently not available during the Klee event.

So if you are going for characters and constellations, it is wise to use your primogems on intertwined fates instead.

Fun fact: Pity will still be active and carried forward to the next wish banner if it didn’t activate in the last event.

4 star characters can do wonders as well

Although Genshin Impact is a gacha game, it appears to be incredibly generous towards F2P players. 

In fact, any 4* characters can become OP and fun to play with while 5* characters like Jean can be pretty underwhelming to some players.

Simply having a 5* character/weapon in the game doesn’t mean total domination for the pay to win players, since a 4* character with maxed out constellations will do better than a 5* with none.

That being said, we would be lying if we were to say 4* are as powerful (or cool) as a 5* – there is still a noticeable power gap between the 2 rarities.

Tier lists are overrated.

Adding on to the previous point, several tier lists are circulating online blatantly declaring certain characters as god tier and others as subpar.

tier lists 2

These lists can be used as a reference, but one should be mindful that these are very subjective and are not fully representative of the characters’ true potential.

Take your time to explore the open world.

As you become closer to AR 30, the story progression tends to slow down considerably. 

Being set in an open world, Genshin Impact has tons of easter eggs for players to discover and delve deeper into its lore.

World quests, secret treasure chests and puzzles… all scattered around the map. 

Not to mention, the breathtaking scenery and music the game has to offer.

Plunge attack or teleport waypoint avoids death.

Running out of stamina while gliding? Simply do a plunge/aerial attack or teleport to a nearby waypoint.

Don’t be misled by the stamina bar, thinking there’s no way out. 

That’s a rookie mistake!

Running out of stamina while swimming to a mysterious ship in the middle of the ocean?

guyun stone forest genshin impact
Beidou’s ship (labelled with an exclamation indicator) has some freebies for you!

If you don’t intend to teleport away, you could consider eating food to instantly replenish your stamina to continue your journey.

Playing on PC gives a more reliable experience, especially when fighting the spiral abyss.

Genshin Impact has high spec requirements, and most phone models may not be able to support smooth gameplay.

This can be extremely detrimental to your gameplay when fighting the spiral abyss, where the timer continues to run even when your game has frozen.

It is also much easier to combo on the PC as players can press 1-4 to swap between character and 5-8 to swap and elemental burst at the same time.

You must swap characters to do real damage with elemental reactions.

And of course, button-mashing works in this game. Just take a look at how easy it is to create elemental reactions, which are essential to countering and doing true damage to certain mobs:

Elemental Reaction
Element 1 (Aura)
Element 2 (Trigger)
Effect Description
BurnPyroDendroPyro damage over time
OverloadedPyroElectroAoE Pyro attack
MagmaPyroGeoFire shield that burns enemies
VaporizePyroHydroAdditional damage
MeltPyroCryoAdditional damage
SuperconductCryoElectroAoE Cryo attack

Lowers enemy physical resistance by 50%
ShatterCryoGeoIncrease CRIT chances
BlizzardCryoAnemoBypass enemy defences
FrozenCryoHydroFreezes enemy
Electro-chargedElectro
HydroElectro damage over time
PoisonHydroDendroAoE poison attack
MudGeoHydroSlows enemy movement and atk speed
ThornGeoDendroBleed

Creates traps that cause damage
CrystaliseGeoCryo/ Electro/ Hydro/ PyroGrants a crystal shield
DustAnemoGeoKnocks enemies back
SwirlCryo/ Electro/ Hydro/ PyroAnemoAdditional elemental damage and some AoE

Do note that the order of the elements matter, where the damage multiplier will differ depending on the trigger element.

You can also read more about elements, where elemental debuffs and elemental resonance can do a great deal of difference with both map exploration and combat.

Save up your fragile resin

Currently, fragile resins is still the most valuable currency in the game for any form of character progression.

This is because the item is incredibly rare and allows you to go past the max number of resin refreshes per day. Typically, players are rewarded 1-2 FR by the adventurers’ guild every time they level up.

fragile resin

It is highly recommended to save these up to use them at one go at the next major patch, or when you are farming for a specific domain material that appears only certain days of the week.

Note: If it’s your birthday, miHoYo will reward you with 1 FR.

Don’t level every character, just 2-3 at a time (or your resources will spread really thin)

As progression is severely restricted by resin in this game, you should try to focus on levelling/enhancing 2-3 characters at a time. 

Even if you are a pay to win player.

electro
We had 2 million mora just an hour ago…

It is virtually impossible to find enough materials, exp books and millions of mora to max out every character when a full resin recharge takes 16 hours and 21 hours once miHoYo raises the resin cap to 160.

Don’t have a claymore user? Use plunge attacks to mine ores faster.

Due to the nature of RNG, it is possible not to have a single character who uses a claymore weapon on your team. This can be troublesome when fighting mobs who can cast geo shields on themselves or when mining for ores.

Fret not, when there’s a will, there’s a way!

Simply climb (or elemental skill if you have Venti) and use a plunge attack on your enemy. This plunge attack will multiply the damage dealt to ores and elemental shields.

Climbing and swimming normally uses less stamina.

Yes, you can climb and swim faster if you hold the sprint button, but it will drain your stamina at a much faster rate. 

If you have just started the game with the base stamina stat of 100, just appreciate the majestic landscape and soundtrack while climbing the mountain peaks very slowly.

Dash running to cover large distances – Don’t just do double dashes.

Holding or tapping the sprint button repeatedly to double dash won’t really help if you are trying to move fast on the map.

There are numerous videos on movement types, showing that bunny hopping is possible on Genshin Impact. But it doesn’t work well on every character either.

To add on, many players also find bhopping to be pretty hard to master.

So what’s a good alternative? 

The answer: Dashing at regular intervals. A double dash may prevent the character from dashing the 3rd time, but spacing out your dashes apart will allow any of your characters to dash again and again… and again.

Pro players can also integrate the dash routine into their bhopping sequence – regular dashes and then transitioning to bhopping when stamina is running low.

Playing on PC? Hold the SHIFT key when launching the game to configure key bindings.

Yes, going to the menu and clicking on the key bindings will do nothing to customising the bindings.

However, most players don’t know that customising them is still possible without the use of any third-party software.

Simply hold SHIFT when launching the game and a pop up will appear, allowing you to customise the original hotkeys.

However, changing the key binds this way is somewhat hacky and will require some tinkering to get it to work.

Do you have more tips to share with new Genshin Impact players? Tell us now!

Related:

Hustle Castle Gem Bay Super Grind Guide 2020

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