Start Your Journey
If you caught our first podcast episode, you know that we love free-to-play games! Genshin Impact is the latest F2P title to make a splash in the gaming industry.
Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG from developer miHoYo. Players explore an epic fantasy land with the goal of reuniting with your lost sibling.
The game features various movement, combat, and crafting mechanics, with plenty to see and do across console, mobile and PC! While cross-save is currently only available across PC and mobile, you’ll still be able to group up with up to 3 friends to fill out your party.
Given the sheer size of Genshin Impact, it can be a little confusing when you first boot up the game. Thankfully, the Average Gamer community has already logged hundreds of hours in the game and we aggregated the top tips for getting started!
While this is a beginner guide for Genshin Impact, we’ll be sprinkling in some bonus advanced tips for those of you who have already started your journey. Prepare to master the elements and solve the mysteries of Teyvat!
Where to Play Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact can be played on PS4, PC, Android, and iOS devices. If you have access to two or more of these platforms, the decision will come down to a few factors:
- Do you have friends who will play on a particular platform?
- If PS4, you’ll need to play on PS4. Hopefully, the devs open up cross-play with other platforms in the future!
- If any other platform, keep reading
- Do you prefer to play action games with a controller?
- If yes, PC still seems like the better choice because you’ll be able to cross-save for mobile gaming on the go
- If no, it comes down to preference between keyboard and mouse or touch screen
The mobile controls for Genshin Impact are about what you’d expect, with dedicated on-screen controls for movement and interactions. You may find it difficult to pull off certain combos of attacks, but the overall feel of the game is there.
The Genshin Impact mobile graphics are pretty spectacular, so it’s definitely viable to enjoy the game without using a larger monitor. The fantastic graphics does require a mobile device with a strong graphics card so check this list to see if you will be able to run this game.
Ultimately, PC is probably the best way to enjoy Genshin Impact right now since you have the option for different input devices and you’ll be able to cross-save and cross-play with a bigger pool of people!
What to do First
Don’t fear fomo! There are a million things to do in the game so try not to feel like you are restricted. Enjoy the game at your own pace and don’t be afraid of missing out on content – there will always be time to catch up.
If these three sentences didn’t convince you… then you must first complete your daily commission quests. These grant substantial amounts of Adventure Rank Exp. A high adventure rank is important to unlock late game content (more on this later).
Next is to use your original resin. These are the moons that can be used on Ley Line Blossoms (the blue and gold clouds on the map), Abyssal Domains, or boss battles.
Lastly, finish the story quest! Genshin Impact has a great storyline that will allow you to explore the lore of Teyvat!
Exploring Teyvat
Genshin Impact gives you a variety of movement options to traverse the map. In addition to being able to sprint around, you can swim and fly!
Within the first hour of the game, you’ll unlock the ability to glide off elevated surfaces. This is the fastest way to cover ground but does take up some of your stamina. If you run out of stamina while gliding, you’ll fall to the ground, taking damage and possibly ending your life depending on height and remaining HP!
Characters in Genshin Impact
Currently, there are 7 known elements, 6 of which are 6 playable. Elements include Anemo, Cryo, Electro, Geo, Hydro, and Pyro, with Dendro playable at a later date.
Additionally, there are 5 playable weapon types. Two are ranged – Bows and Catalyst (similar to mage) – and three are melee – Spears, Claymores, and Swords. Characters can be obtained through in-game events or through the wish system.
Building your Genshin Impact Party
Having a balanced party that can dish out high damage without dying is critical to surviving Genshin Impact’s toughest bosses. Most parties consist of 1 Main DPS (Damage Per Second) character, 1-2 Sub DPS characters, and 1- 2 Supports.
Here’s a breakdown of each category of character:
Main DPS
Your Main DPS is the character you use in the field to battle regularly. This will be your highest leveled character whose normal attacks do the most damage. Because character experience is limited in the game, make sure you level your Main DPS character first!
5-Star options for Main DPS:
- Diluc
- Klee
- Keqing
- Tartaglia
4-Star options for Main DPS:
- Fischl
- Razor
- Ningguang
- Xiangling
- Lisa
Sub DPS
Usually consists of a character that can create elemental combos with your Main DPS character. The primary goal of this character is to affect enemies with elemental combos by using the character’s elemental skill and burst. Teams may run one or two Sub DPS characters based on how much damage the squad needs.
5-Star options for Sub DPS:
- Jean
- Venti
- Mona
- Qiqi
4 Star options for Sub DPS:
- Xingqiu
- Chongyun
- Sucrose
- Kaeya
- Amber
- Beidou
- Traveler (Anemo)
Support
The goal of this character is to provide buffs, shields, or healing for the Main DPS. This is usually done by activating the character’s elemental skill or elemental burst when it’s fully charged. Teams may run one or two Support characters based on how much healing the team needs.
5-Star options for Support:
- Jean
- Venti
- Qiqi
- Mona
4-Star options for Support:
- Bennett
- Barbara
- Noelle
- Traveler (Geo)
Mastering the Elements
There are 7 elements in Teyvat: Anemo (wind), Cryo (Ice), Electro (lightning), Geo (earth), Hydro (water), Pyro (fire), and Dendro (nature). Dendro isn’t playable yet, but we’re anxiously waiting until this element is available to the Genshin community!
Elements can be combined to inflict considerable amounts of damage on enemies. Here’s a quick explanation of each elemental combination that can affect both enemies and even your own avatar.
Burning:
Achieved by combining Dendro and Pyro. Burning causes Burn damage over time.
Most commonly achieved by lighting the surrounding environment (tree roots or grass) on fire. You need to be careful with the burning effect so you don’t do damage to yourself!
Crystalize:
Achieved by combining Geo with Cryo, Electro, Hydro, or Pyro. When combined, it creates a crystal that provides an elemental shield when picked up. You’ll receive one shield per enemy, so AoE attacks can create multiple shields at once! These greatly reduce the effect of elemental damage and is particularly helpful when you’re anticipating being affected by an elemental reaction.
Electro-charged:
Achieved by combining Electro with Hydro. Similar to burning, this status inflicts electro damage over time. If the environment is raining, it could be helpful to switch to an electro character to inflict AOE shock damage!
Frozen:
Achieved by combining Cryo with Hydro. As expected, this freezes the opponent in place.
It’s a great elemental reaction that can give your character a breather to heal up with food.
Melt:
Achieved by combining Cryo with Pyro and causes increased damage against foes.
Melt is extremely powerful against Cryo enemies with shields since it will do 2x damage on each hit. Melt will literally melt their shields away and is useful against large slimes, cryo abyss mages, and cryo regisivine.
Overloaded:
Achieved by combining Electro with Pyro. This deals AoE pyro damage and can cause explosions. Overloaded is great against Geo shields!
Superconduct:
Achieved by combining Cryo and Electro. Inflicts AoE Cryo damage while reducing Physical Resistance by 50%. While superconduct works wonders for physical attackers, it isn’t nearly as useful for catalyst wielders who inflict elemental damage.
Swirl:
Achieved by combining Anemo with Cryo, Electro, Hydro, or Pyro. Swirl absorbs the first element it comes in contact with and spreads that element to other enemies within range, dealing bonus elemental damage. This can be used to spread burning in nature environments or to spread frozen in water environments.
Vaporize:
Achieved by combining Hydro with Pyro. Deals additional elemental damage, but dissipates the two elements afterward. Interestingly, vaporize can be used to put out fire!
In our experience, Pyro has some of the best elemental reactions. It can melt shields and causes the most damage over time. Currently, the two best DPS characters are Diluc and Klee, both pyro based characters.
Performing Combos in Genshin Impact
Performing Elemental combos will require the use of multiple characters, switching after applying their particular damage effect. Depending on the system you’re using, switching a character can be one tap (on mobile) or button press (pc or console). You’ll use one character to set the first effect, switch to a new character, then apply the second effect. As mentioned in the prior section, Genshin Impact combos are formed in the following way:
- Pyro + Cryo = Melt
- Pyro + Electro = Overloaded
- Electro + Hydro = Electro charged
- Electro + Cryo = Super-conduct
- Hydro + Cryo = Frozen
- Hydro + Pyro = Vaporize
- Geo + any element = Crystalize
- Anemo + any element = Swirl
Adventure Rank
Adventure Rank (AR) determines your progression and available activities in Genshin Impact. Some may argue about how enraging this system. Others say it’s the most important aspect of the game.
Everything you do in the game can help level up your AR. The higher AR you achieve, the more resources you’ll have at your disposal.
Adventure Rank Thresholds:
- 8, 12 = Outcrops (blue, yellow) Event spawn in Teyvat. These provide resources to help level up characters and weapons
- 12 = Commissions (daily missions list in purple)
- 14 = Expeditions (fire and forget system – send characters on a mission to retrieve resources and that character is unavailable for an allotted time chosen by the user.)
- 16 = Cooperative (Co-op) mode and unlock 1st domain of Forgery (artifacts). Co-op can be played 2 ways. One way is limited to only one user’s game world. Up to four people can play in that session, but all progression goes to the one user who initiated the session. You can also run co-op mode in the dungeons via online matchmaking. Certain chests in the world require two real people to open, so team up with a friend for extra goods. There are also co-op online events to keep you busy. Unfortunately, no main quest can be done in the co-op world. Certain resources can be consumed soon after defeating world bosses or finding them around the world.
- 20 = Spiral Abyss and Battle Pass
- 22 = Domain Blessing (artifacts)
- 27 = Domain Mastery (talent materials)
Sources of AR EXP:
- Unlock Waypoints/ Statues
- Collect Oculi
- Complete Quest (Story, World, Archon, Commission)
- Leyline Outcrops
- Spiral Abyss
- Abyssal Domains
- Elite Bosses
- Weekly Bosses
- Shrine of Depths
- Dungeons/Temples
- Open Treasure Chests
There are two collectibles that progress your AR in Genshin Impact: Anemoculi and Geoculi. You can turn Anemoculi in at the statue of seven to increase stamina. When you level up your AR, you can receive rewards from the Adventures Guild. Additionally, beyond 20 AR, your world level will increase, making the monsters more challenging.
World Levels:
| Adventure Rank Range | World Rank |
| 1 – 20 | 0 |
| 20 – 25 | 1 |
| 26 – 30 | 2 |
| 31 – 35 | 3 |
| 36 – 40 | 4 |
Your World Rank continues to increase by 1 every four AR until AR 60+.
Quests and Commissions
Genshin Impact questing system is simple and straightforward. There are four types of Quest to complete:
Archon – allows you to progress through the storyline of Genshin Impact.
Story – involves the members you receive from the story or wishes. These help you learn about party members and gain xp
Commission – these quests reset daily. You can do them once per day.
World – scattered all around the map and are given to you by various NPCs. A good source for AR experience!
Event – limited-time quest that you can complete to earn special rewards.
Genshin Impact Wish System
Genshin Impact is a part of the Gacha game series, which is based on a Japanese vending machine. You can either spend in-game money or real-world cash to open loot boxes and packs. In this system, you’ll collect items, cards, or characters.
In Genshin Impact you can earn a special currency called primogen from various activities in the game. Additionally, you can use real money to purchase genesis crystals, which convert to primogen. Players use 160 primogen in hopes of getting a new weapon or character. The game incentivizes people to buy more at a time by guaranteeing high rarity drops!
Weapons and Artifacts
Weapons and artifacts are key to building a strong team in Genshin Impact. Equipping the proper ones will allow you to clear in-game content quicker.
Weapons:
All 3* weapons and above have a base attack, a sub stat, and a special skill. You can level up weapons using other weapons or enhancement ores. Don’t worry about using your 1* and 2* weapons as exp fodder – they won’t be needed.
You can also ascend a weapon when it reaches its level cap. Ascension items are usually gained from quests or domains.
It’s important to match the weapon to the character you are building. For example, if you want to build a DPS dealing Geo traveler, you might consider using the fillet blade with a sub stat that includes %ATK. A supporting Anemo traveler might use iron sting as its weapon which increases elemental mastery, boosting the damage of the character’s elemental skill and elemental burst.
Artifacts:
Characters can equip 5 artifacts at a time, providing different types of set bonuses. Similar to weapons, artifacts have a main stat and sub stats. As you level up an artifact, extra sub stats and sub stat enhancements will be added to the artifact.
At the start of your adventure, the best stats to use include ATK and ATK%. This will allow your Main DPS to output more damage and clear content faster.
As you transition towards the late game, your support character can best utilize elemental mastery to help with elemental reactions. Your DPS characters can use CRIT% and CRIT Rate to help increase their damage.
Meal Prep
Cooking is a pretty relaxed element in Genshin Impact that allows players to craft meals out of collected ingredients. While most recipes will boost your health, some will provide temporary buffs to your stats, like increased speed!
You’ll need to cook meals manually when you first start prepping them. This is a manual mini-game that involves some hand-eye coordination to stop a moving bar in the appropriate zone. It’s fairly easy to do and will eventually open the option to automatically cook recipes when you’ve completed the manual challenge a certain number of times.
Since there are ingredients all over the place, try to cook as often as possible to ensure that your characters can always be topped off with health in sticky situations. Make sure to check the effects of the food before crafting so you don’t waste materials on low-value foods!
Bonus Tips
All the extra tips that don’t necessarily fit under one of the larger topics
- Buying flowers from Flora counts towards your “Collect 100 local Mondstadt specialties” quest in your Battle Pass
- Collecting Iron, White Iron, or Crystal Chunks from an Expedition also counts towards your mining quests in your battle pass
- Level your DPS character first. As you will notice, character exp is limited in the game so it is important to level the character who will dish the damage first.
Take on the World of Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact has drawn some comparison to Breath of the Wild, but it’s truly its own adventure. With a unique party system, the opportunity to team up with friends, and superb combat mechanics, it’s no wonder that millions of gamers have started their Genshin Impact journey!
Genshin Impact is free-to-play and offers in-game purchases, including loot boxes and packs. You can play through the entire game without spending any money.
Currently, Genshin Impact offers cross-platform play between PC and mobile players. Players on the PS4 can only team up with other PS4 players.
Genshin Impact offers cross-save between mobile and PC, meaning you can continue your journey on either advice. This is especially great for people who want to grind levels on the go when they are away from their desktop.
If we missed anything in our Genshin Impact guide, feel free to add your tips and tricks in the comments section. We want to make this the ultimate manual for new players and appreciate any feedback from the community!
IG: Nakumah3
Twitter: iNakumah
Twitch: iNakumah (come check out some Genshin Impact gameplay on his stream!)
If you’re looking for someone to team up with, join our third contributor, BobEvans, with his Genshin ID: 609174124!
