On the surface, Genshin Impact seems like a Zelda Breath of the Wild clone. But after a few weeks with the game, it’s revealed itself to be something quite unique. While it contains many Breath of the Wild trappings, as well as a gacha system that’s become very popular in the mobile market, its many intersecting systems provide hours of content before ever hitting a hard paywall. That all being said, there is a lot of information thrown at the players early on that can be difficult to parse through.
Upon starting the game, you will pick between 1 of the 2 travelers and give them a name. But this is not the only character you’ll be able to play as in Genshin Impact. One of the main features of this game is the ability to form a party of 4 and swap between the characters rapidly to perform elemental combo attacks, or utilize their particular strengths in a fight. Each character will have a basic attack, a stronger charge up attack, an elemental skill, and an elemental burst. They can also wield a sword, a 2 handed claymore, bow, or magic catalyst.
With over 20 characters already in the game, you’ll find many different combinations of weapons and elements, allowing you to mix and match a team to cater to your style, if you can obtain the right characters that is. Simply by playing the story, you’ll unlock 3 additional characters to fill out your party of 4. But as each character comes with an innate weapon and elemental type, you won’t be able to utilize each type without claiming additional characters. You’ll unlock this ability once you reach adventurer rank 5 during the game’s tutorial, as well as the ability to purchase microtransactions. A quick breakdown of the wish system that’s used to roll for new characters is covered in another video you can check on our wiki called Explaining Wishes.
I heard the guy who made it is pretty smart. The influence from Breath of the Wild is felt most in Genshin Impact during traversal. You can dash for short amounts of time using your stamina meter, use a glider after receiving it in the prologue, and climb up virtually any surface while using extra stamina to jump. Best of all, and thank goodness for this, rain won’t impede your climbing progress.
Combat seems simplistic at the start, but eventually you’ll want to be prepared for tougher encounters, which is where character swapping and elemental combos become more important. Many enemies you’ll face may be weak or resistant to certain types of elements, and you’ll want to make the most of this by switching to different characters and using their elemental attacks to stun, debuff, or slow enemies. Hitting an enemy with multiple elements in quick succession can cause some exciting reactions, like using freezing cryo and gusting Anemo abilities to summon a blizzard effect that completely cuts through enemy defenses. On top of this, simply having a robust group of characters with specific elements in a party can provide passive buffs. Having 4 characters with unique elements will decrease the elemental damage your party takes overall, while having 2 pyro teammates will lower the duration of any cryo moves used against you.
In your travels through Genshin Impact, you’ll soon notice that you may be leveling up in different areas. This is because you’ll be earning 2 types of experience, character experience and adventurer’s experience. Each time you fight and defeat enemies, your entire party will gain character experience. This will go towards individual characters gaining levels to increase their health, attack power, and defense. However, you may find that enemies give a fairly low amount of experience, and in order to vastly raise a character’s level, you need to use character XP material found in chests or gained as rewards.
Each of these will grant a character much more experience than fighting a single monster, but you can run out of them quickly. On the other side, you’ll gain adventurer experience as you explore more of the land, take on quests, uncover shrines and teleport waypoints, and more. Your adventurer’s rank is directly tied to how much of the game is open to you, which main story quests you can embark upon, and what kind of loot you can gain. Additionally, you can speak with the adventurer’s guild in either of the cities each time you level up your adventurer’s rank to gain a ton of bonus items. Note that both your character levels and adventurer’s rank have a soft cap, 20 for character and 25 for adventurer, and cannot be pushed higher with more experience.
Instead, you’ll need to meet the requirements for Ascension. Characters can ascend the first time with the right materials after reaching Adventure Rank 15, but Adventure Rank can only ascend by finishing a special Ascension Quest received from the guild. As characters gain Ascension levels, they will unlock new talents and augment their powers. Meanwhile, ascending your adventurer’s rank will increase the world level, giving you bigger rewards and tougher enemies to contend with. The most confusing aspect of Genshin Impact is undoubtedly its multiple currencies.
Our wiki page contains more in-depth info on all of them, so I’ll be covering the ones you most need to worry about when starting out. Mora is the most basic type of currency. It can be gained from doing just about everything, and is used to buy things like food, ingredients, and basic weapons and artifacts from merchants. Keep in mind, it’s easy to come by early on, but you’ll really need it for later levels, so try not to spend more than you have to. Primagems are also rewarded for most of the game’s tasks and have various uses, but they’re mainly used to create fates or replenish original resin, something you’ll need for late game leveling.
The aforementioned fates come in 2 different types, Acquaint Fates and Intertwined Fates. They’re used for wishes, the game’s gacha mechanic, in order to pull different groups of characters and weapons. Very rare to find on their own, they’re sometimes awarded by the guild at certain adventurer ranks, or given out by the developers in in game mail. Most often, they’re crafted from primagems, which can be done automatically when trying to roll for a wish banner when you lack the required amount.
