Genshin Impact Gacha-of-the-Wild All

Mantid wrote:

I will say I have been having a great deal of fun with Klee, Aloy, and Ameno Traveler. Drop Klee's mines, toss out Aloy's freeze bomb, then palm vortex everything together! Won't ever be a top teir move, but it is satisfying.

I certainly can see where Aloy needs some constellations eventually. She has some of the limitations you see in character designs which make constellations desirable, like needing a second charge of her freeze bomb.

I was glad to see that her bombs could be sucked in by Anemo characters. I love those kinds of interactions. I was thinking they probably wouldn't do any constellations for her, but seeing how her constellation page is worded, they definitely left room to add them in the future. Maybe they're saving that for another mini-event when Forbidden West is released next year.

I went to fire up GI on my PS5 to claim Aloy, but it's telling me I already have an account linked. I must have fired up the game briefly on my PS4 back when it launched before settling on PC It doesn't look like there's any way to unlink the account, so I'll just have to wait for 2.2 to play with her.

I was 60 into pity starting this banner, and beat the 50/50 so I got Raiden 16 wishes in- and I was also lucky to get Sara as my first 4-star from this banner.

I haven't started building either character yet since I still haven't got far into the new island so I haven't seen the new bosses needed for ascension or talents yet. I figured I focus on one character at a time. But I'm debating which to try out first. Not sure which might work best with Ayaka and/or Yoimiya.

I've got more weapon options currently for Sara than Raiden (I think I'll use The Catch on Raiden but it may be a bit before I fish enough to get it).

Also, in other news, the new event that started today was kind of fun. Interesting mechanic to have to swap pairs of characters every 25 seconds or so.

Raiden will work spectacularly with Yoimiya.

Sara is still an open question in general. I’m leveling her now that I have Raiden fully ascended, so I’ll let you know when I have her leveled enough to give a serious try and have impressions. My gut tells me she’s going to be a bit on the fiddly side though — mostly useful in niche comps or when you want an ATK buff for both abyss teams.

zeroKFE wrote:

Raiden will work spectacularly with Yoimiya.

Cool. Got Raiden up to level 70 tonight- 80 soon... Now I need to work on getting a spear for her.

EDIT: Ugh! Getting The Catch is going to take forever...

Tscott wrote:

EDIT: Ugh! Getting The Catch is going to take forever...

Those stupid Raimei Angelfish!

Doesn't help I've yet to find a fishing mini-game I actually enjoy. There just doesn't seem to be anyway to make fishing enjoyable!

I'm also disappointed that only the Traveler can fish.

Some not so obvious fishing tips for those looking to farm The Catch.

1) If you don't see the type of fish you're looking for in a fishing spot, fish some of the others to see if that type appears afterwards. Each spot only shows about 4 or 5 fish at a time, but can have 7 or so in the area. So once you catch one fish, one of the hidden fish appears. Fish until no new fish appear to be sure you've got all the type you're looking for.

2) Each spot has a daytime and a nighttime fish population. Once you've gotten all the fish at daytime, advance the time to night and fish from that population (and vice versa).

3) Fish take 3 days to respawn. It sucks.

Why so many needless nerfs to this archon character?...?...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Yb31jUB.jpg)

Been playing around with her a bit at level 80. Got her talents up to 4,6,8 and she can make some pretty powerful characters on her team a bit more powerful. It is pretty nice pairing her with Yoimiya, since using Raiden's E and switching characters lets Yoimiya proc her ultimate on hit. Even without the ultimate, it's a nice buff constantly applying electro and pyro.

It seems like if you need a 4th character on a team, just adding Raiden Shogun will make everything hit about 20% harder.

That said, her electro-power-charging-ring that always hovers on the back of your active character can be a little distracting in the overworld. Especially if you're in an area filled with a lot of electro puzzles you're trying to solve. I wish it at least faded away when you exited combat and came back once you were fighting again.

What is the easiest way to get a decent weapon for Raiden?
Looked at the fishing stuff for some seconds... but, eh, maybe something less grindy than that?

Finally got Yoimiya to 60 today. And her weapon.
Time to do the same with Raiden.

The fishing spear is absolutely her best 4 star weapon, so it might be worth the effort. If you’re a battle pass buyer, Deathmatch is also great.

After those two, Favonius Lance would be okay if you’ve got one. If not, and you have starglitter then a Blackcliff Spear would be an okay option.

None of the craftable spears are particularly suitable for her, so I wouldn’t waste any billets you might have. If for some reason you have the Prototype already crafted you could use it for the stats, but I don’t think the passive will do anything for you — her attacks work with effects that are triggered by EXECUTING normal attacks (Xingqiu’s ult, for example), but they do burst damage. This is the problem with triggering Beidou’s ult, and probably applies to that weapon too.

So really, I’d suggest doing the fishing, even if just for the base version. Even without refinements it’s probably better than the other options, except maybe Deathmatch (or Favonius, depending on your artifacts maybe). Then you can consider getting the fish for refinements at whatever pace you prefer.

I just got a new phone that can play this, and it's nice to see the thread is still active. Any starting tips?

Mixolyde wrote:

I just got a new phone that can play this, and it's nice to see the thread is still active. Any starting tips?

For the most part, just have fun — there’s very little to worry about early on. Especially don’t worry about meta team building/end game talk. You don’t really have to worry about having invested resources in leveling characters and weapons until maybe level 40 or so.

The one thing I wish I had done a bit earlier was to start trying to use all my resin (the game’s energy mechanic for acquiring leveling resources). To begin with, that will just mean doing leylines for experience books or gold.

Also, it plays very well on mobile, but I'd still recommend playing it as a PC game if you can.

zeroKFE wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

I just got a new phone that can play this, and it's nice to see the thread is still active. Any starting tips?

For the most part, just have fun — there’s very little to worry about early on.

Yeah, this. I do have a couple tips regarding the gacha elements:

1) Don't spend any money early on, even if you're lusting after some fancy looking characters. You will earn gacha currency just by exploring the world, completing quests, participating in events, and earning achievements. If it seems like you're struggling with a combat encounter, it's not because you're missing powerful characters. You just need to level up, increase your talent levels, or improve your gear. Genshin Impact is very free to play friendly. You do not need to spend any money at all.

2) If you do earn some gacha currency and get the itch to spend it on something, I'd highly recommend only spending it on the limited character banner early on. That's the one featuring Raiden Shogun right now, but it will rotate out after a few weeks. Avoid the weapon banner for now.

Dyni wrote:

2) If you do earn some gacha currency and get the itch to spend it on something, I'd highly recommend only spending it on the limited character banner early on. That's the one featuring Raiden Shogun right now, but it will rotate out after a few weeks. Avoid the weapon banner for now.

There's also the Beginner Banner- it allows you to do pull 10 wishes for the cost of 8 wishes, twice. Every 10 wishes is a guaranteed 4 star character or weapon, if you didn't get lucky and pull on earlier than 10 wishes in. One of the 4 stars will be Noelle- she's okay with shields and a bit of healing early on. It's possible to get lucky and pull more than two 4-stars (or possibly a 5-star, but the odds are slim).

You should get the 16 wish cost without too much trouble just from advancing through the game as others said above.

One thing I would do different early on is to ignore picking up World Quests if I wasn't going to do them then. You'll see them pop up on the map as you explore as blue exclamation points. They will stay there until you are ready to start them, just remember where (you can also put pins on your in game map to mark the location).

Early on I grabbed them as I saw them. It got a little confusing. I actually thought a couple quests disappeared since I wasn't sure I had actually done them.

Also don't get these confused with random events, which show up as a blue diamond on your map (no exclamation point). These do disappear, and sometimes rather quickly. The rewards on them are minor though, a little money or xp items for weapons and a little bit of companionship XP for your characters. Don't worry about missing them.

Tscott wrote:
Dyni wrote:

2) If you do earn some gacha currency and get the itch to spend it on something, I'd highly recommend only spending it on the limited character banner early on. That's the one featuring Raiden Shogun right now, but it will rotate out after a few weeks. Avoid the weapon banner for now.

There's also the Beginner Banner- it allows you to do pull 10 wishes for the cost of 8 wishes, twice. Every 10 wishes is a guaranteed 4 star character or weapon, if you didn't get lucky and pull on earlier than 10 wishes in. One of the 4 stars will be Noelle- she's okay with shields and a bit of healing early on. It's possible to get lucky and pull more than two 4-stars (or possibly a 5-star, but the odds are slim).

I just want to note that the 4-star guarantee isn't limited to the Beginner banner, that is a system that goes across all the banners. You are guaranteed to pull a 4-star in no more than 10 wishes, regardless if they are done all at once or one at a time or even if they are done months apart, on any one banner (i.e. 6 pulls on the limited character banner and 4 pulls on the Wanderlust Invocation won't guarantee a 4-star). The wish counts do carry forward as the limited banners rotate out, so you don't have to worry about wasting pulls if you don't hit the guarantee before the banner changes.

This also means that as you earn the few free wishes they give you on the Wanderlust Invocation (called "Acquaint Fates", which are blue, as apposed the the pink and blue "Intertwined Fates" which are for the limited banners), the only reason to save those is if you are waiting for a new 4-star character to be added. For instance Kujou Sara, the woman with the red mask on the Raiden Shogun banner, was just added to the game and won't be available in the WI until the next content patch mid-October.

Or if you are lazy like me and just don't get around to using your Acquaint Fates for months a time. Granted I already have a good stock of characters and, ummm, a good selection of bows...

Tscott wrote:
Dyni wrote:

2) If you do earn some gacha currency and get the itch to spend it on something, I'd highly recommend only spending it on the limited character banner early on. That's the one featuring Raiden Shogun right now, but it will rotate out after a few weeks. Avoid the weapon banner for now.

There's also the Beginner Banner- it allows you to do pull 10 wishes for the cost of 8 wishes, twice. Every 10 wishes is a guaranteed 4 star character or weapon, if you didn't get lucky and pull on earlier than 10 wishes in. One of the 4 stars will be Noelle- she's okay with shields and a bit of healing early on. It's possible to get lucky and pull more than two 4-stars (or possibly a 5-star, but the odds are slim).

You should get the 16 wish cost without too much trouble just from advancing through the game as others said above.

I pulled Noelle, Barbara and 8 3-star bows/swords. Is there a rule if thumb in how to level up weapons?

I pulled Noelle, Barbara and 8 3-star bows/swords. Is there a rule if thumb in how to level up weapons?

Early on, not so much. Along with all the other things we were mentioning before, you don't need to worry about much before level 40 or so whether that's character or weapon level.

That said, maybe don't get attached to three star weapons, because it shouldn't be too long before you can replace most (if not all of them) with 4 star ones, either through gacha drops or through crafting. The only notable exception is is a 3 star catalyst called "Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers" which provides a HUGE team buff that lets it remains useful on support characters until the endgame. If you get one of those, feel free to level and refine it as much as possible without any worries.

After so many banners in a row with brand new characters, what character re-runs are everyone hoping for? (Not necessarily out of the ones rumored, but any of them)

Hu Tao. Just her, because her C1 is so transformative for the character. I know the bigger challenges of the game would go smoother if I dipped for Ganyu or even Eula, but I'm just not that interested in those characters. And other than floor 12 of the Abyss, I've been able to solo everything the game has thrown at us anyhow, so I'm not exactly hurting.

Meanwhile, I'm still debating on Kokomi. I can see many teams where an off field, aoe water applier would work so well, even with her icd issues. Just need to decide if I'm willing to bet my saved primogems against the release of a surprise 5-star I won't want to pass up.

Mantid wrote:

Hu Tao. Just her,

She's definitely my most wanted character-wise. Ganyu and Eula would tempt me too.

Meta-wise, Kazuha would be my #1 most wanted. It still hurts me that I lost the 50/50 and got QiQi instead of him.

Meanwhile, I'm still debating on Kokomi.

Yeah, everything I've heard so far screams "wait and see". I'm very curious if they can pull her off, but 90% thinking she'll only be good for healing. And with Jean, Sayu, Diona and Bennett commonly on my teams I'm not in much need of more healing.

Tscott wrote:
Meanwhile, I'm still debating on Kokomi.

Yeah, everything I've heard so far screams "wait and see". I'm very curious if they can pull her off, but 90% thinking she'll only be good for healing. And with Jean, Sayu, Diona and Bennett commonly on my teams I'm not in much need of more healing.

Yeah, between Dion, Sayu, Noelle, and Barbara, I'm not hurting for heals. And honestly I've started to look at healing as mostly a secondary trait for a character.

I still want Jean to cover much the same role Ameno Traveler currently covers (meaning my Traveler would setting into Geo, since her Electro role is well covered by Raiden), and Qiqi because she's adorable.

Of course I've gotten Mona, Keqing, and two Diluc... because the game just won't give you the characters you want easily...

Tscott wrote:

After so many banners in a row with brand new characters, what character re-runs are everyone hoping for? (Not necessarily out of the ones rumored, but any of them)

The only re-runs I would be tempted to roll for right now are Albedo and Kazuha. Albedo because I like characters with solid deployable abilities, and I would love to try a Ning/Zhong/Albedo core.

Kazuha because the more I see of him, the more I think he would be a lot of fun to play in addition to being a powerful addition to some teams. Mihoyo has been a little off on some of their character ability designs lately, but they're nailing the Anemo characters.

I'm also somewhat interested in Xiao, but probably not enough to roll for him.

An ad during Binging with Babish worked well enough to get me to try this and Im enjoying it so far. It is VERY crashy on my iPad but starts back up quickly enough. This is the first of this sort of game for me, so Im finding the 16 currencies as confusing as most of the chat here. The recent noob friendly advice has been appreciated.

Anything you wish you had or had not spent early, like Xp cards, or primothings?

polypusher wrote:

An ad during Binging with Babish worked well enough to get me to try this and Im enjoying it so far. It is VERY crashy on my iPad but starts back up quickly enough. This is the first of this sort of game for me, so Im finding the 16 currencies as confusing as most of the chat here. The recent noob friendly advice has been appreciated.

Anything you wish you had or had not spent early, like Xp cards, or primothings?

If you are interested in spending money in the game, there are only two things that could actually be considered a "good deal" (and even that is pretty relative):

- The $5 "Welkin Pass" which gives you a sizable chunk of gems spread out over a month.
- The $10 tier for the battle pass, which gives you a very respectable amount of extra resources of all types, as well as the choice of one of five 4 star weapon options that are (mostly) very good.

(If you're curious how much of a time suck the battle pass is, it's quite reasonable to finish a given battle pass just by playing regularly within each six week patch period -- I usually wrap it up in about four weeks I think, depending on event bonuses are available in any given patch, and even if you only do basic daily/weekly stuff you it won't take more than five weeks. Currently we're about two weeks into a patch cycle though, so for a new player it might be questionable? You can always just wait and see how far you progress by the end of the patch, and choose to buy the $10 upgrade at that point to get all the extra resources at once.)

Those two things are basically all you could ever really want to spend money on, and even they really aren't necessary -- you can do all exploration, story, most event content with just the starter characters and whatever will drop with the gems you get for free just exploring and doing quests. There are endgame combat challenges and occasional combat challenge events that will be a lot harder as a pure F2P character, but you will never get to a point where either exploration or story progression will be locked behind the fact that you don't have more powerful characters.

Don't buy any of the other resource bundles. You'll get everything you need just playing the game.

Don't spend primo gems to restore energy. If you play to the point where you're at the "endgame" (ie, you've done ALL the exploration and ALL the quests, etc) you might eventually get to a point where the most important resources for increasing character power are gated behind energy, but even then, don't do it! Even at that point there is still so much else you can do when you're out of energy for the day.

Topping up for crystals after having used the "big bonus" for any given tier is a TERRIBLE deal. Even with the initial bonus, it's not really advisable.

Mostly the game is going to tempt you to do this with 5 star characters. So far, the pattern is that for each six week patch cycle there will be two three week periods during which a 5 star character is available to be rolled. On average, it takes roughly 75 rolls to get a character, but you are only guaranteed the advertised character every other 5 star drop (for the other drop, you have a 50/50 chance to get one of the characters that's always available through the standard banner). As a result, if you want to guarantee that you will get an advertised character with the worst possible luck, you may need to be willing to commit to upwards of 160 rolls.

Now, as you're working through the core game content you will get a LOT of gems for free just from exploring and doing quests. If you continue playing past that point, the two small ticket purchases mentioned above probably get you enough to roll one 5 star character (ie, not necessarily the advertised character) every patch or two (assuming you're also doing the various events that happen throughout the patch to get all the freebies given away just for playing). And therein lies the bait for topping up: if you get into the game, you'll probably be interested in rolling for more than one character every patch or two. Anyway, hopefully that helps you get a sense of the general landscape of things so you can feel a little more informed and choose appropriately what kind of spender you want to be.

(Worth noting: up until a couple patches ago, the ONLY thing you would (reasonably) do with crystals is convert them directly to gems for rolling on gacha banners. There are now outfits you can also buy, but only two so far. One of those was actually given free in an event, and based on Mihoyo's patterns in their other big game (Honkai Impact), you can expect that maybe half of whatever outfits they introduce will start off as free via participation in free events, and then will be for sale for alongside the other 50% for a LOT of money afterwards.)

It is VERY crashy on my iPad but starts back up quickly enough

As I mentioned above, it's pretty solid as a mobile game, but I highly recommend playing on your PC when you can. The game has cross platform saves, so you can go freely between platforms. Technically it's also now cross platform with PS4/5, but you need to be VERY careful when starting the game on a Playstation platform because if you don't link your account properly on the first try, you're kind of locked out.

What about regrets related to 'I wish I'd been picking up x along the way more' like whacking trees or saving iron chunks or anything like that.

zeroKFE wrote:

Currently we're about two weeks into a patch cycle though, so for a new player it might be questionable? You can always just wait and see how far you progress by the end of the patch, and choose to buy the $10 upgrade at that point to get all the extra resources at once.)

I think it would be tough for a brand new player to finish the battle pass at this point. If you don't finish it, it's probably not worth the purchase. Just work on completing some of the tasks if you'd like, but definitely do not purchase it for now. Once it has a few days left, you can see how much progress you've made and decide from there.

My advice would be to skip on purchasing the battle pass for now. Like Zero said, your money really doesn't go very far in this game, and you can do pretty much everything without paying a cent.

If you're still playing and enjoying the game come next battle pass refresh, think about investing the $10 from there.

polypusher wrote:

What about regrets related to 'I wish I'd been picking up x along the way more' like whacking trees or saving iron chunks or anything like that.

Definitely mine blue crystal chunks whenever you see them (and purple ones once you get to Inazuma) -- those can be turned into the primary resource for upgrading weapons, and only respawn once every three days. Iron and white iron also are on a three day respawn timer, but are much more plentiful and much less useful, so unless you're specifically saving for a recipe, no need to go too much out of your way for them. Don't pass them up if it's easy, but don't worry too much about them.

The same goes for nearly every piece of plant matter and other gatherable (and most mats dropped by enemies too). Most are pretty plentiful and easy to find when you need them, but it's worth picking them up as you go if it is easy to do. Once you get into leveling specific characters or weapons you'll inevitably encounter something that you wish you had been gathering a bit more actively, but for the most part once you know what you want, you'll be able to get it with a reasonable amount of dedicated gathering.

I'd say the main rule of thumb would be to be aware of the materials needed to ascend your favorite characters and weapons, and be sure to put a bit more effort into grabbing as many of those things as possible when you see them in the distance. Otherwise, just grab everything else when it's easy.

Finally, as for the wood that comes out of trees, don't worry about that AT ALL until you actually unlock the teapot home building system (towards the end of the Liyue story maybe?). You will need a lot of wood if you choose to interact with that system, but it is VERY easy to farm. Unlike everything else which is usually on a one or three day respawn timer, once you've hit seven different trees the earliest you hit will drop wood again, so all you need is an area with eight or more trees and you can farm up hundreds of pieces of wood in just a few minutes. So sure, hit trees as you go if you like, but absolutely do not sweat wood gathering one single bit.

polypusher wrote:

What about regrets related to 'I wish I'd been picking up x along the way more' like whacking trees or saving iron chunks or anything like that.

Not really. I'd just say grab what you see. Picking up a variety of wood as you play through the story could save you a bit of farming for building up your teapot later on, but it's not a big deal. Having a claymore or geo character to break ore while exploring is a good idea.

Edit: Dang, Zero so fast

A few other tips I can think of:
1) Don't spend any fragile resin early on. They will be much more valuable once you make it to AR 40/45.
2) Don't be afraid to level characters to 20 to try them out. Even up to level 40 isn't much of an investment. Beyond that, leveling cost starts to ramp up, so think about your favorites that you want to take higher.
3) Don't forget that you can level up talents too.
4) Explore and have fun, but consider pushing through the story until you get out of Mondstadt. The world really opens up when you get to Liyue, the second major area.

4) Explore and have fun, but consider pushing through the story until you get out of Mondstadt. The world really opens up when you get to Liyue, the second major area.

Oh, this is a VERY good point. Not only does the world open up, but so do a number of other key systems as well as access to resources you might need for some characters you get early on (like Xiangling's ascension material).

And especially if you decide you want to roll for Inazuma characters, you'll need to get through the Liyue story and unlock Inazuma before you'll be able to level Inazuma characters past 40. (Their level 20 ascension mats can be earned just by doing the trial run in the special events tab when they are on banner.)

You'll have all the time (and reason, thanks to world quests and commissions) in the world to go back and fully explore all the parts of Monstadt you might breeze through in the story, but opening up Liyue will really expand the options for how you spend your time in the game.

zeroKFE wrote:
4) Explore and have fun, but consider pushing through the story until you get out of Mondstadt. The world really opens up when you get to Liyue, the second major area.

Oh, this is a VERY good point. Not only does the world open up, but so do a number of other key systems as well as access to resources you might need for some characters you get early on (like Xiangling's ascension material).

I don't know, I rushed through much of Mondstadt, and that I do kind of regret. My memory is a little fuzzy on parts.

But I was hungry for primogems to pull Klee and I was successful, so I don't totally regret it.