Genshin Impact Beginner’s Guide: Everything You Need To Know Before You Start

Genshin Impact was my first ever gacha game and I went into it knowing almost nothing about how these games work. I downloaded it expecting a free open world action RPG — which it is — and then immediately discovered that underneath the beautiful art style and genuinely fun combat there is an entire ecosystem of systems, currencies, banners, artifacts, talent books, and progression mechanics that the game explains poorly and expects you to figure out on your own. I spent my first few hours making decisions I later wished I could undo. This guide is what I wish someone had handed me on day one — everything you actually need to know to start Genshin Impact properly without wasting your early resources or missing things that matter more than they seem.

Genshin Impact is free to download and play on PC, PlayStation 5, iOS, and Android. You can enjoy the vast majority of it without spending a single penny. Whether you are completely new to gacha games or just new to Genshin specifically — start here.

What Genshin Impact Actually Is

At its core Genshin Impact is a free to play open world action RPG where you control a party of four characters and explore a massive world called Teyvat. The world is divided into regions — each one with its own visual identity, culture, story, and set of characters tied to it. HoYoverse has been expanding the game continuously since its launch in 2020 and in 2026 the game is on its seventh major region with more still being built. The amount of content available in Genshin Impact right now is genuinely staggering and all of it is accessible without paying anything.

The game has strong JRPG influences — story quests with fully voiced dialogue, character relationship building, world exploration with puzzles and secrets everywhere — combined with an action combat system that feels responsive and satisfying once you understand how the elemental reaction system works. It is not a traditional MMO despite looking like one from the outside. You play it mostly solo with co-op available for specific content after you have progressed far enough. The tutorial is long and slightly overwhelming but push through it because the game opens up significantly once you are free to explore.

What Is Gacha — And How Does It Work In Genshin

Gacha is the monetisation system that Genshin Impact is built around and understanding it before you start spending anything is the most important thing this guide can tell you. The word comes from Japanese vending machines — you put money in, you get a random prize. In Genshin Impact the gacha system is called Wishes and it works like this. You spend a currency called Primogems to purchase Intertwined Fates which you then use to pull on character or weapon banners. Each pull gives you a random result — mostly four-star characters and weapons with a small chance of getting a five-star. The featured five-star character on a limited banner is what most players are pulling for.

The honest truth about gacha is that it is gambling with a safety net. The safety net in Genshin is called pity. Soft pity begins at 74 pulls — from that point your chance of getting a five-star starts increasing dramatically with every pull. Hard pity — the guaranteed five-star — hits at 90 pulls. Every pull you make carries toward pity even across different banners, so if you get to 60 pulls on one banner without a five-star those 60 pulls count toward your next five-star wherever you pull next. The 50/50 system means your first five-star on a limited banner has a 50 percent chance of being the featured character. If it is not the featured character — you lost the 50/50 — your next five-star on any limited banner is guaranteed to be the featured character. Know your pity count. Know whether you are on a guarantee. Make decisions based on that information rather than impulse.

Primogems and Currencies — What Everything Actually Does

Genshin Impact has several currencies and understanding what each one does stops you from accidentally spending the wrong thing on the wrong item. Here is a quick breakdown of the ones that actually matter as a new player.

Primogems are the main premium currency. You earn them for free through exploration, events, daily commissions, achievements, and story quests. Every 160 Primogems converts into one Intertwined Fate for pulling on limited banners. Do not spend Primogems on anything except pulling characters — every other use of them is a bad trade.

Mora is the basic gold currency used for almost everything — levelling characters, upgrading weapons, crafting, cooking. You will never feel like you have enough Mora. Farm it constantly.

Resin is your daily energy system. It regenerates over time and is spent to claim rewards from bosses, domains, and weekly challenges. Spending your Resin every day is the single most impactful habit you can build in Genshin because it is the primary source of the materials you need to make your characters stronger. Never let it cap out at 160 and go to waste.

Genesis Crystals are the paid currency that converts to Primogems. If you are playing free to play you will not have many of these. The Welkin Moon — a monthly subscription that costs real money and gives you daily Primogems — is considered the best value purchase in the game if you ever decide to spend anything.

How Levelling Works — It Is Not What You Expect

Levelling in Genshin Impact works completely differently from most RPGs you have played before and understanding this early saves a lot of confusion. Fighting enemies gives you almost no experience. Instead you level characters using EXP books — Hero’s Wit, Adventurer’s Experience, and Wanderer’s Advice — which you find in chests, from events, and as quest rewards. You can take a character from level one to twenty in seconds by feeding them enough books. This means you can level any character you want regardless of whether you have been using them — there is no grind tied to playing a specific character, just spending the right materials.

Your characters have a level cap that increases as you raise your Adventure Rank — your account level that goes up as you complete quests, open chests, and explore the world. When a character hits their current level cap you need to Ascend them using specific materials gathered from the world before you can continue levelling them. This Ascension system also unlocks passive talents at certain thresholds so it is worth ascending your main characters as soon as you have the materials rather than leaving them at the cap.

The Elemental System — The Most Important Thing To Understand About Combat

Genshin Impact has seven elements — Pyro, Hydro, Electro, Cryo, Anemo, Geo, and Dendro. Every character in the game uses one of these elements and the interactions between them — called Elemental Reactions — are the foundation of everything that makes the combat interesting. Combining Hydro and Electro creates Electro-Charged which deals continuous damage. Combining Pyro and Cryo creates Melt which multiplies damage significantly. Combining Hydro and Cryo creates Freeze which stops enemies from moving. Understanding which reactions your team can trigger and how to trigger them consistently is what separates effective teams from ineffective ones.

Your party has four characters and you switch between them instantly during combat. This is not just a convenience — it is the core combat mechanic. You swap characters to apply different elements, to trigger reactions, to use abilities on cooldown while others recharge, and to protect a character who is about to take a hit. Getting comfortable with fast character switching makes the combat feel completely different from just mashing attack with one character and it is the single skill that most improves your gameplay early on. Do not play Genshin like a traditional action game where you stick to one character. Rotate constantly.

Artifacts — The Most Important Progression System In The Game

Artifacts are Genshin Impact’s version of an armour and stat system and they are the primary way you make your characters genuinely powerful. Every character can equip five artifact pieces — Flower, Feather, Sands, Goblet, and Circlet — each providing stats and contributing to set bonuses when you equip two or four pieces from the same set. The right artifact set for a character matters enormously — an attack-focused DPS character wants completely different artifact sets than a healer or a support.

The most important thing to understand about artifacts early on is that you need to level them up. An un-levelled artifact does almost nothing. A fully levelled artifact transforms your character’s damage output and survivability. Level your best artifacts to maximum as soon as you can. The sub-stats that appear on artifacts as you level them up are random — this randomness is the real endgame of Genshin Impact for veteran players chasing perfect artifact rolls. As a new player do not worry about perfect sub-stats yet. Just get good artifacts from the right sets, level them up, and equip them. The improvement will be immediately noticeable.

Constellations — What They Are and Whether You Need Them

Every character in Genshin Impact has six Constellations — upgrades that enhance their kit in various ways ranging from minor quality of life improvements to significant power increases. You unlock Constellations by obtaining duplicate copies of the same character through the gacha system. For five-star characters this means pulling the same character multiple times which is extremely expensive even with pity — most players never get their five-stars past Constellation 0 or 1 without spending significant real money. The good news is that most five-star characters are perfectly functional and enjoyable at Constellation 0.

Four-star characters are different. Because they appear on every banner as off-rate options and are occasionally given away through events, you will naturally accumulate duplicates of four-stars over time without targeting them specifically. Fully constellating a four-star character — C6 — transforms some of them into some of the most powerful supports in the game. Bennett at C1 for example becomes one of the best supports available. Building your four-star roster through natural play and fully constellating the best ones is one of the smartest long-term strategies in Genshin Impact for free to play players.

Talents — How To Make Your Characters Stronger Over Time

Every character has three Talents — their Normal Attack, their Elemental Skill, and their Elemental Burst — and each one can be levelled up to make it more powerful. Levelling Talents requires Talent Books which come in different tiers and are specific to each character’s nation of origin. The important thing to know is that Talent Books are only available from specific domains on specific days of the week. Monday Wednesday Friday covers one set of nations, Tuesday Thursday Saturday covers another, and Sunday every domain drops every book type.

As a new player do not stress about maxing Talents immediately — it is expensive in both books and Mora and the gains are incremental rather than transformational. Focus on getting your main DPS character’s primary damage talent to level six or seven first and leave supports at lower levels until you have more resources to spare. The further you progress the more important Talent levels become but in the early game Artifacts and character level matter more.

Oculi — Collect Every Single One You See

As you explore Teyvat you will occasionally see glowing collectibles floating in the environment — small sparkling objects that appear as icons on your minimap when you get close. These are called Oculi and every region has its own type. Anemoculus in Mondstadt, Geoculus in Liyue, Electroculus in Inazuma, and so on for every region. They are sometimes tucked away on clifftops, hidden behind puzzles, or floating in the air requiring you to figure out how to reach them. Do not walk past them. Stop and get them.

Turning Oculi in to the Statues of the Seven in each region gives you rewards — Primogems, Adventure Rank experience, and most importantly permanent Stamina increases. Stamina in Genshin controls how long you can sprint, climb, swim, and glide. Running out of Stamina while climbing a cliff or swimming in deep water is immediately dangerous and early in the game your Stamina pool is small enough to be genuinely limiting. Every Oculi you collect and turn in is a permanent quality of life improvement that makes exploration more comfortable and opens up areas you physically could not reach before. Collect them as you go rather than trying to hunt them all down later.

Daily Commissions and Resin — Do These Every Single Day

Genshin Impact has a daily task system called Commissions — four short missions that reset every day and reward Primogems, Mora, and EXP materials on completion. Doing your four daily Commissions every day is the most important habit you can build in Genshin and it takes less than fifteen minutes once you know what you are doing. The Primogem income from Commissions adds up significantly over time — it is the backbone of the free to play Primogem economy and skipping days genuinely costs you pulls in the long run.

Your Original Resin — the energy system used to claim rewards from bosses and domains — regenerates at one point every eight minutes and caps at 160. Spending your Resin every day before it caps is the second most important daily habit. Domains are where you farm Artifact sets and Talent Books. World Bosses drop Ascension materials for your characters. Weekly Bosses drop materials needed for Talent upgrades at higher levels. All of it costs Resin. All of it is worth doing every day. Players who are consistent with their daily Resin spending over weeks and months pull dramatically ahead of players who log in inconsistently — not because they spend more money but because they use their free resources efficiently.

Final Tips Before You Start Your Journey

A few last things worth knowing before you dive in properly. The story quests are genuinely worth doing — Genshin’s writing has improved dramatically over the years and the newer Archon Quests in particular are genuinely impressive narratively. Do not skip cutscenes, do not rush through dialogue, and do not treat this game like a grinding game where the story is just filler between the gameplay. The world has real depth if you engage with it.

Save your Primogems. Seriously. The number one mistake new players make is pulling on every banner that looks interesting rather than saving for a character they genuinely want. Decide who you want before you spend anything and save until that banner arrives. The gacha is designed to tempt you constantly — pretty new character designs, limited time pressure, fear of missing out. Ignore all of it until you have a clear target. Patience in the gacha is the single skill that will improve your experience more than anything else in this game.

Genshin Impact is one of the most generous free to play games available right now in terms of how much content you can access without spending anything. The combat is genuinely fun, the world is genuinely beautiful, and six years into its lifespan there is more to do than ever. Start with the story, collect your Oculi, do your dailies, save your Primogems, and let the game reveal itself to you at its own pace. You are going to spend a lot of time in Teyvat. There are far worse places to be.

Mr. Sano

Hello! I am Mr. Sano Ethan, a content creator, variety gamer, and the driving force behind Kick Of Draft. With over 6 years of hands-on experience across PC, console, and indie gaming,