Genshin Impact Beginners Guide - 4 Tips to Help You Get Started

Genshin Impact, the free-to-play open-world action RPG by miHoYo is out of closed beta and has finally been released for the world to experience. This anime-style game that heavily pulls mechanics from the likes of Breath of the Wild has captivated players across the world within days of its official public release. For all the new players out there, here are a few tips to help you get started on your journey.

Main Story Quests

Genshin Impact allows players free reign to explore the map at the very moment they get control of their character. And while it is very tempting to forego the main objective very early on, we encourage you to do them first as the game gives you a few new characters as you progress through the story. The game generously provides you with characters that cover almost each element type (Pyro, Cryo, Electro) and on your first gacha 10x roll, guarantees you another character to cover the Geo element. Doing the main story quests also nets you a ton of experience points for your Adventure Rank which unlocks more and more features and rewards as you level up. Having a character per element on hand is handy when exploring the open world as certain elements will be required to interact with specific devices such as shrines or to simply use against enemies harboring the opposing element.

Weapons and Artifacts

With games like these, players are worried about whether or not they should start upgrading their gear early on or to save up resources for later. Which items do I level up? What factors should be considered when doing so? Etc. The easy answer is to only items worth putting resources into as those that have a rank of 3-stars or higher. Item rarities are color-coded, making them easier to keep track of (1-star = gray, 2-star = green, 3-star = blue, 4-star = purple, 5-star = gold). 3-star weapons will always have a passive skill assigned to them and refining these weapons by consuming duplicate copies of themselves will increase the effectiveness of their passive skills.

Save your Chunks

In the city of Mondstadt, there's a blacksmith by the entrance whom you can give ore chunks to be converted into enhancement ores as materials to level up either your characters or weapons. Enhancement ores come in 3 tiers, the first of which require commonly found Iron Chunks to be forged. Fine Enhancement Ores require White Iron Chunks which are harder to come by but provide more exp to your characters and weapons. Mystic Enhancement Ores require Crystal Chunks which are even harder to come by and of course offer the highest exp out of the 3.

For new players, I do not recommend forging the Fine and Mystic Enhancement Ores as the required Chunks can only be found further down the map and aren't as easy to find. What I do recommend is saving the White Iron and Crystal Chunks to instead be used to forge the 4-star weapons that the blacksmith can make for you as these will be much more useful on your adventure.

Level up your Adventure Rank

Separate from your character levels, weapon levels, and artifact levels is your Adventure Rank. AR is your account-wide progression level that isn't tied to any specific character's progression. As your AR increases, new features are unlocked the higher you go. These range from things such as the max level you can raise or ascend your characters to, what dungeons you are allowed to raid, to key game features such as expeditions, seasonal events, and even the online co-op mode.

Whether you are a brand new player or an experienced one, we hope these tips helped you in some way. Genshin Impact has been a ton of fun so far and we'll definitely be playing more it.

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