Genshin Impact New Player Starter Guide

Genshin Impact, one of the most successful live service games of all time, has found its way to Xbox consoles. Best described as an ever-evolving open-world RPG with anime characteristics, Genshin is perfect for anyone who's looking to explore a high fantasy world with countless unique characters and an excellent combination of wonderful music, semi-unique gameplay mechanics, and great art direction. 

The only problem is that if you just started playing Genshin Impact on Xbox or with recent updates, you are going to be more than four years behind in terms of content releases, so everything is going to be a bit overwhelming. That's where this guide comes in, to help you get started!

The World of Genshin

There is a main storyline that carries you through the game with fully realized cutscenes and voice acting. Your goal is to find your sibling, but you'll face some tough foes like the dragon Dvalin and The Abyss Order along the way.

You can't essentially "beat the game." As this is a games-as-a-service title, the story isn't completely finished and will continue through future updates. It's similar to the current model of Warframe or AFK Journey, in which chapters of the story will be released over time and will continue to expand the game's lore, story, and narrative.

The world features a ton of world exploration. You can find better weapons, Artifacts, and even currency in the chests around the world.

Bosses like the Ruin Guard drop important items like the Chaos Device that can be used to upgrade characters, weapons, or equipment. The Ruin Guard is a particularly nasty foe for lower-level players, but we have the tactics you need to defeat it. There are even puzzle elements within the world itself like the secret puzzle in Luhua Pool to tackle.

We recommend focusing on the story at first as it is the best way to increase your Adventure Rank. With an improved adventure rank, you'll gain rewards and features like Co-op, Expeditions, and the Spiral Abyss challenges. There is an immense amount of content available to players for free.

Pay to Win

Since Genshin Impact is a free-to-play game with gacha mechanics, it's only natural to ask if the game becomes unreasonably difficult to encourage you to spend money. The short answer is no. There is no competitive multiplayer mode whatsoever and the endgame modes aren't so difficult that the lower rarity 4-Star characters are instantly invalidated.

Gacha games are when characters and weapons are locked behind rolls. Imagine getting a Kinder Surprise and hoping for the toy you want, but with Genshin Impact, it can become way more expensive than that.

For context, the gacha mechanics are as follows:

• On every limited-time 5-star character banner, the first 90 pulls give you a 50% chance of receiving the featured 5-star character. If you do not receive the featured 5-Star character, your next 90 pulls guarantee that you will receive the featured 5-Star character.
• The pull count persists across banners so if you fail to get the 5-Star character featured in the active banner, the next banner inherits your pull count and featured 5-Star guarantee if applicable.
• In addition, every 10 pulls guarantees either a 4-Star weapon or character.

As for premium currency, referred to as Primogems in-game, your monthly income and expenditure might look like this once you hit the endgame:

• One banner pull costs 160 Primogems.
• Daily gameplay activities grant up to 60 Primogems.
• A full clear of the monthly Spiral Abyss endgame mode rewards up to 800 Primogems.
• The other monthly endgame activity, Imaginarium Theater, grants another potential 800 Primogems.
• Pulls refund a special currency that grants up to five pulls per month.

Therefore, you can obtain up to 26 pulls per month on paper. In practice, you can more or less guarantee a featured 5-star character every two to four months once you factor in event rewards and gifts from the developers, if you play regularly.

Best Characters

Broadly speaking, Genshin Impact's approach to gameplay makes it so that your team composition is just as important as the individual characters in the team. Furthermore, the limited duration of character banners makes it so that you can't really plan ahead in anticipation of a meta-defining character being available.

With that in mind, it might be better in the short term to pull for a character that you like (due to their design, story, and gameplay) and then build a team around them rather than wait indefinitely for a meta-defining character who may or may not appear in the future.

Support characters tend to be the most future-proof. DPS characters can be powercrept by someone who simply hits harder. Support characters can usually only be replaced by a character who fulfills a similar role.

There are currently more than 90 characters through the Wish system, and they all hold their own abilities and have an element that can aid you in battle or the open world itself. However, some are better than others. Characters like Chongyun can break through rocks with his claymore weapon while Venti is one of the few characters who can fly upward. 

They all offer something to the table, so it's worth rolling for more characters, especially so you can work with more elements. If you reroll the same character, you can actually upgrade the character. Elements can significantly change the battle since you can combine different elements to demolish foes.

Examples of top-tier 5-Star support characters (pre-Natlan) include the following:

• Furina - Best offensive support, has summons but drains team health.
• Zhongli - Best defensive support, and has some offensive utility.
• Raiden - Very versatile DPS that can fit in many teams, and functions as an Energy battery for teammates.
• Nahida - Literal god of Dendro elemental reactions.
• Kazuha - Consistent grouping/crowd control abilities.

Of the released Natlan characters so far, Xilonen might see the most long-term play due to her Defense-shredding and Healing capabilities.

If you are in dire need of top-tier DPS characters, the undisputed king of pre-Natlan DPS characters is Neuvillete. Arlecchino is another very strong candidate, as is Alhaitham for Dendro-centric teams.

When it comes to healers, Kokomi is a very good choice. If you're looking for a Healer that opens up a completely different playstyle, Xianyun is practically the only option as she enables jump attacks for the whole team.

4-Star Characters' Viability

Much like many other gacha games, Genshin Impact has higher rarity units and lower rarity units. In Genshin's case, the 4-Star characters are not bad. In fact, some of them function as very capable replacements for 5-Star characters, or are outright irreplaceable. The only caveat is that sometimes you need multiple copies of 4-Star characters for them to reach their full potential via their Constellation bonuses.

If you are just starting out, consider investing in these 4-star characters (pre-Natlan) for the long run if you can get them.

• Bennett - He buffs, he heals, he sets enemies on fire. The only problem is that you have to stay in his buff circle to receive his buffs.
• Xiangling - One of Genshin's best supporting DPS characters. High AOE damage and Pyro application, especially with high Constellation levels.
• Chevreuse - Limits team to Pyro and Electro characters only, but offers significant buffs and debuffs.
• Sucrose - Very good AOE damage with grouping/crowd control capabilities.
• Kuki Shinobu - Constant Electro application and decent healing.
• Xingqiu - Defensive buffs with constant Hydro application.
• Fischl - Near permanent Electro application, but greatly improved by higher Constellation levels.

Again, this is by no means an exhaustive list of Genshin Impact's best 4-star characters. There are situations where other 4-Star characters can do just as well or better, and most 4-star characters can hold their own given enough duplicates.

Weapon Banners

Generally speaking, you're going to be better off saving your Primogems for characters rather than 5-Star signature weapons. The reasoning behind this is simple: Genshin Impact's endgame modes encourage having a wide roster of characters more than a handful of super-powerful individual units.

At the end of the day, whether or not a character's signature weapon is worth pulling for is up to you. Just be aware that you're potentially giving up a future character in exchange for at most a 30% buff for a single character.

Frankly, giving Genshin Impact's best characters a more powerful weapon is practically meaningless when compared to the buffs that certain characters can bring to a team. Doubly so when the characters are Furina and Zhongli, whose abilities can't be replicated by any weapon in the game.

Best Weapons

Fortunately, Genshin Impact has a lot of viable alternatives for 5-Star signature weapons. The Favonius series of weapons is particularly good as a universal baseline for every character due to their high Energy Recharge and Elemental Particle generation properties. Otherwise, you'll have to see what stat your character's Talents scale off of and their intended role to determine which weapon is best.

The craftable options are quite decent too. If you've just started playing Genshin Impact, consider going after the following early-game craftable weapons:

• Iron Sting - Good enough all-around option for early game DPS characters, retains value in late game for characters like Kuki Shinobu.
• Whiteblind - Best free-to-play option for Noelle. Relatively niche otherwise.
• Prototype Amber - Decent enough early-game support weapon. Can also be used if you are lacking healers.
• Mappa Mare - Fantastic option for characters who rely on elemental reactions to do damage, namely Sucrose.

Some 3-Star weapons are very viable for early-game players with some niche mid-game use cases:

• White Tassel - Gives a healthy amount of crit rate.
• Thrilling Tale of Dragon Slayers - Offers a strong attack buff for one character.
• Harbinger of Dawn - Crit Rate and Crit Damage in one weapon.

Serenitea Pot

Obtained at the end of the Liyue chapter, Genshin Impact's Serenitea Pot is functionally your home away from home. At first glance, the Serenitea Pot seems like a wholly cosmetic feature, but it does have some very practical uses as well. To put it simply, the more you build, the more Realm Currency you get. The more Realm Currency you obtain, the more materials you can purchase.

Everything from XP books to most of the regional plants used for character ascension can be passively farmed through the Serenitea Pot. To say that it is a massive time saver is an understatement. The best part is, that the Serenitea Pot is mostly self-sustaining as you can convert the ores obtained through Expeditions into materials for the Serenitea Pot.

Artifacts

One of the most important things you should do when you first start playing Genshin Impact is to save literally every single Fragile Resin you obtain until you reach Adventure Rank 45. You can then use that Resin to get a head start in obtaining 5-Star Artifacts, which are vital for making sure that your characters are as powerful as possible.

Naturally, each character has a specific Artifact set that works best for them. While there are a lot of viable Genshin Impact character builds on the internet, one of the more consistent and up-to-date sources for best-in-slot Artifact assignments is KeQingMains.

Given the immense RNG involved with Artifact farming though, it may be a good idea to set guidelines for when an Artifact is "good enough" for the sake of both your time and sanity. This is particularly true given the fact that you can recycle bad Artifacts at the Crafting Bench.

The simplest approach would be to look at how many flat (i.e. non-percentage) Attack, HP, and Defense buffs, or substats, are on a given Artifact. Since there are different layers of RNG involved for each Artifact slot, the tolerance for flat substats would be different for each slot.

• Flower of Life (Slot 1) and Plume of Death (Slot 2) - Since these two types of Artifacts have no main stat variation, then consider recycling any Artifact with two or more flat substats.
• Sands of Eon (Slot 3) - All main stats are useful. Prioritize keeping anything with Crit Rate substats. Artifacts with three or more flat substats can be recycled once you have at least two of each main stat per farmed set.
• Goblet of Eonothem (Slot 4) - Keep every Artifact with an elemental damage main stat regardless of how bad the substats are. Consider keeping at least two of the best of every other main stat per farmed Artifact set, again prioritizing Crit Rate. Keep one Artifact with physical damage main stats per set, in case of future archetype buffs. 
• Circlet of Logos (Slot 5) - Always keep Crit Rate main stats regardless of the substats. At least one Artifact with Elemental Mastery and Healing Bonus main stats per set should be kept as well. HP, Attack, and Defense main stats can be good if they have extremely good substats or your alternatives have too many flat substats.

Lastly, keep in mind that you only need four Artifacts of a given set to activate the set's effects. A fifth Artifact can come from any other set to bolster a given stat. The vast majority of the time, you're going to have to use an offset Sands, Goblet, or Circlet due to the high RNG involved in getting the right stats for these pieces.

Team Building

Choosing a favorite Genshin Impact character is easy. Choosing three more characters to support them, is less so. Part of the problem is the fact that there are only a handful of guaranteed characters available to each player, so while there's no shortage of viable team compositions, you can't guarantee that everyone has the best-in-slot character for that team.

Fortunately, new players have a lot of time to experiment with team compositions. Genshin Impact's Hyperbloom team is an excellent starting point for most new players as it incorporates many elemental reactions and is fairly accessible, with room for upgrades via 5-Star characters. Furthermore, all the elements in a hyperbloom team can cause reactions with each other in the event someone dies or otherwise can't use their abilities on time.

To make the most basic version of Genshin Impact's Hyperbloom team, you need the following characters:

• Dendro - Collei and or the Dendro Traveler are excellent options as they can passively apply Dendro to enemies, then swap out.
• Hydro - Barbara can passively apply Hydro via her Skill, then swap out.
• Electro - Kuki Shinobu naturally wants Elemental Mastery and has two passive methods of applying Electro without needing to be the active character.

As you can see, a common theme is that all of the above characters can apply their Element without needing to be the active character. These are generally referred to as off-field characters. This is important because most teams want a character to apply an element, and then have someone else apply a different Element to cause an Elemental Reaction.

This is in contrast to on-field characters who are much less useful when in reserve. Noelle is the best early-game example of this as her Burst enhances her normal attacks with Geo energy. Since she can't attack while in reserve, using her Burst means you must commit to her being the active character for a few seconds before switching.

The same principles apply when you get 5-star characters or want to play different teams with more limited elemental reactions. Another option for an early-game team consists of Bennett, Xiangling, Sucrose, and Noelle.

• Bennett is the support character in this scenario, so you would want him to Burst to activate his buffs, and then swap out.
• Xiangling is the off-field DPS character. Burst, Skill, then swap out.
• Sucrose can Swirl the Pyro element via her Skill and Burst to spread it to more enemies.
• Finally, Noelle can use her Burst and Skill to finish off whoever is still standing with minimal risk to herself.

Ultimately, Genshin Impact's best team depends on who you have. You only have to pick characters who can complement each other via Elemental Reactions and field time, and that will be enough to carry you through most of the game.

The only real limitation to keep in mind is that Dendro doesn't react with Cryo, Geo, or Anemo. Similarly, Geo and Anemo can only be used to cause an Elemental Reaction. In other words, Geo and Anemo can only be used after another Element has already been applied to an enemy.

Endgame Modes

Genshin Impact's endgame consists of two main modes: Spiral Abyss and Imaginarium Theater.

Spiral Abyss is divided into two difficulties. The first is a series of eight Floors intended as an introduction for people with newer accounts. The rewards for the first eight floors don't expire or refresh, so there's no rush to complete them.

The second part of Spiral Abyss is four Floors that refresh monthly. Completing these Floors provides a regular supply of Primogems, but you're going to need at least eight highly developed characters to consistently clear the 12th Floor. Ideally, this means Level 80 characters with good Artifacts and Level 80 weapons, alongside a coherent team.

Keep in mind that Spiral Abyss does have a buff of the month though, so certain characters might perform better during certain months.

Genshin Impact's other Endgame Mode, Imaginarium Theater, allows for more horizontal character development. Each month, three Elements are chosen and you will have to have a specified number of characters from those Elements at a certain level to participate.

To claim your Primogem rewards, you will then have to fight up to 10 battles, depending on the difficulty level. The catch is that each character that you bring can only fight up to two battles, so you will be forced to rotate your characters.

Fortunately, you are given a handful of pre-built characters. It generally seems like they're not fantastically built, but you can easily clear the early stages with them. Compared to Spiral Abyss, you can afford to have slightly less developed characters and gear, with level 80 being sufficient for all but the last few battles.

Hopefully, we have helped you on your Genshin Impact journey on Xbox. Be sure to check out our guides hub for more on Genshin Impact.