Genshin Impact is finally doing it, folks. After four years, HoYoverse's open-world action RPG is giving all players a free 5-star character for its upcoming fourth anniversary and the simultaneous release of update 5.0 and sixth region Natlan, and that's just one of many quality-of-life and economics wins coming August 27 (technically August 28, but 5.0 comes early for many regions).
As part of the 2024 anniversary rewards, along with 10 Intertwined Fate and 1,600 Primogems, players can choose a 5-star character of their choice from the standard pool of characters: Jean, Diluc, Mona, Qiqi, Keqing, Tighnari, and Dehya. This will become an annual reward, and HoYoverse said in the 5.0 reveal stream that more characters will be added to the standard pool going forward, so these free 5-stars will add up for longtime players.
Acquiring 5-stars the old-fashioned way, desperately shoveling Primogems at the current limited rate-up banner and hoping for the best, is also getting a boost with 5.0. Natlan will introduce a new Wish mechanic called Capturing Radiance. The easiest way to explain this is: going forward, pulling for limited characters won't be a dead-even coin flip.
Instead of 50/50 odds, followed by a 100% guarantee if you "lose" your pity and pull a standard character instead of the rate-up character, you'll have 55/45 odds to start with. Wishing is totally unchanged otherwise; it's a flat buff to limited 5-star character rates, now with a possible alternate Wish animation. The 50/50 is dead; all hail the 55/45.
The infamous weapon banner is getting a buff of its own. The point system that guarantees your targeted 5-star weapon after two whiffs has been cut down to one point instead of two. In other words, the weapon banner basically works like character banners now, just with a slightly lower soft pity Wish count. If you miss your target on the first 5-star pull, you'll be guaranteed to get it on the next one. Again, odds and rarities are unchanged elsewhere. As-is, getting a specific 5-star weapon can cost upwards of 195 Wishes with bad luck, but this change caps it at roughly 130.
Genshin will seemingly be dishing out more Primogems going forward, too. Completing the main Archon Quest chapters within a "designated duration," which seems to be the patch those quests are released, will award 500 bonus Primogems. This will start with the 5.0 Archon Quest intro.
I suspect longtime players may be more excited by the introduction of an Artifact Transmuter which uses Sanctifying Elixir to create custom-made artifacts with specific stats. It's exactly what you're hoping for: in an on-stream example, one developer printed a 5-star Hydro damage goblet for one of Natlan's new artifact sets and made absolutely certain that it will have critical rate and damage substats. You still have to level these custom artifacts and roll the dice on extra substats, but this is a huge boost to artifact grinding.
You'll unlock the Transmuter itself automatically by acquiring artifacts, and Elixirs will come from a variety of sources. We'll get one for free in the anniversary rewards, for starters. As one developer explained, they can also "be obtained by extracting a certain number of upgraded artifacts," with a limit to how many you can get each "cycle" (seemingly each patch or month). Sanctifying Elixirs can also be obtained by exploring Natlan or purchasing the paid battle pass. Only one Elixir was confirmed to be a level 26 premium battle pass reward, but it's possible higher levels will yield more.
All of these changes help bring Genshin Impact's economy more in line with the more generous rewards and rates of other HoYoverse games like Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, and ought to make it noticeably easier to acquire and gear up the new characters coming in update 5.0. The first half of the event will feature new 5-star Hydro catalyst user Mualani alongside a rerun for beloved 5-star Anemo sword user Kazuha. The second half introduces new 5-star Dendro claymore user Kinich, paired with a rerun for the 5-star Electro Archon Raiden Shogun. New Geo 4-star Kachina will be a featured character on the Mualani and Kazuha banners, and players will get one copy of Kachina for free in Natlan.
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