6 Beginner Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Genshin Impact

For most people, Genshin Impact is their first gacha game. It’s the only gacha game that has broken into the mainstream due to its similarities to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While developer miHoYo has been adamant in denying that their game is just a reskinned Zelda, with which I actually agree on, it has actually played right into their hands and boosted their audience even more. This, however, leads new people to the gacha game genre and are getting lost in progression. With all of that being said, here are a few beginner mistakes you should avoid when playing Genshin Impact.

Need more helpful tips? Check out our other Genshin Impact guides:

1. Genshin Impact: How To Increase Adventurer Rank Quickly – Get your Adventurer Rank up and explore all the game has to offer!
2. Genshin Impact: Basic Weapon Guide – Get to know each weapon and detail and how to fully utilize them!
3. Genshin Impact: Tips for Team Building – Make the most out of your team of characters!

1. Letting your Resin reach maximum capacity

Xiangling and Traveler

This one goes out for those of you who are Adventurer Rank 8 and above. Whenever you open the map, at the top-right of the window, there’s a crescent moon there. Those are called resins. You use those to get rewards from domains, bosses, and ley lines. For domains, after you finish the stage there’s a tree at the end of it which you interact and pay resins to get your rewards. For bosses and ley lines, they leave an outcrop that looks like a big flower. You interact with them and they’ll give you the rewards.

Never let those reach their max capacities as they regenerate 1 resin every 8 minutes and the loots from those are great for progression. You can get stuff that ranges from weapons to materials to improve your characters. The main idea is that these resins act as kind of a “stamina system”, they’re your limiters and you don’t want them to reach maximum capacity as they don’t go over it and you’re wasting potential resins every 8 minutes when they’re fully capped. So keep in mind not to let those cap!

2. Not exploring

Remember: Paimon is (not) emergency food!

Come on, man. This game is a free, open-world, anime game and you’re not gonna explore? What is wrong with you?! Just kidding. Well, by exploring you will encounter a lot of stuff. Treasure chests, anemoculus and geoculus, which are needed to improve statues of the seven. Think of it as kind of like the spirit orbs that help you to improve your stamina and give you more freebies. You may also encounter random quests and NPCs that can give you loots. There’s a lot of stuff to discover in Genshin Impact and they reward you for it, like primogems which you can use to pull characters!

3. Spreading your resources too thin

Paimon looking for resources

This is where things get a little tricky. A lot of people get trapped into the mindset of improving all of the characters and weapons that come across their way. This is a grave mistake. Why? Because by the time you actually get the characters you wanted, you’ll have run out of the materials needed to improve them. Especially awakening materials. So a little tip here is to think about whether you’d actually use that character in your party and if it fits your party composition. Which leads me to the next topic.

4. Believing that the tier list is everything

Sure, tier lists can be helpful to see which characters are powerful. But you should never think that putting all of the S tier characters together in a team will give you the easiest life. In this game, team composition matters more than which tier the individual characters fall on. Each character has a role in a party; the main DPS, the Support, the Healer, and the Enabler. Each character has their own element or vision and they all interact with each other. There’s also something called “Resonance” that activates when you have 2 of the same elements in a team. Here’s a link for a more in-depth resonance and elemental reaction table to base your team on. Pretty sure this would tingle the theorycrafter in you, I know it did in me. If you need something in video format, I recommend ZealsAmbitions’ video about it.

You can also check out his other videos as they’re really helpful for beginners.

5. Forgetting about the Adventurer Handbook

Fischl, JoJo Posing (Yes, that is a JoJo Reference)

Oh, boy. I’m a victim of this. I forgot about this one up until I was grinding for Adventurer rank. Never forget this handbook because they give you pretty generous rewards for doing the tasks written in it. The tasks are easy too (except for improving your statues part since I always have a hard time finding oculi), so they’re really worth it! They give a lot of adventurer experience points which you need to level up. Don’t get confused though, adventurer rank and character levels are two different things. Character level talks about the level a character has and adventurer rank has something to do with what content you can access.

6. Progressing too fast

Traveler in Combat

And here’s the last one. Yup, you read that right. Progressing too fast might be a problem as well. Why? Well, first of all, there’s not much in the game as of now. The only endgame content available right now is the Spiral Abyss and that’s it. Also, by reaching Adventurer Rank 20, you unlock World Level 1. The higher the world level, the stronger the monsters. So if you’re underpowered or undergeared it might get a little iffy for you. This might not be a problem if you follow the past steps as those really prepare you for this situation, so keep that in mind!

Hopefully this guide helps you have a much better experience with Genshin Impact and avoid beginner mistakes. I hope to see you around, traveler!