Hi guys! It's 
aka I.King!
Let's get right to it!
This guide focuses on regular gameplay but for new players there's surprisingly stuff way back at the start. So hopefully some of you end up here first before starting your game.
This isn't so important. There's no real gameplay difference between the two BUT male characters have a different jumping animation which lets you do the "bunny hop" sprint. It saves on stamina while giving you a speed boost so it's pretty useful for traveling the overworld. Something to keep in mind.
Ok back to work. As soon as you hit the beach. Stop. Stuff will pop up on your screen teaching you the basic controls. Try to knock that out but don't pay too much attention. What you want to look out for are the various critters running around like the blue crab you see in the screen above. You can farm these so use the dash you just learned to chase them down. As soon as you're close enough a dialogue box will pop up and you can collect it. There should be at least 3 crabs you can collect. You won't be seeing crabs for a while so why not get a head start?
This is your introductory quest. But you have to trigger it by talking to Paimon. If you don't-
-and when you click it you get sent right back to talk to Paimon. Don't waste time here. You're current goal is to speedrun to AR5.
At AR5 you'll unlock the Wish which is the gacha. Now might be a good time to remind you to go check your in-game mail for all the bonuses you get for starting up the game. You have plenty of primogems at the ready. What's important here is that you only buy 8 Acquaint Fates. They will help you guarantee one of the earnable characters Noelle from the Beginner Banner. IMPORTANT: Use the Wish 10x button. (Note: I didn't get Noelle the first time I used the Beginner Banner. If you end up like me buy another 8 because you'll definitely get her.) Once you've got Noelle spend the rest of your primogems on Intertwined Fates. These you spend on the Character Banner to try and get as many of those characters as you can. The 5* is rated up and for the most part are better than the Wanderlust Invocation Banner's characters. In v1.4 it's Venti who is the early/mid game MVP because his Burst attack will force all enemies together and make them easier to kill.
Continue the game to get to AR7. Now things start to ramp up.
You need to get to AR10 to continue the story. Ignore that. The few things you do starting now will quickly push you there. See that quest that popped up? Do that. This is the meat of what the game will be for you in between the story. You get your Adventurer's Handbook with more tasks to complete and you probably have completed plenty already so collect all those rewards! You will also be able to collect Adventurer's Guild Rewards which happen every AR level up. At 7 that's 7 rewards for you right now!
Your next task is AR8 and as you can see from the picture there's many ways to get that done. You may even have accidentally gotten there because you only needed 1075 EXP but if you haven't I'd recommend going to your Quests Menu for 2 Character Quests for Amber and Kaeya.
At AR8 you unlock Ley Line Outcrops. You'll only have the blue ones first but that's good. If you open your map you'll see a 160/160 at the top right. This is Original Resin and you'll want to spend it every day. Ley Lines is one way to do that and give you fast EXP for your characters like those lvl1 characters you just got from the banners. They also give you AR EXP so it's a really early way to get your AR up fast.
At AR10 continue the story. The next ARs to look out for are:
-AR12 - Daily Commissions
This gives you 60 primogems per day if you do all 4 of them so do yourself a favor and do that.
60 x 3 = 180. It costs 160 primogems to get 1 Intertwined Fate so that's 1 guaranteed Wish every 3 days + 20 leftover.
-AR14 - Expeditions
You start with 3. The pro choice is to do all 3 Crystal locations. IMPORTANT: Set the Expedition for the 20h option! Always do this first when you start up the game. As you level up your AR you'll get up to 5. The other 2 you can pick what you want but always have 3 for Crystals.
-AR15 lets you finish the Prologue Chapter of the Story.
Once you've finished it you'll automatically get Barbara who is the best earnable healer.
-AR20 - Battle Pass
This is a gold mine for many reasons. Leveling it up gets you rewards including free Acquaint Fates (remember how I said not to use your primogems on these?) and as of v1.4 Fragile Resin which give you 60 Original Resin when used.
But this is a guide in itself on what to do in the game to be explained in the next section.
AR20 will also increase your World Level to 1. Don't let that bother you yet. Just be aware the enemies have all gotten a little harder.
-AR25 - Reputation
Reputation is another thing to do that gets you multiple kinds of rewards. For example doing the 3 weekly Requests also completes a BP task.
BUT AR25 is also when you start to grow up in this game because you'll finally hit your first Ascension Domain to be explained later.
-AR27 unlocks the last features of Teyvat.
At this point you will now have Domains of Forgery (Weapon) Domains of Blessing (Artifacts) and now Domains of Mastery (Talent) and because they are all available now we can talk about it.
This concludes the Introductory Section of the Guide. Next up:
Daily Guide
Now that you're at least AR27 and you're done with the Prologue Archon Quests you're ready to get a daily routine going.
Expeditions
As stated previously you do this first always. Not only does this give you plenty of Crystals for Weapon EXP mats it also automatically clears one of the Daily BP tasks if you did the Crystal locations.
Daily Login
This doesn't happen all the time but whenever it's around you don't want to forget to collect it. Additionally check your mail whenever you see the red notification. You usually have a limited time to collect on them and they are usually very nice rewards so don't miss out! You'd be surprised how many players fail to collect on them and let things like primogems and Mora expire.
Battle Pass - Monday
I distinguish daily routine between Mondays and the rest of the week. On Monday BP resets so all the weekly tasks come back. This is when you want to try to do as many of those as possible. Easiest things to do besides Expedition is the Cook 20 things and the Forge 20 things.
Daily Commissions
So the first thing to focus on are your Dailies. This is a daily BP task but it's also the most important thing in your routine because of the primogems so you want to focus on it.
Btw Mona is awesome!
In Liyue I've noticed there's many race to the finish types of commissions and Mona rocks for those! For those of you not blessed with this beauty remember the bunny hop I mentioned at the beginning? You can almost match her speed and stamina by getting good at it.
DO NOT FORGET TO COLLECT YOUR REWARDS FROM KATHERYNE
So many people I've seen forget to go back to Katheryne and get the final daily rewards for doing the commissions. This is the biggest chunk! Don't forget!
Weekly Bosses
Dvalin, Andrius, Childe. They cost 60 resin but they also give you 675 points towards BP each and they drop some very good stuff. And when you get to AR40 and WL5 they'll drop the Talent mats you need after lvl6.
Tip: If you're struggling with Dvalin and Childe you can select the lowest level Domain for them. You won't get the Talent mats and I would actually recommend not collecting the rewards if you do this but just beating them will count towards the BP.
Also here's the fastest way to get to Andrius.
Farming Routes
Most of the players I've seen have these elaborate farming routes for everything and they tell you to do this every day. But this is a casual players' guide so "ain't nobody got tahm for dat!"
For me it's more BP completion for Monday. You need 100 "specialties" from each of the regions. As of v1.4 it's still just Mondstadt and Liyue. So the following are some of my routes. What you want to shoot for is the full 100 but if you got even less "tahm for dat" I suggest doing enough to get to half at least and then on Thursday they'll respawn and you'll be able to get them again from the same routes you did Monday.
BUT farming is still an important part of the game and especially early on you'll want as many of these as possible because they are part of the mats you need to ascend your characters.
Battle Pass - Rest of the Week
Starting Tuesday you'll want to wrap up the rest of the weekly tasks. I usually focus on doing the Ley Lines and Bosses then Domains. After AR45 you'll unlock the hardest Domains of Blessing. Do Domains first after that.
Tip: Every day you should be able to get 180 Original Resin to use. Build up a schedule around this. In the morning whenever you have the time to play use up all your resin. About 12 hours from that point get back into the game and use up your resin again. If you don't really have time for one or both of these sessions as of v1.4 you can create up to 5 Condensed Resin that eat up 40 resin each. You'll need to have finished the Chapter 1 Archon Quests and gotten the Liyue Reputation to lvl3. Also you'll have wanted to farm the Anemo and Geo Crystalflies. There are plenty flying around Dawn Winery. But also be careful. Making Condensed Resin counts towards BP but using them won't so you're only putting off using the resin for another session.
You can actually ignore the rest of the tasks because by this point you'll hit the 10000 max weekly points on Sunday. But you'll also have the resin one too so in case you didn't hit 10000 by Sunday night that's going to be there as soon as you use up your resin.
Outside the Game
Genshin's not just about the stuff you do in game. Make sure you come to this community website every day because MiHoYo releases Web Events that also get you primogems. You'll want to do these.
Also as of v1.4 you can do a Daily Login from the Community Website. Log in and it's the small icon on the right side of the window.
This will take you to another page where you'll have to log in again and then you can collect the reward. This resets monthly and also gives primogems, Character EXP mats and Mora so make sure to do this.
Long-term Guide
You've got your starting point. You've gotten into a rhythm with your daily routine in this game. You also know what to do out of the game. Now let's talk about the long-term.
The Adventurer's Book has plenty of tasks for you to complete so use those as milestones to progress. Of course that will mean taking on the Spiral Abyss which is very difficult in the beginning.
Break it up into sections. Abyss 1-3 will get you a free Xiangling so start there. I'd say Abyss 1 is a cakewalk just to get your feet wet and see how much the difficulty spikes. Don't be fooled by it though because as early as Abyss 2 it gets much harder so I suggest you go find a few videos on these to gauge your team.
Abyss 4 is the last single team floor but if you've gotten through 1-3 it shouldn't be hard. Abyss 5 is when you'll start to feel like your in the endgame. Your 1 really comfortable team won't be enough anymore but maybe you can split them into 2 teams and fit in any of your other gacha characters to make up for it.
For me I've had a team of Mona, Fischl, Ganyu and Zhongli. Now as of v1.3 Zhongli became mad powerful so I split him off of the group. To cover for him I added Bennett because Bennett's Burst heals. For Zhongli I added Ningguang for Geo Resonance and then a Superconduct pair because it helps Physical damage characters like Zhongli. So you'll have to start thinking about that.
Tips
Tons of people have complained that AR is super hard to level up. This is just not true at all. In the beginning it is so easy because exploring will give you so much EXP. I've talked about this already but as of v1.4 I'm AR45 with so much built up AR EXP that I'm actually AR55 but I have barely done any World Quests and none of the Story Quests.
Your daily routine established earlier will net you plenty of EXP and then there's the many many events MiHoYo throws at us for even more EXP. Just about everything you do in this game will give you AR EXP on top of whatever else it gives you so don't worry. These guys complain because it's like they wanted to go from AR1 to AR60 in one day.
Ascension Domains
In fact I'd say AR goes up so fast that MiHoYo set up these checkpoints to help you prepare for the next World Level up. At AR25 and AR35 your AR will be locked until you do a World Quest Ascension Domain to unlock it. But while it's locked your AR EXP still goes up.
Use these stopping points to check your team. Do you have all the mats needed to level them up to the new max level? To Ascend them? Do you have the mats to level up their Talents and Weapons? Are your Artifacts good enough? Only do the domain once these answers are yes because the increased World Level will make everything harder to kill. This is why most of the whales and hardcore players say at AR45 the game suddenly gets crazy. Too many of them got through the domains and brought up their WL before they were ready. Then they were out of mats and couldn't ascend their characters. The bosses became too hard. And because of that you get some of them complaining that MiHoYo was trying to trick them into paying (btw paying doesn't solve this problem lol) or that the resin system is bad.
So again AR goes up fast. Gate them with the Ascension Domains.
Primogems
Now by this point what you really want to think about are the Character Banners. You need primogems. Dailies will give you a guaranteed 60 every day and the Daily Logins will get you even more for the week they are around. The Daily Login site also has primogems on certain days. Finally Events will give you the most out of any single thing you can do so make sure you're getting those done.
As for the rest this is why you save your World Quests. Instead of using them for AR use them for the primogems some of them drop. Recently I was just 40 shy of getting a Fate but I had the Dragonspine King Boar Quest to do which gives 40. And the Fate I bought got me Hutao. Just saying.
Besides quests there's chests. Common chests don't typically do anything so open them when you see them. Even when they do they just give 2 primogems. Exquisite chests also get you 2 primogems, Precious give 5 and Luxurious net you a whopping 10! However some Luxurious chests are tied to puzzles that also give you 40 primogems and sometimes these chests also give 40!
Finally there are Shrines of Depths that you open with a Shrine Key. 40 primogems. Also many of these keys are rewards for completing a one time Domain. Doing those Domains also give you 40 primogems.
Proper management of these resources could net you a Fate per day which is what I was doing from v1.0-1.2.
Also most of the Fates you use will drop a common 3* weapon which will also net you 15 Stardust. Each month in Paimon's Shop you can also buy 5 Intertwined and Acquaint Fates for 75 Stardust each. So you'll want to try collecting 750 Stardust each month so you'll start out every month with 10 Fates and these could also drop 15 Stardust each.
Spending
All of this primogem managing will still be a long way from guaranteeing you a 5* character so you may still feel like spending money if a character that speaks to you releases. And by all means get the characters you like. But please remember any time you feel like reaching for your wallet that you're spending within your means. If you know it's been hard to control your spending (on anything not just this game) then set a budget for yourself. Say $100 max. Or a set amount of your paycheck monthly and you can only spend up to the total amount that ends up being. Let's say hypothetically $50/mth. So for v1.4's Venti or Childe banners if you started playing since the game's release you'd have $50 x 6 months = $300 MAX that you can spend on these banners.
On the other hand if you're feeling like spending only because you saw a video of a character or weapon being really good and you think that's the reason why you're having trouble in the game think again. While some weapons and characters might make the game easier they aren't the only way to beat whatever you're stuck on. This is called FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. It also leads to the "Pay 2 Win" mentality.
Pay 2 win or p2w is shorthand for a game or aspect of a game that requires players pay in order to complete. Games like Asura that place the ending of the game into separate paid DLC content or Star Wars Battlefront that set powerful items necessary to beat it behind pay walls. Anyway you look at it Genshin Impact isn't like that. In fact several accounts from whale players say that the only thing p2w does is make the game so easy that it's boring. A few have made f2p accounts where they discovered how much more interesting the game became without having all of the powerful weapons and broken characters. They could still get things done but now their achievements felt earned.
Bonus Info
This section is just for stuff I found to make the game feel smoother. It's a personal preference so it may not suit you.
I like to turn off Y-axis reset and combat camera. Combat camera does make battles look cooler but I find that sometimes it makes it harder to gauge where you should move relative to the enemies. Also it will keep resetting the camera to its preferred angle and that gets disorienting.
The second thing is to set the camera distance to 5.0. By default it'll be set at 4.0 which is nice to get a close up shot of your characters. But in an open world where enemies and objects could be anywhere it's better to have the camera hang back a little and give you a bigger scope of your surroundings. Plus if you want to do something like take a picture you can always manually zoom in.
Finally don't forget to turn Auto-Play Story on. It was a new feature from v1.2 which let's the dialogue play on its own without you needing to click anything. But I will say for regular game dialogue it tends to skip over them a little quick. You can always toggle it off from the screen itself but maybe you'd prefer having more control. For content creators though this is a must. It gives the voiced scenes more flow.
Also while you're fiddling with the settings you might as well get an Achievement for free. As of v1.4 if you toggle the Dialogue Volume back and forth (let it go each time so it actually changes the setting) after a while you'll get the Achievement - You Could Hear Paimon All Along, couldn't you? - a hilarious self-aware achievement and running inside joke about Paimon. Hey even if you don't care about the joke the free primogems are more than worth it.
Resources
Official
Official Genshin Impact Youtube Channel
Guides, Tips & Tricks
Other Perspectives
IWintoLoseGaming (Character/Weapon Testing & Comparison)
Fun Content Creators (to watch while you game)
AsianGuyGenshin (Warning: Snarky British Man)
Tectone (Warning: Cussin'. Lotso cussin'.)
Demone Kim (Warning: Big Daddy vibes)
Or
Inotia King (Story Content) #shamelessselfplugftw
Thank you guys for checking out my guide. Hope it'll help you guys better manage your accounts. Don't go crazy over this game. There's many things to keep in mind and this RPG game is heavy on resource management which can be fun when you realize it's there. There's plenty more you can do on top of what I've shown here but if you're a casual gamer like me this stuff will get you in and out of the game's time sensitive stuff as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Enjoy your journeys in Teyvat Travelers!
