Hello Travelers!
It's been a long time since I've made a guide for the casual gamer. All the way back in v1.4 actually. And in that time a few things have changed so it's probably about time for an update now that we're almost at the end of v2.4.
Now I already covered the beginning of the game and starting up a new account last time. That stuff as far as I know has not changed. You'll still need to get yourself to at least AR25 before you can settle into a routine and AR27 before you can really get everything in that routine. And the final hurdle will be AR45 which is the highest AR you actually need for the game right now.
So you're AR27. What do you do to maximize your gains for the limited amount of time you want to spend on this game?
Expeditions
First thing I recommend is to park yourself in front of a Katheryne when you're done playing everyday. That way as soon as you login you go straight for her to get your Expeditions done.
Always go for the 20 hour one and try to pick the ones you would most benefit from. I recommend Crystals and Mora. In the early goings you may even want the meat or veggies because you might not have enough to get your recovery foods. But later on it's almost a mindless move of muscle memory like you see above.
Note: The characters that get you time bonuses for are Bennett and Fischl for Mondstadt, Keqing and Chongyun for Liyue and finally Sara for Inazuma.
Daily Login
We don't get too many of them anymore but we did for v2.4 so as long as those are around never ever forget to collect on them.
Battle Pass - Monday
Mondays amirite? But for us Genshin Gamers this is a great way to knock things out quickly and have more time the rest of the week.
So head for your Battle Pass menu. You want to do as many of the weekly tasks as you can today.
Cook 20 Dishes
Forge 20 Items
These two are the easiest to knock out right away. I like being in Liyue so that you just jump off to the right and Master Zhang's right there to forge stuff. Then jump all the way down and head back up the incline to Chef Mao's where you can cook with his stove.
Weekly Bosses
We now have 5 Weekly Bosses with another incoming. It is not so likely you'll have the resin to do them all but the BP only needs 3 and those 3 are discounted for a total of 90 resin which you get every 12 hours.
Daily Commissions
These are usually short activities and you can knock them all out in about 10 minutes. On Mondays I would knock out the Weekly Bosses first just to get those out of the way. The Dailies don't reset for the whole day so you can prioritize that stuff that can run down your resin first so it doesn't overflow while you do the rest of your Monday.
DO NOT FORGET TO COLLECT YOUR REWARDS FROM KATHERYNE
New(er) - Requests & Bounties
I forget exactly when but we no longer need to collect 100 local specialties. Instead with the Reputation system we get points for getting Requests and Bounties done every week. So you might as well knock those out too even if you are at max rep.
My suggestion though is to start with Inazuma. In the other regions the Bounties take much longer because you need to go around looking for "clues" to find the bounty. But in Inazuma they are right there and most are very close to a waypoint.
And in terms of Requests the other regions only have ones that require items and that can get costly or tedious depending on the item. But Inazuma often gives you fighting requests where all you have to do is go to a place and kill stuff. That's free. It just takes a little time to get to the place and kill stuff. If you're not up for that by all means go for the item ones. My suggestion then would be Mondstadt because they have the cheapest versions out of all the regions and also even if you get like Glory's 3 Dandelions you should have probably farmed enough of them to afford losing 3 and if not there are at least 6 right outside the front gate of Mondstadt so pay up to Glory and go get double the dandelions back.
New(er) - Serenitea Pot
Another new thing that replaced the specialties is our Homeworld. Now if you collect coins and build furnishings or purchase from a Friend's world you'll also get BP.
There's a second part to that which is our farms and Friendship. So let's incorporate that into this routine.
The Serenitea Pot's farms run on a 3 day cycle so you won't always be able to sync it with a Monday. That's fine. Just make sure you're aware of when that day is. Now if you go into your map and open the Serenitea Pot tab it'll tell you if you've got plants ready to be picked. But that's a few menus to cycle through so I came up with a trick.
When I'm done in the mornings I park myself at Yae's shrine. (call it a ritual to make sure she comes home in v2.5) But right next to the shrine is a patch of grass and 1 lonely Naku Weed. Specialties respawn every 2 days so it isn't a perfect science but pluck that weed as soon as you've done a round at the pot. If one day you see it respawned it means your plants are either done or they'll be done soon and that's when you can check your map. (and of course you don't have to go with the shrine. Just make sure you routinely go to a place that's got a specialty nearby)
Ok so you've got to head into your pot. I plant my characters right next to the house and I put my house right next to the path leading to the next area of the layout. For example I'm using the beach one right now so place the house right on top of the hill in the main area and then at the next area which is the bottom of the hill place all 6 of your farms. (because of Load you won't be able to place all 6 farms with the house so that's why I put my characters there)
Next place 2 Waypoints right next to the farms and right next to your house. This way you can teleport right on top of the farm and collect and replant immediately. Or if you just wanted to buy something from your house you can teleport to that immediately.
As for what to plant yes there's a best option. The meadow is the worst so there's nothing to be done with that. I'm still working on getting the 20 primo achievement on that one.
But for the other 2 you want to collect Silk Flowers for the glebe.
And you want Valberries for the field.
You can also use Jueyun Chilies but those net you 3 per plant while you get 4 Valberries per plant so only use Jueyun Chilies if you don't want to farm Valberries and you don't have any more seeds on you.
That said you can buy 5 seeds per week from Tubby so if you don't have the seeds you can always get at least 5 right from your pot.
Then the Friendship. Keep in mind that in a layout you have nice and built I wouldn't recommend any of this. Pick a layout you haven't really touched yet and use it for the purpose of getting these achievements on top of the BP. So in that same way you want to place characters you have that aren't at max Friendship yet. (also be aware of which ones are at 9 Friendship because this feature raises it pretty quick so don't waste them on a Character that high already)
You'll be able to fit 7 out of 8 characters in the area with your house so just fit the last one where your farms are. (You could also put all 8 in a separate area but I don't recommend that because it'll take a little more time to edit when you need to.) When any of them max out make sure to replace them with another character that hasn't. It takes longer than 3 days to max out the pot's Friendship boost so you do this every time you collect your plants.
And finally collect your coins at the same time too. At 3 days you should have over 2000 coins so that'll get you your BP.
Important: During the first week of a new patch you'll lose a full Monday which could cause you to fall short of the 10000 BP points cap. But you can try your best to make up the difference and the Serenitea Pot helps with that because you can make 10 furnishings. My suggestion is to use your potions to get 5 instantly then make 5 green ones that finish in 12 hours so you can collect the next day.
The stuff you can do the day of the update is save your Dailies until after you update. Then for resin don't spend all of it. If you have less than 60 12 hours before the update goes live then you'll have about 150 by then. (90 resin every 12 hours) Or you can just buy a Transient Resin which gives you that 60. This is so you can get the 150 resin daily BP points for that day.
Battle Pass - Rest of the Week
You've done most of the tasks for the BP now. By doing the Weekly Bosses you've also gotten a total of 4 Domains and 1 World Boss too. So if you haven't taken them all out yet that'll be priority 1 for Tuesday.
So the rest of the week is only about doing Domains, Bosses and Ley Lines. From what I've seen it's really easy to naturally get all of this done. If you farm for Artifacts you'll have the other 11 Domains you need in no time. 11 Domains at 20 Resin each means 220 Resin. You get 180 daily. If you farm the Ley Lines it'll take you 380 to get 20 because you don't have to collect on all 20 you just need to do 20.
And that last part is my trick for collecting on them for BP's sake. Each week you are likely not going to want to farm both bosses and Ley Lines so whichever one you don't want to farm you can just beat the boss and move on. In the early days of your game you probably don't want to because it takes some effort to do these things but at AR45 when you're dealing with lvl90 Domains on the regular these guys are easy.
So for bosses I like doing 2.5 rounds against the regisvines and then the Anemo and Electro Hypostases. These guys are the fastest for my team to deal with. Test them out and see which bosses are the quickest wins for your team. I also do 4 because by the time you're done the first boss should have respawned. For Ley Lines you get 6 every day so if you aren't planning to collect just do those 6 starting Monday. That way by Thursday you only have 2 to do and you're done. As for Domains I wouldn't recommend doing this for them since Artifacts and Mats are always useful to collect on but if you have too many and don't want to deal with it the Character Trials also count as Domains. But it is more annoying than Ley Lines and Bosses because you need to exit out each time for it to count.
Outside the Game
Genshin's been consistent with Web Events so anytime they come up do them. They usually take no time at all to do and they give out primogems so there's no reason not to do them.
Now the thing I've noticed is that these events don't always show up in your in-game notices. So you'll want to head to Hoyolab on a regular basis. This has more perks than the 1.
The biggest being that you can read more of my stuff. #shamelessselfplugftw
So you'll want to go to these specific places:
https://www.hoyolab.com/events
https://webstatic-sea.mihoyo.com/ys/event/signin-sea/index.html?act_id=e202102251931481&lang=en-us
https://www.hoyolab.com/accountCenter/postList?id=17009971
I'd just bookmark them and make sure to open them every day. The first one is the events page and sometimes they'll put up an event that you won't know about unless you go to this page. For example. Also the contests like this one that I'm making this guide for. Anyway the second link is for the Daily Signin rewards. There are 60 primogems here every month along with Mora, Foods and mats. It's easy to do so why not?
Long-term Guide
I've talked about a few things last time so refer back to that topic for those. What I want to talk about specifically this time is Primogems and Gacha because this seems to still mess people up.
A little street cred
I am a f2p casual player. This block of characters is just 10 shy of every character in the game. And you can see I have Constellations for many of them including the 5*s.
So my tip for players (including the Dolphins and Whales) is to focus on 4*s in the beginning. If you don't have all or most of the 4*s don't skip banners. Once you've gotten most of the 4*s you'll have the freedom to skip any banners to hunt for 5*s. For spenders this means not having to spend on a 5* you don't really want just because there are 4*s on the banner you do want. For example I skipped almost every banner of this update because Yun Jin was a guarantee and I wanted to make sure I had Yae. I did roll a little on Shenhe's banner and luckily I snagged a Qiqi early meaning with the pity reset I have a guarantee on the rate up 5* next and tons of saved up Fates to go after her.
This tip won't guarantee you get a Character list like mine but also my list isn't the best out there. I've seen other f2p with even more characters than I have. But this system might save you from spending too much or for f2p it might save you from FOMO if you get characters you didn't want and can't guarantee the characters you did because of it.
Spending
So why not move from that to the spending itself since people still say that Genshin is gambling. Spoiler Alert: It isn't.
My system above should help net you more characters than just ripping open your weeping wallet. Planning on how you spend on the gacha should help you from feeling a need to spend more than you were comfortable with which will prevent you from blaming the game for your spending which will prevent you from being angry.
But the other thing is understanding your spending. Lootbox games incentivize you to spend on their games by making limited time drops and providing very very little earnable currency. Genshin does neither of these things. As a gacha game the point of spending is to secure the characters or weapons you really like and is entirely optional. You do not need any specific character or equip them with any specific weapon to do things in the game. Everything can be done with even mediocre builds. It isn't p2w (pay to win) at all. In fact the people who did spend and deck out their characters have complained and are still complaining that the game is too easy. Well duh.
So always keep in mind that this game is built around a f2p playstyle and that spending is purely to make your time playing even more fun. Using Aether's Geo abilities? Gets the job done. Using Planet Befall while equipped with Zhongli's broken shield mechanics and a Staff of Homa? Gets the job done with more fun.
Resources
Official
Official Genshin Impact Youtube Channel
Guides, Tips & Tricks
Thank you guys for checking out my guide. I hope it'll be a help to you as you continue to play this awesome game.
At the end of the day the name of the game when it comes to RPGs is resource management. Having a handle on how you spend your time and resources will make playing the game go much smoother.
Have fun on your journey across Teyvat my fellow Travelers!
#gameguides
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
