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[Genshin Impact] Breath of the Gacha (1.2 out now!)
Kyanilis
Bellevue, WARegistered User regular
Bellevue, WARegistered User regular
https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en
What is Genshin Impact?
A F2P open world action RPG gacha game that basically rips its exploration straight from Breath of the Wild, it's developed by miHoYo
But what IS Genshin Impact?
GI is kind of a weird game when it comes to gachas, clearly meant to appeal to a larger console audience as well as mobile gamers. If you are a fan of the large open world and style of Breath of the Wild you'll probably feel right at home. There's climbing, swimming, gliding, and you'll absolutely run out of stamina at the worst time and die because of it. There's puzzles to discover and chests to open literally everywhere. There's dungeons and world bosses and the action combat is extremely smooth with unique abilities for each character along with a fairly involved elemental combo system. Seriously, look at this chart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY3XGzDousMAlso maybe I should mention that it has some great music?
https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_UWhat platforms is it on?
This game has its global launch on September 28th on PC, iOS, Android, and PS4. Switch has been announced but no release window yet.
Preload is live!
Game servers go live:
September 28th 10:00 AM GMT+8 (China time).
September 27th 10:00 PM ET
September 27th 7:00 PM PT
Is there cross-play/cross-save?
Yes, but there's limitations:
Cross-save: PC, iOS, and Android. You can swap between those platforms at any time and use the same account. PS4 does not support cross-save.
Cross-play: All platforms can play together! Yes, PS4 can play with PC users, etc.
The game IS regional so if you're playing on the US server you can't play with people playing on the EU server. You can swap servers but your progress is saved by region.
Is the story any good?
I've played through the prologue (through the first area) and it's probably not going to surprise anyone but it's well written and the characters are entertaining and charming. I like it a lot! There's currently 2 of a planned 7 areas as of the CN open beta, which should reflect the global launch. They're opening up a PTR essentially this week for patch 1.1 already which is expected to contain the 3rd area. Even right now the world has a lot to explore and quests to do, however.
Is there multiplayer?
The game supports 4 person co-op. Starting at Adventure Rank 16 you can open your world up or join other people's worlds to explore with and help friends. There's some limitations, though. For rewards that require resin, guests still have to spend that resin. Guests can't go around and complete quests in your world and story progress isn't advanced for them. They also can't go and open your world's chests, though they can still get drops from monsters. There's also matchmaking for Domains (this game's version of dungeons).
Okay, but what about single player?
You can play the game completely single player. In fact, the real "endgame" content at the moment is Spiral Abyss which you can't take friends into.
Alright, how is the F2P experience?
At launch there are 6 guaranteed characters you can get for free: 4 very early in the story for a full team then 2 from other activities. With these characters you can basically do everything currently in the game. You will need 2 more characters by the time you reach the high levels of Spiral Abyss (they require 2 teams of 4) but, for most players, this won't be a concern for a month or two, if not longer. Plenty of time to earn some additional rolls to get more characters, in my opinion. If you just want to experience the story and play the game at your own pace there's absolutely zero need to pay into the gacha system. There's some rough math floating around about F2P primogem income but I'm not going to post it here because this has changed significantly from CBT to CN OBT and even then it's hard to predict without seeing what events are like.
Ok but it IS a gacha right? How bad is it?
There are two things you can gacha for: Characters and weapons. 4* teams are completely viable for Spiral Abyss so this information is mostly for people who really want the 5*s: There's a bit of contention around the gacha rates in this game currently because from the outside they're really low for a gacha. Sitting at 0.6% in the standard banner for 5* (the highest rarity). If your first thought is "yikes" well, you're not alone. However, this is balanced against featured banners and the pity system, which follows these rules:
You are guaranteed to get a 4* within 10 pulls.
You are guaranteed to get a 5* within 90 pulls (1st pity). (80 for weapon focused banners)
You are guaranteed to get the featured 5* character within 180 pulls (2nd pity). (160 for weapons)
The way this works out is the first 5* you pull in a banner has a 50% chance of being the featured character. If you don't get the featured character the first time you WILL get it the second time you pull a 5*. The pity counter also restarts when you get a character so if you pull a 5* (that isn't the featured character) on say, your 3rd roll then you'll get the featured character within 90 pulls after that, so 93 max (instead of 180).
The effective rate ends up being about 1.6% for featured banners, which is much more in line with other gachas. Also the pity still applies to individual pulls, in fact, most people recommend you do single pulls unless you absolutely want to save time. You can do 10-pulls but they don't provide an additional benefit like many games.
So is it P2W?
In my opinion? Not really. There's nothing to win aside from speedrunning to the top of Spiral Abyss. No content is locked behind needing any abilities that a free character doesn't provide. There's no PVP, and heck, not even any leaderboards. It's a gacha game so you can absolutely whale to get through some grinding faster, but it's by no means required.
Is there an energy system?
There's Resin which works as the energy system in this game, you have a max of 120 and it recharges over time at a rate of 1 every 8 minutes. You can spend the currency (primogems) or certain items you'll pick up as you go to refill it. Resin is ONLY spent for certain activities, ie Domains and looting certain open world bosses. Exploring the world, doing quests, and opening chests does not require any Resin. This is not one of those games where you just can't play if you run out of energy, there's plenty to do.
What is Adventure Rank?
This is essentially your account level and how they gate progress. You earn AR XP by doing most things, including small amounts by just opening chests with more gained by doing quests and dailies, etc. As you gain ranks more and more content is unlocked and your World Level also will eventually increase, making monsters you run into out in the field progressively tougher but the trade-off is that they will drop better items. It gets progressively longer and longer to increase your Adventure Rank so at the high levels this is a slow grind, but you'll have access to most features at around AR 20-30 which doesn't take too long.
Resources
Interactive map with collectables: https://genshin-impact-map.appsample.com/#/
What is Paimon?
Emergency Food
Kyanilis on
+6
Posts
Upcoming 1.2 events
Current story event: The Chalk Prince and the Dragon
(Fuck another gacha what am I doing to myself)
I uhh, may have been checking out the CN open beta to get a handle on how the game feels and all that and it's hard to not just spend a ton of time in it. You know, with having to restart for the global launch.
I’m going to not bother to reroll, it’s too tedious for me and I don’t think it will make a long term difference.
I'm hopeful with how smooth the Chinese open beta has been that global launch might be fine? But yeah, it's a risky move with any game that requires an online connection. Also the servers go live similarly to the preload date so 7pm PDT on the 27th so I'll have a chance to check things out Sunday evening, which is nice.
But the rates are fuck awful in this game; I can't even imagine how many rerolls I would need to do to get any 5*, let alone a specific one.
I agree with you, but I’ll build around what I get and it will be just fine.
. . .now if only Granblue Remix could get their act together.
And then re-rolling is just restarting the game over and over by making a new account. You play the beginning until some set point near the start where you unlock the ability to try your luck (aka "pull") for new units. Usually when it's a brand new game, you also get some free currency to do those pulls at the same time. So you do your pulls and then if you get what you want, great, now you can play the rest of the game. If you don't, start a new account and play the beginning again until you get back to where the game gives you the free currency and try again.
Why do people do this? Because masochism is fun! But really it's usually a process done by people who don't want to spend money interfacing with shitty lootbox style gambling systems (and who does, really) but they really want a specific character/weapon/whatever and this way you only have to spend time instead of money to basically "guarantee" it with enough repetitions.
While they have said they do not have any rules against rerolling, they did say that their system might see multiple accounts as someone trying to sell them and you will be banned for it.
edit- I should point out that if you and others in your household wish to each make an account on the same PC/PS4 then that should be perfectly fine. It is when a whole bunch of accounts are all being made in quick succession on the same device that the system starts to raise its eyebrow. ie: When someone is trying to reroll.
Yeah that's just a pre-release event, you can't get any characters from it. The rerolls people are looking for are from the in-game gacha system.
What name is displayed ingame to other players? Your account name (ie- the name it pulls from Facebook when you login to the launcher) or your character name ingame (assuming you get a chance to name a character)?
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
It should be the name you give your main character (the Traveler), this is the first thing it has you do when you actually get in-game. The game will also assign you a numeric UID which is what you give to people who you want to co-op with (this is how they handle cross-play). But no, the account name isn't visible ingame as this can also be things like email addresses, names, etc which would be a huge yikes.
I thought this was coming out on Monday?
EDIT: Nevermind. I guess this is out at around 10PM EST tomorrow which is surprising.
Exact time it launches is September 28th 10:00 AM GMT+8 (China time). So for people in NA it technically launches tomorrow evening (7pm PT, 10pm ET)
The first 2 regions are well known at this point, but I don't think anything beyond that was in beta.
If you want to go in completely blind obviously don't use stuff like that but I know for me being consistent in marking those means when there's like 1-2 left I won't be pulling out my hair trying to figure out where. Figured I'd post it for anyone else who is worried about that. You can sign in with your Google account to save progress as well!
Can we put that in the OP so it's easy to fine, pretty please?
Done!
The annoying part is that the service keeps running after exiting the game, forcing you to run a batch script to terminate it (or do it manually) each time you stop playing.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
They acknowledged this bug a couple months ago, I'm a little surprised it's not fixed yet but release priorities often aren't what players expect. I do think they'll still fix this (and hopefully the uninstall thing), though.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12