Genshin Impact Currency Guide

Genshin Impact has been capturing the hearts and minds of curious plates ever since its recent global launch, something that’s taken a lot of us by surprise. But hey, turns out taking the vibe from Breath of the Wild and framing it with anime-style action is pretty cool. Part of the appeal here, of course, is its free to play nature. That works against it too of course, especially when a bunch of confusing currency is involved.

Genshin Impact Currency Guide

There are six special currencies in Genshin Impact, and that’s without counting the standard in-game loot called Mora. These currencies aren’t super complicated, especially compared to many other gacha games. That said, the way they’re presented in the game is a little weird. The in-game explanations aren’t great either, so after tinkering around with it myself, let me break it down here.

Fates

All of this currency revolves around one function in Genshin Impact: Wishes. Making a Wish is just in-game lingo for a gacha pull, so if you know what that means you’re good here. Each Wish costs one Fate, and using ten Fate at once will guarantee at least one 4-star drop or higher. Sounds easy, but now you need to know that there are two distinct kinds of Fates.

Intertwined Fate: You’ll see these as requirements to make “banner” pulls. Whenever there’s a Wish option for a specific character, or weapon set, or anything with a limited availability, you’ll need these. For reference, they’re the rainbow-colored orbs.

Acquaint Fate: If you just want to pull from the “normal” Wish pool, you’ll need the solid, blue orbs. If you’re trying to fill out your roster outside of event banners, you’ll need these.

Related: Genshin Impact Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts 

Trading for Fates

The weirdest part in Genshin Impact is that you can’t just get Fates. Most gacha games just have one premium currency that feeds into everything, or separates free vs paid currency. Genshin Impact instead uses two different sub-currencies that you have to trade for Fates.

Primogems: This is the currency you actually earn while playing the game, which you then exchange for Fates. Either Fate costs 160 Primogems, making a full ten-pull cost 1600. Once you have enough you can either go into the shop menu to exchange for Fates, or do the conversion as needed in the Wish menu. You get bundles of these things constantly as in-game rewards, but it can take a while to grind them up.

Genesis Crystals: Here’s the one you need to be careful with, or wary of entirely. As with any free to play game, there are premium currencies. This is that, a resource you put real money into that also converts to Primogems. The exchange here is totally even, so when you buy a number of Genesis Crystals, you can then trade them for the same number of Prismogems. That’s definitely weird, but the store in Genshin Impact also sells some item bundles and other resources for Genesis Crystals, so the logic is floating around there somewhere.

In a nutshell, you need Fates to summon for weapons and characters, and Primogems to make Fates. You can pay real money for Genesis Crystals, to get more Primogems or other resource bundles. Now, there’s one more currency, which is a sort of Fate residue that you earn for making Wishes. This is meant to kind of dull the pain of disappointing pulls, in a manner of speaking.

When you make pulls, spending on what you get, you’ll earn some number of Masterless Starglitter, and/or Masterless Stardust. Once you build a bunch of these up, you can check out their respective tabs under “Paimon’s Bargains” in the Shop menu. Here you’ll be able to exchange for characters, weapons, Fates and more. It can take a while to get the fancier stuff, but the shops rotate stock on a monthly basis. This means you’ll have chances down the line to get characters or weapons the gacha is refusing to part with. What you get depends on what you pull:

• Duplicate 5-star Character – 10 Masterless Starglitter, 1 Stella Fortuna for them
• Duplicate 5-star Character (Constellations maxed) – 25 Masterless Starglitter
• Duplicate 4-star Character – 2 Masterless Starglitter, 1 Stella Fortuna for them
• Duplicate 4-star Character (Constellations maxed) – 5 Masterless Starglitter
• 5-star Weapon – 10 Masterless Starglitter
• 4-star Weapon – 2 Masterless Starglitter
• 3-star Weapon – 15 Masterless Stardust

As you can see, getting duplicates not only gets you some of the bargain vouchers, you’ll also get Stella Fortunas. These unlock new skills in a character’s constellation chart, so getting those duplicates is important for building a beefed up team. And that’s all for now!

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Personally I’m not a hardcore min/max kind of player, so I prefer to just exchange my vouchers for Fates, especially when you can get a discount. It’s fun to make Wishes! Especially for free. But the voucher system is also handy if you need something specific. You just have to bide your time until what you want is available, and save until then.

Are you having fun in Genshin Impact? Are you paying real money, or are you finding ways to use your free Primogems effectively? Let us know over at the Prima Games Facebook and Twitter pages!