How to Trigger Quicken Reaction in Genshin Impact

The Electro element had the biggest glow-up in Genshin Impact’s history with the arrival of Dendro and the Quicken Elemental Reaction. This special reaction can amplify both elements’ powers to an even bigger extent, and here’s what you need to do to trigger them.

Quicken Reaction Explained in Genshin Impact

Quicken is triggered by applying Electro to a Dendro-inflicted target or vice versa, but here’s where things get interesting. Different from most other reactions, Quicken is a special Reaction that can develop into two different paths: Aggravate or Spread. These three reactions compose the Catalyze reaction group.

Quicken itself doesn’t deal damage, and instead inflicts the target with a Quicken Aura. This aura can evolve into the Aggravate or the Spread reaction, depending on which element you apply next.

Aggravate is triggered by applying Electro to a target with a Quicken Aura. It deals Electro damage and amplifies Electro damage inflicted on the target.

Spread activates by applying Dendro instead, and amplifies Dendro damage dealt to it. Both values for Aggravate and Spread are affected by factors like character level, artifact effects, and Elemental Mastery.

The base formula for those is:

• Aggravate: 1.15 x Level Multiplier
• Spread: 1.25 x Level Multiplier

Level Multipliers increase with your character level. That’s why guides usually advise you to always level your Dendro/Electro characters to 90 whenever possible if you plan on using them for reaction-based teams.

The Quicken Aura must always be reapplied to new targets as it doesn’t directly affect your character. But that also means that you can trigger Spread with an off-field character like Nahida and Alhaitham will benefit from its effects, for example.

Also, neither Aggravate nor Spread consume the Quicken Aura so that you can trigger both at the same time on the same target.

In the above example, all three reactions co-occur, thanks to Nahida’s skill triggering once again once Quicken was applied. Oz immediately hit the target, too, thanks to Fischl’s C6, so all reactions went off simultaneously. Here’s the same thing happening during the same fight, but it’s clearer to see.

Quick elemental application means more persistent Quicken Aura. Make sure to have reliable applications when building teams focused on a Catalyst reaction.

As a quick tip, the last element applied will always be the one getting buffed. A rough summary would be:

• Dendro + Electro + Electro = Stronger Electro hits (Aggravate).
• Dendro + Electro + Dendro = Stronger Dendro hits (Spread).

And again, both can be buffed at the same time depending on how reliable your application is.

How Much Damage Quicken Increases?

As previously said, the Quicken-based reactions increase your damage according to factors like Level and Elemental Mastery, but you always get a flat damage increase instead of a percentage one. While Artifacts have shown you that flat stat numbers are usually bad, they can sometimes be more beneficial to damage calculations than percentage damage boosts.

According to Genshin Impact Wikia, a character at Level 80 would receive a 1239 and a 1347 damage increases for Aggravate and Spread, respectively, while the same character at Level 90 would receive an increase of 1664 and 1809. This number is directly added to the damage inflicted, and it’s also subjected to Critical Damage scaling.

So if a Lvl 90 Electro character delivers a non-critical 8000 damage hit with no reactions applied, applying Aggravate to the target beforehand would bring that number up to 9664, which is more than a 20% damage increase. This is amazing for fast-hitting characters like Fischl or Keqing, some of the best Aggravate users.

A Dendro character in the same conditions would see a little bit more of an increase, with Alhaitham and Tighnari being the best examples. Even if the difference is initially not that huge, it increases as you apply Elemental Mastery and other external multipliers to the equation. And these characters have plenty of Elemental Mastery scaling, so you’re always incentivized to build it.

Characters that can already deal huge numbers by themselves, such as Raiden Shogun with her Burst don’t get that much improvement from Aggravate, but it’s still a decent increase for weaker hits, such as her Elemental Skill. She’s also a great Electro applier for Spread teams, so she still benefits from Dendro a lot.

Elemental Mastery-focused builds have become popular for many characters for that reason, and the Thundering Fury Artifact Set was also changed back in 3.0 to increase the extra damage received from Aggravate by 20%, making its 4-piece set an even better option for Electro characters.

So consider all of that when you build a Dendro or Electro character, as both have been walking side by side since Sumeru arrived in the game. Some previously believed to be weak are now at their top performance and will continue to be boosted with every new character and artifact added to the game.