How to level up slowly in Genshin Impact

Whenever a new game with any kind of RPG mechanics hits the shelves it usually takes mere hours until a plethora of videos pops up on YouTube showing us how to LEVEL UP FAST!!, or something along those lines. Of course it’s been no different with Genshin Impact, as you can see above.

My general bewilderment about people’s urge to be “finished” with a game as quickly as possible notwithstanding, in this particular case it really, really puzzles me. As I talked about last time, while playing at my usual pace my adventure rank kept rising much faster than I would have liked, all the way up to 40, and although the required amount of XP increases with each rank it didn’t slow down all that much even then.

To prevent the ever increasing world level from ruining my enjoyment of the game I decided to do something about it, so I took a closer look at how much adventure rank XP each activity actually yields. It’s true that a lot of stuff awards some of it, but as it turns out the amounts vary by quite a bit.

Without further ado, here’s what you can do to LEVEL UP SLOWLY, as it were, in Genshin Impact.

Let’s start off with the big kahuna: daily commissions.

Once you’ve reached adventure rank 12 you can do up to four daily quests, depicted on your map by a purple symbol. They are usually quick and painless (also sometimes fun) to do, and they award a whopping 250 AR XP each, as well as another 500 once you’ve completed all four. That’s 1,5k XP per day right there, or up to 10,5k per week.

To put this in a bit of context, at AR 12 you only need 1,650 XP for the next rank! At AR 24 it’s 4,300 XP, and still only 7,175 XP at rank 34. As you can see refraining from doing these commissions will slow down your levelling speed considerably.

Unfortunately there is one big drawback to this however, as these quests are also a source of free primogems, the game’s funny money used to buy more resin and, most importantly, to wish (gamble) for characters and weapons. By not doing the commissions you’re missing out on 60 primogems total per day, so you need to decide what’s more important to you.

Personally, I’ve stopped doing them almost two weeks ago and I’m much happier with the game for it.

The next biggest source of AR XP are non-repeatable quests, meaning your archon, story and world quests.

Of course I’m absolutely not suggesting to ignore those, as they are one of the game’s strong suits and so much fun. However I do advise to take your time with them. There isn’t that much story content in the game yet anyway, so rushing through it will only make you run out of ‘stuff to do’ sooner (as per usual).

Also, world quests usually award 100-400 XP each, story and archon quests even more on average, so doing quest after quest after quest will contribute to raising your AR pretty quickly while not helping a lot with progressing your characters to match.

Then there are the various repeatable activities you need resin for: ley lines, abyssal domains and bosses. These all award AR XP too, but as your available resin is limited you can’t do them ad nauseam anyway.

Hence my only advice here is not to use primogems to buy more resin – which I wouldn’t do anyhow as I’d rather be able to make more wishes.

The other source of additional resin, fragile resin, one-use items awarded by some quests and for hitting certain adventure rank milestones, are best saved up until you reach at least AR 40, as you’ll get much more bang for your buck then. At that point the 100 XP per 20 resin spent aren’t going to speed up your levelling all that much anymore, so knock yourself out.

Various aspects of game world exploration also reward AR XP.

Treasure chests, for example, spit out some XP in addition to weapons, artifacts and upgrade materials, but the amounts are pretty negligible. A common chest gives a mere 10 to 20 XP (I believe it’s 20 when you open it for the first time, and 10 after respawn), exquisite chests yield 20, precious chests 30 and luxurious chests 40. At least the latter two types don’t respawn (I’m not sure whether there are exquisite chests that do), so overall this doesn’t contribute to your AR all that much.

Unlocking teleport points, turning in Anemoculi/Geoculi to level up your Statues of the Seven and stuff like that also gives you some AR XP, but these are things that you’ll always want to do at the first opportunity for obvious reasons. As none of this is repeatable it isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things anyway, so I don’t see any potential nor need for savings here.

Of course there are also activities that don’t award any AR XP at all.

Running around the map and killing stuff, for example mini-bosses like ruin guards or abyss mages, is fun and supplies you with many different materials you’ll need to ascend your characters and weapons.

While you’re doing that you can and should take the time to also pick up any flowers, fruits, ores…basically anything you come across that isn’t bolted down. These, too, are needed for ascension as well as cooking and forging. Keep in mind that some characters can help you hunt down specific stuff. Having Klee or Qiqi, should you be lucky enough to own them, in your active party makes region-specific gatherables appear on your mini-map in the Mondstadt and Liyue regions, respectively, and Ningguang does the same for all kinds of ore no matter where you are.

You can also always do Spiral Abyss, but since I’m not a big fan of that mode I can’t tell you much about it. I think that it doesn’t award any AR XP though, so there’s that.

One last tip, if you want to finish your weekly battle pass challenges but don’t have enough resin and/or don’t want to get the AR XP you can still do ley lines, domains, elite bosses and weekly bosses, just without claiming the rewards at the end, and you will get credit for the battle pass.

In summary, if you want to slow down adventure rank progress in Genshin Impact you should stop doing the daily commissions, take your time with questing, not use primogems to buy additional resin and only start using fragile resin at AR 40 and up. Other than that you can pretty much do whatever you fancy while levelling up at a much more casual pace.

I enjoy the game a lot more when I play like this, and maybe you will too.

Genshin Impact – A Janus-faced jewel

For about five weeks now I’ve been playing Genshin Impact each and every day, and I still enjoy it a lot. A couple of days ago we got the first content patch since the game’s release, which gave us some more things to do, new characters to chase and a whole bunch of great quality-of-life upgrades.

I’m playing in my usual middle-of-the-pack kind of way, neither chasing to max-level (or max-something) as fast and efficiently as possible, nor “just” exploring and goofing around.

That being said, I’m now rapidly closing in on adventure rank 40, which means that my world level and thus the game’s overall difficulty will increase for the fifth time (the world level goes up every 5 ranks starting from AR 20), and let me tell you, this is having a dramatic impact on how I play the game. Or rather, how it pretty much has to be played.

Casual players’ reaction to the difficulty curve; power-gamer in the back, smirking

I feel Genshin Impact is basically a mashup of two very different types of game, and if you plan on playing it long-term you’d better like both of those, else you might find yourself having a hard time.

On the one hand it’s a lighthearted and funny, well-written story-driven RPG-light with lots of exploration and many oohs and aahs along the way. I haven’t laughed this much while gaming for a long time, and that world…just wow.

It’s also one of the few games that give me dialogue options I would actually say myself

Until about AR 25 I was primarily running all over the place, doing quests, opening chests and collecting anything that wasn’t bolted down. I didn’t pay much attention to my characters’ stats at all, only when I saw mob levels noticeably higher than mine did I use some XP items – of which I had plenty –  to push my weapons and characters to match.

However, at AR 30 at the latest the game turns its head and shows its other face, and this one is a very much progress-oriented and exceptionally grindy not-so-light-RPG that gets harder and harder quickly and has you scrambling just to keep up.

Sounds bad? Well, again, it depends on whether you like this sort of stuff or not.

I am liking it thus far, yet I can clearly see the downsides too.

This required more effort than meets the eye

My main DPS character, Razor, is maxed out for my current AR bracket, meaning that he’s level 70, as is his weapon, and his skills are all level 6. My go-to support DPS, Xiangling, and my main healer, Qiqi, are close behind.

All other characters I own are much below that though, and many are still at level 1. Which is a shame, as I would really like to, for example, check out Fischl as another support alternative, or see if Chongyun could be a good main DPS for my second team, but I just can’t afford to “waste” any resources on them. I don’t even have a second team to speak of. Because, again, I need to focus on my main characters as the next world level increase looms.

For the last three weeks or so I’ve even kind of followed a schedule, as this is just how the game works.

On Mondays and Thursdays I farm talent mats for Qiqi and, to a lesser extent, Barbara. Leftover resin, if any, is used to farm whichever elite boss I need character ascension mats from.

On Tuesdays and Fridays I’m going for Razor’s and Xiangling’s talent mats, as well as ascension materials for some of my secondary weapons.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays it’s heavy farming for Razor’s claymore, my main source of DPS, and more elite bosses.

Lastly, on Sundays I only kill bosses as the domains are on a weird random-drop rotation that’s pretty ineffective.

Getting the three aforementioned characters up to snuff required spending pretty much all my available resin – which, by the way, is the game’s slowly-regenerating energy resource aka gating mechanic most mobile games have (or so I hear) – on these activities. Even now I’m not allowing myself to branch out much as I want to be ready for AR 40, meaning that I continue to farm the exact same mats so I can spend them on these characters the moment the game lets me.

In addition to the above I do the daily comissions, try to fulfill all daily and weekly tasks for the battle pass, and also make my rounds around the map to kill various mini-bosses for their drops. It’s a busy day, every day.

As I said, so far I’m having fun doing all this stuff. I’m just not sure how long it will last. I really hope that adventure rank progress slows down significantly after 40, because it just rises too fast for my taste. I’d like to try out other characters, I want to go and explore again (still have some Anemoculi and Geoculi to find), and do all the quests I haven’t done yet because I didn’t have the time (and because they give massive amounts of adventure rank XP, speeding up the treadmill even further).

Technically there is a way to slow this process down a bit. At AR 25 and 35 you are offered an ascension quest. Until you’ve finished it you don’t get the perks attached to that rank (being able to ascend characters and weapons further, getting more/better loot etc.), your rank doesn’t go any higher and the world level stays the same too. At the time I didn’t see the benefit – who doesn’t want to get better rewards for the same activities? In hindsight I would have liked to stay at 35 for a week or two. Or maybe rather not, as the XP you get during that time isn’t lost, and you might well skip a couple of ranks if you wait long enough, possibly even resulting in a double world level increase. *shudders*

Bottom line is, there’s no escaping it. If you like the game and play a lot your world level will rise constantly no matter what you do, and you’ll have to try and keep up if you don’t want the game to become tough as nails.

Now, of course I know that some players like their games tough – or don’t perceive the same things as tough that I do – so your mileage may vary. Personally, I was fond of the gameplay as relaxed as it was in the beginning. I get by, but I really don’t want it to get any harder still, hence I keep grinding to be as strong as possible.

So…is it even worth playing if your preferences are more on the casual side, then?

Right now my answer would be yes. The characters are fun to play, combat is slick and the progression systems motivating. It’s grindy, but doesn’t feel like a chore, is what I’m saying. That story, character development and voice acting are far above average by video game standards and the game’s open world just sublime goes without mentioning at this point….and yet I did just now. Fucked that up, didn’t I? Anyway, yes, it’s worth it.

This doesn’t change the fact that I’ve never played a game quite like this though – one that combines two extremely different and, arguably, contradictory playstyles and absolutely does not let you opt out of either. Maybe over in Asia this isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but to me that switching of gears came very unexpected.

At least you now know what you’re getting yourself into should you pick up this game, if you haven’t already. What to do with it is up to you.

Just let us play our characters please!

The other day I finished the Glassmaker storyline in Warframe. I’d been looking forward to the big finale quite a lot, as this was the first Nightwave episode that I really liked in terms of lore as well as gameplay.

The investigation part played out as usual, and while the last item gave me a bit of grief because it was really hard to spot I still enjoyed it overall.

Then came the inevitable boss fight.

Dude, where’s MY big-ass sword??

I’m not a big fan of boss fights in general – multiplayer games usually being the exception – though this one, while a forced 1 vs 1, wouldn’t have been too bad were it not for one huge design “twist” that all too many game devs seem to be so very fond of using – taking away our weapons and/or abilities and replacing them with something else.

So here I am facing off a 50-foot monster, having equipped my most efficient, highly powered tools of destruction, the acquisition of which has taken much effort over the course of months – and I can’t fricking use any of it.

Instead, I have to dodge lumps of glass the baddie is throwing at me (when he’s not busy swinging his one-hit-kill sword), then pick them up and throw them back at him. I’m not even kidding!

Did I still whup his ass on the third try and got my rewards? Sure. Was it fun though? Hell no.

Game devs use this weird design crutch again and again – and that’s what it really is, isn’t it? A crutch. Beating this particular boss would’ve been a cakewalk had I been able to use my regular weapons and frame abilities, so they just didn’t let me.

*sigh* Alright…let’s do this!

Ok, sometimes it might not be that. When The Secret World takes away our powers so we have to punch our way out of the baddies’ underground lair with bare fists it’s for lore reasons and also for, well, fun, I guess. That whole mission chain is one big homage to the Indiana Jones movies after all.

And it is fun…for about two minutes. Unfortunately it gets old really fast, but the cultists keep on coming. By the time we got out of there on our very first playthrough I was determined to never do that mission again.

If this is what the afterlife’s like I want no part of it!

Over in Transylvania another quest tranforms us into some sort of wraith – and again all of our familiar abilities vanish from the hotbar, to be replaced with two simple, rather underwhelming attacks and one self-heal once more. The following fight was…not pleasant.

I sure hope you will, because I fucking can’t

Of course Everquest II did it too. I guess over the span of 16 years it was bound to happen at some point. Being a rat was good for some laughs at least, I’ll give them that.

Look, I get it. Stuff like this probably seems like a good idea on paper.

It gives players a diversion from their usual gameplay – which can get somewhat stale when you play an MMO for long enough, no argument there – and might also serve as an unexpected twist or even comic relief when done right.

I do not think that the benefits ever outweigh the drawbacks however.

You see, dear devs, by the time you throw this stuff at me I’ve most likely long made my choices. The class I play or frame I use, the abilities or skillsets I’ve picked and the weapons I wield – all of this makes up the character I want to play. You know, because it’s the combination I have the most fun playing.

Letting us pick – or, more often than not, work hard for – our favourite toys and then, out of the blue, being all like “Nah, you can’t use those now; here, have a dull teaspoon and some cotton balls instead” is, honestly, kind of a dick move.

I can’t be the only one feeling that way either. Actually, I know that I’m not. Bhagpuss talked about really disliking it when several of Guild Wars 2’s Living World issues pulled that kind of stunt more than once, for example.

I feel aversion is quite a natural reaction to this, because, again, we don’t play the characters we play by accident. We do because we like them just the way they are.

What my Bruiser’s hotbars normally look like…

Of course the fact that whatever it is that our familiar gameplay loop gets replaced with in such cases is, more often than not, objectively worse and less fun doesn’t help one bit. But that’s not really a surprise, is it? The core gameplay of every MMO, even a freshly released one, has usually been years in the making. How could some ‘gimmick mechanic’, only meant for one event, one quest or one boss fight ever match that?

So, dear game devs, please stop doing that kind of stuff.

My favourite restaurant doesn’t serve an old loaf of bread instead of the meal I ordered for the sake of ‘variety’ or ‘surprise’ – or just because it’s easier and cheaper to do – either, does it?