How does the Pity System Work?

Genshin Impact is a free-to-play, open-world RPG that was released late 2020. While heavily compared and most likely influenced by BOTW, the game has gone through a lot of improvements and additional content that continuously proved it as an outstanding title on its own. The game has a gacha-based system where players have to spend premium currency for a chance to get a random character or weapon. In this page, we’ll be discussing how the game’s pity system works and how you can use that to your advantage.

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Genshin Impact has a gacha-based system where you have to spend Primogems and/or Fates to “pull” or Wish for characters and weapons. Every other week (or more than that duration), the game rotates an event/limited banner. We’ve covered how the Wish/gacha system of the game works on this page. On this page however, we’ll be covering how the game’s Pity system works.

TLDR

This is the summarized version of what we have discussed in detail below. Consider reading through our detailed explanation if you want to understand the mechanics of the Pity System better.

* Pity system guarantees that you’ll get a 5-star weapon or character.* Pity counter is counted separately per Wish category (Character Event, Weapon Event, Permanent)* Pity counter carries over across different events.* Soft pity triggers starting around the 70th pull.* If you haven’t acquired any 5-star, you’re guaranteed to get a 5-star on your 90th Wish.* Getting ANY 5-star will reset the pity counter back to 0.* You have a 50-50 chance of getting the event 5-star or a random 5-star when you trigger your Pity Wish.* If you didn’t get the exclusive 5-star during your 50-50 Pity chance, your next pity wish (soft or hard pity) will be a guaranteed exclusive 5-star.* If your next pity wish will trigger a guaranteed exclusive 5-star, do not wish on the same category anymore until the banner of the 5-star you want becomes active.

What is a Pity System?

As the name suggests, this is a consolatory system that gives you a 5* weapon or character if you fail to get any 5* weapon/character for a certain number of draws. So in simpler terms, if you’re made a lot of wishes and you haven’t been able to get any 5-star, the game takes pity on you and gives you a guaranteed 5-star. This sounds very attractive, right? Well, please read well since there are conditions for that.

Your guaranteed pity kicks in at 90 wishes (without any getting 5-star). Your “soft” pity kicks in at around the 70th pity onwards. Soft Pity means that you have an increased chance of getting a 5-star. So even if you fail to get a 5-star starting at 70 wishes, you’re guaranteed to get one once you’ve hit 90.

Once you’ve acquired ANY 5-star, your Pity counter resets back to 0. This is why to avoid “ruining” your pity counter, Wish only on the banners where you really want to get the characters/weapons on.What’s important to know is that the Pity Counter will carry over to the next event! They don’t expire either so you can hold off from wishing and save up your guaranteed pity for the next exclusive 5-star that you want to get!

The 50-50 and Guaranteed Pity

Now, this is very important! We talked about the guaranteed 5-star you’ll get from the pity system above. You should also know about the 50-50 chance and Guaranteed Pity. This is usually applicable to the Limited/Event banners since very desirable new and re-run characters have an appearance rate for a duration of time.

50-50 Pity

If you have acquired an exclusive character/weapon during your last Wishes, you’ll have a 50% chance to get the event/limited 5-star and 50% chance to get a random 5-star on your next pity trigger. So for example, you’ve acquired Hu Tao from the last event banner, the next time your soft or hard pity kicks in, you'll have a 50-50 chance of getting the current event character or a random non-event exclusive 5-star weapon or character.

If you’ve managed to secure the event-exclusive 5-star during your 50-50 pity, the pity counter will reset back to 0 AND your next pity will still be a 50-50. This is because you’re lucky enough to get the event 5-star during your 50-50 chance.

Guaranteed Pity

Using the example above, let’s say you’ve triggered your pity and obtained a non-exclusive 5-star. Your pity counter will reset back to 0 and you have to “build” your Pity Counter again by making Wishes. However, since you didn’t get the exclusive 5-star during your last 50-50 pity, your next pity trigger will be a guaranteed event-exclusive 5-star. This is the most desirable status to have when saving up your pity counter.

To use this knowledge to your advantage, if you’re expecting a 5-star that you want in the upcoming banners (or through leaks) and if you have a guaranteed pity, do not Wish on event banners anymore to avoid ruining your Guaranteed Pity. Getting ANY 5-star will reset your counter back to 0 and you’ll start off with the 50-50 pity once again.

How to Count your Wishes?

Each banner has its own pity counter (number of wishes). That means that the number of wishes you’ve made in the Event/Limited banner will be counted separately from the Character Event, Weapon Event, Permanent categories.

Counting your wishes is very important, since it will tell you whether you’re about to hit the soft pity or not. This in turn, can help you decide whether you’ll need to buy a Welkin and/orBattle Pass or if you’ll have enough time to save up enough wishes for an upcoming banner.

To do this, you have to open the wish page and click the History icon. For PS4/PS5 users, press the down D-PAD. Once you have your history loaded, you can conveniently switch between the different banners where you’ve wished before. Wishes you just made a few minutes ago will not be displayed immediately since it may take around 1 hour for those recent wishes to appear in your history. The history can only keep track of 6 months worth of wishes but that should be more than enough (unless you’ve been skipping banners since you’ve played and haven’t Wished at all).

Counting your wish is very simple. Each page displays 6 wishes. From the first page, backtrack through the previous pages then multiply them via the number of pages you’ve backtracked since the last 5-star you’ve obtained. (For new players, backtrack to the start of the list). So if you’ve backtracked 10 pages, that’s 60 wishes.

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This concludes our detailed guide about Genshin Impact’s Pity System. Please check out our other pages within the guide for more helpful tips and information about the game.