The most desirable part of Genshin Impact is in collecting its characters. Typically, the only way to obtain the desired character is to use Primogems to wish for them when they are on their own Featured Banner. However, sometimes players may feel compelled to whale for a character for various reasons.
Whaling is a term in gacha games that refers to spending real-world money to obtain a desired character, weapon, or other things. This can vary from spending a small amount of money to large amounts. Whaling is how players of gacha games, like Genshin Impact, can help guarantee that they receive the character or other item they want.
In Genshin Impact, whaling can have its pros and its cons. Whaling definitely comes with risks since real money is at stake, but players can decide for themselves if the reward is worth it. To decide if whaling is worth it, players need to weigh the pros and cons and the risks versus the possible rewards.
Benefits Of Whaling For Characters In Genshin Impact
There's a beauty to Genshin Impact that isn't seen in many other gacha games, and that is its pity system. Despite that the number of Primogems needed to pull can be egregious, Genshin Impact always has a visible light at the end of the tunnel due to its pity. No matter what, players can use Genshin Impact's History page to determine how many more wishes they need to guarantee themselves a 5-star character or weapon. Utilizing this information, players can know how much money to spend to get that 5-star pull and know that spending that amount of money will guarantee them what they want and will not be wasted because of Genshin Impact's pity system.
This pity system applies to all of Genshin Impact's banners: the Featured Banner, Weapon Banner, and Standard Banner. The Featured and Standard Banner have the same soft and hard pity for characters. In Genshin Impact, HoYoverse also added the very well-recieved Epitomized Path system for Weapon Banner pity, meaning that every banner has guaranteed rewards. This means that players spending money can be safely assured that they will receive what they want if they spend enough money for it.
Whaling can also help players receive extra rewards and items that other players wouldn't have if they don't spend. Genshin Impact gives out a specific amount of Primogems every patch from events, and unless a player skips multiple Featured Banners, they will not have enough Primogems to get every available character or weapon in the game. Whaling helps players have access to all of Genshin Impact's characters and weapons, meaning they can enjoy playing with everything the game has to offer, with more team compositions available because of more characters, and their characters will feel much stronger because they have more 5-star weapons in Genshin Impact.
Also, getting a 5-star character to Constellation 6 (C6) is practically impossible without whaling. Unless a player saves Primogems for a long time, skipping a massive amount of Banners, they will never have enough Primogems to get multiple Constellations of a 5-star character, let alone C6. Whaling helps players get their favorite 5-star characters to higher Constellations, meaning that they can enjoy them at a much higher power level, and probably even makes the game more fun. And since players will be wishing a lot more to receive multiple copies of the same character and will be receiving a lot of Starglitter and Stardust, they can use those resources to purchase more Wishes, 4-star characters and weapons, and materials to upgrade the characters that they received.
Risks Of Whaling In Genshin Impact
Even though Genshin Impact has a pity system, it takes a lot of wishes to reach it. It costs the player 180 wishes to guarantee themselves the Featured 5-star character on a banner, and 240 wishes to guarantee the weapon they want from the Weapon Banner's Epitomized Path. Inside the Genesis Crystal shop, without the x2 bonus, spending $100 USD grants the player 8,080 Genesis Crystals, which can be converted 1:1 to Primogems. This only gives the player 50 wishes, meaning that if a player is starting from zero pity on a Banner and wants to whale, they would have to spend more than $300 USD to be guaranteed a Featured character. This is even worse on Genshin Impact's Weapon Banner, since Epitomized Path pity is 240 wishes, meaning that it would be about $500 USD for players to guarantee themselves the weapon in Genshin Impact they want if starting from zero pity.
A large con for smaller spenders is that whaling might not even get a player the character that they want. For example, if a player is whaling for the Featured banner and is starting at zero pity, a player could whale for 90 wishes and receive a Standard Banner 5-star like Jean or Qiqi instead of the Featured Banner character that they want. And as said above, since 50 wishes are about $100 USD, players are spending a large amount of money on a risk, basically gambling on if they will receive the 5-star character in Genshin Impact they want. And if they do not receive the featured 5-star, they had basically wasted a lot of money. If players are not willing or are not able to spend enough to reach hard pity, any money they spend before that pity is essentially a gamble, and could be a total loss.
Whaling is something that players need to think about before committing to. If a player loves Genshin Impact and wants to improve their experience or really wants a specific character above all others, whaling can help them achieve those goals. Yet, they also need to consider just how much money Genshin Impact asks for its Genesis Crystals/Primogems, and if spending that much money is worth it to them. Whaling also raises the question to players if they need to be cautious about spending, since gacha games can absolutely cause gambling addictions, even with Genshin Impact's pity system. While whaling can definitely increase a player's enjoyment of Genshin Impact, spending that kind of money definitely has its downsides, and players should think long and hard to themselves if the rewards outweigh the risks involved.