Although Genshin Impact gives players some starter characters through its main story at the beginning of the game, most playable characters have to be pulled through the Wish system. This means players will need to spend in-game currency like Primogems or Fates in order to get things like 5-star Genshin Impact characters, along with better weapons. Here's everything to know about how Genshin Impact's pull rates work.
As a free-to-play RPG, Genshin Impact makes most of its money from players buying Primogems and Monthly Passes. Characters and weapons are pulled through Banners. The characters and weapons featured on Genshin Impact's Wish Banners have a boosted pull rate, offering players a better chance at nabbing them for a limited time. So, if a 5-star character appears on a Banner, it means she's more likely to be pulled from there than another Banner where she isn't featured. Additionally, some characters have limited runs, meaning they only be pulled while their specific Banner is active. Thankfully, Banner reruns have started to become common in more recent Genshin Impact updates. However, even featured Banner characters still have incredibly low pull rates in Genshin Impact, so a certain amount of luck is still required.
Thankfully, for anyone who wants to experiment with gacha pulls without spending their Primogems or Fates, the Genshin Impact Wish Simulator provides a way to do that. While it's not 100% accurate, it does use Genshin Impact's pull rates to predict what characters and weapons players would get from Banners, so it can be pretty helpful - especially if players are trying to see how likely it is to pull a 5-star character in Genshin Impact.
Genshin Impact's Banner Pull Rates Explained
A 5-star Genshin Impact Banner character only has a pull rate of about 0.6%, while 5-star weapons are only slightly better at around 0.7%. The chances for 4-star weapons and character pulls in Genshin are a bit higher, but are still fairly low. For instance, a 4-star Banner character like Xiangling has a pull rate of about 5%, while a 4-star weapon's pull rate is 6%. Otherwise, players will only pull 3-star weapons from the Banner.
Developer miHoYo has implemented a pity system in Genshin Impact, which makes gacha pulls a little easier on players. This means if someone is unlucky enough to get a 5-star character after 89 pulls, they're guaranteed to get one on the 90th attempt. A soft pity system has been discovered by fans (but not officially confirmed), which means some players can get their 5-star pity character closer to the 75th attempt. As with character pull rates in Genshin Impact, the likelihood of getting a 5-star weapon from the pity system is just slightly better than the probability of a 5-star character.
So, while Genshin Impact's pull rates are pretty low, its Wish system is somewhat forgiving thanks to these so-called pity pulls. And sometimes, free characters are still available in the game by completing limited-time events (or like the Horizon Zero Dawn crossover that gave users Aloy). At the end of the day, no matter what players are unlikely to be stuck with only the starter characters in Genshin Impact for very long, even if their luck isn't great.
Source: Genshin Impact Game Database