Is Genshin Impact Pay To Win? (And 10 Things You Need Should Know)

Genshin Impact, Characters, Anemo, Characters, Xiao, Pay to Win
If you want to start playing Genshin Impact but don't know anything about it, this is your place!


Genshin Impact has become known lately and new players keep coming into this game. But everyone’s first question about this game is “is it pay to win or free to play?”.

Today we’ll tell you a few things related to this and you’ll know if Genshin Impact isfree or not and more questions that you might have about the game's elements!

10. Is Genshin Impact Free?

We’re finally here! Top 1! And we couldn’t talk about anything other than Genshin Impact itself!

Genshin Impact is the reason that you and I are here right now! You’re just curious about this game and I’ll tell you everything you want and need to know about it!

  • Genshin Impact is totally and absolutely FREE! Exactly, you don’t need to pay for it to play it, you just need to download it and play it!
  • Even if it’s totally free, there are some in-game payments that you can choose to do or not. As we said, some of these payments are the Blessing Moon, Battle Pass, or skins.
  • Anyways, it’s a totally free game in which you don’t really need to pay anything to go forward with it!

9. Paying to Unlock Characters

Actually, you don’t necessarily have to pay to unlock characters, but if you want to unlock 5-star characters you need Primogems, so…

Primogems can be got from almost everything: dailies, events, chests… And that’s the free to play part about this!

But, you can always pay for them on Paimon’s bargains. You pay for them to get Crystals and those Crystals can be converted into Primogems. That’s the pay-to-win part!

8. Can Characters Be Unlocked Without Paying?

As we said, you don’t actually have to pay to unlock characters! If you don’t want to use Primogems to get characters, don’t worry! There are some options for you!

When you start playing, Genshin Impact gives you 3 initial characters: Amber, Lisa, and Kaeya. But if you keep playing, it will also give you Barbara and Xianling!

Also, Genshin Impact does some events that give you free characters. Sometimes you can choose between a few characters, but for others you don’t have options. But, they still give you really good characters such as Xingqiu or Beidou!

7. Paying to Unlock Weapons

Weapons are very important in this game since they have passives and increase your characters’ DMG and yes, you can pay for them or for free! 

  • If you don’t want to use primogems to get weapons, you can obtain them through chests or events! If you obtain them through chests, they’ll always be 1/2/3-stars weapons, but if you obtain them through events they'll always be 4-stars!
  • If you want 5-star weapons or special 4-star weapons, you have to use Primogems. As we said, if you don’t have any primogems, you can pay for them on Paimon’s bargains. That’s the pay-to-win option!

6. Can Skins Be Unlocked Without Paying?

Skins were implemented one year ago on Genshin Impact and they’ve released a few since then! If you want to obtain skins for your 4-star characters (actually, there are just skins for Barbara and Ninguang) you’ve had to play the event to get them for free.

If you didn’t play the event, you have to pay for them on Paimon’s bargains. They’re just free to play if you play the events.

If you want skins for your 5-star characters (there are just for Jean and Keqing) you have to pay for them, there’s no way to obtain them freely. If you paid for them while the event was on, you had a discount! But if you didn’t, you have to pay the full price for them.

5. Do I Have to Pay to Level Up Characters?

Leveling up characters is very important since you can’t keep moving forward in the game without it. Enemies increase their level and you have to increase your level too to defeat them.

To level up characters you just need materials and Mora, and you can obtain them easily without paying for them! If you don’t have enough Mora, you can get them through Ley Lines using your resin.

But, if you don’t have enough resin to obtain those materials and Mora you can pay for primogems and convert them into resin!

4. Paying to Get Resin

As we said, you don’t necessarily have to pay to get resin, since every day you have 160 resin for free! And you can convert your primogems into resin (we don’t recommend it), but there are some options to get more resin, free to play and pay-to-win!

If you have Fragile Resin, you can convert them into normal resin. You can obtain Fragile Resin leveling your Adventurer Rank or on the Teapot!

If you don’t want to do this, you can always pay for Crystals and convert those Crystals into Primogems and those Primogems into resin!

3. Do I Have to Pay to Unlock Domains?

To unlock domains you don’t have to pay for anything!! Yes, you’re reading correctly. Unlocking domains is totally free since it’s part of the base game and it’s needed to level up characters and weapons.

Domains are used to obtain materials, but there are some domains that give you Primogems because they’re puzzles, but you just can do them once. Also, there are a few domains that give you Mora, but it’s not really worth it.

To do these domains and obtain their reward, you have to use resin. If you don’t have enough, as we said, you can pay for it! So, it’s totally free to unlock domains but not totally free to obtain the rewards.

2. Paying for Events

Genshin Impact releases events all the time so you can obtain Mora, Primogems, crowns, and special weapons! You just have to relax and enjoy those events, even when they get difficult because you have to defeat a lot of enemies!

Events are totally free! In the beginning, there was an event where you had to use resin, so if you didn’t have enough you had to pay to get more. But now, they’re totally free and you don’t have to use resin to do them! So yes, events are totally free to play!

1. Is Genshin Impact Pay To Win?

Actually, Genshin Impact is very coin flip and it depends a lot on what you want and your luck, so it’s difficult to say if it’s pay to win or free to play.

If you’re lucky on Gatcha and don’t need to pay for Primogems to get the characters you want, then it’s totally free to play for you!

But if you never have enough Primogems and you really want a character, you may be tempted to pay for a few Primogems and you’ll think it’s very pay to win.

It depends a lot on your luck, but I would say it’s kind of pay to win, since they give Primogems and materials, but not too much so it’s hard to always have enough for everything you want.

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With an obsession with licorice and thousand of pages behind me I've decided to be the new heroe of the town and defeat with the power of the words those who don't believe in the power of video games
Gamer Since: 2006
Favorite Genre: RPG
Currently Playing: Persona 5 & Horizon Zero Dawn
Top 3 Favorite Games:Assassin's Creed 2 , Life is Strange, League of Legends


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