Genshin Impact: Leveling and EXP boosts guide

Although you can level-up in Genshin Impact through questing and mob kills, that’s not just the only grind you have to go through. You still need to consider the various leveling items and EXP boosts that’d facilitate a character’s growth. Here’s our guide to help you out.

Note: For more information, check out our Genshin Impact guides and features hub.

Genshin Impact: Leveling and EXP boosts guide

First off, as mentioned in our beginner’s guide, leveling your characters is quite different from leveling your Adventure Rank. Although certain concepts are similar, the latter is to help progress the story further and provide more quests.

In any case, for leveling your characters, you’re mostly looking at mob kills and quest completions. Likewise, there are several kinds of leveling items, and foremost among these are the EXP booklets (a.k.a. EXP boosts). Examples include:

• Wanderer’s Advice – +1,000 EXP
• Adventurer’s Experience – +5,000 EXP
• Hero’s Wit – +20,000 EXP

Hero’s Wit is actually very valuable. If you checked out our microtransactions guide, it’s cited that the Wayfarer’s Supply Bundle nets you x50 of these. However, be forewarned that this bundle costs 980 Genesis Crystals, Genshin Impact‘s premium currency.

You could also grab several Hero’s Wit EXP booklets once you’ve unlocked the Battle Pass (Adventure Rank 20). The Battle Pass has several ranks and some of these provide you with Hero’s Wit. There’s even a Gnostic Hymn upgrade that has an extra row filled with rewards, but this requires a cash purchase.

In any case, you do need to pay gold for every level-up using these booklets. Additionally, every new character you obtain in Genshin Impact starts at level 1 no matter how powerful they might’ve been while they were just a “trial” member of your party. As such, you’ll need 7x Hero’s Wit to have them reach level 20 which is the first hurdle.

This is actually an important facet to remember. While you can experiment with different party compositions, you should still avoid using your Hero’s Wit and other EXP boosters on characters that won’t be helpful in the long run (i.e., Amber). At best, spend resources only on those that’ll become mainstays all throughout your journey — i.e., Venti, Fishl, Diluc, and Jean — though they are, of course, obtained via Wish microtransactions.

Ascension and Talents

Anyway, once a character reaches level 20, that’s when you’ll need to complete their Ascension to increase the cap. This requires a few materials collected from your adventures. Some, however, can be easily purchased from the Souvenir Shop (I’ll get to this in a while). After completing the first Ascension, you’ll unlock a character’s talent. Basically, it’s a boost for one of their existing skills.

Completing the Ascension also increases that character’s level cap to 40. This requires hundreds of thousands of EXP – or 29 Hero’s Wit and 116,000 gold if you want a shortcut. From here, you’ll need materials for yet another Ascension/talent and level cap increase. It’s like climbing a mountain called Mount Microtransaction.

The Souvenir Shop and Constellation unlocks

The Souvenir Shop can be found in the main hubs (i.e., Mondstadt and Liyue Harbor). Just look for the NPC with the diamond icon. The Souvenir Shop sells several Ascension-leveling materials such as Agnidus Agate Sliver and Vajrada Amethyst Sliver. It also has materials for leveling weapons/crafting.

Note: Characters may require another Ascension-leveling material. In the case of Barbara, you need to find Philanemo Mushrooms.

Anyway, the currency used by the shop in Mondstadt is the Anemo Sigil. Meanwhile, the one in Liyue Harbor uses Geo Sigils. These sigils are found by simply exploring in their respective zones as random drops from treasure chests, challenge completions, Statue of the Seven level-ups, and so on.

Other goals you can set your mind to are the Constellation-activating materials for your Traveler/main character called the Memory of Roving Gales. The one in Mondstadt has the Constellation unlock for your Anemo (wind-based) Traveler and the one in Liyue Harbor has the unlock for the Geo (earth-based) main character.

That’s just the Constellation unlocks for the Traveler. What about other characters, you ask? Well, these items are called Stella Fortuna, and the only way you can obtain these is through Wish microtransactions as well. Specifically, you need to get a duplicate of that character — this will be converted into their Stella Fortuna. Yes, it’s going to be very costly, so be wary of this mechanic.

Genshin Impact is available via its official website. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.