Maybe you’ve been playing Genshin Impact for a while, or maybe you’ve just picked it up. Either way you’ve probably found yourself spending more and more time exploring the gorgeous open world of Teyvat, and less time doing other boring stuff like talking to friends, cleaning the dishes, showering. No? Maybe that’s just me.
Whether Paimon’s only just escorted you to the gates of Mondstadt or you’re already a well established slime killer, levelling up and picking Sunsettia fruit in Liyue and beyond, you may have some unanswered questions. Questions like, how do I get more poultry? What does elemental mastery actually do? How do I increase character friendship levels? and how long can I go without doing that washing up? For the answers to (most of) these questions, this guide is at your disposal.
Table of Contents
(Click the links below to skip further into the guide, to the selected section)
- How to get more recipes
- How to unlock new map areas
- How to upgrade statues
- Where to find anemoculus
- How do you reach the Anemoculus near Iris/Dragonspine Adventurer Camp?
- How to heal your team without food
- How to get more poultry
- Best spots to farm poultry
- What to do with pinecones
- How to process ingredients
- What does friendship do?
- How to increase friendship
- What are elemental reactions?
- What does elemental mastery do?
- How does elemental resonance work?
- Is Genshin Impact multiplayer?
- How does multiplayer work?
- Is Genshin Impact free?
- How does the pity system work?
- Is Genshin Impact on Switch?
How to get more recipes in Genshin Impact
One of the first tricks you’ll learn in the opening quest line of Genshin Impact, is how to cook yourself a succulent Chicken-Mushroom Skewer meal. After preparing a few of these and trying out some of the other recipes available at the start of the game, your likely going to want to start collecting more recipes, so you can make use of all the fruit, vegetables and meat you’re collecting.
How do you get more recipes? The simple answer: by finishing quests, exploring the world map, raising your reputation in different areas and levelling your Adventure Rank. Having higher Adventure Rank allows you to buy different recipes from a number of businesses. You will also receive recipes as rewards for completing various quests throughout the game and meeting other achievement criteria such as increasing your reputation level in Mondstadt and Liyue.
You can buy more recipes from Sarah at The Good Hunter in Mondstadt. You can also buy recipes in Qingce Village and the Wangshu Inn, as well as at the following businesses in Liyue Harbor:
For a full list of all recipes and how you can earn them or buy them, check out this great recipe location guide by GameWith.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to unlock new map areas in Genshin Impact
This one is easy. To make the dark blue areas of the map visible you just need to find and activate Statues of The Seven. When looking for them on your map, they’ll look like a light blue circle with a down arrow (kind of like an ice cream cone). See them circled in yellow below. When you approach one and interact with it, it will reveal the surrounding area on the map, as in the video above.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to upgrade statues in Genshin Impact
When you find Statues of The Seven on the world map (see section above), you not only get more of the map revealed and your party healed (see section below), you also get the chance to run further, fly longer and climb higher thanks to stamina increases rewarded for statue upgrades.
To upgrade a Statue of The Seven and gain a stamina upgrade, the player makes an offering of Oculi to the statue. This Oculi is in the form of Anemoculus in the Mondstadt region and Geoculus in the Liyue region. The statues are globally linked, which means that it doesn’t matter statue in each area you make an offering too, you’ll be upgrading all of them.
As you continue to upgrade the statues, you’ll continue to increase your stamina, allowing you to run, fly, swim and climb for longer. The number of oculi needed to gain a statue upgrade will also increase as you continue making offerings.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Where to find anemoculus in Genshin Impact
As you roam around the Teyvat, the world of Genshin Impact, you may notice a small cross-like symbol appearing on your mini-map. These are Oculi, either Anemoculi or Geoculi. They’re definitely worth pausing your current mission to collect as they’re the precious material used to make offerings to the Statues of The Seven and upgrade your stamina (see section above).
In some locations these oculi will be fairly easy to collect, they’ll just be sitting there in plain reach, or only subtly hidden. In other cases, they can prove more tricky to locate. Here are three of the main things to look out for when trying to pinpoint an Anemoculus or Geoculus:
- Is there a rock formation covering the oculi? Sometimes if you’re near a cliff face, the Oculus will be hiding under a pile of rocks that look very similar to the cliff itself, so it can be easy to miss that they are in fact a destructible barrier.
- Can you glide from something high nearby? This is probably the most common way that Oculi need to be caught. Have a look around and if you see a higher area nearby, chances are you’ll be able to jump from there and glide down to the oculi.
- Are there twinkly fairy-looking things in the grass nearby? These are called Anemograna, and they’ll always come in groups of three. If you collect all three of them, in the spot where you pick up the third Grana, an Anemo wind current will appear, allowing you to jump in and fly up to grab the Oculus. Anemograna can also be used to reach treasure chests that are otherwise inaccessible, as in the video below.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How do you reach the Anemoculus near Iris/Dragonspine Adventurer Camp in Genshin Impact?
Maybe I’m just stupid. But I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to reach the Amenoculus floating high above the road just outside the Dragonspine Adventurer Camp where you find Iris. I tried searching everhwere for Anemograna, and jumping off high places. I even tried gliding over all the way from the Dragonspine peak itself (this failed miserably).
Eventually I figured out that you just have too glide across from the nearby tallest tree, which you can see in the vide above.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to heal your team without food in Genshin Impact
It’s easy to get into the habit of feeding your team with your delicious hand cooked meals when they lose health. And certainly this is one of your key options when in the middle of a battle (other than using a party member’s healing skill). But if you find yourself outside of battle with some injured party members, a much more efficient way to get everyone back to top health, is by visiting a Statue of The Seven.
Instead of wasting food, just fast travel to your nearest statue, interact with it and choose the option “Statue’s Blessing”. On this blessing screen you can manually heal your party members. You can also choose how much healing power to use automatically in future when you stand close to a statue. Personally I keep this set to 100% so all I need to do is stand near the statue and my active party is fully healed. The healing power of the statue is regenerated over time, so don’t worry about using it up.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to get more poultry in Genshin Impact
You may have noticed that while flowers, mushrooms and fruit are almost constantly available to you as you roam the countryside, poultry is a little more scarce. You’ll find it occasionally in chests and other reward bundles, and also be given it sometimes by NPCs. The problem is, you’re going to want a lot of it, especially early in the game when Chicken-Mushroom Skewers are one of your primary health restoring meals, and they require poultry to cook.
So where do you get more of the stuff? I have some sad news for you. You know those cute ducks and majestic ibis you see near the waterways of Teyvat? Your primary supply of poultry is going to come from killing them. Sad I know. If you really can’t bear to hunt the cute ducks, you could always become a vegetarian. (There are some great veggie recipes, like Mushroom Pizza, that become available as you progress through the game).
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Best spots to farm poultry in Genshin Impact
If you’ve come to terms with the cruel slaughter of duckies and other graceful avian lifeforms in service of your cooking, the next question is – where’s the best spot to hunt? The simple answer is, pretty much anywhere. Especially places with water. A good strategy is to use a bow weilding character as you travel so that when you do stumble across a bird you can quickly whip out your bow and shoot it.
If you’re urgently in need of some poultry and want to do some concentrated farming, your best bet is to head to the lakes of Teyvat and other places where water meets land, as that’s where you’ll most commonly find birdlife. A good spot for this early on is a farming route starting at the gates of Mondstadt with the pidgeons huddled in front of the small boy (sorry Timmie), and then the ducks in the lake next to the bridge, and then on to Springvale and/or Windrise. You can see what this looks like in the video above.
While you’re on your hunting missions, don’t forget to keep an eye out for mushrooms as well, as you’ll need them to cook some of your delecious poultry-based meals.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
What to do with pinecones in Genshin Impact
You’ve probably found yourself picking up a metric tonne of these things, thanks to the fact that they’re pretty much everywhere. You’ve also probably found yourself asking – “what the heck am I going to do with these 5 million pinecones”. Fret not traveller, there is a very good use for them, it just takes a little bit to unlock it.
That use – as you may have surmised from the item card in your inventory – is for cooking. And the first recipe that you’ll be able to unlock to cook them in is the delicious Mondstadt Hash Brown. To unlock the hashbrown recipe, you need to be Adventure Rank 15, which will allow you to complete the Temple of the Wolf domain, at which point you’ll be rewarded the hash brown recipe.
If you’ve got Razor as a playable character, and you use him to cook your hashbrowns, then you’ll have a chance to produce something even cooler – Puppy Paw Hash Browns. That’s right, hash browns in the shape of puppy paws, with increased healing powers. It doesn’t get much cuter than that folks.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to process ingredients in Genshin Impact
To cook some meals in Genshin Impact, you’ll notice that the recipe calls for processed foods, rather than just raw ingredients (e.g. the Mondstadt Hash Browns discussed in the section above require Jam to prepare, which you can make via food processing).
Food processing is easy enough, it’s just hidden away in the menu in a way that means some of you may have missed it. To access the processing menu, visit a campfire or other cooking area, enter the cooking menu like usual, and select the right hand tab at the top of the screen that looks like two chillies.
From this tab you can use raw ingredients to create refined foods. For example, Sweet Flowers can be turned into Sugar, which in turn can be combined with Berries and Sunsettias to create Jam. You can buy the raw ingredients needed for some processed foods (e.g. Milk for Cheese) from general goods stores like Mondstadt General Goods.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
What does friendship do in Genshin Impact?
Raising Friendship levels in Genshin Impact unlocks story and aesthetic bonuses, namely: Voice-Overs, Character Stories and Namecards.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How to increase friendship in Genshin Impact
Friendship levels are increased by collecting Companionship EXP. You collect Companionship EXP by completing a large range of activities including Random Events, Domains, Ley Line Outcrops and Commissions. When you receive the EXP it is applied equally to all members of your active party.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Genshin Impact Elemental Reactions
Elemental reactions are a key component of combat in Genshin Impact and without taking them into consideration you’re missing out on a lot of destructive power that you could otherwise be weilding. The gist of it is that enemies and players can have an elemental status that’s either innate – e.g. the Cryo status on a Cryo Slime – or applied – e.g. a Pyro status left behind after you hit an enemy with a Pyro elemental attack. Either way you’ll be able to see this status by looking at the element icon above the enemy (or above your own healthbar when applied to a player character).
When an enemy or player character that has an elemental status then gets hit with another element, these elements combine to create an elemental reaction, which in most cases deals more damage than would otherwise have been dealt by the attack. This can include reactions like Melt which is triggered by a Cryo attack hitting an enemy with a Pyro status or Electro-Charged, caused by an Electro attack on a Wet enemy.
You can read more about all the ways that different elements react with each other in the Elemental Reaction wiki page. Or you can view more information about specific elements below:
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
What does Elemental Mastery do in Genshin Impact?
Increasing the Elemental Mastery attribute of your characters increases how much damage their Elemental Reactions do. This can be increased via weapons and artifacts as well as via some character abilities.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How does Elemental Resonance Work in Genshin Impact?
Elemental Resonance is a party wide bonus buff that you receive based on the elemental types of your characters. Apart from ‘Protective Canopy’ which you receive from having each character in your team be a different element type, every other resonance effect is achieved from having two characters of the same type. This means that the most resonance effects you can have active at one time is 2, with a party made up of two pairs of elemental typed characters.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Is Genshin Impact multiplayer?
It sure is. You can play Co-Op Mode with up to three friends with crossplay supported across all available platforms. The gameplay is PvE (Player vs Environment), not PvP (Player vs Player). This means that you’ll be working together to take down enemy bosses and claiming loot rather than facing off competitively. One good outcome of this setup is that a higher/worse ping doesn’t have as much of a detrimental effect as it would usually do with online multplayer games.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How does Genshin Impact multiplayer work?
While Genshin Impact’s multiplayer mode is easy to jump into and allows full open world exploration with your friends, there are a few conditions that come with the Co-Op Mode:
- You must reach Adventure Rank 16 before you can play multiplayer.
- If you’re currently in the middle of an Archon or Story Quest, you’ll need to finish it before you can play multiplayer.
- You must be in the same server to play together (America, EU or Asia).
- One player acts as the host and all other players join their world.
- You can only join a host’s world if you have the same or higher World Level than them.
- You can only have a total of 4 characters total in the party. If you have 2 players, you can each have 2 characters. If you have 3 players, the host has 2 characters and the other two players have 1 character each. If you have 4 players then each player only has 1 character.
- You can complete Domains and other open world challenges together, but story missions are inaccessible during cooperative play.
- Visiting players can’t collect Anemoculus or Geoculus in the host’s world, but can collect plants, fruit, ore and hunt animals. When completing Domains and other challenges, all players receive the reward loot.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Is Genshin Impact free?
Yes! While you can choose to make in-game purchases, this is entirely optional and it’s totally possible to play the game and enjoy traversing the world of Teyvat without spending any real world money.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
How does the Genshin Impact pity system work?
Take pity on us Genshin gods! Thankfully, they kind of do. Every 10th pull of the wish machine is guaranteed to give you a 4 star or higher character or weapon. This works for both single or 10-pack wishes, so you don’t need to worry about always saving up to buy 10 wishes at once. The game will keep track, and every 10th wish they’ll take pity on you and ensure you get something good. Note: If you’re lucky enough to get a 4 star or higher prize before your 10th pull, then the counter is reset.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Is Genshin Impact on Switch?
Not yet, but hopefully soon. On May 16, 2021 Genshin Impact news leaker @GenshinReport tweeted the following:
Prior to this, a Switch port trailer (below) was shown in January 2020 at a Japanese Nintendo Direct presentation. Then in October 2020 miHoYo confirmed in an interview with Inverse that the port was in active development.
(Jump back up to Table of Contents)
Feel like supporting me to write more game guides?
If you’ve found any of my guides helpful and you want to shout me a coffee to help power future work, feel free to do so through Ko-Fi below 🙂