Genshin Best Passives Ranked

Genshin Impact is famous for many, many reasons: amazing-looking characters, beautiful landscapes, a vast open world, and more. While many things spring to mind, there probably aren’t many people playing Genshin Impact just for the characters’ passive abilities.

That being said, every character in the game has a passive ability, and while some are more useful than others, all deserve to be acknowledged. With that, in this guide, we’ll have the Genshin best passives ranked and break down all of the Genshin Impact passives into a list to show you the best of the bunch.

Bottom Line Up Front

Though there are many passive abilities for you to utilize in Genshin Impact, the best by far are the passives belonging to Childe, Nahida, YaoYao, and Sayu. Childe’s passive is perfect for anyone who loves battling, as he’ll add one skill level to your normal attack talent. Both YaoYao and Sayu will help out anyone on an artifact grind by making crystalflies significantly easier to catch, allowing you to condense resin whenever you need to.

Finally, Nahida will let you collect large batches of local specialties at once, making gathering resources to ascend your characters a breeze. You can also use Nahida’s elemental skill to read the minds of certain NPCs, so Nahida is a must-have for any lore nut.

Selection Criteria

There are a few different abilities that could be considered passive abilities. The first is the talent unlocked at ascension level two, the second is the talent unlocked at ascension level four, and the third one that we will be ranking today is the passive talents that take effect in the overworld.

We’re only ranking the overworld passive talents today. It would be unfair to compare talents that are only really useful for the individual character, as what’s suitable for some characters will be useless for others. The passive talents that appear in the overworld, however, put everyone on the same playing field, and while some skills are still far more helpful than others, these skills can be used pretty much everywhere.

Though there are over 60 characters in Genshin Impact, there are not as many different passive abilities as multiple characters will share the same passive. As such, I have decided to group many of the passive abilities together in one entry as they all do the same thing, just in a slightly different way. Any differences between them would be negligible, so putting them in their own entry on this list wouldn’t accurately show what the passives can do.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in and rank all of the overworld passive abilities in Genshin Impact.

19. Step Away from the Cooking Pot!

Passive Utility: Ayato/Hu Tao: 18% chance to give a suspicious dish of the same type when cooking.

Welcome to the dark depths of entry 19. This is solely reserved for the passive abilities that have no business existing. There is only one passive ability here which is shared by two characters, and while it’s not a waste of resources, it is a waste of time.

Hu Tao and Ayato are both horrendous chefs, but at least they can cook at all, unlike the Electro Archon. Though we appreciate them trying, whenever Hu Tao or Ayato cook any dish, they have an 18% chance of making a suspicious dish of the same type.

Suspicious dishes are worse versions of the standard food dishes. Although they’re technically free to make, you’ll always be better off using a character who can double the product of a delicious dish, using a character to make their signature dish, or just making the standard dish with no buffs.

The fact that even the standard version of a food dish is better than the suspicious dish, and the fact that if you have Hu Tao or Ayato, then you probably already have a character with one of the food passive abilities ranked earlier on makes this passive ability totally redundant, and more of a joke to suit the characters personalities.

18. Lisa – General Pharmaceutics

Passive Utility: 20% chance to refund materials when crafting any potion

At 18th we have Lisa. Lisa has a 20% chance to refund a portion of the materials used when making potions. Saving resources is always a good thing, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll always forget that potions exist.

Even if you are a potion fanatic, this passive is still very niche,  doesn’t really help you save any resin, and outside of damage showcases, potions are hardly ever used.

17. The Speedwalkers

Passive Utility: Rosaria/Dehya will increase movement speed by 10% during the night/day, respectively 

Next up, we have the characters whose passives say that they really have somewhere to be. Rosaria will increase your party’s movement speed by 10% at night, and Dehya will increase your party’s movement speed by 10% during the day.

If you have both of these characters in your party, you’ll be able to powerwalk all the time, which while fun, is fairly inconsequential, especially when these passives do not take effect in domains or the Spiral Abyss.

16. Serenitea Pot Helpers

Passive Utility: 

• Yoimiya: refunds some of the resources used when crafting furniture
• Itto: 25% chance to gain an extra log when hitting a tree

I’ve decided to group Yoimiya and Itto together because both will help you manage your resources in the Serenitea Pot. Yoimiya will refund a portion of the resources used when crafting teapot furnishings, and Itto has a 25% chance to get an additional log of wood when hitting a tree, meaning you could get six logs from a tree instead of three if you’re lucky.

Both of these passives are fantastic for any Serenitea Pot enjoyer, but because of how niche this is, most people probably won’t miss them if they didn’t exist, which is why they’re so low on this list.

As a side note, Itto’s passive ability is compatible with “The Boon of the Elder Tree,” making your wood-gathering trips significantly faster, so if you do like making your Serenitea Pot look great, this little combo will make your life so much easier.

15. Thoma – Snap and Swing

Passive Utility: 20% chance to get a bonus fish when fishing in Inazuma

Now onto one of the most niche passives in Genshin Impact, let’s look at Thoma. Thoma has a 20% chance to give you another fish when you successfully catch one in Inazuma.

This is amazing when you’re going through all the effort to farm for the Catch. Still, outside of that, you’re likely rarely fishing, so this passive quickly loses its luster, especially considering that this will only work in Inazuma.

14. The Ore Refunders

Passive Utility: Diluc/Zhongli/Ganyu refunds 15% of the ore used to craft Claymores/Polearms/Bows, respectively 

Even though this passive is fairly underwhelming, it surprisingly belongs to some of Genshin Impacts’ most popular characters. Diluc, Zhongli, and Ganyu will all refund 15% of the ore used when crafting claymores, polearms, and bows, respectively.

This is definitely a useful passive to have, but when you think about how often you actually craft weapons in the game, the 15% ore refund pales in comparison to other passives that help you save resin.

13. Aloy – Easy Does It

Passive Utility: Animals that drop meat/frozen meat or foul will not flee from you

Coming in towards the middle of the pack, we have Aloy’s passive ability. Aloy makes it so that animals that drop meat, frozen meat, or fowl will not try to flee from you when you approach them.

This passive is very similar to YaoYao’s and Sayu’s. However, because there are several different ways to farm for meat and fowl and this ability does not work on those precious crystalflies, thirteenth is where this passive belongs.

12. Ningguang – Trove of Marvelous Treasures

Passive Utility: Ningguang will highlight ore deposits on your minimap

Ningguang’s passive ability will make harvestable ore veins appear on your minimap, with the exception of Cor Lapis and Noctilucous Jade, which are considered local specialties. This is a very handy passive to have if you’re short on ores, but because of the many other ways there are to collect ore, this passive is fairly mid.

If you’re short on ore, you can speak to any blacksmith and ask for tips. This will make a large vein or ore appear on your map. Alternatively, you could also send characters on expeditions with some of the passive abilities listed above to farm ores passively.

11. Character Expedition Bonuses

Passive Utility:

• Mondstadt: Bennet/Fischl make expeditions 25% faster
• Liyue: Chongyun/Keqing make expeditions 25% faster, Yelan/Shenhe gain 25% more rewards from 20-hour expeditions
• Inazuma: Kujou Sara makes expeditions 25% faster, Kuki Shinobou gains 25% more rewards from 20-hour expeditions
• Sumeru: Cyno/Faruzan gain 25% more rewards from 20-hour expeditions

Next, we have all of the passives that will help you out of your character expeditions. These passives will either grant you 25% more rewards when sending a character on a 20-hour expedition or make the expedition 25% faster.

These passives are useful because more rewards and shorter waiting times are always great, but because all of the resources that can be gathered on expeditions can be farmed easily enough in the overworld, I wouldn’t say that these passive abilities are better than the passives that can help you make the most of your resin.

These passives will only work for certain characters in their home regions, so let’s go over which characters can make your expeditions more efficient.

Both Bennett and Fischl will reduce the time spent on an expedition on Mondstadt by 25%, and both are my go-to for gathering ore in my Monstads expeditions. Chongyun and Keqing will do the same in Liyue, and Kujou Sara will make your Inazuma expeditions faster. We have yet to receive a character who can make Sumeru expeditions faster, but considering how common this passive ability is, it’s likely just a matter of time until we see a character with it.

Yelan and Shenhe will both make you gain 25% more rewards after completing 20-hour expeditions in Liyue, Kuki Shinobou will do this for Inazuma, and both Cyno and Faruzan will make your Sumeru expeditions more bountiful. Surprisingly, we’ve yet to receive a Mondstadt character who can give you some bonus goodies from an expedition, but just like the time-saving passive, I think it’s only a matter of time before one is added.

10. Stamina Savers

Passive Utility:

• Kazuha/Kaeya//Razor/Heizou decrease sprinting stamina consumption by 20%
• Beidou/Kokomi decrease swimming stamina consumption by 20%
• Xiao/Candace decrease climbing stamina consumption by 20%
• Venti/Amber/Collei decrease gliding stamina consumption by 20%

Next up, we have the stamina-saving passive abilities, which take up the most passive ability real estate by far.

There are 11 characters who have different iterations of the stamina-decreasing passive ability, so let’s quickly go over them and the different ways you can save your stamina.

Razor, Kazuha, Kaeya, and Heizou all decrease sprinting stamina consumption by 20%. Unfortunately, these passives will not stack with each other, so a 20% stamina consumption reduction is the most you’ll get. While this passive is handy to have, there is plenty of food items that can do this already, and you can usually regain sprinting stamina easily enough.

Beidou and Kokomi both decrease swimming stamina consumption by 20%. This can be useful for getting to a few places in the early game. However, you can usually get where you need to go across bodies of water just by Kaeya-bridging. This passive is especially disappointing for Kokomi, considering when you pop her elemental burst, you can walk on water, making this passive almost totally redundant to her.

Xiao and Candace will reduce your climbing stamina consumption by 20%, which alongside the gliding stamina, is probably the most useful of the stamina consumption reduction passives. Sometimes we all underestimate how big a cliff is to climb, so without eating stamina dishes, a 20% stamina consumption reduction is a welcome relief from falling to your death yet again.

Finally, Venti, Amber, and Collei will all grant a 20% stamina consumption reduction when you’re gliding. Just like climbing, at every point in a Genshin Impact player’s life, we’ve wished we had just a little more stamina to reach where we need to be, so a small boost is nice to have after all, don’t we all know by now that gliding is faster?

9. Finding Extra Fries in the Bag!

Passive Utility:

• Xinyan/Noelle: 12% chance to double defense-boosting dishes.
• Jean, Barbara, Diona: 12% chance to double healing/revival dishes.
• Xiangling: 12% chance to double attack boosting dishes.
• Yun-Jin/Nilou: 12% chance to double adventurer’s (stamina) dishes.

Slot nine is home to all of the passive abilities surrounding cooking, with one exception we’ll get to later on.

If you consider yourself a bit of a Genshin Impact chef, then these talents will likely come in handy for you. However, aside from possibly saving you a few resources here and there, these kinds of talents aren’t going to impact your game too much.

Both Xinyan and Noelle have a 12% chance to double the product of defense-boosting dishes when you cook them perfectly. Get used to this 12% chance to double the product upon perfect cooking because pretty much all of the cooking passive talents will follow this formula.

Jean, Barbara, and Diona have a 12% chance to double the produce when cooking perfect healing dishes, including revival dishes, Xiangling can receive double the attack-boosting dishes, and Yun-Jin and Nilou have a chance of receiving double the adventurer’s dishes.

You probably won’t get too much mileage out of these passives if you have a strong healer on your team, but when you do cook, it’s always worth using one to get some bonus dishes.

8. Local Specialty Radars

Passive Utility: Klee, Mika, Yanfei, Qiqi, Gorou, and Tighnari will highlight local specialties in the region they are from.

Coming in at eight are the characters with the passives to help us find local specialties. Like the character and weapon enhancement material passives, those won’t really help you save resin, but they will save you a hell of a lot of time, especially when you consider how much of a pain local specialties like Scarabs and Rhkkhashava Mushrooms are to find.

Klee and the upcoming Mika will highlight Mondstadt’s local specialties on the minimap, Yanfei and Qiqi will highlight Liyue’s specialties, Gorou will tell you where Inazuma’s specialties are, and finally, Tighnari will show you where Sumeru’s local specialties are. Combine this passive with Nahida’s passive ability, and you’ll be rolling in resources in no time.

7. Character and Weapon Enhancement Materials

Passive Utility: 

• Dori: 25% chance to refund character and weapon enhancement materials.
• Sucrose: 10% chance to double character and weapon enhancement materials.

Dori and Sucrose both have passive abilities revolving around character and weapon enhancement materials, otherwise known as mob drops! Dori has a 25% chance of recovering some of the crafting materials you use, and Sucrose has a 10% chance to double the product. While these don’t really help you save much resin, they can help you save a lot of grinding time, especially for those pesky handguards.

6. Weapon Ascension Materials

Passive Utility:

• Alhaitham, Albedo, Ayaka: 10% chance to double crafted weapon ascention materials.
• Mona: 25% chance to refund materials used to craft weapon ascention materials.

Next up, we have the passives who will help save your weapon ascension materials. Alhaitham, Albedo, and Ayaka will all have a 10% chance of doubling the product when crafting weapon ascension materials. Maybe there’s just something about names beginning with the letter A that makes you thrifty when crafting weapon ascension stuff, but the fact that we have three characters that all do the same thing is both a little odd and extremely helpful.

Mona, on the other hand, is the only character to have a 25% chance to refund a portion of the resources used when crafting weapon ascension materials.

5. Character Talent Materials Passives

Passive Utility:

• Eula and Layla: 10% chance to double the crafted talent materials.
• Xingqiu: 25% chance to refund materials used to craft talent materials.
• Yae Miko: 25% chance to get region character talent material refunded when crafting.

Placing fifth, we have the first batch of resin savers that will help you out when crafting character talent materials. Eula and Layla have a 10% chance to double the product when crafting character talent materials, and Xingqiu has a 25% chance to refund some of the items used to create the character talent materials.

Yae Miko stands out from the crowd as she has a 25% chance of getting a regional character talent material back. This hopefully means that you’ll be able to spend less time farming talent domains and more time enjoying your beefed-up characters.

With all of the passive talents that allow you to either double the product or refund a portion of the materials used, I have a specific way of using them that seems to be the most efficient. The only downside it, it does require some mental maths. It always takes three of one material to craft another, so if the number of resources you have is multiple of three, then go ahead and try to double your product.

However, if the resources you have are not a multiple of three, try your luck on refunding some of the products used, keep doing this until a multiple of three appears, then double the product again for a chance to really squeeze the most out of your farming.

Of course, this all still depends on luck, but it’s certainly worth a try!

4. The Raiden Shogun and Wanderer – Penny Pinchers!

Passive Utility: Raiden Shogun will make polearms and swords 50% cheaper to ascend. Wanderer will make bows and catalysts 50% cheaper to ascend.

Just shy of the top three, we have the passive to reduce the cost of ascending weapons by a whopping 50%. Mora can become a precious commodity, especially when you’re ascending character to level 90 and start finding yourself farming Mora leylines, so anything to help you pinch your pennies is a great thing to have.

The Raiden Shogun will reduce the cost of swords and polearms, and the Wanderer will reduce the costs of bows and catalysts by 50%, so remember to get them to help you out the next time you level up your weapons!

3. Sayu and YaoYao – Cystalflies Galore!

Passive Utility: When Sayu/YaoYao is in the party, your characters will not startle Crystalflies and other animals, excluding boars and large birds.

Coming in at number three, we have Sayu and YaoYao, who share the same passive ability. Their passive abilities make it so that small creatures like squirrels, small birds, and most notably, crystalflies no longer try to flee from you when you approach them. Anyone who has played Genshin Impact for long enough will know the struggle of collecting crystalflies for condensing your resin.

Those tiny little bugs just keep flying away as soon as you get close. This struggle is practically eliminated by this passive ability, although it is important to note that after you collect one crystalfly in a group, the rest will still try to flee. The fact that both Sayu and YaoYao make collecting crystalflies easier is amazing for anyone who wants to conserve their resin, and because both of these characters are four-star units, they’re easy enough for free-to-play players to get.

2. Tartaglia – Master of Weaponry

Passive Utility: Increases your party’s normal attack talent level by one.

Living up to his personality, Childe’s passive ability grants plus one to the attack talent of every character in your party. For characters who thrive off of having a strong base attack, like Xiao, this talent is insanely useful, and to date, there have yet to be any other characters who improve character talents in this way.

Childe was one of the first 5-star characters I properly used, and at that point, I wasn’t really clued up on how artifacts worked, let alone what passive abilities did. So when I eventually switched up my team and gave Childe some well-deserved time off, I was so confused as to why some characters who would hit hard before suddenly weren’t performing as well. The answer to that was I had lost an entire talent level in basic attacks, so trust me when I say that this passive makes all the difference!

This passive ability adds in a great deal of combat prowess, and it’s a shame that Hoyoverse hasn’t followed this idea with any other characters, though perhaps that’s because this ability is absolutely insane. If 36 starring the spiral abyss is your game, then why not add Tartaglia to your party for a decent combat boost.

1. Nahida – On All Things Meditated

Passive Utility: Nahida can use her Elemental skill, All Schemes to Know to pick up five harvestable items within a fixed AOE. You can also read the thoughts of certain NPCs.

Finally, my favorite and what I believe to be the best passive ability in Genshin Impact, we have Nahida’s passive ability, On All Things Meditated. This passive is unique in many ways, as not only does it make collecting resources significantly easier, but it can also unlock tidbits of lore that would otherwise be completely unavailable.

Nahida’s passive ability allows her to use her elemental skill to collect local specialties and resources like sweet flowers, sunsettias, and more. Basically, if you can pick it up in the overworld without having to hit it, and it doesn’t move on its own, Nahida can pick it up for you with her elemental skill. That may sound straightforward, but when you can collect up to five items at once, you’ll see that your character material grinding will get significantly faster.

In all honesty, I would place this in slot one for that alone, but the bonus feature of being able to read select NPC’s minds really sets this passive ability apart from the rest. Of course, this feature isn’t for everyone, but no one can deny that the ability to read the thoughts of others is incredible, and especially for the lore-hungry Genshin Impact players, Nahida is a must-have for her passive alone.

Passive Talents We’d Love to See

Now that we know which passive exploration talents we already have, let’s take a moment to fantasize and think about some talents we’d love to see introduced into Genshin Impact.

Refund and Double the Product Bonus to Gemstones

We can get refunds and double the products on every other character level-up and ascention material, apart from the different fragments, chunks, and gemstones. I would love to see some characters that give us bonuses to crafting these gems because farming them can be a real pain.

I’m not sure if we don’t have a passive to do this yet because the gemstones are technically boss drops, but many of the other ascention materials cost resin to obtain initially, so why we don’t have a passive talent for the gemstones yet is beyond me.

Speed Up Plant Growth in the Serenetea Pot

When Hoyoverse first added farmable materials to the Serenetea Pot, I instantly farmed as much as I could. Mostly for the achievements, but more materials are always a good thing! To get all of the achievements in a Realm Beyond series III, you need to grow and harvest 800 crops in each of the different types of fields.

This sounds easy, especially when you can harvest crops like Valberries to get four harvests for one plant. However, the Orderly Meadow field only grows plants that give one harvest per seed. It took me over eight months to finally get the achievement for harvesting 800 crops, and I was very diligent with planting and harvesting!

If there were a character with the passive to speed up crop growth, even by just 10%, I would have been able to save so much time for achievement hunting. I think this would be a great addition to have, as it’s not so game-changing that the meta will shift entirely, but it’s also useful enough that I can see many people taking advantage of it.

FAQs

Conclusion

So there we have it, a rundown of all of the overworld passive abilities you can get in Genshin Impact. From the outright brilliant to the questionable, there are going to be lots of passives to help you out on your adventures across Teyvat.

The shining stars of this list are, by far, Childe, Nahida, Sayu, and YaoYao. These characters’ passive abilities are so helpful and so unique that if you have the chance to add them to your team, you most definitely should.

• About
• Latest Posts

Bethany Gerrish

Beth is a dedicated and passionate writer, with a deep love of gaming. It was only a matter of time before the two collided and with a slight Genshin Impact obsession, writing about the game was the most logical next step! Open world and RPG's have always been a favourite of Beth's, but Genshin Impact has been a long-running favourite since picking it up for the first time. As a soon to be university graduate with a bachelor's in Journalism, Beth is taking her first steps into the real world of digital journalism and is looking forward to meeting lots of new people and writing many informative pieces for you to enjoy!

Latest posts by Bethany Gerrish (see all)

• Genshin Impact Jadefall’s Splendor Guide - June 16, 2023
• Genshin Impact Iniquitous Baptist Guide - June 15, 2023
• Genshin Impact Best Character Skins Ranked - June 9, 2023