Starting a new game can sometimes be overwhelming if it involves many concepts and features a unique combat mechanism. Most of the time, players don’t pay much attention to tutorials and dive straight into the gameplay. I did the same, and sometimes gameplay was a bit complex because I ignored tutorials.Â
I’m an early game Genshin Impact player and have been playing this game since launch, and I highly recommend that new players should know a few in-game terms beforehand. This will help new players to know about the game terminologies and get a better start before diving into detailed quests and game combat mechanics.Â
Here I’ll share a few Genshin Impact terms that can help you understand the game better, whether you are a beginner player or a veteran. I will attach relevant pictures so that you can get a better understanding of my viewpoint and observe the overall concept.Â
Genshin Impact Glossary of Terms
Let’s go over the terminologies that will help you get a better start in the game, and I hope these terms will help you in the longer run.
Updated till version ~ 2.6
Elements
Genshin Impact has different elements that you can use with your characters, and currently, there are 7 elements in the game. Pyro, Cryo, Hydro, Electro, Geo, Anemo, and Dendro.
As of writing, Genshin Impact is yet to introduce Dendro element characters in the game. Having two elements of the same type can give additional buffs as well.
Physical Damage
Physical damage is raw damage that your character deals with, regular attacks, or enemies dealing with you. Physical damage is different from elemental damage, and it is white in colour.
Elemental enemies will apply elements on you, while melee enemies or range enemies may damage you physically. It depends on the type of enemies you are dealing with to observe which kind of damage you will get.
Elemental Skill
Characters have a unique skill that they can use after a short duration of time. These skills can consist of shields, deployable or unique attacks depending on the character. So far, no character has the same elemental skill, and it can be leveled up to increase its potency.
I would say elemental skill is a permanent ability that your character features. Elemental skills have cooldowns that you have to wait before using them again.
Elemental Burst
Elemental bursts can be considered an ultimate ability that your character can use and deal vast damage to enemies with these abilities. You have two requirements before using this ability, energy cost and cooldown. You need to fulfil the burst energy cost for a character to use their elemental burst.
After their elemental burst is off cooldown, you can use it again to get a unique effect. While these abilities are pretty potent in dealing damage, depending on the character, they can give abilities to crowd control as well. One such character is Venti, and if you are interested to read about him, you can check out the Venti guide here.
Elemental Reaction
An elemental reaction is an effect you get when two elements come into contact with each other. When your characters are of a particular element and apply their ability to an enemy with a different element, you can see elemental reactions coming into action together.
Overload, freeze, and electro-charged are a few examples. As you progress through Genshin Impact, you will learn more about them and benefit from dealing with vast amounts of damage or crowd controlling the enemies.
Statue of the Seven
The many Statues of Seven is a unique teleportation point where you can offer Oculis you collect throughout your journey. Every Teyvat region has its own Statue of seven, and interacting with it gives you that specific region’s elemental powers. With rewards like Mora and primogems, they also offer an increase in stamina bar in regions like Mondstadt and Liyue region.
An increase in stamina bar can help you climb mountains that usually are a challenging ordeal. Statues of seven represent the region’s archons, and you can easily recognize them from their shapes. A Statue of seven can also heal your characters or revive fallen characters to their total health. You can tweak the Statue’s healing and optimize it to your needs.
Teleport Point
Teleport points are structures throughout the region that you can unlock to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye. The Statue of seven also acts as a teleport point and helps you to travel faster.
I recommend you always try to unlock a new region’s teleport points before starting rigorous explorations. Quests may require you to travel between places fast, which will help you do so.
Character Screen
A character screen is displayed to see your overall character stats, weapons, artifacts, and details related to your character.
You can see it as a configuration page for your character where you can tweak their stats.
Pressing C on the keyboard or tapping on the character icon on touch devices will open this for you. You can see all characters and navigate to them.
Weapons
Weapons have a particular page where you can see all your collected weapons. They come in different rarities, and you can obtain some of them through a wishing system.
You can obtain the same weapon and refine it to a maximum level of 5 by combining four extra copies of that weapon.
Artifacts
Artifacts are items you can equip on your characters to change their stats. They come in different rarity and unique sets of stats that you can put on your characters in 2-piece,2-piece or 4-piece, or 1-piece combinations.
Having them in combination can also provide your character with additional buffs. Some of them even have the potential to provide overall team buffs.
Food
Food are Genshin consumables that you can cook, process, buy from shops or submit in certain quests. They feature different effects that your character will experience, broadly categorizing offence, defence, and recovery food items. Characters can consume a limited amount of food till the fullness is reached.
Materials
Materials are overworld items you can obtain from unique flora and fauna. They also consist of prototype billets that you can use to forge craftable weapons in a blacksmith’s shop.
Gadgets
Gadgets are rare items you get from quests or limited-time events or crafting. Some of the common ones are treasure compasses, fishing rods, and portable teleport points.
Quest Items
Higher rarity items you get through quests or receive after completing the quest. Until now, I’ve personally felt their use enough except for submitting them in quests.
Precious Items
As the name suggests, precious items can yield your potential rewards in the game. Oculis, Elemental sigils, and wishing fates are extremely valuable to the game.
They can help you wish on featured banners and obtain your desired characters or weapons.
Furnishings
Furnishings are obtained from blueprints that you can learn to craft furniture in Serenitea pot.
They come in different rarity and require you to collect their respective material to craft the required furniture.Â
Serenitea Pot
 The Serenitea pot is a mini-world in Genshin Impact that you can customize and design according to your needs.
You can deploy your favourite characters there, be an architect and construct your own world.
Character Development Items
You can obtain overworld drops or EXP materials to invest in your characters. Whenever you try to ascend your character or invest in their talents, you need to use character development items with more to complete the process.
Obtaining them can be a challenge as most of them can be obtained only from the overworld and require you to craft them to get their higher rarity.
Adventure Rank
While progressing through the game, adventurer rank is the in-game level that you obtain.
Opening chests, completing quests and using original resin increase your Adventure rank.
As you will progress, you get some rewards at each Adventure rank.
Paimon Menu
The Paimon Menu is the menu you get when you tap or click on the Paimon Icon on the top left of the screen. You can access different options like Party setup, Friends, Achievements and more
These options are self-explanatory, and you can see other options inside them. Through the Paimon Menu, you can also access additional options like the clock, Game settings, in-game mail, Notices, and Camera.
Some quests require you to change the in-game world time or take a picture, so these options can help you there.
World Level
World-level is like Adventure rank; however, your Adventure rank scales according to your world level. As you progress through Genshin Impact and increase your world level, enemies will become stronger and drop higher rarity materials.
You can always lower your in-game world level if you think your characters are under-invested.
Original Resin
You will obtain Original resin that you can use to claim rewards from world bosses, Ley lines, and domains. Call it a currency that you are exchanging in the world to get something better in return.
One unit of original resin is generated in 8 minutes.
Condensed Resin
If you cannot play for a couple of days, you can create condensed resin from the original resin. You can create 5 condensed resins simultaneously, and it takes 40 original resins to create one condensed resin.
Also, you can get double the rewards from domains and leyline. Unfortunately, you cannot use Condensed resin to claim rewards from overworld bosses.Â
Ley Line Blossom
Ley line blossoms are places where you can interact with them to get character EXP material or mora. After defeating enemies that will get summoned, you can use Original resin to claim rewards from it.Â
Domains
Domains have capabilities like teleport points. They are dungeons where you can fight enemies in unique environments to claim rewards.
They require you to spend the original resin to redeem their respective rewards.
Mysterious Seelie
Connected with lore, these beings, when interacted with, will guide you to their Seelie holders where you can solve a puzzle or obtain a chest.
There are different types of seelies, and all of them have their own unique features that represent the region they belong from.
Quest Menu
Quest Menu is where you see story, world, daily, and archon quests and obtain rewards for completing them.
You can press J to open it up and see quest-related details for it. If you have multiple quests and want to switch to a specific quest at any time, you can do this from the in-game Quest menu.
Mini-Map
Mini-map is a circular rotating map that you see on the topmost left. And can see different locations where you can go to complete quests or navigate easily throughout the game.
You can open the extended map with the M key and mark anything on the map and navigate toward it.
Elemental Sight
You can temporarily enable elemental sight for a short period to see things that can’t be seen in general. Suppose you a see a Seelie holder and observe it with elemental sight, you will see a wave-like animation outgrowing from it to a specific direction where you can find the seller. Elemental sight can also help you to locate items for bounties while completing region commissions.
Conclusion
As you start to put your time into the game, you will learn more about it. Even as an adventure rank 59 players, I’m still learning. There are so many things related to the game, whether related to the game’s lore or meta that you can keep adding them to your knowledge database. I wish you luck on your Genshin Impact journey and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.Â
I suggest you go over other guides on the site to know about your favourite character or weapon. I’m sure you will learn something new from them. I always believe that whenever you get an opportunity to learn something new, you should always be ready to grab it. And be grateful to others for letting you tag along the journey.
I wish you luck and hope to see you in another guide. Till we meet next time!
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