Genshin Impact F2P Primogems Guide

How many Primogens can you get in Genshin Impact as a F2P player? We've made the ultimate guide that shows you exactly how to get max primogems.

Welcome to Advanced Gacha Calculus!

In this online course, you’ll learn just how many Primogems you can reliably earn in Genshin Impact as an entirely free-to-play player and how you can do this. We’ll also include some info on how to best augment this Primogem accrual by spending the least cash possible, just in case you are interested.

Nevertheless, the point of this video is to let entirely F2P players know just how many Primogems they can earn while playing the game so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not this game is worth their time.

To do so, we’ll divide this article into two segments:

  • How many Primogems you can earn per patch not counting the base content
  • How many Primogems you can earn by doing the base content.

The good thing is that you can earn a substantial amount of Primogems just by playing the game without ever spending a dime. How much you can earn this way is debatable, but we can help give you some good approximations.

This way, even enfranchised players can get a lot of mileage for this article.

So, we hope you like math, because that’s what Advanced Gacha Calculus is all about!

Table of ContentsShow

How Many Primogems Can You Get As A F2P Player?

Genshin Impact Spiral Abyss

If there’s one thing we must applaud miHoYo for, it’s the consistency with which they update Genshin Impact. Without missing a day, they have released a new patch every 6 weeks since the game’s release.

This is why we’ll keep all our calculations to patch level.

Each patch also typically brings us two new 5* characters, which you can spend Primogems to wish for. So let’s look at how many Primogems you can expect to get as an entirely F2P player in every patch and where these Primos will be coming from:

Primogems Source Notes
2520Daily CommissionsYou can earn 60 Primogems each day by completing the Daily Commissions. With 42 days in each patch, that’s 2520 Primogems.
1800Spiral Abyss Floors 9-12Every two weeks, floors 9-12 of Spiral Abyss reset and you can clear them again. To get the maximum number of Primogems from this you will have to bring you’re A-game, so we suggest checking out the Tier Lists for all the characters and weapons, as well as the best artifacts for each character.
120Character QuestsTypically, the two featured 5* characters in every patch get their own Character Quests, which award 60 Primogems each.
40Trial RunsTrial Runs are useful to get a feel for new characters before pulling on their banners, but they also carry some Primogem rewards.
300Update MaintenanceBefore each patch, the servers need to go through some maintenance. Players are compensated for this downtime with 300 Primogems.
300Developer Stream Promo CodesSome 10 or so days before a new patch goes live, we always get a preview of the next patch. During this preview, the developers show us three redeemable codes for 100 Primogems each. These codes expire, but you can always check whether there are any new ones by following this link.
60HoyoLab Daily LoginsHonestly, we feel that logging into the HoyoLab app every day so that you can get 1/3 of a Debate Club a month is more trouble than it’s worth, but you could technically do this as well.
2160*Events*This is an approximation! In most patches, we get one big event that awards 900 Primogems and three smaller events that offer 420 Primogems each. The actual number could be slightly higher and lower, but they’re somewhere in this ballpark.
Total: 7240 Primogems

With these calculations, we arrive at 7240 FREE Primogems for every patch.

This amounts to roughly 45 Fates. So, if this is your only source of Primogems, you’re only guaranteed to get a 5* character once every two patches (3 months)! Of course, you could always get lucky, but we keep luck out of our equations.

Once again, we must note that these are approximations. And while not a lot, there are some sources of Primogems we didn’t account for: Web Events (typically 100 Primogems each), Achievements (also somewhere around 100 Primogems added per small patch), exploration (patches that add in new areas or regions, like 2.0, can easily offer thousands of Primogems just through exploration).

You also get to obtain some Fates every patch. Completing the free Battle Pass will net you 5 Acquainted Fates (800 Primogems). Every month, you also get to purchase up to 5 Acquainted Fates and 5 Intertwined Fates from the Stardust Exchange (1600 Primogems). Do keep in mind that 10 of these 15 Fates are Acquainted Fates, which must be used on the Standard Banner and don’t contribute towards the pity on the Limited Character Banner.

Stardust Exchange resets monthly rather than every patch, but even if we lowball it and say that every patch you get just the 15 Fates, that’s still significant. With these added sources of Fates, your total wish-count per patch goes up from 45 to 60, but only 50 Fates can contribute towards new Limited 5* Characters.

How Many Primogems Can Low-Spenders Earn in Genshin Impact?

Paimons Bargains

In Genshin Impact, there are two types of low spenders: those who only purchase the Blessing of the Welkin Moon ($5 per 30 days) and those who purchase Welkin and the Battle Pass ($10 per patch).

Welkin

Genshin Impact Blessing of the Welkin Moon

For $5 a month, you’ll get a significant boost to your Primogem income. Roughly speaking, F2P players get 2/3 of the Primogems that players who purchase the Welkin get. This is because purchasing the Blessing of the Welkin Moon will net you 90 Primogems every day you log in for the next 30 days.

If you forget to log in on any day, you don’t get the Primogems!

It also nets you 300 Genesis Crystals. Genesis Crystals can be converted into Primogems at a rate of 1:1, but most low spenders opt to not spend them, as character skins can only be purchased with Genesis Crystals. That’s why we’ll only take the daily 90 Primos when we do our calculations.

With 42 days in a patch, the Blessing of the Welkin Moon will net you an additional 3780 Primogems in addition to everything that F2P players get.

With this, the total number of Primogems you get per patch goes up to 11020 (again, we purposefully keep our approximations a bit lower). When converted into Intertwined Fates, this amounts to approximately 69 Fates.

Add to that the 5 Intertwined Fates from Stardust Exchange plus some coincidental Primogems, and you’re guaranteed to hit soft pity on the Limited Character Banner once every patch.

So, by treating the game as a subscription service that costs you $5/month, you’re giving yourself a favorable chance to get a new Limited Banner 5* character once every patch.

Welkin + Battle Pass

Genshin Impact Battle Pass

Those who purchase the Battle Pass on top of Welkin will also get 4 Intertwined Fates and 680 Primogems.

When we convert these Primogems into Intertwined Fates, the total number of Fates goes up to 83.

You are guaranteed to get a 5* character at least every 90 pulls. Knowing how meticulous miHoYo is, it wouldn’t surprise us if the number of Primogems and Intertwined Fates available to players who regularly purchase both the Blessing of the Welkin Moon and the Battle Pass amounted to exactly 90 Intertwined Fates, i.e. one guaranteed 5* character per patch.

How Many Primogems Can You Earn As A Beginner?

Genshin Impact Frostbearing Tree

So far, all of our calculations were done under the premise that the player has already completed all the content the game had to offer prior to the release of a new patch.

Beginners who have yet to do this have an enormous wealth of Primogems waiting for them in the various nooks and crannies of Teyvat. We’re talking tens of thousands of Primogems.

So let’s take a look at how many Primogems and/or Fates new players can expect to get just by playing the game.

Primogems Fates Source Notes
11600ChestsAs of Patch 2.2 and the introduction of all Inazuma islands, there are well over 2900 chests in the game. Each one gives anywhere between 2 and 10 Primogems. If we took 4 Primogems as a conservative average, that’s 8000 Primogems hiding in chests. In all likelihood, you can get more.
1100Archon QuestsThe rewards for playing through the main story offer just around 1100 Primogems at the moment.
2670World QuestsMany World Quests feature anywhere between 20 and 80 Primogems as rewards. The total amount of Primogems you can get by completing all the World Quests equates to approximately 1800.
1320Character QuestsSure, we get 2 new Character Quests in each patch, but all the old ones stay in the game. And with more than 20 Character Quests for you to go through, that’s easily another 1200 Primogems to add to the bank.
440Hangout EventsInstead of starring in Character Quests, some 4* characters have their own Hangout Events. These replayable quests have multiple routes and playing through all of them will net you 60 Primogems per Hangout Event.
900Adventurer Handbook Chapter RewardsThe Adventurer Handbook Chapters are there to incentivize players to try out new things, and among the many rewards they offer are some Primogems.
8 Acquainted FatesAdventure Rank 50Leveling up your Adventure Rank nets you loads of rewards. We stopped at AR50, but going beyond this will offer even more rewards. It’s just that Adventure Ranks take a very long time to obtain past AR50 and we didn’t want to include rewards that only the most hardcore players will ever get.
600Serenitea Pot Trust RankOnce you unlock player housing at AR30, you’ll have to build up your Trust Rank to unlock new furnishings. Doing so will also net you a nice amount of Primogems.
600Favored Furniture SetsYou can invite the characters you own into your Player Housing. If you also build the Furniture Sets they like, they will award you 20 Primogems per Set per character.
You can get 1280 Primogems this way, but this would require you to already own all characters in the game. So we settled on 600 as a more achievable goal.
720Statues of the SevenIn Mondstadt and Liyue, the Statues only hold 90 Primogems each, but in Inazuma maxing out the Statue will net you 540 Primogems.
3 Acquainted Fates 1 Intertwined FateThe Frostbearing TreeThe Frostbearing Tree offers a wealth of resources for F2P players, and Fates are among the first rewards you get.
20 Acquainted Fates 10 Intertwined FatesThe Sacred SakuraReplacing the Souvenir Shop in Inazuma is the Sacred Sakura, which will accept Electro Sigils in exchange for loads of rewards, including up to 30 Fates!
2500AchievementsThere are currently over 500 achievements that players can get in Genshin Impact. Collectively, these achievements offer almost 5000 Primogems, but once again we cut this down by half to make the goal more attainable for casual players.
2400Spiral Abyss Floors 1-8Unlike floors 9-12, which reset every two weeks, you can only get the rewards for floors 1-8 once. That said, you’re well incentivized to do so, as this will net you lots of free Primogems and even a free Xiangling very early on.
21+ Acquainted FatesCharacter AscensionsAs of patch 1.2, you can receive up to 3 Acquainted Fates just by leveling up characters. In a game with over 35 characters, that over 100 Fates! But, once again, this would require you to have all the characters in the game.
Even with just the 7 free characters that every player gets, that’s 21 Acquainted Fates, and you will easily get more characters even as a F2P player.
Total:
• 25670 Primogems
• 11 Intertwined Fates
• 50 Acquainted Fates

So, when we add all this up, you’re looking at about 22670 F2P Primogems ripe for the taking on your way to AR50. This can be exchanged for roughly 128 Fates of your choice. In addition to this, you also get 11 Intertwined Fates and at least 50 Acquainted Fates (more with each new character beyond the 7 free characters every player is guaranteed to get).

Also, keep in mind that reaching AR50 will take some time. So while you’re doing that, you’ll also be getting some, if not all, of the Primogems in our patch calculations.

All of this is to say is that, even with the worst of luck, it won’t be long before you can accumulate two or three 5* characters or weapons on your account, and that’s if you’re unlucky!

Now you just need to make sure you spend your resources wisely. We recommend reading this guide to learn how to get the characters you want in Genshin Impact by understanding some of the hidden mechanics behind the game’s gacha banners.

Conclusion

Genshin Impact Primogems

Genshin Impact does its best to disassociate any of its in-game items from real money values.

For example, you convert Primogems into wishes at a rate of 160:1. Why 160? It’s a deceptively tricky number. You may think 10000 Primogems is a lot, but divided by 160 this amounts to a bit over 60 Wishes, which is far from even soft pity.

All of this is to say that, despite being a fun game with lovable characters, a breath-taking open-world, and amazing music, Genshin Impact doesn’t want you to know how much you’re spending on it, or even how many resources you’ve really got as a F2P player.

So we hope that this crash course on Advanced Gacha Calculus has helped shed some light on things that the game would rather keep hidden.

All in all, even with the worst of luck, you’ll easily get two or three 5* characters within your first patch of playing Genshin Impact, but thereafter your Primogem income will slow down to a crawl where you won’t even be able to get a guaranteed 5* character once per patch unless you get in the habit of purchasing the Blessing of the Welkin Moon.

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Samuel Stewart

Samuel is GamingScan's editor-in-chief. He describes himself as a dedicated gamer and programmer. He enjoys helping others discover the joys of gaming. Samuel closely follows the latest trends in the gaming industry in order to keep the visitors in the flow.

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