Quick Answer: Genshin Impact's pity system guarantees 5-star items after specific pull counts: 90 for characters, 80 for weapons. The 50/50 system gives 50% chance for featured characters, with guaranteed featured pull after losing. Soft pity increases rates starting at pull 74 for characters and 63-65 for weapons.
Look, after covering gacha systems for years, I can tell you that Genshin's pity mechanics are both a blessing and a curse. They're generous enough to guarantee your pulls eventually, but complex enough that even veteran players get confused about the details.
The system operates across three banner types—Character Event Wish, Weapon Event Wish, and Standard Wish—and here's the thing that trips people up: each maintains completely separate pity counters. Miss this detail, and you'll be scratching your head wondering where your pity went.
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Understanding Genshin Impact's Pity System Fundamentals
What is the Pity System?
Think of pity as your safety net. No matter how unlucky you get, the system guarantees you'll hit specific milestones: 4-star items every 10 pulls (across all banners), and 5-star items at 90 pulls for character/standard banners, 80 for weapon banners.
Here's where it gets interesting—these counters work independently. Pull a 5-star? Both counters reset. Pull just a 4-star? Only the 4-star counter resets. Simple in theory, but I've seen countless players mess this up in practice.
Types of Banners and Their Pity Rules
Character Event Banners are where most players spend their primos, and for good reason. The 90-pull hard pity combines with the 50/50 system to create predictable (if expensive) character acquisition. When you lose that 50/50, you're looking at pulling from the standard pool: Diluc, Jean, Qiqi, Mona, Keqing, Tighnari, and Dehya.
Weapon banners? Different beast entirely. 80-pull hard pity with a 75/25 system instead of 50/50—already better odds. But the real game-changer came in Version 5.0 when they updated Epitomized Path to need only 1 Fate Point instead of 2. Suddenly, weapon banners became actually reasonable for targeted pulls.
How Pity Counters Work
Your pity counter ticks up with every single wish and resets the moment you see that golden star. The beauty (or frustration, depending on your perspective) is that these counters stick around between banner rotations of the same type.
Pulled 75 times on Zhongli's banner but didn't get him? That 75-pull count carries over to the next Character Event Banner. Cross-banner transfer between different types? Nope. Character banner pity stays separate from weapon banner pity.
The 50/50 System Explained: Mechanics and Probabilities
How 50/50 Works on Character Banners
Every time you pull a 5-star character on a limited banner, you're flipping a coin. Heads: featured character. Tails: standard 5-star character. Exactly 50% each way—hence the name.
But here's where Version 5.0 got sneaky good: Capturing Radiance bumps your effective rate to 55% in favor of the featured character. It's not a huge improvement, but over time? Those extra percentage points add up to real value.
Winning vs Losing 50/50
Win the 50/50? Congrats, you got your character and you're back to 50/50 status for next time. Lose it? You get a standard 5-star instead, but—and this is crucial—your next 5-star character pull becomes 100% guaranteed to be the featured character.
This guarantee system is what makes Genshin's gacha actually manageable for planning purposes.
Guaranteed Pull After Lost 50/50
The math here is brutal but predictable: worst case scenario costs you 180 pulls total. Lose the first 50/50 at 90 pulls, then need another 90 for the guarantee. That's 28,800 primogems if you hit hard pity both times.
The silver lining? Guarantee status carries over indefinitely between Character Event Banners. Lose your 50/50 on a banner you don't care about? That guarantee is waiting for you on the next banner you actually want.
Soft Pity vs Hard Pity: Complete Breakdown
Soft Pity Activation (Pulls 74-89)
Here's where the community data gets really interesting. Around pull 74, your 5-star rate jumps from the base 0.6% to roughly 6.6%—that's more than a 10x increase. Each subsequent pull adds another ~6% to your odds.
Most experienced players will tell you they rarely hit actual hard pity. The soft pity window (pulls 74-85) is where the magic happens. I've tracked my own pulls for two years, and I think I've hit pull 90 exactly twice.
Hard Pity Guarantee (Pull 90)
Hard pity is your absolute ceiling: 100% chance at pull 90 for characters, pull 80 for weapons. The costs are significant—14,400 primogems for character hard pity, 12,800 for weapon hard pity—but at least you know your maximum investment.
Statistical Analysis of Pity Rates
When you factor in the pity system's impact, the consolidated rates tell a different story than the base percentages. Character banners effectively give you 1.6% per pull (one 5-star every 62.5 wishes on average), while weapon banners hit 1.85% thanks to their lower hard pity threshold.
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Character Banner Pity System (2025 Updated)
5-Star Character Pity Mechanics
The current Character Event Banner system is the most player-friendly it's ever been. Hard pity at 90 pulls, the 50/50 system, and now Capturing Radiance improvements all work together to give you that effective 55% win rate.
That 5% improvement might not sound like much, but when you're talking about investments of 14,400+ primogems per character, every percentage point matters.
4-Star Character Pity Rules
Four-star characters have their own mini-50/50 system that most guides gloss over. When you hit that 10-pull guarantee and get a 4-star item, you've got 50% odds of getting one of the three featured 4-star characters versus some random 4-star character or weapon.
Fail that featured 4-star pull? You get a guarantee for the next 4-star acquisition. Maximum cost for a specific featured 4-star: 20 pulls.
Banner Transition and Pity Carryover
This is where strategic planning gets fun. Your pity progress moves seamlessly between Character Event Banners, maintaining both your pull count and guarantee status. The dual Character Event Banner system means you can have two limited characters running simultaneously, sharing the same pity counter.
Smart players use this to their advantage, building pity on banners they're lukewarm about and saving guarantees for characters they actually want.
Weapon Banner Pity and Epitomized Path System
Weapon Banner 50/50 Mechanics
Weapon banners give you better base odds with their 75/25 system—75% chance of getting one of the two featured weapons, 25% chance of getting a standard 5-star weapon. Lose that 75/25? Your next 5-star weapon is guaranteed to come from the featured pair.
Epitomized Path Explained
Version 5.0's Epitomized Path update was honestly game-changing. You pick one specific weapon from the featured pair as your target. Get the wrong featured weapon? You earn 1 Fate Point. Next 5-star weapon pull is guaranteed to be your chosen weapon.
The old system required 2 Fate Points, which was frankly predatory. The current 1-Fate-Point system actually makes weapon banners reasonable for targeted pulls.
Fate Points and Guarantee System
Fate Points reset when the banner expires, when you get your chosen weapon, or if you change your selection mid-banner. Under the current system, maximum cost for a guaranteed specific weapon dropped from 38,400 primogems (240 pulls) to 25,600 primogems (160 pulls).
Still expensive? Absolutely. But at least it's not completely insane anymore.
Standard Banner Pity Rules and Mechanics
Wanderlust Invocation Pity System
Standard banners follow the same 90-pull hard pity as Character Event Banners, but without any 50/50 mechanics. Your 5-star pool mixes permanent characters (Diluc, Jean, Qiqi, Mona, Keqing, Tighnari, Dehya) with 10 permanent 5-star weapons.
It's basically a lottery ticket with terrible targeting. Soft pity kicks in around pull 74, same as character banners, but good luck getting what you actually want.
No 50/50 on Standard Banner
No featured items means no 50/50 mechanics and no guarantee systems. Each 5-star pull randomly selects from the entire permanent pool. As someone who's covered gacha economics for years, I can't recommend spending limited primogems here unless you literally don't care what you get.
Beginner Banner Special Rules
The Beginner Banner offers genuine value: 10 pulls for 8 Intertwined Fates, guaranteed Noelle, and one additional 4-star character within those first 10 pulls. New players should absolutely take advantage of this before it disappears after 20 total pulls.
Pity Tracking Tools and Calculators
Official Wish History Method
The in-game History button gives you official tracking through detailed wish logs separated by banner type. Each page shows 6 pulls with color-coded rarity: gold for 5-star, purple for 4-star, blue for 3-star. Version 4.5 extended history retention from 6 months to 1 year—a quality-of-life improvement that was long overdue.
Third-Party Pity Trackers
Community tools like Paimon.moe import your wish history directly from the game's feedback URL system. These platforms provide automated pity counting, statistical analysis, and probability calculations based on your current status.
The advanced features—luck rankings compared to other players, comprehensive spending analysis—can be eye-opening. Sometimes in ways you don't want them to be.
Manual Pity Counting Tips
For manual tracking, you need systematic recording of 5-star acquisition dates and pull counts across all banner types. Note your guarantee status (50/50 vs guaranteed) and current pity count for each banner type separately.
Spreadsheet templates with automatic calculations can save you headaches. Trust me on this—I've seen too many players lose track and make expensive mistakes.
Common Pity Misconceptions and Myths Debunked
Pity Reset Myths
Let me clear this up once and for all: pity counters only reset when you receive 5-star items. They maintain progress indefinitely until your next 5-star acquisition. Four-star pulls reset the 4-star counter but have zero impact on 5-star pity accumulation.
Timing and RNG Misconceptions
The gacha system uses true randomization with fixed probabilities. External timing factors don't matter. That desire sensor theory suggesting the game detects what you want and reduces those rates? Pure superstition with no factual basis.
I've tested this extensively (occupational hazard), and the numbers consistently match the stated probabilities.
Cross-Banner Pity Confusion
Character Event Banner pity stays completely separate from Weapon Event Banner and Standard Banner pity. You need independent tracking and resource allocation for each banner type. The Chronicled Wish banner maintains separate pity mechanics with its own Chronicled Path system.
This separation is actually a feature, not a bug—it prevents you from accidentally wasting pity progress on the wrong banner type.
Optimal Pity Strategies for F2P and Spenders
Primogem Management for Pity
F2P players should accumulate 28,800 primogems (180 pulls) before targeting specific characters. This ensures acquisition regardless of 50/50 outcomes. The monthly Welkin Moon provides excellent value at 3,000 primogems over 30 days, while Battle Pass offers additional resources alongside primogems.
When to Stop Pulling
Players on guarantee should stop immediately after acquiring their desired character. This preserves 50/50 status for future banners. The practice of building pity on unwanted banners carries significant risk—early 5-star acquisition can waste valuable guarantees.
I've seen this mistake cost players their most wanted characters. Don't be that person.
Banner Planning Around Pity
Long-term planning requires tracking upcoming character releases and estimating primogem income between desired banners. Guarantee management becomes crucial when multiple desired characters appear consecutively, forcing difficult skip decisions for higher-priority acquisitions.
2025 Pity System Updates and Changes
Recent Pity Adjustments
Version 5.0 delivered the most significant pity improvements since launch. Capturing Radiance provides meaningful 50/50 rate improvements, while the Epitomized Path update substantially reduces weapon acquisition costs. The consolidated 55% featured character rate and reduced weapon pity requirements make limited banner pulling more attractive than ever.
Version-Specific Changes
The historical evolution shows consistent player-friendly improvements: Version 2.0 introduced Epitomized Path, Version 2.3 added dual character banners, Version 4.5 brought Chronicled Wish, and Version 5.0 delivered our current optimized systems.
Future Pity Predictions
Based on historical patterns, future adjustments will likely focus on reducing acquisition costs or improving guarantee mechanics. Potential improvements include cross-banner guarantee transfer or enhanced soft pity rates.
Honestly? The trend has been consistently pro-player, which gives me hope for continued improvements.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the 50/50 system work in Genshin Impact? The 50/50 gives you 50% chance for the featured character versus 50% for a standard character when pulling 5-stars on limited banners. Version 5.0's Capturing Radiance bumps the effective rate to 55% favoring featured characters. Lose the 50/50? Your next 5-star character is guaranteed to be featured.
What is soft pity and when does it start? Soft pity dramatically increases 5-star probability starting around pull 74 for character banners, pulls 63-65 for weapon banners. The base 0.6% rate jumps to roughly 6.6% at pull 74, with continued increases until hard pity kicks in.
Does pity carry over between banners? Pity carries over between banners of the same type but not between different banner types. Character Event Banner pity transfers to future Character Event Banners, maintaining both pull count and guarantee status.
How many primogems for guaranteed 5-star characters? Guaranteed featured character requires maximum 28,800 primogems (180 pulls) in worst-case scenarios: losing the first 50/50 at 90 pulls (14,400 primogems), then needing another 90 pulls for the guaranteed featured character.
How does weapon banner Epitomized Path work? Epitomized Path lets you select one featured weapon as your target. After Version 5.0, getting a non-selected 5-star weapon grants 1 Fate Point, guaranteeing your chosen weapon on the next 5-star pull. Maximum specific weapon acquisition: 160 pulls.
Can you track pity count in-game? The in-game History button provides official pity tracking through detailed wish logs separated by banner type. Count pulls since your last 5-star acquisition to determine current pity. History retention extended to 1 year in Version 4.5.