Beginner's Guide

[LtNoobslayer]

For those who've made it past the getting started guide and haven't yet been scared off, this guide will hopefully serve as helpful tips and tricks for your early game to keep you from getting too lost or frustrated.  The game has come a long way in the 2+ years it's been around and some of us old geezers from launch made all the mistakes for you to learn from.

First things first, save your primogems (henceforth known as primos) for Event/limited characters.  The standard banner will give you stuff over time but shouldn't really be your focus as it's too random and the pool is too diluted to reliable target anything.  You'll get free fates to spend on it from the battlepass, leveling up your adventure rank, and certain quests.  Typically it's also recommended to ignore the event weapon banner as it takes more primos to guarantee what you want.  Most people agree that ion general: new characters = new play styles > weapons = stats.

Take your time, there's no reason to rush the game as you've got 2 years of content to look forward to at your own pace.  Since this isn't an MMO there's zero reason to rush to the end to be "up to date".  If an event is locked by story requirements but you really want to participate and don't care about possible story spoilers all events now have the "quick start" option to unlock them regardless of your story progress.

Early on in the game you'll be given a quest called "In the Mountains" from Katheryne, just ignore that for now.  This quest takes you to the Dragonspine area of South Mondstadt and it is a rather unforgiving environment much like its in lore descriptions.  It's advised to put this quest off until further along in your journey, towards the end of the Liyue chapter to be precise.  This matches up with when the area released in the live version of the game and means you'll have a more robust roster of characters and likely a better understanding of the elements and combat system by then.  Even with this advice many travelers still want or need help with this area, luckily nearly all of it can be done in coop so light the beacons and summon help if this happens to you.

Which leads me to me next tip; if you ever need help and can't find any online friends just change your in game signature to anything along the lines of "I need help please" and be amazed at the flood of bored AR55-60 players who are more than happy to curb stomp anything you are struggling with.  It's honestly our favorite pastime.

When you're first getting started, pick your top 2 absolute favorite characters and really focus in on leveling them up and keeping them at the maximum level for your world.  Your world level increases over time with AR levels and the occasional ascension quest from Katheryne of the adventurer's guild.  as a general rule of thumb, you aren't "wasting resources" on leveling anyone up to 40.  After that the mid game can get a little bit tighter on resources while you're leveling your teams so try not to spread yourself too thin.  Keep that 2 + 2 mentality for a while to have one solid team for clearing content.  2 Main characters and 2 supporting characters about 10-20 levels behind.

While leveling characters, it's a good idea to keep your weapons leveled to match.  Your level 50 Amber should be using a level 50 bow while your level 40 Kaeya is using a level 40 sword.

After your second Ascension for your characters (breaking through maximum level caps) you unlock talents, These are important parts of your character's power level and shouldn't be forgotten as they increase your attack and skill multipliers, 4000 attack means nothing if you're still only hitting for 25%.  The first time you can only upgrade them to level 2 but every ascension after that adds 2 talent levels you can unlock up to a maximum of level 10. Many folks stop at talent level 9 due to the decreasing cost to returns and the need for event exclusive materials for the last talent level.  "Giving a character a crown" to a character is more of a sign of favoritism not optimal leveling.

If you ever run out of quests don't panic.  Just take a few days to explore and hunt chests and puzzles.  Do your daily commissions and farm some leylines for mora and exp books.  Combat is not a significant source of character exp for leveling. The exp books from the blue leyline disorders are the main source of character exp for leveling.  Once your AR has increased from these activities more quests will become available.

Artifacts are less important in the early game, throw something with the appropriate main stat for each slot and keep them somewhat leveled until you hit AR45.  At this point you get access to the level 90 artifact domains and will get a 5 star artifact every single run.  This is when you can go absolutely insane farming for artifacts and burn as much resin as you want doing so.  Prior to this point it's ok to go grab some artifacts with spare resin not needed for character and weapon upgrades but it's advised to not "grind" until after this point for efficiency sake.

Once you're ready to dive into building those characters up, head on over to the Gearing your Characters guide.

Edited February 22 by LtNoobslayer
Adding links to next guide in series