Genshin Impact Artifact Leveling Tips

by Duuko

Set a standard

There is no use discussing how to develop good Artifacts if you don’t have a definition for what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ look like. Factors to consider are your AR and key stats, such as hp for Zhong, def of Albedo and your crit/atk for standard dps. For this guide I will share my standard for dps Artifacts.

• To be considered for upgrade, Artifacts must have the correct primary stat. These being %ATK on Timepiece, %Element on Goblet, %CRITRATE/DMG on Circlet.
• Premium stats are considered %CRITRATE, %CRITDAMAGE, %ATK, %REGEN by me.
• Trash stats are flatDEFENCE, %HP, flatHP, flatATK by me.
• Feathers and Flowers need 3 premium stats to be considered, other Artifacts need 2.
• Artifacts that have more than 1 Trash stat are not considered.
• If an Artifact has rolled 2 Trash stats by +12 it is abandoned.
• If an Artifact has not rolled 2 Premium stats by +12 it is abandoned.
• Artifacts that start with 4 substats have standards reduced by 1. *** Avoid results-oriented rolling

You’ve got an artifact with 3 premium stats and tadah, you roll flat hp. Do not get discouraged and bin it! The odds are still with you and you are more likely to end up with a solid piece of gear than not. Searching for perfect gear before you have decent gear will yield a perfect piece and a bunch of unleveled garbage.

Avoid the Sunken Cost Fallacy

On the other hand, if you have a great piece of gear that hits no premium stats in the first three rolls (this being +8 or +12 for 5*s) it’s time to let it go. The opportunity loss from this is too much to return from even if you land on premium stats for the remaining 2-3 rolls.

+16

After getting your two dps Feathers to +20 and retrieving the level 9 requirement for the adventurer handbook, avoid pushing anything but premium pieces to +20. The value of a +16 is not far off, but the exp it takes to bridge that gap is the same needed to get 3 artifacts to +8. The reason this is so much more valuable leads to the next point.

Most of your best Artifacts will be discovered

The initial roll that occurs when an Artifact drops is only a very small part of the rng that goes into it being good. An Artifact may drop with %crit, critdmg, regen and flat atk, but this artifact is not strong yet – it only has a higher probability of being strong. It would not be irregular for the rolls to land twice in regen and twice in flat atk, and suddenly it’s not so special at all. A large part of finding good Artifacts is in leveling decent ones in intervals of +4 to see if something exceptional emerges. This is why leveling three Artifacts to +8 is so much more valuable then pushing one from +16 to +20.

For example: taking an Artifact with %crit, %atk, and flat defense. It is always worth pushing +4 to see if you land a third premium stat. The best artifact I currently own has only two premium stats, but one was %crit which rolled over and over until it hit +19.1%.

All this said, if an Artifact with average potential has gotten worse from +0 to +8 it’s best to leave it there because you should:

Never level in intervals greater than +4

Using +8 Artifacts to level is really the max before you step into dangerous territory. Unless you have a taste for the thrill of risk, there is literally no benefit to having multiple subs to roll in one pass. You will see videos of people scrapping 6 +4 artifacts at once and hitting that one flat hp 3 times. There will be situations where you have no +0 artifacts left to use, so make sure you have plenty of failed +4 and +8 pieces to use from attempted discoveries. I’ve seen the argument made that by going all in at once you can catch the chance of a 2x exp multiplier and save a ton of resources, which is an idea that has to be addressed.

The House is favored

It is true that 2x and 5x exp multipliers are massive value if it hits leveled artifacts you are scrapping. That said I want to go over some brief math on why playing this game will lose you more than 20% of your artifacts over time.

The odds of getting a 2x is between 5-10%, let’s be generous and say it’s 10%

Leveled Artifacts are worth 80% of there total exp.

In case A we say that we are going to fill 6 slots with +4 4* Artifacts. We will examine a interval of 10 rolls to guarantee one filled slot gets 2x multiplier.

In case B we take every 1* artifact we used to level +4’s for case A, and use them to level directly.

As at this point you’ve probably guessed – this math is supported by a simpler relationship. The loss between the two is ~20%.

The important thing to understand here is that getting a bonus 100%exp 10% of rolls is the same as getting a 10%exp bonus every roll. This said we actually can apply this 10% bonus to both cases A and B, think of it as A hitting bigger jackpots and B hitting small jackpots much more often as it takes more rolls of 6 to get though 1*s. Given the jackpot gives no advantage to case A other than getting more exp at once, the only standing exp modifier is the 20% deficit to case A. The reason I previously stated the difference between the two cases to be ~20% lies in the fact that you can’t level an artifact perfectly to +4, there will be overflow that will also be penalized 20%.

TL;DR – the jackpot will reward high and lowrolling equally given time, so just avoid the 20% penalty and use unleveled artifacts when you can.

Do not expect an on-set elemental Goblet

The probability of rolling an elemental Goblet within your set that has good subs in near zero. This said – if you ever find an elemental Goblet with good subs from any set, it should take upgrade priority along side your Feathers. If you DO find an on-set Goblet with BAD subs do not compromise and level this item. There is no such thing as 5-set bonuses, and the flexibility you get from consolidating your Goblet with your set is rarely worth the loss in raw stat quality you’d get from an off-set piece.

Flat stats suuuuuuuuck

If I’m being honest I consider flatATK a Trash stat alongside DEF and HP. As your Feather, Weapon, and Character levels push into endgame you do not want to see three rolls on flatATK. At 1000 ATK, which isn’t really even end-game, you need 3 flatATK rolls to equal one %ATK substat – and don’t even get me started on how it holds up to the crit subs… I would rather see %DEF then this stat. These are truly the 3* weapons of the Artifact leveling system.

4 substats on a +0 Artifact is worth a stat

I’m not sure whether this needs to be said, but I want to emphasize how good these guys are. I will bend over backwards to try and make a 4 stat base artifact work over a 3 stat counterpart.

Farm your free Artifacts

This one’s also a dead horse, but again for emphasis – farming the daily Artifact locations alone can take a 5* from +0 to +20 in 10 days. This is easily the best resinless farming you can do for your power level.

EDIT: it looks like more people than I expected don’t know about this. Here are the locations that Artifacts spawn every 24 hours.