Condensed guide to character building (patch 5.1)

In the early game, you’ll need to invest in some of the characters (a.k.a. units) you start with, though you may end up replacing them when you get more characters. Some puzzles and challenges require you to use certain elements or weapons, so try to build a diverse roster of units who can form at least a couple coherent teams. Most teams have a unit who spends more time on the battlefield than the others, and this unit is called the “on-field” unit, while the others are called “off-field” units.

Character building happens in six phases. Here are recommendations for how a character should look at each phase if developed in a balanced way:

1. Level 20–39, weapon level 1–40
2. Level 40–49, weapon level 50, important talent(s) level 2, artifacts +4
3. Level 50–59, weapon level 60, important talent(s) level 4, artifacts +8
4. Level 60–69, weapon level 70, important talent(s) level 6, artifacts +12
5. Level 70–79, weapon level 80, important talent(s) level 8, artifacts +16
6. Level 80–90, weapon level 90, important talent(s) level 9–10, artifacts +20

It’s worth ascending every unit you get to phase 1 just for the blue wishes. Early or experimental units may be cheaply built to phase 3 as needed, awarding another blue wish each. Build any unit you might conceivably use in the Spiral Abyss or Imaginarium Theater to at least phase 5 for a third blue wish each. You’ll eventually want 8+ units at phase 6 to clear the Spiral Abyss with 36 stars, but phase 5 units will do fine in the overworld or the Imaginarium Theater.

Keep an R5 copy of every blue weapon in case their passives turn out to be good for a certain unit or situation. Farm weapon ascension materials as needed, but don’t spend resin at the blacksmith – you will get plenty of ores from expeditions, from mining while exploring, and incidentally from other activities.

Farm character ascension and talent materials as needed to upgrade each unit’s most important talent(s). The game will suggest which talents to prioritize, or you can look up a build. Most units will eventually want a 9–10 in their most important talent and a 6–8 in their other helpful talent(s). Most units don’t have much use for their normal-attack talent, and some don’t need to level their burst either, depending on how they are used.

Avoid capping XP on a character before you’re ready to ascend them. For many units, levels are the last priority after making sure the unit’s weapon, talents, and artifacts are in decent shape for their phase of development. The last 10 character levels (81–90) are very expensive and don’t increase base ATK very much, but it’s still worth doing for characters that contribute a high percentage of a team’s damage or who scale meaningfully with stats other than ATK. Reaching level 90 is especially worthwhile for units who trigger reactions like Overload, Hyperbloom, or Aggravate/Spread.

Don't spend resin on artifact domains until AR 45, when the best rewards become available. Try to farm artifact domains where both sets are useful to you. If you need a set that's paired with a set that none of your units want, try to aquire it with the Strongbox instead of farming its domain directly. This is the best way to use 5-star artifacts that you don't plan to upgrade – don't use them for artifact XP.

While 5-star artifacts are normally the most desirable to equip, there are certain viable sets, namely Exile and Instructor, that only appear on 3- to 4-star artifacts, so don’t immediately dismiss such an artifact as fodder just because it’s a 4-star.

Most units should prioritize getting enough ER% to burst on cooldown or every rotation. Character-specific guides will give you a rough idea of how much ER% a unit needs, but you may need to experiment on your own to figure out what amount of ER% is enough for your situation. Don’t feel bad about having a bit of extra ER% to make a burst-centric unit more reliable, especially if they use 4pc Emblem.

The next priority for damage dealers is to improve crit rate and crit damage, keeping them at about a 1:2 ratio. Transformative reactions can’t crit, so units who are focused on such reactions want EM instead of crit. Finally, it’s helpful to get the stat(s) that the unit scales with (ATK, DEF, HP, or in some cases EM).

Possible main stats for each artifact type:

• Flower: HP
• Plume: ATK
• Sands: ATK%, HP%, DEF%, ER% (rare), or EM (rare)
• Crown: ATK%, HP%, DEF%, crit rate (rare), crit dmg (rare), healing (rare), EM (very rare)
• Goblet: ATK%, HP%, DEF%, DMG% (8 possible types), EM (extremely rare)

At first, it’ll be all you can do to get the right main stat and set bonus on your artifacts, but you’ll eventually want to replace decent artifacts with good/great artifacts that have desirable substats (unless the unit doesn’t benefit from most substats). A good goal for units that deal a significant portion of the team’s damage with their talents (as opposed to relying on transformative reactions like Hyperbloom) is to get a total of 30+ valuable substat rolls on their artifacts. Flat ATK/DEF/HP substats are less valuable than % substats of the same type, so two rolls in a beneficial flat substat count as only one valuable roll for such an assessment.

An achievable distribution of valuable rolls is 7 on both the flower and the plume, and 5 each on the sands, circlet, and goblet. That gets you just one roll away from the benchmark of 30 rolls. Assuming you don’t have the resources to test every possible artifact, you’ll need to identify which ones have potential: flowers and plumes should ideally start with at least 3 good substats, while others should start with at least 2.

Only four of a unit's artifacts need to be of the desired set(s), so an off-set artifact may take the place of whichever type of artifact you are having the most difficulty obtaining for the set. Save potentially good artifacts regardless of what set they are from so that you will have plenty to choose from in that event.

Prized substats like crit have a lower chance of appearing than less valuable ones. But the Artifact Transmuter added in 5.0 allows one to spend Sanctifying Elixirs to craft an artifact of any set and type while choosing the main stat and two of the substats. Elixirs are expensive, so they should be saved for hard-to-obtain double-crit artifacts that will allow you to stop farming or strongboxing the artifact set in question. Of the possible artifacts that one might want for a main damage dealer, the rarest relative to their cost in Elixirs are double-crit Elemental DMG% goblets and double-crit EM or ER sands.