Genshin Impact Pity System Guide 2026 – Soft Pity, Hard Pity, 50/50 Math Explained

Genshin's wish system has three load-bearing mechanics that most players misunderstand: soft pity is a probability ramp (not a guarantee), the 50/50 carries between banners, and pity counts persist within banner types until you actually pull a 5★. Master these three and you'll never waste primogems again.

Pity System at a Glance

Do the Four Banner Types Share Pity?

This is the most-asked question on the site, so here it is up front: pity only rolls forward inside the same banner type, Fate Points are wiped every banner, and nothing is shared between the four.

Chronicled Wish is the one most players forget. It costs Intertwined Fates but keeps a completely separate counter - the 60 wishes you banked on a Character Event banner are worth nothing here. Before pulling you must designate one 5-star character or weapon from the current list, and the pool then only drops that item type. The designated item is guaranteed at 50%; any other 5-star grants 1 Fate Point, and your next 5-star is the designated item. Fate Points reset when the run ends.

Two more details: Chronicled Wish has no featured 4-star system, and since Version 5.3 a limited 5-star character needs at least two prior Character Event appearances before it can appear there at all. Full rules: Chronicled Wish guide.

Soft Pity — The Most Misunderstood Mechanic

The base rate of pulling a 5★ is 0.6% per wish. This stays flat from wish 1 to roughly wish 73. Then at wish 74, the rate jumps dramatically:

Practical implication: ~60–70% of 5★ pulls happen between wishes 74–85. Only ~15–20% reach hard pity at 90. Don't assume you're unlucky if you hit 90 once or twice — it's rare but normal.

Hard Pity — The Guaranteed Floor

If you've made 89 wishes without a 5★, wish 90 is 100% guaranteed to be a 5★. This is the absolute ceiling. On weapon banners, hard pity is wish 80.

What hard pity does NOT guarantee:

• The featured character (that's the 50/50 system — see below)
• A specific weapon (that's Epitomized Path — weapon banner only)
• Cross-banner persistence — Character Event pity, Weapon pity, and Standard pity are tracked separately

The 50/50 System (Character Event Banners Only)

When you pull a 5★ on a Character Event banner, there's a 50% chance it's the featured limited character and a 50% chance it's a random standard 5★ (Diluc, Jean, Mona, Qiqi, Keqing, Tighnari, or Dehya).

If you lose the 50/50: your next 5★ on that banner type is guaranteed to be the featured character. The guarantee persists across banner changes — if you lose on Xiangling's banner and switch to Hu Tao's banner, your next 5★ on Hu Tao's banner will still be guaranteed.

Since Version 5.0 (Capturing Radiance): a lost 50/50 can now be converted into a win outright. HoYoverse's own Q&A lists a 0.018% base trigger chance, and with it included a 5-star pull carries a 55.000% combined chance of being the featured character. The hard safety net sits further out: lose the 50/50 three times in a row - each time only getting the featured character on your second 5-star - and the next 5-star is guaranteed to trigger Capturing Radiance. It never touches your pity counter or your guarantee.

Cost Breakdown

Realistic expectation: most players get their featured character between 75–85 pulls (~12,000–13,600 Primogems). Only ~15% reach hard pity, and only ~7.5% hit both a lost 50/50 and hard pity. Budgeting 14,400 Primogems (90 pulls) per character is a safe conservative target.

Weapon Banner — Epitomized Path

The Weapon Event banner has different rules:

• Soft pity: ~63 wishes (steeper probability ramp because hard pity is 80, not 90)
• Hard pity: 80 wishes
• Base rate: 0.7% for a 5-star weapon, slightly above the 0.6% on character banners
• No 50/50 - it is a 75/25: 75% chance the 5-star is one of the two featured weapons, 25% chance it is a standard 5-star weapon
• Epitomized Path (1 Fate Point cap since Version 5.0, down from 2): designate one of the two featured weapons. Pulling the other featured weapon grants 1 Fate Point, and at 1 point your next 5-star weapon is guaranteed to be your designated one
• Standard weapons grant nothing: a 5-star from the 25% standard pool neither adds nor resets your Fate Points - the single most punishing cell in the whole system
• Fate Points reset when you claim your designated weapon, when you change your selection mid-banner, and when the banner ends. The wish counter itself carries on.

Worst case for weapon banner: 160 pulls (25,600 Primogems). The math: first 5-star at 80 pulls lands on the other featured weapon (1 Fate Point), second 5-star at 80 more pulls is the designated one. If that first 5-star is a standard weapon instead, no Fate Point is granted and the ceiling rises to 240 pulls (38,400 Primogems). Either way it is far more punishing than character banners - only pull weapons if you are a spender willing to navigate this system.

Pity Persistence Rules

• Pity carries over between banners of the same type. Your Character Event pity continues on the next Character Event banner. Your Weapon Event pity continues on the next Weapon Event banner.
• Pity does NOT carry across banner types. Character Event pity, Weapon Event pity, and Standard pity are all tracked separately.
• Pity resets only when you actually pull a 5★. It does not reset when a banner ends, when a patch drops, or when you switch between Character Event and Standard banners.
• Chronicled Wish keeps its own counter that carries into the next Chronicled Wish run, and it never mixes with Character Event or Weapon Event pity.
• Fate Points are the one exception. Weapon Event and Chronicled Wish point counters both reset every banner - wish counts carry, points do not.
• Character Event and Character Event-2 share one pool, so switching between the two simultaneous banners costs you nothing.

Building Pity on the Wrong Banner - When It Works

"Building pity" means pulling on a banner that is not your target so the counter sits higher when your target arrives. It does not change a single per-wish probability; all it changes is your risk profile, which is why the only real question is what you can afford to lose.

The one safe condition

You would be happy with any 5-star that shows up in those pulls. A fresh account where every standard 5-star helps, or a banner whose featured character you also want, just below your top priority - there, building pity is free progress.

Three ways it goes wrong

• You are already on a guarantee. After losing a 50/50 your next 5-star is guaranteed featured, and that flag follows the account, not the banner. Pull a 5-star on a banner you do not want and the guarantee is spent - your target banner goes back to a coin flip. This is the most expensive mistake in the whole system.
• Building on the weapon banner. Fate Points reset when the banner ends. The wish count survives; the Fate Point you may have paid 80 pulls for does not.
• Building on Chronicled Wish. Same problem - its Fate Points reset between runs too.

The safer version

If you build anyway, stop at 60-70 wishes. Below 74 you are still on the flat 0.6% rate, so you are buying a head start cheaply. Past 74 you are inside soft pity, and every wish there is a ramp roll you are spending on the current banner instead of your target. See our gacha strategy for how to allocate across a patch cycle.

Smart Wishing Strategy

How to Check Your Wish History

The game never displays a pity counter, so you have to count it yourself. Three routes, most reliable first:

• In-game history: Wish screen, then History in the bottom-left corner. Tabs are split by banner and each page holds six entries. Only the last six months are kept, and new pulls take roughly an hour to appear, so checking right after a session shows nothing.
• HoYoLAB / official community app: the Genshin tools section has a wish-record entry that reads an authorization code mailed to you in game. It covers your full history and exports to a spreadsheet - the right choice if you want long-term averages or soft-pity hit rates.
• Third-party trackers: sites such as paimon.moe import your wish-history URL and compute everything automatically. That URL carries an account token, so skip this if account safety matters to you; the two official routes are enough.

Manual method: scroll to your last 5-star entry and count every entry after it - that number is your current pity. Write it down, because the record is deleted after six months and cannot be recovered.

Five Common Misconceptions

1. "Soft pity at 74 means a guaranteed 5-star"

It is a ramp, not a guarantee. Wish 74 sits at roughly a 6.5% chance, so it still misses more than nine times out of ten. Only wish 90 is certain.

2. "Pity carries across banner types"

It does not. Character Event, Weapon Event, Standard and Chronicled Wish each run their own counter, and no progress moves between them.

3. "The weapon banner is a 50/50"

It is a 75/25: 75% for one of the two featured weapons, 25% for a standard 5-star weapon. And only the other featured weapon grants a Fate Point - a standard weapon grants none.

4. "Fate Points carry to the next weapon banner"

They do not. The wish counter carries; Fate Points are wiped at banner end, when you claim your chosen weapon, and when you change your selection.

5. "10-pulls have better odds than single pulls"

Identical odds. A 10-pull only saves taps, and near pity it can cost you: a 5-star on wish 89 wastes the other nine wishes in that batch.

FAQ