How to get free wishes in Genshin Impact

Wishes are one of the cornerstones of Genshin Impact – a horrible gacha-based lootbox random system that pries on gambling addictions.

Wishes get you a chance at cool characters and weapons, but you'll usually get a lot of trash in-between. Because of the high price and dismal drop rate, buying wishes in Genshin Impact never feels worth it. I’ve made that mistake, sadly more than once now, and everytime I just feel dirty and sad afterwards.

Getting wishes for free on the other hand? It's awesome. And in the early game it feels like a great reward when they were flowing a bit faster into my inventory.

That being said, even if you’ve been playing Genshin Impact from launch like I have, there are so many activities that it can be easy to forget they even existed in the first place. If you haven’t, you might want to check out our WTF is Genshin Impact article to get up to speed.

Some of those, like the animal trap (not the new ubiquity net) you’ve probably never really touched because there wasn’t much reason – and fair enough. However, there are plenty of other activities in Genshin Impact that are worth revisiting that many people have forgotten.

Here we have a list of sneaky little things you can do in Genshin Impact to earn extra primogems or straight up wishes that you may have been overlooking.

Daily check in

I’ve spruiked the daily check in here before but it’s still easy to forget about so I want to mention it one more time.

I have it set as a bookmark and it auto opens as a tab on my browser – but even then I still forget to click it sometimes. The good news is you can skip a bunch of days by accident and still unlock all the primos on offer, so don’t give up just because you forget yesterday.

Levelling up characters

Genshin is a game with a strong focus on its cast of playable characters. They’re unlocked through story and by the game’s gacha wishing system. Some are much stronger or just more useful to your party than others, and given there are so many characters and limited level up resources, most people pick a few to level up and focus on.

Something many players forget is that you get wishes for ascending characters. Levelling and ascending a character to their first ascension phase earns you a free wish, and is always a pretty cheap endeavour.

I mentioned this to my partner who’d forgotten and he managed to earn a heap of extra wishes just by pushing his 0 level characters to that first milestone with items he already had.

Other tiers of ascension can offer wishes too, but it gets more expensive. It’s worth doing if you happen to have the resources on hand and would prefer free wishes instead. Plus, having more characters levelled up can be very helpful for our next tip.

Spiral Abyss

The Spiral Abyss is Genshin Impact’s set of single player challenge dungeons. When first starting out, you only need one team of 4 characters. But as you complete more challenges you’ll need enough levelled characters for two independent teams. Depending on the enemies and bonuses that might be active in the Spiral Abyss, different elements or weapons might be beneficial so having a range to choose from alway helps.

Again, the Spiral Abyss isn’t something all Genshin players interact with, because of the difficulty and character requirements. But even completing the easiest levels can earn you primogems. The more difficult portions are also a gold mine for extra primogems and they reset every month so you can earn them again. It’s well worth hitting the Spiral Abyss just to see how you go and what you can earn.

World exploration

Genshin Impact’s undeniably Breath of the Wild inspired world is made for exploring. Every direction you look in there are enemies to fight, chests to open, or just interesting landmarks. After a lot of Genshin playing this can all pretty easily blend together, but it’s important to keep your mind on the primogem prize.

Every chest you find is worth a couple of primos. Puzzles often lead to chests (OK, most things often lead to chests). It’s not a lot but it adds up, and can be helpful to keep in mind while exploring, wondering if it’s worth bothering those hilchurls for that common chest booty.

Statues of the Seven and trees like the one in Dragonspine and the Sakura in Inazuma can also be levelled. These are generally long term goals and both require the hunting down of environmental collectibles. They have plenty of in-game benefits – like levelling up Traveller – and are worth doing, but are a bit of a slog.

It’s easy to push to the side and forget about them, especially if they’re not directly helping you but it’s worth checking in on your progress. A quick guide lookup and a few minutes of your time could see you knocking these off and gaining a bunch of extra wishes.