Genshin Impact: 10 Changes That Would Make Artifact Farming Less Frustrating

Ah yes, Artifact farming. The bane of every Genshin Impact player’s existence. Countless days toiling away as you fight the same enemies in the same Domain, innumerable amounts of Resin only rivaled by immeasurable bad rolls, and unanswered prayers to the gods of RNG – these are the tragic hallmarks of trying to build a character in Genshin Impact.

It’s easy to picture a system where you could instantly get perfect Artifacts for free and never touch the Domains again. Let’s be realistic, though: Genshin Impact is a gacha game through and through, and the Artifact randomness is here to stay no matter how frustrating it may be. But fear not! There are definitely some adjustments that could be made to the system, which would make the grind more fun for players while retaining Hoyoverse’s goal of an endgame pursuit. Here's what we'd love to see.

10 Main Stats For Your Main

Eliminating RNG entirely from the Artifact system would remove a lot of recurrent content for players and diminish the individuality of character builds. However, Artifact sub stats provide dozens of layers of randomness on their own. Main stats don’t need to add to this.

There should be a system in place to guarantee an Artifact’s main stat every once in a while. Maybe it could be a pity mechanic like the game’s Wish system already has. Or perhaps something where you sacrifice X number of Artifacts in exchange for one with a specific main stat. Random sub stats are needed for fine-tuning builds, but main stats are essential enough to character functionality that they should be more attainable.

9 Make The Artifact Strongbox Stronger

The Artifact Strongbox is a handy mechanic that was added to give players access to a few extra Artifact rolls. Three Artifacts can be consumed to form a new one, and this can be a nice option when you don’t need to sacrifice Artifacts for experience.

Nonetheless, the Strongbox has room for improvement. Mainly, there’s no reason it should be limited to only four basic sets – every Artifact set should be an option to make here. It’s not like the exchange ratio is super favorable anyway, so the least it could do is let players choose from any Artifact set they want. This would give you a few extra chances to obtain that elusive perfect Artifact.

8 Please Install An Escalator

This point has less to do with the Artifacts themselves and more to do with the Domains in which you acquire them. Genshin Impact veterans will know that when you spawn into an Artifact Domain, you typically need to traverse a flight of stairs to reach the fighting arena. The question is: Why?

It can take almost 15 seconds to go up or down these stairs, and it will probably consume your whole Stamina bar. This isn’t a big deal when it happens once or twice, but when you’re on the verge of tears after 72 unsuccessful Artifact runs, this little design feature is a massive annoyance. While we’re at it, why not restore our characters’ Energy when we restart a Domain too?

7 A Limited-Time Engagement

It’s no secret that Genshin Impact loves its limited-time events, and it’s no surprise why. Temporary events provide a constant influx of content to active players, and they give aspiring players a compelling reason to get involved with the game. Genshin Impact’s events feature a ton of variety, which is why it so strange that there have been no Artifact-focused events yet.

Imagine an event where all the Artifact Domains get invaded by a special Fatui taskforce or perhaps corrupted, enhanced Hilichurl variants? These modified Domains might be more challenging than their normal counterparts, but they could also offer a greater chance to obtain well-rolled Artifacts. However they might choose to implement it, mixing Artifact farming with limited-time events is an unexplored space that could add some spice to the Domains that are currently a little bland.

6 It's Lavawalker Wednesday, My Dudes

The Domains that provide Level-up Materials for Talents and weapons function on a weekly rotation; materials for certain characters and weapons can be acquired only on certain days. While this can admittedly be an annoyance if you only have time to play on the weekend or something, it does limit the pool of drops available from a particular Domain.

Artifact Domains could benefit from a similar system. For example, a Domain could drop only Viridescent Venerer Artifacts Monday-Thursday and only Maiden’s Beloved Artifacts Friday-Sunday. There would still be a lot of variance in the rolls of the individual Artifacts, but at least you wouldn’t be stuck with 2,000 Artifacts from a set you don’t need.

5 Combating RNG With More RNG

If there was a system that rotated the Artifacts available from a certain Domain, why not pair it with a system that rotates the enemies as well? Artifact Domains are largely so tiresome because they are so monotonous.

Maybe there could even be a pool of several different enemy groups and each time you start the Domain, a new one is randomly selected. They should still follow a theme, such as being mainly Pyro enemies, so that your team composition isn’t invalidated, but more enemy variety would certainly make Artifact farming sessions more engaging.

4 Raid: Artifact Legends

Despite its bad rap, grinding for items is not an inherently bad feature of modern games. The success of games like Destiny 2 proves that players love to sink hours into acquiring god-rolls, as long as their time is sufficiently rewarded at the end, and they had fun along the way. Thus, it’s not really the idea of a grind that Genshin Impact players mind so much as the lack of reward and its currently boring nature.

Genshin Impact should take inspiration from other types of games to revamp its Artifact farming format. Instead of loading into a single, unchanging, square arena to farm Artifacts, what if it was a labyrinthine dungeon with multiple encounters and multiple Artifact chests along the way? Similar spaces have already been utilized in the Misty Dungeon events, and this would also be a fantastic opportunity to incorporate much-needed co-op gameplay. Artifact farming sounds a lot more enticing when it’s in a raid-style format with friends, doesn’t it?

3 The Earth Isn’t Flat – Your Sub Stats Shouldn’t Be Either

Flat sub stats on Artifacts – specifically Flat HP, ATK, and DEF – are terrible and should be removed. Although technically they can scale decently on some characters, they are almost always worse than their percentage-based counterparts. They serve no purpose other than to artificially inflate the sub stat pool.

They don’t even need to be removed without replacement. What if new sub stats like Stamina or Cooldown Reduction were added in their place? This would maintain high levels of RNG while introducing more interesting sub stats that are actually useful.

2 This Little Maneuver Is Going To Cost Us 51 Years

Leveling up Artifacts takes forever and there’s no reason for it. You’re limited to consuming just six Artifacts at one time, and you have to watch a fancy animation almost every time the Artifact levels up, even if no sub stats were enhanced.

It would be much more convenient if you could consume however many Artifacts you want at once. Obviously it should confirm every four levels whether you want to continue upgrading (since the rolls might be bad), but the point is that the process could be streamlined significantly.

1 Condensing The Resin Process

Condensed Resin unlocks when you reach Reputation Level Three in Liyue, and it essentially allows you to condense two Domain runs into a single attempt. This is pretty necessary to maintain your sanity when farming for Artifacts, so why is it not the default behavior?

Condensed Resin doesn’t actually save you any Resin, it just lessens the time needed to spend it. Moreover, even though it requires Crystal Cores to craft, these aren’t rare at all and only exist to needlessly lengthen the Artifact farming loop. Condensed Resin should be completely free to craft just from Resin, and it’d also be nice if it didn’t require a Crafting Bench to make either. Making trips back to Mondstadt every five runs is just unnecessary busy work.

Source: Read Full Article