Genshin Impact Pity System Explained: Soft Pity, Hard Pity, 50/50 & Capturing Radiance

"Pity" isn't an official HoYoverse term — the community coined it to describe the mechanic where 5★ odds climb and then get guaranteed. Genshin runs 3 independent Wish counters, each tracked separately:

• Character Event Wish (limited character banner): 5★ base rate = 0.6% per pull, flat from pull 1.
• Weapon Event Wish (weapon banner): 5★ base rate = 0.7% per pull — higher than the character banner.
• Wanderlust Invocation (standard banner): 5★ base rate = 0.6%, drawn randomly from the permanent character pool (not the limited character).

From pull 1 until you enter the soft-pity zone, this rate barely moves — check which character is worth pulling for on our Genshin character list first.

Past a certain wish count, the 5★ rate stops being flat and starts climbing every pull — that's soft pity. Reach the maximum and the system forces a guaranteed 5★ — that's hard pity:

• Character & standard banners: soft pity kicks in noticeably around wish 74 (roughly +6% per pull after that), hard pity guarantees at wish 90.
• Weapon banner: soft pity starts around wish 63 (roughly +7% per pull), hard pity at wish 80.

In practice, most 5★s land inside the soft-pity window (74-89 for characters) rather than exactly at pull 90 — which is why pulls often feel earlier than expected. Plug your current pull count into our pity calculator for your exact percentage right now.

Every time you land a 5★ on a limited character banner, there's a 50% chance it's the featured character and a 50% chance it's one of 7 fixed standard-pool characters (Diluc, Jean, Mona, Qiqi, Keqing, Tighnari, and Dehya — this exact roster doesn't rotate). If you "lose" the 50/50 (get a standard character), you're flagged with a guarantee: your very next 5★ on a limited character banner is 100% guaranteed to be the featured character, no exceptions.

This guarantee flag carries over across different character banners — lose it on banner A, and it stays active into banner B (even a different character) until it's used.

Since version 5.0, HoYoverse added Capturing Radiance: right at the moment you'd "lose" the 50/50, there's a small extra chance to auto-convert that into a win (featured character) — separate from the normal guarantee flag. Based on community data cross-referenced across multiple trackers (estimated figures — HoYoverse hasn't published the full formula): the trigger chance rises with your recent consecutive 50/50 losses and is guaranteed to trigger before your 3rd-to-4th consecutive loss depending on the community model (a detailed datamine-based model puts the guarantee right at the 3rd loss, i.e. max 2 in a row; a broader large-sample statistical model puts it at the 4th, i.e. max 3 in a row) — meaning in practice you rarely lose the 50/50 more than 2-3 times consecutively. Factoring in Capturing Radiance, the overall chance of getting the featured character on any 5★ pull nudges from 50% up to roughly 55% across large sample sizes.

Capturing Radiance does not apply to the standard banner (Wanderlust Invocation), since that banner has no 50/50 or featured character concept.

The weapon banner (Weapon Event Wish) has its own extra mechanic called Epitomized Path: you pre-select 1 of the 2 featured 5★ weapons ("chart a course"). Before getting to Fate Points, know the root problem: every 5★ pull on the weapon banner only has a 75% chance of being one of the 2 featured weapons (roughly 37.5% each), with a 25% chance it's an off-banner standard 5★ weapon instead — Epitomized Path/Fate Points exist specifically to patch over that 25%+37.5% randomness. Every time you get a 5★ on the weapon banner that ISN'T your chosen weapon (whether it's the other featured weapon or a standard one), you earn 1 Fate Point. Since version 5.0, just 1 Fate Point guarantees your very next weapon-banner 5★ will be exactly the weapon you chose (before 5.0 it took 2 Fate Points, meaning up to 3 total 5★s before the guarantee).

Important: Fate Points do NOT carry over to the next weapon banner rotation — every time the featured weapons change, Fate Points reset to 0, even though your underlying pull-count pity stays intact. That means the true worst case for guaranteeing your exact weapon is: hit the 80-pull hard pity on a weapon you didn't want (earning 1 Fate Point), then hit another 80-pull hard pity to finally land the guaranteed one — up to 160 pulls / 25,600 Primogems total. Check which 5★ weapons are worth picking on our Genshin weapon list.

Genshin also has a separate pity layer for 4★ items, applying across all 3 banner types: pull 9 times in a row with no 4★ or 5★, and pull 10 guarantees at least one 4★-or-better item. This counter resets to 0 whenever a 4★ OR 5★ drops (not just a 4★), and it carries over across rotations of the same banner type just like 5★ pity — but does not carry between character/weapon/standard banners.

4★s on limited banners have their own 50/50: each 4★ pull has a 50% chance of being one of the rate-up 4★ characters, and if you "lose" that, the next 4★ is guaranteed to be a rate-up character — meaning a maximum of 20 pulls to lock in the featured 4★ you want.

The question new players ask most: does switching banners reset your progress?

• Carries over: your 5★/4★ pity count and your 50/50 guarantee flag stay intact when moving from one Character Event Wish banner to another — even a completely different character, even across several patches.
• Doesn't carry over: pity for Character Event Wish, Weapon Event Wish, and Wanderlust Invocation (standard) are 3 fully separate counters — grinding one doesn't help the others at all.
• Special exception: the weapon banner's Fate Points (Epitomized Path) reset to 0 every time the featured weapons rotate, even though the weapon banner's underlying pull-count pity stays put.

So before you pull, it's worth checking whether your target character or weapon is actually worth building pity for on our Genshin tier list — better than regretting it after the fact.

Combining base rate + soft pity + hard pity into a full probability model (cross-checked against verified community calculation tools) gives these averages — these are averages only, not guarantees; actual luck swings a lot around these numbers:

• On average, it takes about 62-63 pulls to get any single 5★ on the character banner (starting from pity 0, regardless of featured or not).
• On average, it takes about 93-94 pulls to lock in the EXACT featured character (accounting for the chance of losing then winning the 50/50, including Capturing Radiance).
• On average, it takes about 54 pulls to get a single 5★ weapon (thanks to the higher 0.7% base rate and shorter 80-pull hard pity).

Each Wish costs 160 Primogems or 1 Intertwined Fate (limited/standard banners) / 1 Acquaint Fate (weapon banner). Guaranteeing a character via the full 90-pull hard pity costs up to 14,400 Primogems. Stack up free Primogems through daily commissions, events, and redeem codes on our latest Genshin codes page.