Genshin Impact Friendship Guide

Maxed out friendship with best girl. | Image: miHoYo via HGG / Jeffrey Hsu

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Having learned how to play video games before he could walk or read, Jeffrey is a gaming zealot. With a fixation on efficiency and details, he'll d... Read more

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Being able to bond and improve your relationship with characters in a gacha game is a fairly common staple nowadays. Genshin Impact is no exception, as you can level up your friendship with each of the characters you own. In today’s guide, we’ll be covering the entire friendship system, what rewards you can earn from it, and the best ways to level up friendship in Genshin Impact.

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What Does Friendship Do in Genshin Impact?

Friendship merely indicates the bond you (as the Traveler) have with each of the characters that you own. As you raise your friendship level, you’ll learn a bit more about the respective character’s history and thoughts on certain matters.

This system is solely for lore and minor aesthetic purposes. It has no impact on gameplay currently. However, we would not be surprised if further down the road, miHoYo ties in friendship to some mechanic — perhaps a bonus in some event depending on your friendship level.

Friendship Rewards

As mentioned above, you’ll be able to learn more about a character as you level up your friendship with them in Genshin Impact. At certain friendship levels, you’ll unlock additional dialogue and stories in their profile page. You’ll also gain access to more conversations with them in your Serenitea Pot.

These give you more insight into the world of Genshin Impact, what drove the character to become who they are today, and other tidbits of interesting lore. The required friendship level for unlocking these differ from character to character, and sometimes you also have to complete a specific quest as a prerequisite.

A couple achievements (“Hitherto Unknown” and “Fireside Chats”) are tied to maxing out your friendship with characters and unlocking their conversation dialogue in the Serenitea Pot. While it’s not a staggering amount, you’ll earn a couple primogems from completing these.

Additionally, you can obtain a unique character-specific namecard that you can display on your player profile. You earn these once you max out your friendship with a character at Friendship Level 10. Simply click the little treasure chest icon that appears next to the character’s friendship bar to claim it.

Interestingly, the game also keeps track of which character you maxed out your friendship with first, as well as how many maxed out friendships you have. You’re likely to see a reference to this during the anniversary event for Genshin Impact, when it goes over a recap of your journey so far.

If you really like a specific character and want to show off your love for them, we recommend making sure they’re the first one you max out your friendship with. That way they’re more likely to make a named appearance in your journey’s recap!

How to Increase Friendship in Genshin Impact

Every time you complete certain activities in Genshin Impact, you’ll earn Companionship (friendship) EXP towards your active party members. As you increase your Adventurer Rank, you’ll gain more friendship EXP per qualifying activity.

Which activities qualify isn’t very intuitive, so we’ll be going over each one.

Ley Lines/Bosses/Domains

You’ll gain friendship EXP every time you spend some Original/Condensed Resin to claim your rewards from defeating a Ley Line Blossom, domain, or boss. Since spending Resin is how you get most upgrade materials and resources, you’ll steadily level up your friendship just by getting stronger.

Tip: Since Ley Line Blossoms exist in the overworld, you can defeat the enemies with your strongest team. Afterwards, swap to a secondary team comprised only of characters that you’re trying to level your friendship with and claim the rewards (and friendship EXP).

This strategy also works for any bosses in the overworld, but not for ones within instances like Dvalin. Domains are obviously exempt as well, but if you have a character strong enough to solo the domain, you can bring in three weaker characters solely to gain EXP towards their friendship.

Daily Commissions

This will be your main (and quickest) source of friendship EXP. Every real-life day, you’ll be given access to four randomized quests set in one of the major regions of Teyvat — indicated by a purple diamond marker on the world map.

You’re already incentivized to complete commissions for the primogems they award, but you’ll also get large chunks of friendship EXP upon completion. They’re all relatively easy and can be quickly done within fifteen minutes of gameplay, so you should be able to finish them each day.

Tip: A trick to efficiently level up your friendships is to proceed through each commission until the very last stage. Then, swap to a party consisting only of underused or under-leveled characters to complete the commission with. This way you can easily level up friendship with your weaker characters, while saving your main party for more challenging content (like weekly bosses).

This is easiest to do on commissions where you have to talk to an NPC to turn in the quest or reach a certain goal marker. Combat/eradication commissions are a bit more annoying, as you’ll need at least one character in the party who can reliably finish off the enemy.

Once you complete your daily set of four commissions, make sure to speak with Katheryne at any Adventurer’s Guild kiosk to claim your commission bonus for the day. You’ll get another chunk of rewards, including even more friendship EXP. Once again, we recommend swapping to your secondary party.

Serenitea Pot

Once you unlock the Serenitea Pot by progressing through the main story and complete “Idle Teapot Talk,” you can invite characters to stay at your personal home. Every time you claim the Realm Bounty from your housekeeper Tubby, you can click on the purple chest icon and any currently invited characters will gain friendship EXP.

The rate at which you accumulate friendship EXP is tied to the Adeptal Energy Rank of your teapot home, so try to get it to the max rank as soon as possible. Note that Tubby can only hold so much friendship EXP at one time. We recommend regularly claiming it at least once every two real-life days.

Initially, you’ll only be able to invite two companions. As you level up your Trust Rank with Tubby, you’ll eventually be able to host up to eight companions at once. Whenever you reach max friendship with a character, swap them out for another one to not waste any friendship EXP.

Random Events

Occasionally while you’re exploring the world, a prompt for a random quest will appear, indicated by a blue diamond marker. Completing these will offer a small chunk of friendship EXP and other rewards. Nothing major, but it’s appreciated nonetheless.

When these appear, we recommend immediately doing them. If you take too long or wander too far away, they tend to despawn. If you’re in the middle of something else or happen to miss one, don’t fret. The rewards are fairly minor.

You can complete up to ten random events per day. However, you’re not likely to see more than 2–3 unless you specifically idle in areas where they tend to spawn. Though specifically searching for random events is really not worth the time or effort.

Forging

This is the last method to gain friendship EXP in Genshin Impact, but it’s probably the least worthwhile way. Every time you forge Mystic Enchantment Ore specifically with Magical Crystal Chunks, you’ll gain a bit of friendship EXP.

But since this method requires using Original Resin, it’s largely seen as a huge waste. Weapon EXP crystals are already rather easy to obtain just by forging with normal ore. You’re better off using your Resin to farm more important resources, like artifacts or level up materials.

This is really only done by people who are about to be capped out on their Original Resin and don’t have time to spend it. Though if you care about being efficient with your Resin, you’re not likely to be in such a situation to begin with.

Join the High Ground

And that’s it for our guide to friendship in Genshin impact. Just by regularly playing the game and following our tips, you’ll max out your friendship with every character you own! If you have any more questions or want us to clarify something, leave a comment below. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more Genshin Impact articles and more!

Happy gaming!