In Genshin Impact, Artifacts are key to successful character development and taking on the challenges of Teyvat. But Artifacts operate differently than other improvable items in Genshin Impact, so farming them is important to successfully get upgrades.
Rather than equipping armor and shields, Genshin Impact uses Artifacts to improve character stats. Artifacts in Genshin Impact can be found all over the world of Teyvat and offer necessary buffs to the player's team such as attack bonuses and health point increases. There are five Artifact types: Goblets, Circlets, Flowers, Sands, and Plumes, and many come in matching sets that can buff the character's stats further when combined in twos or fours. It's important to note that unlike weapons in Genshin Impact, Artifacts can only be improved by consuming other Artifacts, so farming them is important to make powerful character builds.
Early on, one-star Artifacts can be found simply by exploring. Opening chests, progressing in the main questline, completing side quests such as Adventurer's Guild commissions, and completing available Domains will offer a slew of one and tw0-star Artifacts that the player can use to improve their preferred ones. Though four-star Artifacts are much more difficult to find early on, players shouldn't bother with leveling up Artifacts below three stars, and Genshin Impact will throw plenty of three-star Artifacts into rewards prior to reaching Adventure Rank 20.
After reaching Adventure Rank 20, however, enemy difficulty will increase proportionately with the rarity of the Artifacts they drop, so battling bosses and completing Domains are more important. Four-star Artifacts become more abundant when looting chest after defeating bosses and Domains at higher difficulty levels. Similarly, after Adventure Rank 40, five-star Artifacts will begin dropping from Domains and bosses.
A list of available bosses and Domains can be observed when opening up the journal and changing tabs on the left-hand side, and each quest will show their possible rewards. Keep in mind, many Genshin Impact bosses have cooldowns and repeatable Domains will require the use of Resin. After running out of bosses in single-player, jumping into co-op mode (after Adventure Rank 16) and helping others clear some of their bosses can offer more loot to farm. Despite the cooldown timer, the same bosses may be available in other players' games. This method can be repeated infinitely by hopping from session to session.
After completing the above steps, the only other way to farm without using Fragile Resin is to defeat mini-bosses such as Mages and Mitachurls as they respawn in-game. Even low-star items found this way can be farmed and used to craft higher-level items with Alchemists.
Genshin Impact is available now for mobile devices, PC, and PS4, and is coming to the Nintendo Switch at a later date.