While Genshin Impact is a free to play game, there are still many ways that players can sink money into it. The biggest way is through the game's gacha system known as Wishes where players roll for more characters to play as and new powerful weapons.
Considering how many Genshin Impact players have put a lot of money in to try and get certain 5-Star characters, it's very clear that it's up to luck in order for players to get what they want. However, players have also begun studying the Wish system's rates in order to figure out if there is a better way to get these characters.
When rolling for 5-star characters, there is a pity system that comes into play. With it, players are guaranteed to get a 5-star character or weapon from the banner they are rolling from as soon as players reach their 90th wish. If, however, a player gets a 5-star character or weapon before the 90th wish, the pity counter will reset.
While it might work out for some players to just use the pity system, the studying of the drop rates by the Genshin Impact community have revealed that the drop rates of 5-Star characters actually fluctuate with how many wishes a player has done before getting a 5-Star character. Even though it starts at a chance of 0.6% for a 5-Star drop, it can get as low as 0.187% and as high as 20.627%. This can be taken advantage of in order to increase the odds of getting a 5-Star character before the pity system kicks in.
How this works is that the first wish will always be 0.6% odds, but the odds will actually decrease with each wish. This however will change as soon as players reach their 76th wish. At that point, the odds apparently will go to 20.637% for a 5-Star character. At this point it is recommended to make single wishes for the 76th, 77th, 78th, 79th, and 80th wishes. If players do not get a 5-Star during these wishes, they will likely just have to rely on the pity system.
These wishes in succession aren't just wishes within a single wish session. This is counting how many wishes the player has made since either they started the game or when they last received a 5-Star character or weapon from the Wish system. This also means that players are recommended to count what wish they are on in order to better play the odds.
Genshin Impact is available on mobile devices, PC, and PS4 with PS5 and Switch versions in development.
Source: WiLLiSGaming | YouTube