Genshin Impact gives out its first free 5-star character as update 5.0 pulls out the big guns for Natlan: custom-made artifacts and no more 50/50 odds on characters

Genshin Impact is finally doing it, folks. After four years, HoYoverse's open-world action RPG is giving all players a free 5-star character for its upcoming fourth anniversary and the simultaneous release of update 5.0 and sixth region Natlan, and that's just one of many quality-of-life and economics wins coming August 27 (technically August 28, but 5.0 comes early for many regions). 

As part of the 2024 anniversary rewards, along with 10 Intertwined Fate and 1,600 Primogems, players can choose a 5-star character of their choice from the standard pool of characters: Jean, Diluc, Mona, Qiqi, Keqing, Tighnari, and Dehya. This will become an annual reward, and HoYoverse said in the 5.0 reveal stream that more characters will be added to the standard pool going forward, so these free 5-stars will add up for longtime players. 

Acquiring 5-stars the old-fashioned way, desperately shoveling Primogems at the current limited rate-up banner and hoping for the best, is also getting a boost with 5.0. Natlan will introduce a new Wish mechanic called Capturing Radiance. The easiest way to explain this is: going forward, pulling for limited characters won't be a dead-even coin flip. 

Instead of 50/50 odds, followed by a 100% guarantee if you "lose" your pity and pull a standard character instead of the rate-up character, you'll have 55/45 odds to start with. Wishing is totally unchanged otherwise; it's a flat buff to limited 5-star character rates, now with a possible alternate Wish animation. The 50/50 is dead; all hail the 55/45. 

The infamous weapon banner is getting a buff of its own. The point system that guarantees your targeted 5-star weapon after two whiffs has been cut down to one point instead of two. In other words, the weapon banner basically works like character banners now, just with a slightly lower soft pity Wish count. If you miss your target on the first 5-star pull, you'll be guaranteed to get it on the next one. Again, odds and rarities are unchanged