Character and Weapon Leveling Guide

1. The Three Pillars of Leveling

New players almost always make the same mistake: they dump every Hero's Wit into one character's level bar, hit the level 20 wall, and wonder why nothing changed. Genshin splits progression into three independent tracks, and each one gates the next. Character level raises base HP, ATK, and DEF using EXP books and Mora. Ascension is a separate set of six breakpoints that lift the level cap and grant a fixed bonus stat. Talents upgrade the three combat skills on their own material track. A character at level 90 with no ascension is strictly weaker than a level 80 character who is fully ascended, because the ascension bonus stat never applies.

The practical takeaway is to level and ascend together. You cannot reach level 40 until you clear the level 20 ascension, you cannot reach level 50 until you clear the level 40 ascension, and so on through level 80. Plan your resin around both books and boss materials at the same time instead of fully leveling first and ascending second.

Character Level: EXP Books and Mora

Genshin has three tiers of character EXP books. Wanderer's Advice grants 1,000 EXP, Adventurer's Experience grants 5,000 EXP, and Hero's Wit grants 20,000 EXP. These values are consistent across the official wiki and community databases. Mora cost is fixed at 1 Mora per 5 EXP regardless of which book you use, so a Hero's Wit costs 4,000 Mora to consume. The conversion efficiency never changes between tiers, which means there is no penalty to converting lower books up through the crafting bench if you are short on high-tier books.

Taking a single character from level 1 to 90 requires roughly 8,362,650 EXP, which works out to about 415 to 419 Hero's Wit depending on how you round waste. That figure is repeated across multiple independent English wikis, so treat it as reliable. The Mora bill for just the leveling portion is around 1.67 million. Unlike ascension and talent materials, there is no dedicated domain that drops EXP books. You get them from Ley Line Blossoms (the EXP outcrops), treasure chests, events, and the Realm Depot inside the Serenitea Pot. Lower-tier books mostly come from exploration and commissions.

Ascension Gates and Materials

Ascension happens at six breakpoints: level 20, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80. Each one needs four material families at once. Elemental gems come in four rarities (Sliver, Fragment, Chunk, Gemstone) dropped by world bosses of the matching element, and the total needed across all six phases is 1 Sliver, 9 Fragments, 9 Chunks, and 6 Gemstones. Boss-specific materials come from regular 40-resin world bosses, and a full ascension needs 46 of them. Local specialties are gathered in the open world and a full build needs 168. Common enemy drops come from normal mobs and can be upgraded three-to-one at an alchemy bench when you are short on the top tier.

The full Mora and book cost for a complete level 1 to 90 ascension plus leveling lands near 2.09 million Mora and roughly 419 Hero's Wit, not counting talents. That number is corroborated by both the official wiki tables and independent EN guides, so it is safe to plan around. The physical materials are the real bottleneck because local specialties respawn on a roughly 48-hour timer and boss materials are capped by your resin.

2. Weapon Leveling

Weapons level on the same EXP book and Mora economy as characters, with the same 1 Mora per 5 EXP rule. The difference is the enhancement ore track. You can feed weapons fine enhancement ore, mystical enhancement ore, and the higher-tier jazz/arkhe ores from the Parametric Transformer and events, which gives you a second sink for ore you would otherwise ignore. Weapons ascend at levels 20, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 the same way characters do, and weapon ascension materials come from weekday domains and the same region-locked mob drops.

The veteran habit is to keep your main DPS weapon at the same level as the character and to push support weapons only to 80 or 90 depending on how much they scale with stats. A level 90 weapon on a level 1 character is wasted; match the two tracks. For most 4-star weapons the refinement rank matters more than the last ten levels, so do not sacrifice a useful refinement to chase weapon level on a bench unit.

3. Talent Leveling

Talents are the third track and the most expensive per point of power. Each character has three combat talents (Normal Attack, Elemental Skill, Elemental Burst) that can reach level 10. Weekday talent domains drop Teachings, Guides, and Philosophies books that are element-themed and only available on specific days. A full single talent to level 10 costs roughly 1.65 million Mora plus the book chain and a stack of common mob drops, and that is before the weekly boss material.

Levels 8 to 10 require a drop from a weekly boss (the 60 or 70 resin trounce domains) and the final level 10 also requires a Crown of Insight. Crowns are scarce: they come from limited-time events and from the regional offering trees such as the Sacred Sakura in Inazuma, the Tree of Dreams in Sumeru, and similar structures. Because crowns are effectively non-renewable outside events, most players save them for a character's most important talent and stop other talents at level 9. Decide which talent actually drives the damage or utility before spending a crown.

4. Adventure Rank Experience

Adventure Rank (AR) is account level, not character level, and it gates nearly every system in the game from domains to the Spiral Abyss unlock at AR 20. AR exp comes from a fixed set of repeatable and one-time sources. Daily commissions give the most reliable chunk: four commissions plus the bonus claim total 1,500 AR exp per day, or 10,500 per week, and there is no substitute for showing up. Ley Line Blossoms that you clear for books or Mora also grant a small AR exp reward, so your resin spending doubles as rank progress.

World Quests and Archon Quests are the largest one-time injections of AR exp, and they are the reason a new account can jump dozens of ranks in a single region. Exploration pays out through Statues of the Seven, waypoints, oculi, and reputation boards. The Adventurer's Handbook tracks these and hands you bonus exp for clearing its objective lists, which is the most efficient way to push a stuck rank early on. Reputation tasks in each nation also feed AR exp and unlock useful blueprints.

5. Efficient Daily and Weekly Routes

A disciplined day takes about twenty minutes. Claim the four daily commissions and the bonus, run your condensed resin on whatever domain your current character needs most, clear the two weekly boss trees for talent materials, and sweep local specialties for any character you are pre-farming. Use the Adventurer's Handbook's "Claim All" on expedition and gadget rewards so nothing decays. The single biggest waste in this game is resin that expires at the 160 cap because you did not log in; the daily login is worth more than any single farmrun.

On a weekly cadence, prioritize the trounce bosses for the characters you are actually building, because those drops are the long pole for talents. Spend Parametric Transformer charges and Teapot currency on the same day you do resin so the timers align. If you are between characters, bank resin into condensed resin rather than spending it on a domain you do not need yet.

The Serenitea Pot and Trust Rank

The Serenitea Pot (the housing system) is a slow but free source of both Mora and EXP books through the Realm Depot. As you place furnishings and raise Trust Rank, you earn Realm Currency that buys Hero's Wit, Mystic Enhancement Ore, and character ascension materials on a rotating stock. Trust Rank rises from the first time you place each unique furnishing, so the efficient play is to craft one of every recipe once rather than spamming duplicates. The Teapot also generates a small passive currency trickle you can convert into books, which over a month adds up to a meaningful chunk of a character's leveling cost.

The Parametric Transformer

The Parametric Transformer is a gadget that converts a loadout of junk materials into a randomized reward, including EXP books, enhancement ore, and talent books. It holds one charge that recharges over several real-world days and needs to be placed in the open world to activate. Most players load it with low-tier mob drops they have in surplus and collect it on the same day as their weekly boss run. It is not a primary farming method, but it is free value that you should never let sit at a full charge.

6. What to Prioritize at Low vs High AR

Below AR 45 your bottleneck is account progression, not artifact quality. Push Adventure Rank through Archon Quests and World Quests, build one main DPS team to level 80 with talents at 6 to 8, and do not touch artifact domains seriously because 5-star drops are not guaranteed yet. Spend resin on talent and weapon domains and on boss materials for your carries. A single well-built team clears all of the open-world content and most of the permanent Abyss corridor.

At AR 45 and above the math flips. Artifact domains guarantee at least one 5-star piece per 20 resin, so the ceiling on your characters is now set by substats rather than levels. Shift resin toward artifacts for your two Abyss teams, finish talents to 9 or 10 on your carries, and only then consider leveling bench characters. The rule of thumb: levels and ascension get you to the door, artifacts and talents decide whether you walk through it. For the artifact half of that equation, see our artifacts guide, and for resin planning read the Original Resin guide. Character-specific material lists live on each entry in Characters.