Genshin Impact 5.0 will boost the drop rate of those blasted handguards

Forget Natlan, the developers of Genshin Impact have just announced a change to the game that is even bigger and better than an entirely new region – the basic drop rate of some materials you need to upgrade the abilities of your characters will be increased in version 5.0. Among them are the cursed and blasted handguards that seemingly half the Inazuma characters require as well as the specter cores the other half seems to need.

I know that I’ve given up farming for my Inazuma roster because of those handguards, so this is a most welcome change HoYoverse is planning. Here are all enemy types that will have a higher material drop rate in next update:

• Specter
• Abyss Mage
• Nobushi
• Kairagi
• Ruin Guard
• Ruin Hunter
• Ruin Grader

In addition, version 5.0 will unlock World Level 9. Enemies will be upgraded by about ten levels on WL9, making for tougher combat in the open world. In return, all enemies will be guaranteed to drop at least three character level-up materials on WL9, which is nice.

To make farming for your characters even simpler, update 5.0 will introduce a function that lets you pinpoint the location of regional materials like Kalpalata Lotuses on the in-game map.

These are not the only changes coming to version 5.0 – the development team really put a lot of effort into this one. 

The Crafting Bench will allow you to create eight more Articat Sets:

• Deepwood Memories
• Nymph’s Dream
• Gilded Dreams
• Vourukasha’s Glow
• Desert Pavilion Chronicle
• Marechaussee Hunter
• Flower of Paradise Lost
• Golden Troupe

HoYoverse really wants players to upgrade their characters and equipment (understandable, as there are persistent complaints from people who refuse to do so and still want to be able to clear all the combat events, which makes it harder and harder to balance things), so a new Battle Pass mission will be added that will steer players towards upgrading their artifacts.

The load limit of the Serenitea Pot will be increased as well, allowing you to place 1.6-times more furnishings than before – better plan those home extensions, everyone. You can also store 2,200 instead of 2,000 furnishings after update 5.0.

Optimizations are coming to the cooking and food systems, allowing you to search for specific dishes or filter them by effects. Condensed Resin crafting, weapon enhancement, and forging get a glow-up as well to make them more user-friendly.

5.0 will also bring over a feature from Zenless Zone Zero: A prompt that warns you if you’re about to begin a long quest. In Genshin Impact, these will even recommend you elements and weapon types in case the mission contains a difficult combat section.

Looks like there’s a ton of additions planned for the coming update, about which we’ll learn more during the Genshin Impact 5.0 livestream.