Almost every Genshin Impact pity guide quotes a soft pity number HoYoverse has never published. The officially disclosed rates are stranger and more useful than the folklore — and they contain enough information to prove soft pity is real without datamining a thing.
This guide is for Version 7.1, "A Rekviem for the Underworld", live since 23 September 2026 on Asia servers and 22 September on America. Every number below was read on 3 October 2026 off HoYoverse's own drop-rate disclosure for the banners running right now: "When Warm Winds Cavort" (Vesna, Anemo), "Surging Ballad" (Vodyanitsa, Hydro) and the Weapon Event Wish "Epitome Invocation". Phase 1 wishes close 13 October 2026 at 17:59 server time on every region.
Quick answer: on character banners the base 5-star rate is 0.600% and you are guaranteed a 5-star at least once per 90 wishes. The first 5-star you win has a 50.000% chance of being the promotional character — and separately a 0.018% base chance of triggering Capturing Radiance, which converts a lost 50/50 into a win on the spot. Folding that in, HoYoverse publishes a 55.000% consolidated chance a 5-star character from an event wish is the promotional one. Lose the 50/50 and the next 5-star character is guaranteed. The weapon banner is a different system: base 0.700%, hard guarantee at 80, a 75.000% promo chance and Epitomized Path with a maximum of 1 Fate Point. Soft pity — the rate climbing before the hard floor — is never published as a curve, but HoYoverse's own two numbers prove it exists.
What is the pity system in Genshin Impact?
"Pity" is community shorthand for two guarantees HoYoverse publishes and one behaviour it does not.
The published ones are the hard guarantees and the per-10 guarantee. On the standard wish the official rule text reads "guaranteed to win 5-star item at least once per 90 attempts"; on both character event wishes it narrows to "guaranteed to win 5-star character at least once per 90 attempts." On the weapon event wish the figure is 80. Separately, on all of those banners you are "guaranteed to win 4-star or above item at least once per 10 attempts."
The unpublished one is soft pity — the widely observed fact that your odds climb steeply somewhere in the seventies rather than staying flat until the 90th wish. HoYoverse has never released a per-wish ramp table, though it does use the term itself. The Q&A infographic attached to the official Capturing Radiance explainer of 14 August 2024 asks "but will this mechanic affect the original 'soft pity' and 'hard pity' guarantees?" and answers it directly: "It doesn't affect the guarantees." Note that the wording lives in the image, not the page text.
Your pity counter is also not one counter. It is three, and they do not talk to each other.
| Wish type | Hard guarantee | Guarantee count shared with |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Wish "Wanderlust Invocation" | 90 | nothing |
| Character Event Wish and Character Event Wish-2 | 90 | each other |
| Weapon Event Wish "Epitome Invocation" | 80 | other weapon event wishes only |
That middle row matters this patch. Vesna is on "When Warm Winds Cavort", Vodyanitsa is on "Surging Ballad", and the official rule text states plainly: "The wish guarantee count for 'Character Event Wish' and 'Character Event Wish-2' is shared, and is accumulated between both." Wishes spent on Vodyanitsa move you toward a Vesna guarantee and vice versa — one pool wearing two banners.
What are the real published wish rates in Version 7.1?
Straight from HoYoverse's official wish drop-rate disclosure for the banners running right now.
| Banner | 5-star base | 5-star consolidated | Hard floor | 4-star base | 4-star consolidated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wanderlust Invocation (standard) | 0.600% | 1.600% | 90 | 5.100% | 13.000% |
| When Warm Winds Cavort (character) | 0.600% | 1.600% | 90 | 5.100% | 13.000% |
| Epitome Invocation (weapon) | 0.700% | 1.850% | 80 | 6.000% | 14.500% |
"Base" is the flat per-wish chance. "Consolidated" is HoYoverse's own blended figure including the guarantee — the long-run average. Two official details that surprise people: on the standard banner the 0.600% splits evenly into 0.300% for a 5-star character and 0.300% for a 5-star weapon, and when the per-10 guarantee fires on a character banner it resolves as 99.400% a 4-star and 0.600% a 5-star, not 100% a 4-star.
How do we know soft pity is real if HoYoverse never published it?
This needs no leaks and no datamining — only the two numbers in the table above.
Assume the pessimistic model: a flat 0.600% per wish, no ramp, with a hard floor handing you a 5-star on the 90th. The long-run average is 69.7 wishes per 5-star, implying a consolidated probability of 1.435%.
But HoYoverse publishes the consolidated probability as 1.600% — one 5-star every 62.5 wishes. A flat 0.600% rate capped at 90 cannot physically get below 69.7. The published figure is about 10% better than a flat rate allows, so the per-wish probability must rise before the hard floor.
The weapon banner tells the same story. Flat 0.700% with a floor at 80 averages 61.4 wishes, a 1.628% rate. HoYoverse publishes 1.850% — 54.1 wishes, a 12% gap. Same conclusion.
Soft pity is therefore officially implied and officially unquantified. The starting pull quoted everywhere — mid-seventies for character banners, low sixties for the weapon banner — comes from community pull-log datasets, not HoYoverse. Treat those as estimates with no official standing and budget with the 62.5 and 54.1 averages instead.
How does the 50/50 work, and what exactly is Capturing Radiance?
Winning a 5-star on a character event wish does not mean winning the featured character. The official rule for the live banner: "The first time you win a 5-star item in this event wish, there is a 50.000% chance (excluding the triggering of 'Capturing Radiance') it will be the promotional character." Lose that coin flip and "the next 5-star character you win is guaranteed to be the promotional character."
Capturing Radiance, added in Version 5.0, sits on top of that coin flip. HoYoverse's clarification of 10 February 2025 is worth quoting in full, because the third sentence is the part that gets mangled in retellings:
"The base probability of triggering 'Capturing Radiance' is 0.018%. Including the possibility of triggering 'Capturing Radiance,' when winning a 5-star character in the event wish, there is a consolidated probability of 55.000% it will be the promotional character. If the promotional 5-star character is the second 5-star character you obtain on three consecutive occasions, the 'Capturing Radiance' mechanic is guaranteed to be triggered the next time you obtain a 5-star character in a Wish."
Three things follow that people routinely get wrong.
First, Capturing Radiance only applies when the 50/50 applies. The official text is conditional on it "not [being] guaranteed to win the promotional 5-star character" — so if you are already on a guarantee it cannot trigger. It is a 50/50 rescue, not a bonus on a guaranteed pull.
Second, it is character event wishes only: "'Character Event Wish' and 'Character Event Wish-2' can trigger this mechanic. This mechanic will not trigger in other Wishes."
Third, the "three consecutive occasions" clause is a safety net against a cursed streak, not a general counter. It fires when the promotional character has been your second 5-star — you lost the 50/50 and got there via guarantee — three times running.
HoYoverse also publishes a single all-in number for the live Vesna banner: "Consolidated probability of winning 5-star character (incl. guarantee and Capturing Radiance) = 1.103%."
Do not confuse Capturing Radiance with "Radiance: Stellar Glimmer"
This one is new to Version 7.x and it is catching people out. The Stellar Glimmer reactions introduced a family of combat states labelled Radiance: Stellar Glimmer — an umbrella covering Radiance: Stellar-Conduct and Radiance: Stellar Swirl. Those are elemental reaction states that live in your damage calculations, not in the Wish system.
And while we are here, because most third-party pages fumble it: Stellar Glimmer reactions are not Lunar reactions either — Lunar-Charged, Lunar-Bloom and Lunar-Crystallize sit behind a separate enabler. Three unrelated systems, one shared word.
Does the weapon banner have pity, and how do Fate Points work?
Yes, and this is the most expensive misconception in the game. A player on the Genshin Impact subreddit put it bluntly on 29 September 2026 after finding out: "I feel so dumb — the amount of weapon banners I've skipped."
Epitome Invocation has its own counter with a hard guarantee at 80, accumulating across weapon event wishes — spend 50 wishes this patch without a 5-star and you start the next weapon banner at 50. What does not carry over is Fate Points.
The official Epitomized Path ruleset:
- You chart a course toward one of the two promotional 5-star weapons. No course charted, no Fate Points at all.
- Every 5-star weapon you win that is not your chosen weapon grants 1 Fate Point.
- At maximum Fate Points, the next 5-star weapon is guaranteed to be your chosen weapon.
- Obtaining the chosen weapon resets Fate Points to 0, whether or not you had reached maximum.
- Changing or cancelling your course resets Fate Points to 0. So does the wish period ending.
The maximum is 1. That is official: the same 14 August 2024 news post that introduced Capturing Radiance states, "the number of Fate Points needed for 'Epitome Invocation' has been adjusted to 1, significantly increasing the efficiency of obtaining the promotional 5-star weapons." It used to be 2, and plenty of outdated advice still assumes the old value. Note the in-game rule text only says "the maximum amount of Fate Points" — the number itself appears solely in that news post.
There is a second, separate guarantee many players miss: "If the first 5-star weapon you win in this event wish is not one of the promotional weapons, then the next 5-star weapon you win is guaranteed to be a promotional weapon." Unlike Fate Points, this one lives on the weapon-banner counter, so you cannot lose to the standard pool twice in a row.
On the odds: the promotional pair has a combined 75.000% chance, and because the official text says "the probability of obtaining each promotional 5-star weapon is equal between all of them" below maximum Fate Points, that is 37.5% each and a 25% chance of a standard 5-star weapon. HoYoverse's blended figure for pulling either Beyond the Chrysalis or Hymn of the Maelstrom on the live banner, guarantee included, is 1.480%.
Do single wishes have better odds than ten-pulls?
No. The official rule text kills this one in a line: you are "guaranteed to win 4-star or above item at least once per 10 attempts." It is a counter over attempts, not a property of the ten-pull button. Base probabilities are identical either way and the per-10 guarantee arrives at the same point. As one reply to a recent "singles are better" thread put it: "Nothing changed except you wasted time doing each pull one by one."
How many wishes should you actually budget?
Using only the published consolidated rates, not community curves:
- Any 5-star: 62.5 wishes on average, worst case 90.
- A specific promotional character: 91 wishes on average, from HoYoverse's 1.103% all-in figure. Worst case 180 — lose the 50/50 at 90, guarantee at 90 again.
- A specific promotional weapon: 68 wishes on average, from the 1.480% figure. Worst case 160 — lose at 80, bank the Fate Point, guarantee at 80.
Before committing a count to the Phase 1 close, check the Genshin banner schedule for October 2026 and the Version 7.1 banner lineup. To top up without spending, the confirmed free primogem sources in 7.1 and the current working redemption codes are fastest, and the free 5-star selector running this patch hands you a character at no pity cost at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does pity carry over between banners? Yes, within its own pool. Your character count carries from one character event wish to the next and is shared between Character Event Wish and Character Event Wish-2. Your weapon count carries across weapon event wishes. The standard count is separate from both. Fate Points are the only thing that genuinely expires at the end of a wish period.
Does losing the 50/50 reset my pity counter? No. Winning a 5-star resets the counter regardless of whether it was the promotional character. Losing the 50/50 sets a guarantee flag for your next 5-star character; it does nothing to the count.
What is the exact pull where soft pity starts? HoYoverse has never published it. The commonly quoted mid-seventies figure comes from community pull-log datasets, not an official source. What is official is that the published 1.600% consolidated rate is mathematically impossible under a flat 0.600% rate, so a ramp definitely exists.
Can Capturing Radiance trigger on the weapon or standard banner? No. It is restricted to Character Event Wish and Character Event Wish-2, and the rule text for Wanderlust Invocation and Epitome Invocation never mentions it.
Can I lose the 50/50 twice in a row? Not on the same counter. Losing it guarantees your next 5-star character is the promotional one, and the weapon banner's equivalent rule means you cannot lose to the standard weapon pool twice consecutively either.
Is Capturing Radiance the same as Radiance: Stellar Glimmer? No. Capturing Radiance is a wish mechanic from Version 5.0. Radiance: Stellar Glimmer is the Version 7.x combat-state family from the Stellar Glimmer reactions, covering Radiance: Stellar-Conduct and Radiance: Stellar Swirl — and those are distinct from Lunar reactions too. They share a word and nothing else.
Where can I check my own pity count? In-game, open the Wish screen and check the History and Details tabs for that banner. Details also carries HoYoverse's published probabilities for that exact banner — the only source worth trusting when a guide and the game disagree.
The short version
Budget 62.5 wishes for a 5-star, 91 for a specific promotional character, 180 for the worst case. Vesna and Vodyanitsa share one guarantee count this patch. The weapon banner's 80-wish counter carries over while its Fate Point does not, and the maximum has been 1 since Version 5.0. Capturing Radiance is a 50/50 rescue with a 0.018% base trigger and a 55.000% consolidated outcome — strictly conditional, and absent from the weapon and standard banners.
If a guide quotes an exact soft pity pull as fact, it is quoting the community, not HoYoverse. The ramp is real, the curve is unknown, and 62.5 is the average to plan around.
Want more Genshin Impact guides? Everything we publish on wishes, banners, codes and character builds lives in one place:
