Quick answer: Varka is a 5-star Anemo Claymore on-field DPS whose damage is decided by your party list before you touch a single artifact. Run him with a second Anemo character and a matched pair of Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo units and his attacks deal 220% of their normal damage; get it wrong and you drop to 140% or 100%. His best weapon is Gest of the Mighty Wolf, his best set is A Day Carved From Rising Winds, his ATK target is 2,500, and the talent to level first is his Elemental Skill — not his Normal Attack. Two of his damage sources are locked behind a quest he cannot start until he is Level 70.
This guide applies to Version 7.1 "A Rekviem for the Underworld", live since 23 September 2026. Every talent number, weapon passive and artifact clause below is transcribed from in-game text, and the dated event information comes from the HoYoverse in-game announcement API.
Who is Varka and how do you get him?
Varka is the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius and the current Knight of Boreas — an NPC referenced since Version 1.0 who became playable in Version "Luna V" on 25 February 2026.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Rarity / Element / Weapon | 5-star, Anemo, Claymore |
| Region | Mondstadt |
| Team Bonus | Hexerei |
| Role | On-field DPS |
| Ascension stat | CRIT DMG, 38.4% at sixth ascension |
| Lv. 90 base stats | 12,613.29 HP / 352.79 ATK / 795.45 DEF |
The acquisition answer is blunt: you cannot pull Varka right now. He is event-exclusive, appearing only on his own Character Event Wish and never in the standard pool. That banner, "The Northerly Wind's Song of Triumph," ran once — 25 February to 17 March 2026 — and has not returned since. See our October banner schedule for what is live, and the 7.1 free 5-star selector guide for the current free picks.
How does Varka's dual-claymore damage work, and which talent should you level?
Tapping his Elemental Skill, Windbound Execution, deals AoE Anemo damage and puts him into Sturm und Drang for 12 seconds. Inside that window his Normal and Charged Attacks hit harder, he cannot perform Plunging Attacks, and his two claymores split elements:
- The left-hand claymore converts to Anemo damage that, in the game's words, "cannot be overridden by other infusions."
- The right-hand claymore deals a second element when the party contains Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo characters, "following the aforementioned priority order of Elemental Types" — Pyro, then Hydro, then Electro, then Cryo.
That priority list has a tidy resolution: in a correctly built Varka party only one of those four elements is present at all, so the priority never fires. If the priority order is deciding your right-hand element, your party is already wrong.
While in Sturm und Drang, Windbound Execution is replaced by Four Winds' Ascension — AoE damage in both elements, 11-second cooldown, two maximum charges. Normal Attack hits shave 0.5 seconds off that cooldown, up to 15 times per entry. You can also spend a charge on Azure Devour, a stamina-free Charged Attack firing two instances of each element. His Burst, Northwind Avatar, costs 60 Energy on a 15-second cooldown.
Now the talent priority, where generic claymore advice goes wrong. Varka's Sturm und Drang Normal Attacks, his Sturm und Drang Charged Attack, Four Winds' Ascension and Azure Devour are all listed under his Elemental Skill talent, not his Normal Attack talent — which governs only the plain attacks he uses outside Sturm und Drang, and those barely happen. So: Elemental Skill first, Normal Attack second (spare Crowns only — see our Crown of Insight guide), Elemental Burst last.
The Burst ranks last for a concrete reason. His first ascension passive's party multiplier, his fourth ascension passive's stacking buff and his C1 bonus all name the same four things — Normal Attacks, Charged Attacks, Azure Devour and Four Winds' Ascension — and every one omits Northwind Avatar. His Burst is the one button his own kit refuses to buff.
What is the best Varka team?
His first ascension passive, Dawn Wind's March, contains the most important sentence in his kit:
| Party condition | Multiplier on NA, CA, Azure Devour and Four Winds' Ascension |
|---|---|
| Neither condition met | 100% |
| At least 2 Anemo, or at least 2 of the same element among Pyro/Hydro/Electro/Cryo | 140% |
| At least 2 Anemo and at least 2 of the same element among Pyro/Hydro/Electro/Cryo | 220% |
The 220% tier needs two Anemo characters and a matched elemental pair simultaneously — exactly four slots. Varka's party shape is not a preference, it is arithmetic: Varka, one more Anemo, and two characters sharing a single element from Pyro, Hydro, Electro or Cryo. Add a third element anywhere and you fall to 140%, costing roughly 36% of that damage.
Then there is the second condition most build pages collapse incorrectly. Varka's Witch's Eve Rite Passive, Dawn's Return, needs the Hexerei: Secret Rite team bonus, which requires at least two Hexerei characters in the party. With it, Normal Attack hits cut Four Winds' Ascension's cooldown by 1 second instead of 0.5. Sorting the twelve Hexerei characters by element turns that into a lookup:
| Element | Hexerei characters |
|---|---|
| Anemo | Varka, Venti, Sucrose, Prune |
| Pyro | Klee, Durin, Nicole |
| Hydro | Mona |
| Electro | Fischl, Razor |
| Cryo | Lohen |
| Geo | Albedo |
There are two valid routes to satisfying both rules at once, and the community generally knows only the first:
- Route A — your second Anemo is your second Hexerei. Venti, Sucrose or Prune solves both conditions in one slot, leaving two free for any matched pair.
- Route B — a member of the matched pair is your second Hexerei. Run any Anemo you like, including Jean, Kazuha, Faruzan or Vesna, and let Klee, Mona, Fischl, Razor or Lohen carry the Hexerei requirement from inside the pair.
Route B matters because the advice circulating in player threads is narrower than the rules are. A typical exchange on r/Genshin_Impact answering "best anemo for Varka" settled on "Varka needs a second Hexerei character, so Sucrose or Prune are the only viable anemo options" — which drops Venti, who is both Anemo and Hexerei, and mistakes a party requirement for an Anemo-slot requirement. Your second Anemo does not have to be Hexerei at all.
The weakest matched pair is Electro, and players are blunt about it. Asked what an Electro Varka team would even look like, one reply ran: "fischl and? cant think of anything good next to her." Pyro, Hydro and Cryo all have deeper benches.
What is the best weapon for Varka?
| Weapon | Base ATK (Lv. 90) | Secondary stat | Headline passive at R1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gest of the Mighty Wolf (5-star) | 608 | CRIT Rate 33.1% | +10% ATK SPD; up to 4 stacks of +7.5% DMG, plus +7.5% CRIT DMG per stack under Hexerei: Secret Rite |
| A Thousand Blazing Suns (5-star) | 741 | CRIT Rate 11.0% | +20% CRIT DMG and +28% ATK for 6s on Skill or Burst, extendable to 12s |
| Serpent Spine (4-star) | 510 | CRIT Rate 27.6% | +6% DMG per 4s on field, max 5 stacks; you also take 3% more damage per stack |
| Blackcliff Slasher (4-star) | 510 | CRIT DMG 55.1% | +12% ATK for 30s per opponent defeated, max 3 stacks |
Gest, his signature from the Hexerei weapon series, wins on fit rather than raw numbers: Varka's ascension stat is CRIT DMG, so he arrives starved for CRIT Rate, and Gest hands him 33.1% of it. Its four stacks come from Normal Attack hits, Skill casts and Charged Attack starts, so they are trivially maintained.
Note the clause, though. The +7.5% CRIT DMG per stack is conditional on Hexerei: Secret Rite. Without a second Hexerei in the party, Gest loses 30% CRIT DMG at R1 and becomes an ordinary stat stick — a weapon whose value depends on your roster, not your build.
A Thousand Blazing Suns needs a specific warning. Its passive ends with a clause granting 75% amplification while the equipping character is in the Nightsoul's Blessing state — a Natlan mechanic. Varka is from Mondstadt and can never enter that state, so roughly a third of the weapon's text is permanently dead on him. It stays strong for an unglamorous reason: 741 base ATK and +28% ATK, plus a maximum extended duration of 12 seconds that matches Sturm und Drang exactly.
What are the best artifacts, and what ATK should you aim for?
The set is A Day Carved From Rising Winds, from the Moonchild's Treasures domain:
- 2-piece: ATK +18%.
- 4-piece: after a Normal Attack, Charged Attack, Elemental Skill or Elemental Burst hits, gain Blessing of Pastoral Winds for 6s: ATK +25%. If the equipping character has completed Witch's Homework, it upgrades to Resolve of Pastoral Winds, which also grants +20% CRIT Rate.
Read that condition precisely, because it is not the weapon's condition. The set's CRIT Rate clause asks only whether the equipping character personally finished Witch's Homework; it does not require a second Hexerei character. Guides describing both the set and the weapon as "needs Hexerei" merge two different gates — the set is a solo quest you can clear today, the weapon's bonus is a roster problem.
ATK matters because of the other half of Dawn Wind's March: every 1,000 points of Varka's ATK grants 10% Anemo DMG Bonus and 10% of his matched element's DMG Bonus, to a maximum of 25%. That cap lands at 2,500 ATK. Here is how close the two 5-star weapons get, assuming Lv. 90, R1, 5-star Lv. 20 artifacts with the 4-piece active, an ATK% Sands, a flat-ATK Plume and no ATK substats at all (our own derivation, not a published figure):
| Setup | Base ATK pool | Approximate total ATK | Versus the 2,500 cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gest of the Mighty Wolf | 960.79 | ~2,133 | ~370 short |
| A Thousand Blazing Suns | 1,093.79 | ~2,691 | Already over |
That inverts the usual framing. A Thousand Blazing Suns reaches his damage-bonus cap for free, freeing every substat for CRIT; Gest does not, and needs ATK% rolls to finish the job. Gest still wins overall on what it gives back, but the trade is real. Published ATK targets for Varka range from roughly 2,000 to 2,500 depending on the guide — and only the higher figure actually matches the cap written into his passive, which is the number worth building to.
Run ATK% Sands, Anemo DMG Bonus Goblet, CRIT Circlet. Which Circlet follows from a baseline worth computing: with Gest and the 4-piece active, before a single substat, he sits at roughly 58.1% CRIT Rate (5% base + 33.1% weapon + 20% set) and 118.4% CRIT DMG (50% base + 38.4% ascension + 30% weapon) — already close to the 1:2 ratio most guides target. A CRIT DMG Circlet pushes past it and makes CRIT Rate the scarce substat; a CRIT Rate Circlet does the reverse. Check which side your artifacts already lean before committing.
Two alternatives, with their real texts:
- Desert Pavilion Chronicle — 2pc Anemo DMG +15%; 4pc, after a Charged Attack hits, +10% Normal Attack SPD and +40% Normal, Charged and Plunging Attack DMG for 15s. Note the gap: Four Winds' Ascension is an Elemental Skill, so that 40% misses his biggest hit, and the Plunging clause is dead since he cannot plunge in Sturm und Drang.
- Viridescent Venerer — 2pc Anemo DMG +15%; 4pc +60% Swirl DMG and a 40% elemental RES shred. His claymores deal direct elemental damage, not Swirl damage, so the 60% never touches his hits. The RES shred is real, making this a supportive option rather than a damage set.
What do you need to unlock before any of this works?
The Witch's Homework quest requires Varka to be Level 70 or higher. You must also own him and have completed "Witch's Homework: Solution" to obtain The Little Witch's Dictionary, which requires inviting Razor, Fischl or Sucrose. Varka's chapter is the act "The Untitled Question," containing the quest "Stories to Sate the Glass and Scroll." Finishing it is what makes him a Hexerei character at all — and therefore what unlocks both Dawn's Return and the artifact set's +20% CRIT Rate.
Ascension materials for Lv. 90, for budgeting:
| Material | Total |
|---|---|
| Mora | 420,000 |
| Prismatic Severed Tail (boss drop) | 46 |
| Vayuda Turquoise (Sliver / Fragment / Chunk / Gemstone) | 1 / 9 / 9 / 6 |
| Wolfhook (Mondstadt local specialty) | 168 |
| Broken / Reinforced / Precision Drive Shaft | 18 / 30 / 36 |
One passive to ignore while planning: his Utility Passive, Homebound Wind's Paean, cuts his Hold-skill cooldown by 5% per Mondstadt party member but explicitly "does not trigger in Domains, Trounce Domains, or the Spiral Abyss." Since eleven of the twelve Hexerei characters are Mondstadt characters, a Hexerei-heavy party maximises a passive that switches itself off in every piece of endgame content.
Why is this the week to build Varka?
Two dated, first-party reasons, both inside the next three weeks.
Imaginarium Theater Season 1 closes on 1 November. Its required elemental types are Hydro, Cryo and Anemo, and the Version 7.1 update notes state: "After the first season of Imaginarium Theater begins, the characters Dehya, Varka, Mualani, and Lisa will each gain a new 'Thespian Trick' that can be exchanged from the NPC Wolfy." Season 2 opens 1 November on Hydro, Electro and Geo — Varka is not eligible next season. Our Imaginarium Theater October guide covers the roster.
The new Spiral Abyss season opens on 16 October, and Floor 11 is a Varka floor. The update notes give its Ley Line Disorder verbatim: "All characters in the party gain a 60% Anemo DMG Bonus. All party members receive a 60% Cryo DMG Bonus."
Read that against his kit and the recommendation writes itself. A party of Varka, one more Anemo and a Cryo matched pair takes 220% from Dawn Wind's March while both claymores receive a 60% damage bonus at once — the left hand from the Anemo line, the right hand from the Cryo line. Slot Lohen, the only Cryo character on the Hexerei roster, into that pair and the same four characters also satisfy Hexerei: Secret Rite. Floor 12's second half adds 75% Cryo DMG Bonus, and the season's blessing, Stardread Moon, fires a True DMG shockwave on Cryo Swirl among other reactions — which a character applying Anemo and Cryo at once triggers constantly. Our Floor 11 guide covers the layout.
FAQ
Is Varka worth building if I do not have a second Hexerei character? Yes, with a known cost. You keep the full 220% party multiplier, his largest damage source, which needs only the right elements, and you keep the artifact set's +20% CRIT Rate, which depends only on his own quest. You lose 30% CRIT DMG from Gest of the Mighty Wolf and the faster Four Winds' Ascension cooldown. Sucrose and Fischl are both 4-stars on the Hexerei roster, so the fix is usually cheap.
Does Varka need Energy Recharge? Far less than a typical claymore DPS. His Burst is excluded from every damage amplifier in his kit, so building to cast it more often buys you his weakest hits. His Elemental Skill generates 6 Elemental Particles when it hits, which covers casual Burst usage without dedicated Energy Recharge investment.
What does the Pyro, Hydro, Electro, Cryo priority order actually do? It decides which element his right-hand claymore deals when several of those elements are in the party, with Pyro taking precedence over Hydro, then Electro, then Cryo. In an optimal party only one of the four is present, so the order never comes into play. Seeing an unexpected right-hand element is a reliable signal that your party has lost the 220% bonus.
Can I pull Varka in Version 7.1? No. He is event-exclusive and has not appeared on a banner since his debut ran from 25 February to 17 March 2026. He is also absent from the standard wish pool, so the only route is a future Character Event Wish rerun.
Which constellation is the biggest upgrade? C1. It grants an extra Four Winds' Ascension charge every time he enters Sturm und Drang and adds Lyrical Libation, making the next Four Winds' Ascension or Azure Devour deal 200% of its original damage. C2 adds a separate AoE Anemo hit equal to 800% of his ATK on those same two abilities, while C3 and C5 are standard talent-level increases.
