How many wishes for a guaranteed 5★?
“Guaranteed” in Genshin means the mathematical worst case - the budget after which the system must hand you the character or weapon you chose. It's the right number for zero-risk planning and the wrong number for realistic expectation, because soft pity usually delivers far sooner. Here's the whole ladder.
The headline numbers
- 180 wishes (28,800 primogems) - hard guarantee of the featured character from a fresh 50/50.
- 90 wishes - hard guarantee if your next 5★ is already guaranteed (you lost a 50/50).
- 160 wishes - hard guarantee of your selected weapon with Epitomized Path (1 fate point, v5.0+).
- ~155 wishes - 90% confidence for the featured character from a fresh 50/50.
- ~80 wishes - the 50/50 point: a coin-flip at the character.
Every level, computed exactly
Computed at build time with our engine (pity 0, Radiance on, Epitomized Path on):
| Scenario | 50% chance | 90% chance | 99% chance | Guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Featured character - fresh 50/50 | 80 | 155 | 161 | 180 |
| Featured character - guaranteed active | 76 | 80 | 83 | 90 |
| Selected weapon - Epitomized Path, 0 fate points | 79 | 133 | 138 | 160 |
| Selected weapon - 1 fate point | 65 | 69 | 71 | 80 |
Constellations and refinements stack the ladder
Each copy repeats the same ladder. Worst-case budget for a target number of copies (starting fresh, guarantees included):
| Goal | Worst-case wishes | Primogems |
|---|---|---|
| C0 - first copy of the character | 180 | 28,800 |
| C1 - two copies | 360 | 57,600 |
| C2 - three copies | 540 | 86,400 |
| C6 - seven copies | 1,260 | 201,600 |
| R1 - first copy of the weapon | 160 | 25,600 |
| R5 - five copies of the weapon | 800 | 128,000 |
Capturing Radiance (v5.0+) nudges the expected cost down slightly (a ~55% featured rate instead of 50%) but never changes the worst case.
Which number should you save for?
Save to your risk tolerance. The 90% budget (155 for a fresh character) is the community sweet spot: you fail only one plan in ten, and you bank the leftover ~25 wishes toward the next target. Full-guarantee savers sleep perfectly but hold wishes idle for extra patches - with soft pity, unspent wishes are unearned 5★s. Run your own numbers on the wishes-needed calculator, then turn the result into a saving timeline with the savings planner.
All figures from our documented model - see the methodology. Snapshot October 2026.