Genshin Impact has the vibrant world of Teyvat for you to explore, with yourself and up to 4 friends. Or play solo with a party of 4 characters, which you can chop and change at will, due to the awesome combat system the game provides. Genshin Impact at the moment offers about 30 playable characters that you can unlock using the gacha system, and each character has a friendship level, which of course, you can increase, but how exactly do you do that?

Each character has a vibrant background and story that can dive into to learn everything about your favorite characters if you so desire. It requires a bit of time and a lot of patience, as it revolves around how high your Adventure Rank is, but once you’ve hit Adventure Rank 12, you can start gaining friendship experience!

You can gain companion XP in various ways. Luckily, for achieving Adventure Rank 12, you will unlock daily quests called Commission Quests. Along with completing these quests, finishing dungeons, and random events in the world, you’ll steadily gain companion XP for those in your party of 4. As the friendship level increases, so does the amount of lore revealed about that specific character.

Every single one of the characters in Genshin Impact has a friendship level, and everyone has to be leveled up to reveal the lore about them. Don’t worry, though, as you can repeat dungeons and other events around Teyvat, to help increase this level with every character you unlock. This is optional, you may or may not care about the characters in this game, but if you love diving into the lore of the game and its characters, this friendship level is perfect.

The friendship level can be seen on the main character screen. On the right side of the screen, underneath the character’s stats, there should be a Friendship with a gauge underneath it. This is the Friendship level; once this gauge fills up to the top, a Friendship level will be awarded. You can check how high your level is as there should be a number near the bar’s end. The default Friendship level is 1, so the first increase will bring it to a 2.

This mechanic was introduced earlier this year as a way that players can get to know more about the characters in their party. It’s been hinted by miHoYo that increasing this friendship mechanic will pay off in the long run. Is this a potential hint that making an effort to do so is a worthwhile endeavor?

We have many more guides on starting you out in this new game in our Genshin Impact section!