If you’ve ever stared at your inventory after a tough boss fight wishing you had more Warming Bottles to survive Dragonspine, or a stronger 4-star weapon for your new main, learning how to craft in Genshin Impact is one of the most underrated skills you can pick up early on. I ignored crafting completely for my first 20 adventure ranks, wasting thousands of mora buying recovery items from shops that I could have made for a fraction of the cost with common open-world materials. It’s not just for making potions, either: crafting lets you unlock character ascension materials, weapon billets, and even quality of life gadgets that make exploring Teyvat way less frustrating. This guide breaks down everything you need to know to get started, no complicated mechanics required.
How to Craft in Genshin Impact: Basic Mechanics You Should Master First
Unlike many other RPGs, you can’t craft items directly from your inventory in Genshin Impact. You’ll need to interact with dedicated crafting stations scattered across every region, or place portable versions of these stations in your Serenitea Pot for easy access. The three core stations you’ll use most often are alchemy benches for potions and ascension material conversion, blacksmith forges for weapons and mining tools, and cooking pots for buff and recovery food.
Once you know how to craft in Genshin Impact, you’ll wonder how you ever played without it. The basic process is the same for every station: interact with the station, scroll through the available recipes, check that you have all required materials in your inventory, select the quantity you want to make, and confirm the craft. You don’t need to spend primogems to unlock any core crafting recipes, so you never have to worry about missing out on useful items if you play for free.
Recipes unlock automatically as you raise your Adventure Rank, complete world quests, and level up your regional reputation. You can also buy rare recipes from NPCs in every region for a small mora cost. All crafted items are permanent unless you use or discard them, so you don’t have to worry about your hard work going to waste if you don’t use an item right away.
Must-Craft Items for Every Playstyle, No Matter Your Team Comp
You don’t have to craft every available item to get the most out of the system. These are the items that are useful for every type of player, whether you only explore the open world or grind Spiral Abyss every reset:
You can skip low-tier potions and food once you unlock higher rank versions, as the higher tier items give significantly better buffs for only a small increase in material cost. For example, a Lv. 3 attack potion gives a 30% attack boost, while a Lv. 1 only gives 10%, so it’s worth waiting to craft the higher tier version once you unlock it. Crafted attack buff food can give you up to a 40% attack boost for 5 minutes, which is often the difference between clearing a spiral abyss floor and missing it by a few seconds.
Common Crafting Mistakes to Avoid Wasting Rare Materials
If you’re new to knowing how to craft in Genshin Impact, it’s easy to get excited and make items you don’t actually need, wasting materials that take hours to farm. The most common mistake I see new players make is using Northlander Weapon Billets on low-tier weapons they don’t plan to level up fully. I did this with a polearm billet my first month playing, wasting it on a weapon I never used, and I didn’t get another polearm billet for 6 weeks after that.
Another common mistake is forgetting you can convert ascension materials at the alchemy bench using Dust of Azoth. If you have 20 Vajrada Amethyst chunks for Electro characters but no Shivada Jade for Cryo characters, you can convert the extra Electro chunks to Cryo chunks for a small amount of Dust of Azoth, which you can buy from the Paimon shop for free with Stardust. This saves you hours of farming Cryo boss drops when you just need a few more materials to ascend a new character.
You should also avoid crafting more of an item than you can actually use in a month. For example, if you only visit Dragonspine once every few weeks to farm artifacts, you don’t need 50 Warming Bottles taking up space in your inventory. Those small monster drops you used to make the bottles could be better used for character ascension or talent level up materials. Never use a Northlander Weapon Billet on a weapon you don’t plan to level to 90, as these billets are extremely rare drops from weekly bosses.
Hidden Crafting Perks Most Players Miss Out On
Crafting has a ton of small hidden perks that even players who have been around for years often miss. The first is that many characters have passive talents that give you bonus items or reduce material costs when you craft specific types of items. For example, Xingqiu has a passive that gives you a 25% chance to get extra ore when you forge weapons, Sucrose gives you a chance to get extra alchemical items, and Bennett gives you a chance to get extra food when you cook. I always swap to Xingqiu before forging anything, and I’ve saved at least 20 crystal chunks in the last month alone from his passive.
You can also unlock exclusive crafting recipes by leveling up your regional reputation in every nation. The most useful of these is the Parametric Transformer, which you unlock at Liyue reputation level 3. This gadget lets you put in 150 common materials like slime condensate or hilichurl masks, and it will spit out rare items like hero’s wit, mora, or even 5-star character ascension gems. It refreshes every 7 days, so you can get free rare materials every week for no extra work.
If you have your Serenitea Pot unlocked, you can craft furniture and decor items to raise your Trust Rank with the Tubby, the teapot spirit. Higher Trust Ranks unlock even more exclusive recipes, including special landscape items and portable crafting stations you can place anywhere in your teapot. Always use a character with a matching crafting passive before you start any crafting session to get free bonus items with no extra cost.
At the end of the day, learning how to craft in Genshin Impact doesn’t take a ton of time, but it gives you huge rewards that make every part of the game feel easier. You don’t have to memorize every recipe right away: start with the must-craft items we listed, use character passives whenever you can, and avoid wasting rare materials on items you won’t actually use. Even if you only spend 5 minutes a week crafting condensed resin and buff food, you’ll notice a big difference in how fast you progress through the game, and how much mora you save for pulling new characters or upgrading your weapons. Next time you’re passing by an alchemy bench or blacksmith in Mondstadt, stop and take a look at the recipes you have unlocked — you might be surprised by how many useful items you can make with the materials already sitting in your inventory.