I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed up to a Liyue world quest marker at 9 PM only to find the NPC is only available between 10 AM and 4 PM, forcing me to stand around doing nothing for 10 real minutes if I didn’t know the time skip trick. Learning how to fast forward time in Genshin Impact is one of the first quality of life features every new player should master, and it’s completely free, built directly into the game with no risk of account penalties. This guide will walk you through exactly how to use the feature, when to use it, and what common mistakes to avoid to get the most out of every play session.
How to Fast Forward Time in Genshin Impact: Step-by-Step for All Platforms
The in-game time skip feature is accessible across every platform Genshin Impact runs on, with only small differences in navigation between PC, mobile, and console. For PC players, open the Paimon menu by pressing Esc or clicking the Paimon icon in the top left corner of your screen. You’ll see a small clock icon right next to your Adventure Rank number in the top right of the menu. Click that, and you’ll be taken to the time adjustment screen.
Drag the hour hand around the dial to your desired time, or click directly on the hour markers to jump straight to that hour, then click confirm. You cannot use the time skip feature while you are in combat, inside a domain, or during an active cutscene, so make sure you’re in a safe, open world area before you try to adjust the time. For mobile players, the process is almost identical: Tap the Paimon icon in the top left, tap the clock icon next to your Adventure Rank, adjust the dial, and confirm.
For PlayStation and Xbox players, open the main menu with the Options or Menu button, navigate to the clock icon using the D-pad, adjust the time with either the D-pad or joystick, and press X/A to confirm. You can only skip time in 1-minute increments minimum, and there’s no limit to how far ahead you can skip, though skipping multiple days at once has very limited use for most players.
Top Use Cases for Fast Forwarding Time in Genshin Impact
Most players only use the time skip feature for quest requirements, but it has a ton of other practical uses that can cut your farming and questing time in half. Some of the most useful ways to use the feature include:
- Farming time-specific materials: Many items like Crystal Core, Noctilucous Jade, and local specialties only spawn or are easier to find at specific times of day. Skipping straight to 2 AM, for example, lets you grab all Crystal Core spawns without waiting for dusk naturally.
- Unlocking time-gated quests and NPC interactions: A huge number of world quests and daily commissions only trigger at certain times, like the "Luhua Landscape" quest that requires you to meet an NPC at noon, or the ghost quests in Tsurumi Island that only appear after dark.
- Triggering weather and environmental events: Some puzzles, like the sun dial puzzles in Mondstadt and Sumeru, only activate at specific times, and you can skip time to make rain stop if you're tired of slippery surfaces while climbing.
- Resetting daily temporary spawns: While rare materials have real-world cooldowns, you can skip time to reset daily temporary spawns like fish pools and common enemy camps that refresh every in-game day.
If you’re the type of player who likes to optimize every minute of your play session, you might already use tracking tools to stay on top of spawn timers, daily reset schedules, and limited event end dates so you never miss out on free rewards. Many casual and hardcore players alike use YonoVIP to keep track of all their Genshin Impact daily tasks alongside other live service game schedules, so they know exactly when they need to log in and skip time to grab limited rewards before they disappear. For example, if you’re farming Crystal Cores for Condensed Resin, skipping straight to 2 AM lets you run all your favorite crystal fly routes in Mondstadt, Liyue, and Sumeru without having to wait for the sun to go down naturally, which cuts your farming time in half.
Common Misconceptions About Fast Forwarding Time You Should Avoid
There are a lot of false claims floating around community forums about what time skips can and can’t do, and believing them can lead to wasted time or unnecessary stress. The biggest myth I see new players fall for is that skipping time will reset their 48-hour local specialty cooldowns. Time skips only affect in-game day/night cycles, not real-world cooldowns for rare materials, event rewards, or Spiral Abyss resets. So if you farm all the Violetgrass in Liyue today, skipping time 48 hours in-game won’t make them respawn – you still have to wait 48 real hours for them to come back.
Another common myth is that using the time skip feature can get your account banned. That’s completely false: this is an official, HoYoverse-added feature designed to make the game more convenient for players, so you’ll never face any penalties for using it as intended. The only time you might run into issues is if you use third-party mods to skip time or adjust server time, which is against the terms of service, but the built-in time skip is 100% safe.
One other thing to note: skipping time won’t advance event timers, either. All limited-time events are tied to real server time, so if an event ends in 3 real days, skipping 3 days in-game won’t make it disappear early, and you can’t skip ahead to unlock event stages that haven’t been released yet. If you’re in the middle of a quest, avoid skipping time more than the quest specifies, as some NPCs will despawn if you jump too far ahead, forcing you to restart the quest step.
Advanced Tips to Make Time Skips More Efficient
Once you get the hang of the basic time skip feature, there are a few small tricks that can make it even faster and more useful for your playstyle. Save your most common time presets in your head for quick access – 90% of the time, you’ll only need four specific times: 12:00 PM for noon-locked quests, 6:00 PM for dusk spawns and puzzles, 2:00 AM for night-only materials and ghost quests, and 4:00 AM for early morning fish spawns. You don’t have to drag the dial slowly around the clock every time: on PC and mobile, you can tap directly on the hour markers to jump straight to that hour instantly, which saves a ton of time.
If you’re playing on console, using the right joystick to drag the time dial is much faster than tapping the D-pad repeatedly, especially if you’re skipping multiple days to reset daily quest spawns. Another great trick: batch your material runs by time of day. Do all your daytime material runs first (like farming Jueyun Chili, which is easier to see in daylight, or completing daytime-only quests), then skip to night once to do all your night runs, instead of skipping back and forth between day and night every 10 minutes.
Always check if a quest requires a specific weather or time before you skip – some quests will say “wait until the next day” but actually require you to arrive between 8 AM and 10 AM specifically, so skipping to 7 PM will mean you still have to adjust the time again, wasting a few extra seconds. If you’re ever unsure what time you need, check the quest description in your quest menu: it will almost always list the exact time window required to trigger the next step.
At the end of the day, learning how to fast forward time in Genshin Impact is such a simple trick, but it makes a huge difference in how much you can get done in a single play session. You don’t have to waste time standing around waiting for the sun to rise or set, or log in multiple times a day just to catch a specific NPC. As long as you remember that time skips don’t affect real-world cooldowns, and you only use the built-in feature instead of third-party mods, you’ll be able to optimize your playtime perfectly and spend more time doing the parts of the game you actually enjoy, whether that’s exploring new regions, fighting bosses, or hanging out with your favorite characters.