Genshin Impact’s World Level system evolves the world to keep pace with your progress. Basically, increasing your World Level also increases the quality of the loot that’s available in the world, and it also unlocks the ability to ascend your characters to even higher levels. More risk, more reward, right? But there’s a point where increasing your World Level might be a detriment to your ability to play the game. You’ll quickly run into a problem if your World Level increases to a point where you can’t beat bosses and ascend your characters.
Strategically picking the right moments to level up your world is hugely important if you don’t want to hit a progression wall. Nobody wants to get slapped around by an Oceanid when they need the drops from that fight to upgrade their characters. There are a few points where you can stop your World Level progression to let your characters catch-up, and don’t worry: you won’t lose any Adventure Rank progress if you do so.
What Do I Get At Each World Level?
Currently there are nine World Levels available to players: starting with WL0 at the start of the game, and ending at WL8 after unlocking at Adventure Rank 50. Each World Level/Adventure Rank increase offers certain benefits, and the Genshin Impact wiki has an easy to read chart that documents the changes.
There are a few key point where your character’s power significantly increases alongside the World Level. World Level 3 is a sweet spot: you’re getting an increase in your Talent Level caps up to six (right before they begin demanding 4 star materials) and you unlock your the second passive talent on all of your characters. This is a huge spike in power, especially for characters with important second passive talents like Sucrose or Bennet. It’s hard to imagine either character without their second talent.
Genshin Impact
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Should I Be Stopping At Adventure Rank 35 & World Level 3?
At AR35, even without doing the Ascension quest to unlock World Level 4, you can access four character Ascensions, six levels of Talents, two passive talents, and access to 5 star artifacts from both Trounce Domains (Stormterror and Golden House). I think this is a fantastic stopping point for players who want to experience the story and exploration that Genshin Impact has to offer without feeling like they need to look up build guides or roll for better characters. You can play through the game comfortably at your own pace using underpowered characters and poor team compositions because, hey, it’s a game and having fun is totally fine. Think of AR35 and WL3 as Genshin’s easy mode, because beyond that things get a lot harder.
The World Level 4 & 5 Gauntlet
If you’re the type of player who wants to make their way to the end game of Genshin Impact, Spiral Abyss, you’ll need to keep pushing your World Level to gain access to better drops and higher character and Talent levels. That said, there’s nothing wrong with taking a little extra time to get prepared before you move beyond AR35. Remember that not all Adventure Rank Ascensions are manual: AR40 is automatic, so you’ll move from WL4 to WL5 whether you like it or not. This can be the most challenging section of the game for some players, and I’ve personally been sitting on AR45 for a while as I get my characters leveled up.
WL4 isn’t terribly exciting, but AR40 is. After you peak over AR40 you can finally start getting 5 star artifacts from Domains of Blessing, and that’s where a lot of your damage spikes will come from. You’ll also get automatically bumped up to WL5 when that happens, so just keep in mind that Domain levels are fixed. I recommend investing your Original Resin into artifact Domains if you’re having trouble keeping up with the levels of world bosses.
Ultimately your decision to move on from AR35 really comes down to whether you want to do Spiral Abyss. There’s no content in the game that requires you to be above AR35, so feel free to hang out at that level. It’s where you’ll feel the strongest compared to typical enemies in the game. The road to AR45 can be the toughest section of the game depending on your team composition and your available characters, so try to prepare yourself as much as you can before the AR35 Ascension.
