Best F2P Teams in Genshin Impact — Four-Star Squads That Clear

The Free Roster Is Stronger Than the Banner Roster

Here is the uncomfortable truth about Genshin Impact's economy: the single most valuable character in the game for most accounts is a four-star with a 60-energy burst who has been available on the standard banner since launch, and the second most valuable is handed to you for clearing Floor 3 of the Spiral Abyss.

Bennett and Xiangling do not care what you spent. Neither does Xingqiu. Put those three in a party with any Anemo unit and you have a team that was clearing endgame content in 2020, was clearing it through Sumeru and Fontaine, and is still clearing it now. It has a nickname — the National Team — precisely because it never went away.

This is not a "cope" list for players who cannot pull. It is a list of teams that beat a lot of five-star squads run by people who never learned a rotation. Here is what to build, in what order, with what.

Which Characters Are Actually Free

"F2P" gets used loosely. For this guide, free means: guaranteed to you without gambling, or guaranteed on the Beginners' Wish, which every account gets and which costs nothing meaningful.

The Quest and Abyss Handouts

These are handed over outright:

• Amber — completing the quest Wind-Riding Knight.
• Kaeya — completing the quest Crash Course.
• Lisa — completing the quest Sparks Amongst the Pages.
• Barbara — the permanent Baptism of Song event, at Adventure Rank 18 with A Long Shot completed.
• Xiangling — the permanent People's Choice event: clear Spiral Abyss Floor 3, Chamber 3 at Adventure Rank 20 or above.
• Collei — the permanent Curtain of Leaves event: clear Spiral Abyss Floor 4, Chamber 3.
• Noelle — guaranteed on the 8th pull of the Beginners' Wish, and she cannot be obtained twice from it.
• The Traveler — every element you unlock at the corresponding Statue of the Seven.

Two of those are enormous. Xiangling is one of the best off-field damage dealers in the game and she costs you one Abyss clear on the easiest floor. Collei is a functional Dendro applicator, which unlocks an entire reaction toolkit for free — worth reading our Genshin elemental reactions guide before you decide which of those reactions your account should chase.

Everything else worth having comes from the standard banner, Wanderlust Invocation, which you feed with the Acquaint Fates you accumulate passively. Xingqiu, Bennett, Fischl, Sucrose, Razor, Beidou, Ningguang and Chongyun all live there permanently. If you want the full arithmetic on rates, pity and what a pull actually costs, the Genshin wish and gacha guide has it.

Witch's Homework Hands You a Fourth

The Witch's Homework permanent event, added in the Luna III update, is the biggest free-character addition in years and a lot of players have not claimed it. Complete the Witch's Homework: Solution quest and you choose one of Fischl, Sucrose, or Razor to join your party outright. One only — pick carefully.

It also does something stranger and more useful. Completing the associated quests turns those characters into Hexerei characters, unlocking a Witch's Eve Rite Passive that upgrades their existing kit. The character must be level 70 or higher to start the quest, and most of the effects require at least two Hexerei characters in the party to fire.

The three free options, in short:

• Fischl (Phantasmal Nocturne): with Oz on the field, an Overloaded reaction from a nearby party member grants Fischl and nearby active characters 22.5% ATK for 10s. An Electro-Charged or Lunar-Charged reaction instead grants 90 Elemental Mastery for 10s.
• Sucrose (Sevenfold Transmutation): creating a Small Wind Spirit gives nearby party members roughly 5.71% increased damage across normals, charged, plunges, skills and bursts for 15s. The Large Wind Spirit gives Hexerei party members about 7.14% for 20s.
• Razor (Surge of Lightning): his burst's Wolf Within gains damage equal to 70% of his ATK, and overflowing Electro Sigils call down a lightning strike for 150% of ATK while restoring 7 Energy, once per second.

If you only ever build one, take Fischl. She is off-field Electro that works in Aggravate, Hyperbloom, Overload and Electro-Charged teams, and her value does not depend on you owning specific partners.

Team One: The National Team

Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu, Sucrose (or Chongyun, or Anemo Traveler).

Two Pyro, one Hydro, one Anemo. Every unit is a four-star. Nothing in it is time-limited.

The Rotation

Order matters more than gear here. The standard loop:

1. Xingqiu skill, then burst. Guhua Sword: Fatal Rainscreen creates Rain Swords for damage reduction and interruption resistance. Guhua Sword: Raincutter costs 80 Energy, runs 15 seconds, and turns your active character's normal attacks into off-field Hydro application.
2. Xiangling skill, then burst. Guoba breathes fire for off-field Pyro. Pyronado costs 80 Energy and spins with you for 10 seconds.
3. Sucrose skill twice to swirl and drop resistance.
4. Bennett burst last. Fantastic Voyage costs 60 Energy, lasts 12 seconds, activates once per second for 12 ticks, and grants an ATK bonus scaling off Bennett's Base ATK — which is why you build him with Energy Recharge and a high base-ATK weapon, not crit.
5. Stand in the circle and normal attack with Xiangling.

Bennett goes last because the ATK bonus snapshots onto Pyronado if you cast it while standing in the field. That single ordering detail is worth more damage than most artifact upgrades.

Why It Still Works Six Years Later

Xingqiu applies Hydro constantly and off-field. Xiangling applies Pyro constantly and off-field. Hydro landing on a Pyro aura triggers Vaporize at the 2x multiplier, and it does it over and over, from two characters who are not even on screen. Bennett buffs everyone and heals through the mistakes. Sucrose groups enemies, shreds resistance with Viridescent Venerer, and shares Elemental Mastery.

The team also has almost no energy problems if you build for it, which matters because two 80-cost bursts every rotation is a real requirement, not a suggestion.

The C6 Bennett warning: Bennett's sixth constellation infuses Sword, Claymore and Polearm users in his field with Pyro. That kills Xiangling's ability to be Vaporized by Xingqiu's water on her normal attacks. If you have C6 Bennett, either play around it or stop attacking with polearm carries in the field. It is the rare constellation that can be a downgrade.

Team Two: Fischl Aggravate

Fischl, Collei (or Dendro Traveler), Sucrose, Barbara/Kuki-style healer.

Fischl's Nightrider summons Oz, who attacks nearby opponents with Electro for the skill's duration and can be re-summoned to her side mid-duration. That is dense off-field Electro, which is exactly what Quicken wants.

Apply Dendro, apply Electro, and the resulting Quicken aura makes every subsequent Electro hit an Aggravate — flat bonus damage that scales with Elemental Mastery and the triggering character's level. Collei is free. Dendro Traveler is free. Fischl is free from Witch's Homework. The whole team can be assembled without a single wish.

Build Fischl with ATK, crit and enough Energy Recharge to keep her burst online. Build the Dendro unit with Elemental Mastery and nothing else. This is one of the few teams where a fully free lineup performs at close to the ceiling of what the archetype offers.

Team Three: Budget Hyperbloom

Collei/Dendro Traveler, Xingqiu or Barbara, Fischl, flex.

Hydro plus Dendro makes Dendro Cores. Electro hitting a Core triggers Hyperbloom, which fires a seeking projectile at nearby enemies.

The reason this archetype is so good for free accounts: Hyperbloom is a transformative reaction. Its damage scales off the triggering character's level and Elemental Mastery, full stop. It cannot CRIT. It ignores your artifact crit rolls entirely. Which means a Fischl in a pile of green Elemental Mastery substats does the same Hyperbloom damage as a fully optimised one.

Do not build crit on your Hyperbloom trigger. The Genshin artifact guide covers exactly why that stat is dead weight here and where the budget should go instead.

Free Weapons That Embarrass Gacha Weapons

Weapons are where free accounts actually lose ground, so use the ones the game gives away.

• "The Catch" — a polearm from the Inazuma Fishing Association. 42 base ATK, 10% Energy Recharge, and at R1 it gives +16% Elemental Burst DMG and +6% Burst CRIT Rate. It is fully refinable through fishing, and at R5 that is +32% Burst DMG and +12% Burst CRIT Rate. On Xiangling, whose entire damage profile is her burst, this competes with five-star polearms. It is free. Go fishing.
• Amenoma Kageuchi — a craftable sword with 12% ATK that refunds 6 Energy per Succession Seed at R1, up to three seeds. It solves Xingqiu's 80-cost burst on its own.
• Iron Sting — craftable, 36 Elemental Mastery, +6% all damage per stack up to two stacks at R1. A reaction-team workhorse.
• Prototype Amber — craftable catalyst that regenerates 4 Energy every 2s for 6s after a burst, plus party healing. Barbara's best budget option.
• Favonius weapons — 60% chance on a CRIT hit to generate particles worth 6 Energy at R1, once every 12s. The standard-banner Favonius series is the single best answer to team energy problems, and standard banner four-stars are the ones you accumulate anyway.
• Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers — a three-star catalyst. Switching off the wielder gives the incoming character +24% ATK for 10s at R1, once every 20s. A three-star weapon providing a party-wide ATK buff is absurd value on Barbara or Lisa.

The Artifact Sets Worth Your Resin

You do not have infinite resin, so farm in this order.

Viridescent Venerer. 2-piece is +15% Anemo DMG; 4-piece increases Swirl damage by 60% and drops the target's resistance to the swirled element by 40% for 10 seconds. A 40% resistance shred applied by a free four-star is the largest single team-wide damage multiplier available to a free account. Sucrose wearing this is a bigger upgrade than most five-stars.

Noblesse Oblige. 2-piece is +20% Burst DMG; 4-piece gives all party members +20% ATK for 12s after using a burst. It does not stack with itself, so exactly one character in the team wears it — usually Bennett or Xiangling. It also drops from Adventure Rank rewards at ranks 43, 47, 48, 49 and 51, which means you get pieces without spending resin at all.

Instructor (4-star). 4-piece gives the whole party +120 Elemental Mastery for 8s after triggering a reaction. It is a four-star set, so it is cheap to farm, and on Sucrose it stacks with her passives: Catalyst Conversion gives matching-element party members +50 EM on Swirl, and Mollis Favonius gives everyone else 20% of Sucrose's own EM for 8s.

Emblem of Severed Fate. For Xiangling specifically, once you have the account bandwidth. Energy Recharge into burst damage is exactly her scaling.

If you want to know what all this is actually for, the Genshin Spiral Abyss guide lays out the floor-by-floor targets these teams are being built to clear.

Five Mistakes That Make F2P Teams Feel Bad

Spreading resources across ten characters. Four fully built characters beat ten half-built ones by an enormous margin. Pick a team and finish it.

Ignoring Energy Recharge. Two 80-cost bursts per rotation is the National Team's actual requirement. If Xiangling's Pyronado is not up every rotation, the team does roughly half its damage. Fix energy before you fix crit.

Casting Bennett's burst first. The buff snapshots. Cast it last, before the burst you want buffed.

Building crit on transformative reaction triggers. Hyperbloom and Burgeon cannot CRIT. Every crit substat on that character is a wasted roll.

Skipping talent levels. Talent books are cheaper than good artifacts and give a flat, guaranteed multiplier. An 8/8/8 Xiangling on mediocre artifacts outdamages a 1/1/1 Xiangling on great ones.

More Genshin coverage lands on the Genshin Impact coverage hub, and the rest of our game guides live on the Mythras blog.

Quick Action Checklist

• Claim the free characters: Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara, Xiangling (Abyss 3-3), Collei (Abyss 4-3), Noelle (8th Beginners' Wish pull), and every Traveler element.
• Complete Witch's Homework: Solution and pick Fischl unless you already own her.
• Build the National Team first: Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu, Sucrose.
• Rotation is Xingqiu, Xiangling, Sucrose, then Bennett's burst last so the ATK buff snapshots.
• Go fishing for "The Catch" and refine it. It is Xiangling's best realistic weapon.
• Craft Amenoma Kageuchi for Xingqiu's 80-cost burst and Iron Sting for reaction units.
• Farm 4-piece Viridescent Venerer for Sucrose before anything else. The 40% resistance shred is team-wide.
• Exactly one character wears 4-piece Noblesse Oblige. It does not stack.
• Never build crit on a Hyperbloom or Burgeon trigger. Elemental Mastery only.
• If you have C6 Bennett, remember his Pyro infusion can block Vaporize on polearm and sword carries.
• Level talents to 8 on your main damage dealer before chasing perfect artifact substats.