Genshin Impact Talent and Ascension Material Guide — The 7 Million Mora Character

One Character Costs Seven Million Mora

Here is the number that reframes the whole game. Taking one character from level 1 to 90 and pushing all three combat talents from 1 to 10 costs 7,050,900 Mora. That breaks down as 1,673,400 Mora burned feeding EXP books, 420,000 Mora on the six ascension phases, and 4,957,500 Mora on the talents. Per character. Not per team.

On top of the Mora you are handing over 415 Hero's Wit, 168 local specialties, 46 normal boss drops, 18 weekly boss drops, 114 Philosophies-tier talent books and 3 Crowns of Insight. That is one unit. A four-person team is roughly 28 million Mora of commitment.

Most players never do this math, which is exactly why their account feels stuck at "everyone is level 70 with talents at 6." Spreading resources thin is the single most common progression mistake in Genshin, and it is not a skill problem — it is a planning problem. Let's fix the plan.

The Two Gates You Cannot Skip

Character power in Genshin runs through two separate upgrade tracks that constantly gate each other: ascension (which raises your level cap and base stats) and talents (which raise your actual damage multipliers). You cannot level talents past a certain point until you ascend, and you cannot ascend until your Adventure Rank keeps up.

Ascension Phases and What They Unlock

Six ascension phases take you from level 20 to level 90. Each one has an Adventure Rank requirement and a fixed Mora cost:

• 1st ascension — AR 15, 20,000 Mora, cap 40. Unlocks the 1st Ascension Passive and gives an Acquaint Fate.
• 2nd ascension — AR 25, 40,000 Mora, cap 50. Unlocks the character's bonus attribute and talent leveling up to Lv. 2.
• 3rd ascension — AR 30, 60,000 Mora, cap 60. Talents to Lv. 4, plus another Acquaint Fate.
• 4th ascension — AR 35, 80,000 Mora, cap 70. Unlocks the 4th Ascension Passive and talents to Lv. 6.
• 5th ascension — AR 40, 100,000 Mora, cap 80. Talents to Lv. 8, plus a third Acquaint Fate.
• 6th ascension — AR 50, 120,000 Mora, cap 90. Talents to Lv. 10.

That 2nd ascension is a hard wall worth memorising: a character cannot use talent books at all until they hit Ascension Phase 2, which means level 40 and Adventure Rank 25.

The Talent Cap Nobody Reads

Notice the pattern above: talent caps unlock at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 across ascensions two through six. This is why people who rush a character to level 90 and then panic-farm talent books are doing it in the wrong order. You should be feeding talents as the caps open, because talent books come from a day-gated domain and you cannot binge them at the end.

The corollary: if a character is sitting at level 80 with talents at 6, they are leaving two full talent levels of damage on the table that they were already allowed to take. Check your roster. You almost certainly have one.

What a Full Ascension Actually Eats

Every character follows the same ascension template — only the specific items change. Taking one character through all six phases requires:

• 420,000 Mora
• 1 Sliver, 9 Fragments, 9 Chunks and 6 Gemstones of their elemental ascension gem
• 46 normal boss drops (the Hoarfrost Core / Everflame Seed / Marionette Core tier of item)
• 168 local specialties
• 18 one-star, 30 two-star and 36 three-star common enemy drops

The 168 local specialties are the part that quietly ruins schedules. Local specialties respawn 46 hours after harvest, not 48 — which sounds like a rounding error until you realise it means the respawn drifts two hours earlier every cycle, so a plant you grabbed Monday evening is back Wednesday afternoon. Two full circuits of a specialty route gets you most of a character.

Ascension gems can be crafted upward at a 3-to-1 ratio through Alchemy, but the crafting itself is Adventure Rank gated: AR 25 for Fragments, AR 35 for Chunks, AR 45 for Gemstones. Boss drops are the flexible currency here — 46 of them is roughly a dozen boss runs at 40 resin apiece, which is a real chunk of your week. Our Genshin resin management guide covers where that resin should actually go.

Talent Books Are a Calendar Problem

Talent books drop from Domains of Mastery, which cost 20 Original Resin per run and unlock at Adventure Rank 27. The catch is that each domain only offers one of its three book series on any given day. Miss the day, wait for the next one.

The rotation is identical across every region: the first series is available Monday and Thursday, the second Tuesday and Friday, the third Wednesday and Saturday, and on Sunday all three are available at once. Sunday is the single most valuable farming day in the game and the one most players sleep through.

The Seven Domains and Their Books

There is now one Domain of Mastery per region, and the day slot follows the order below — first series is Monday/Thursday, second is Tuesday/Friday, third is Wednesday/Saturday:

• Mondstadt — Forsaken Rift: Freedom, Resistance, Ballad
• Liyue — Taishan Mansion: Prosperity, Diligence, Gold
• Inazuma — Violet Court: Transience, Elegance, Light
• Sumeru — Steeple of Ignorance: Admonition, Ingenuity, Praxis
• Fontaine — Pale Forgotten Glory: Equity, Justice, Order
• Natlan — Blazing Ruins: Contention, Kindling, Conflict
• Nod-Krai — Lightless Capital: Moonlight, Elysium, Vagrancy

Two practical notes. Books craft upward at 3-to-1, same as gems, so three Teachings make a Guide and three Guides make a Philosophy — meaning a bad drop day is never wasted. And the Traveler is the one exception to everything: their books rotate through all three of a region's series depending on their current elemental alignment.

What One Talent Costs From 1 to 10

Every character in the game shares the same talent upgrade curve. Taking a single talent from 1 to 10 costs:

• 1,652,500 Mora
• 3 Teachings, 21 Guides and 38 Philosophies of the relevant book series
• 6 one-star, 22 two-star and 31 three-star common enemy drops
• 6 weekly boss drops
• 1 Crown of Insight

Multiply by three for a full set of talents and you get 9 Teachings, 63 Guides, 114 Philosophies, 18 weekly boss drops, 3 Crowns and 4,957,500 Mora. And notice where the Mora hides: the 9-to-10 step alone costs 700,000 Mora per talent. Levels 9 and 10 together account for over two-thirds of a talent's entire Mora bill.

Weekly Boss Drops Are the Real Bottleneck

Books you can farm. Mora you can farm. Weekly boss drops you cannot, because they are capped by the calendar.

Weekly bosses give you three discounted claims per week at 30 resin each, then charge 60 for anything beyond that. Each claim drops one material from that boss's pool of three, chosen at random. You need 18 of them for one character's full talent set — and since each boss serves multiple characters and each claim is a coin flip between three items, "just farm it" is not a plan.

Two things make this survivable. First, Dream Solvent converts one weekly boss material into a different material from the same boss at a crafting bench, with no Mora cost, one solvent per conversion. It drops from Trounce Blossom claims at roughly a 33% rate, so most weeks you pick one up. Second, discipline: claim all three discounted rewards every single week, even when you are not actively building anyone. A stockpile you did not need is infinitely better than a wall you cannot climb.

Crowns Are Rarer Than You Think

The Crown of Insight is only needed for the final 9-to-10 step on a combat talent, and it is the hardest ceiling in character building. Since launch, 109 Crowns total have been obtainable in the entire game.

Your permanent, repeatable sources are narrow: 28 come from region offering systems like the Frostbearing Tree, Sacred Sakura, Tree of Dreams and Fountain of Lucine; one comes from reaching Act 10 in the Imaginarium Theater for the first time; and one is purchasable each month from Paimon's Bargains for 50 Masterless Starglitter. Everything else has come from limited-time events that are gone.

So the rule is blunt: do not crown a character you are not certain about. A talent at 9 is 90% of the value; the crown is a rounding error on damage but a genuine scarcity on your account. Crown your permanent-team supports and your main damage dealer, in that order, and leave the flex slots at 9.

The 80-to-90 Trap

Here is a claim you can check on your own account: the 80-to-90 stretch costs 3,423,125 Character EXP, which is 171 Hero's Wit and roughly 41% of the entire 8,362,650 EXP it takes to go from level 1 to 90.

Feeding EXP books also costs 1 Mora per 5 EXP, so that last ten levels is another 684,800 Mora on top. For a pure support whose numbers do not scale off their own stats, those ten levels are the worst-value purchase in the game — you are better off taking three characters from 80 to talent level 9 than one character from 80 to 90. For a main damage dealer, level 90 matters because enemy level scaling punishes the gap, so pay it there and skip it elsewhere. Where those supports fit is covered in our Genshin best F2P teams breakdown.

Levels 95 and 100 Exist Now

Characters can be ascended two more times past phase 6, pushing the cap to 95 and then 100. The cost is not materials — it is 1 Masterless Stella Fortuna for level 95 and 2 more for level 100. That is constellation currency, which means it comes from duplicate pulls or Paimon's Bargains.

Treat this as an endgame flex, not a target. Unless your account is deep enough that you have spare Stella Fortuna sitting around, the resources are better spent finishing a second team for the Spiral Abyss than squeezing ten more levels out of one unit.

A Planning Routine That Actually Holds

1. Pick one character and finish them. Half-built characters do not clear content. One finished character does.
2. Check the material list before you pull, not after. If their book day is Wednesday and you never play Wednesdays, that is information.
3. Feed talents as caps unlock — 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 — rather than waiting until level 90.
4. Farm the domain on Sunday when all three book series are open, especially if you are building two characters from different series.
5. Run a local specialty circuit every 46 hours. 168 per character is two decent loops.
6. Claim three weekly boss rewards every week at the 30-resin rate, whether or not you need them today.
7. Bank Crowns. Spend them only on characters that will still be in your team a year from now.

Where the leftover resin goes once talents are handled is the artifact grind, and that is a different beast entirely — the Genshin artifact guide covers when to stop farming. More coverage lives on the Genshin Impact coverage hub, and the rest of our guides sit on the Mythras blog.

Quick Action Checklist

• Budget 7,050,900 Mora per fully built character: 1,673,400 for EXP, 420,000 for ascension, 4,957,500 for three talents.
• Remember talent leveling requires Ascension Phase 2 (level 40, AR 25) before it unlocks at all.
• Match ascension phases to talent caps: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
• Talent domains run Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday, Wednesday/Saturday, and all three on Sunday.
• Craft books and gems upward at 3-to-1 rather than letting off-day drops rot.
• Harvest local specialties on a 46-hour cycle; you need 168 per character.
• Claim your three discounted weekly boss rewards every week and save Dream Solvents for conversions.
• Only 109 Crowns of Insight have ever existed — spend them on permanent team members.
• Skip level 80-to-90 on pure supports; it is 41% of the total EXP for very little payoff.