How Gacha Pity Systems Actually Work (2026 Guide)

Most new gacha players lose their first big pull the same way: they spend premium currency the moment they get it, without knowing where the safety net sits. That safety net is pity: a rule that improves your odds, or hands you a top-rarity unit outright, after a run of bad luck. This guide explains the terms, compares the rules three publishers actually print, and turns them into a plan you can use before you spend anything.

Do this first:

• Open your game's rates page (often called Details, Rates or "i") and find three numbers: the base rate, the hard pity and the featured-unit chance.
• Check whether pity is shared between banners of the same type, or tracked per banner.
• Pick one banner and stay on it until you reach the guarantee you are planning for.

The key terms, in plain English

Hard pity is the ceiling. Genshin Impact's character banner, for example, promises at least one 5-star character within 90 pulls.

Soft pity is the rise before that ceiling. Here is the part most guides skip: HoYoverse does not publish a soft-pity number. What it does publish is a base rate of 0.6% and a consolidated rate of 1.6% on Genshin's character banner. The gap between the two shows that the guarantee pulls the average well above the base, but the exact pull where odds start climbing comes from player-run trackers, not from the publisher. Treat any "soft pity starts at pull X" claim as an estimate.

Why it matters: if you plan around an unofficial soft-pity number and it is off, you can come up short. Plan around the published hard pity, and anything earlier is a bonus.

Genshin Impact: the published rules (Version 7.1)

These figures come from Genshin Impact's in-game Wish Details for the Version 7.1 banners, which HoYoverse lists as running until October 13, 2026, 17:59.

Character Event Wish

• Base 5-star rate: 0.600%. Consolidated rate including the guarantee: 1.600%.
• At least one 5-star character within 90 pulls.
• Your first 5-star has a 50% chance of being the featured character. If it is not, the next 5-star is the featured character.
• Capturing Radiance, added in Version 5.0, can turn a lost 50/50 into the featured character. HoYoverse gives it a 0.018% base trigger chance, for a 55% consolidated chance that a 5-star is the featured one. If you lose the 50/50 three times in a row, it triggers on your next 5-star.
• The pity count is shared between Character Event Wish and Character Event Wish-2, and separate from all other wish types.

Weapon banner (Epitome Invocation)

• Base 5-star rate: 0.700%. Consolidated: 1.850%. At least one 5-star weapon within 80 pulls.
• Your first 5-star weapon has a 75% chance of being one of the two featured weapons.
• Epitomized Path lets you pick one featured weapon. Each 5-star that is not your pick gives a Fate Point. HoYoverse cut the maximum to 1 Fate Point in Version 5.0, so your next 5-star after one miss is your pick.
• Fate Points reset to 0 when the banner ends, and also if you change or cancel your chosen weapon.

Common mistake: pulling on the weapon banner "a little" each phase. Fate Points do not carry over, so a half-finished path is lost when the banner closes.

Honkai: Star Rail: same family, clearer carry-over rules

HoYoverse's second big gacha uses the same structure, and its Warp Details state the carry-over rules in plain words.

• Character Event Warp: 0.600% base, 1.600% consolidated, at least one 5-star within 90 Warps, 50% featured chance with a guarantee after a loss.
• Light Cone Event Warp: 0.800% base, 1.870% consolidated, at least one 5-star within 80 Warps, 75% featured chance.
• Carry-over: the pity count in any Character Event Warp "will always be carried over" to other Character Event Warps. The same applies between Light Cone Event Warps. Each type stays separate from the others.
• Departure Warp (the beginner banner): limited to 50 Warps, with at least one 5-star character within 50. It is counted separately from every other Warp.

Do this first in Star Rail: finish the Departure Warp before you touch an event banner. It is the shortest published path to a 5-star character in the game.

Raid: Shadow Legends: mercy that depends on the shard

Raid does not use banners and a 50/50. It uses shards (summoning items) and a mercy system. Plarium's help center publishes these rules:

• Mercy starts after a set number of shards without a given rarity. Plarium's example: after 20 Void Shards without an Epic, your Epic chance rises by 2% per shard until you get one, then resets.
• Each shard type has its own counter. On Ancient and Void Shards, the Epic and Legendary counters are also separate.
• Increases are additive. A 2% increase on an 8% chance makes it 10%.
• The counter is not shown in the game.

Plarium's Summoning Events page adds the default odds indirectly: a x2 Summon Boost raises Ancient and Void Shards to 16% Epic and 1% Legendary, and Sacred Shards to 12% Legendary. Half of those figures gives the default rates.

Plarium does not publish the Legendary mercy threshold for each shard type on its Mercy System page. Community trackers quote numbers, and they do not all agree, so this guide does not repeat them. If you are new to Raid, our guide on which Raid shards to open in your first week turns these rules into a day-by-day plan.

Side by side: what each publisher promises

Common mistake: assuming one game's math applies to another. A Raid shard counter and a Genshin banner counter behave nothing alike, even though both get called "pity."

How to plan your pulls, step by step

1. Write down your pull count after every session. Raid does not show its mercy counter at all, so a tally is the only way to know where you stand.
2. Check your guarantee status. Two players at pull 80 can be in different positions: one has a featured guarantee from a lost 50/50, the other does not.
3. Budget to the worst case. For a featured 5-star on a 50/50 banner with no guarantee, plan for up to two hard pities: 180 pulls in Genshin or Star Rail.
4. Save between banners when pity carries over. If the count carries, skipping a banner you do not want costs nothing.
5. Finish what you start where it resets. Genshin's Fate Points reset at the end of the weapon banner, so only start that path if you can finish it.

If you only remember one thing: plan to the published hard pity, never to an unofficial soft-pity estimate.

What to spend (and what never to spend)

This guide does not recommend any purchase. If you choose to spend, these rules keep the cost predictable:

• Spend only after you know your pity and guarantee status, never mid-banner on impulse.
• Never spend on a banner just because currency is sitting there. Shared currency spent on a unit you do not want leaves you short when the one you want arrives.
• Never chase a weapon or Light Cone before the character it is built for. A signature item does little without its owner, and Genshin's weapon path resets when the banner ends.

The same reasoning applies outside these three games. Before you spend in any new free-to-play title, read its rates page first. Our sourced Where Winds Meet verdict and our look at how Soul Land: Awakening World paces its early pulls apply this to two newer games.