How Gacha Rates Really Work — Pity, 50/50 and Why Your Luck Isn't Bad
A 0.6% rate does not mean what most players think it means. Here's the actual maths behind soft pity, guaranteed pulls and the 50/50, across the major gacha games.
The short answer
The advertised base rate in most gacha games is not the real rate you experience, because soft pity sharply increases the odds as you approach the pity counter. In Genshin Impact the 0.6% base rate rises steeply from pull 74, producing an effective average of about 62 pulls per five-star. Hard pity guarantees the drop at a fixed number, and the 50/50 determines whether that drop is the featured character or a random standard one — losing it guarantees the featured character on your next five-star.
Verified and last updated August 12, 2026.
- Time needed
- 13 min
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Read time
- 5 min
The single most common misunderstanding in gacha games is treating the advertised rate as the rate you will experience. Genshin says 0.6% for a five-star. If that were flat, you would expect a five-star roughly every 167 pulls. In practice the average is around 62.
The gap is soft pity, and once you understand it, most of the frustration around these systems becomes planning rather than luck.
The three mechanics
Hard pity — a guaranteed five-star at a fixed pull count (90 in Genshin's character banner). Soft pity — the rate climbing steeply before that point, from around pull 74. The 50/50 — when a five-star drops, a coin flip decides whether it is the featured character or a random standard one. These three interact, and understanding them together is what makes the system predictable.
How soft pity changes everything
Under a flat 0.6% rate, five-star pulls would be distributed evenly across all pull counts. They are not. Community datasets covering millions of recorded pulls show a distribution that is nearly flat until the low seventies, then spikes dramatically.
The practical consequence: you almost never reach 90. The average across a large sample is about 62 pulls per five-star, and the majority land between 75 and 85. When someone says they got a character at 90, they were genuinely unlucky rather than experiencing the norm.
This also means partial pity has real value. Sitting at 60 pulls into a banner is a substantially better position than sitting at 10, and that value carries into the next character banner.
The 50/50, and why it is not as bad as it feels
When your five-star finally drops on a featured banner, it is a coin flip between the featured character and a random standard-pool five-star.
Losing that flip is the single most demoralising moment in these games. But the structure matters: losing guarantees your next one. The system does not allow two consecutive losses.
So the real worst case for any specific character is two full pity cycles — around 180 pulls. Not unlimited. That number is what you should budget against, and everything better than it is a bonus.
Several games have improved on this. Honkai Star Rail uses the same 50/50 structure. Wuthering Waves raised the featured chance to 50% with a lower hard pity of 80. Zenless Zone Zero mirrors Star Rail closely. The trend across newer releases is toward slightly more generous rates, largely because the market is now competitive.
Comparing the major systems
Weapon banners are a different proposition
The character banner is reasonably fair once you understand it. The weapon banner generally is not, and it is where most regret happens.
Weapon banners typically add a fate point system: losing the featured weapon once moves you closer to a guarantee, but the total pulls required to be certain of a specific weapon can be considerably higher than for a character. You can also receive the wrong featured weapon, since these banners usually feature two.
The honest calculation: a signature weapon typically improves a character's damage by somewhere between 10% and 25% over a good free or craftable alternative. A new character changes what you can do entirely. For a player with finite currency, characters are almost always the better purchase.
Practical saving strategy
The maths above turns into three rules:
Budget 180 pulls per character you actually want Planning
That is the guaranteed worst case. If you cannot reach it, you are gambling rather than planning. Most of the time you will spend far less, and the surplus rolls into the next one.
Check your pity before deciding to skip a banner 1 min
Being at 70 pity changes the calculation completely. A character you were lukewarm about becomes reasonable when they are likely eight pulls away, and pity carried forward is never wasted.
Never pull to 'test your luck' Discipline
Ten pulls on a banner you do not care about is the most common way players end up unable to afford the character they do want. Every pull either goes toward something you want or is spent.
Skip weapon banners unless you have surplus Planning
The fate-point structure makes them substantially more expensive per unit of usefulness. This is the easiest place to save.
On the psychology of it
These systems are designed by people who understand variable-ratio reinforcement extremely well. Soft pity exists partly to be generous and partly because a near-miss followed by a reward is the most compelling reward schedule known. Understanding the maths is genuinely useful; it does not make you immune to the design. If you find yourself spending money you had not planned to, the maths is not the problem to solve.
Key takeaways
Frequently asked questions
Is soft pity real or a community theory?
Real, and it has been confirmed by large-scale data analysis across millions of recorded pulls. The published base rate in Genshin is 0.6%, but the observed distribution of five-star pulls does not match a flat 0.6% at all — the frequency spikes sharply starting around pull 74. The rate rises steeply from there until hard pity. HoYoverse does not advertise this, but it is unambiguous in the data and it is why the effective average lands near 62 rather than 90.
Does losing the 50/50 mean the game is punishing me?
No, it is a genuine coin flip on each featured five-star pull, and losing it feels far worse than winning feels good. The important structural point is that it cannot happen twice in a row — losing the 50/50 makes your next five-star guaranteed to be the featured character. So the true worst case for any character is roughly 180 pulls, not unlimited. Framing it that way makes planning much easier.
Do my pity counters carry between banners?
Pity carries within a banner type, not across types. Your character event banner pity persists when a new character banner arrives, so pulls you spent on a previous character are not wasted. But standard banner pity and weapon banner pity are tracked entirely separately. This is the mechanic most new players misunderstand, and it leads to people abandoning progress they actually kept.
Is the weapon banner ever worth pulling on?
For most players, no. Weapon banners typically have worse pity behaviour, a fate-point system that can require substantially more pulls to guarantee the specific weapon you want, and the power difference between a signature weapon and a good free or craftable alternative is usually modest. Characters change how you play; weapons change a damage number by a percentage. Pull weapons only when you have surplus currency and a character you genuinely love.
How much can I actually earn for free per patch?
In Genshin, a reasonably thorough free-to-play player earns roughly 60 to 80 pulls per 6-week patch from dailies, events, Spiral Abyss and exploration. That is comfortably under one guaranteed character at worst-case pity. Practically it means about one character every one to two patches if you save, which is why targeted pulling rather than pulling on everything is the only viable free-to-play approach.
About the author
Roblox & Live-Service Editor
Priya started scripting in Roblox Studio at fourteen and has since published three experiences, the largest of which passed 1.2 million visits. That background is why our Roblox coverage explains why a code fails rather than just telling you to try again later.
Found something wrong? Games patch and fixes go stale. If a step here no longer works, tell us at hello@spyld.com and we will retest it. Read how we test and our editorial policy.