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How Gacha Pity Systems Work: Rates, Guarantees, and Carryover Explained

By Freedom251 Team · · 11 min read

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Gacha pity is a banner-specific counter that limits how long you can go without receiving a high-rarity item. It does not mean every pull has the same chance, and it does not automatically mean the next high-rarity item is featured. To understand a pity system, separate four rules: the listed base chance, any consolidated rate that includes guarantees, the maximum number of pulls before a rarity is forced, and the rule deciding whether that result is the featured item.

The exact counter, threshold, featured chance and carryover rule belong to the individual banner. The examples below use official HoYoverse guidance for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, updated in September 2025. Treat them as examples, not universal gacha standards, and check the active banner’s in-game details before pulling.

What pity means in a gacha game

A pity system is a set of rules that tracks attempts on a particular banner and guarantees a result by a stated maximum. In ordinary probability terms, each pull may have a published chance of producing a rare item. Pity adds a ceiling: if the required rarity has not appeared earlier, the game must award it by the threshold.

That ceiling is usually called hard pity. A five-star guarantee at 90 wishes means a qualifying five-star must appear no later than the 90th wish under that banner’s rules. It does not say that the chance is 1/90 on every pull, nor that the featured character must be the item you receive at that point.

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Most games keep separate counters for different banner families. A character event banner, weapon or Light Cone banner, and permanent or regular banner can have different pools, thresholds and featured rules. Progress on one normally cannot be assumed to apply to another.

The four rules you must keep separate

Listed base rate

The base rate is the published probability attached to a pull before considering a later guarantee. It must always be identified with the game and banner. For example, HoYoverse lists a 0.600% base five-star rate for the Honkai: Star Rail Character Event Warp and a 0.800% base five-star rate for the Light Cone Event Warp.

Consolidated rate

A consolidated rate combines the ordinary chance with outcomes created by the pity rules. It describes the overall rate under the stated system, not the chance on an isolated pull. HoYoverse lists a 1.600% consolidated five-star rate for the Star Rail Character Event Warp, explicitly including the guarantee, alongside its 0.600% base rate. Those figures answer different questions and should not be presented as interchangeable.

Hard rarity guarantee

A hard guarantee is the maximum number of attempts before an item of a particular rarity appears. It guarantees the rarity, not necessarily the featured item. In Genshin Impact’s official Wish guidance, Character Event Wish guarantees a five-star character within 90 wishes, while Weapon Event Wish guarantees a five-star weapon within 80 wishes.

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Featured-item guarantee

A featured rule decides which item you receive when the high-rarity result arrives. It is a second layer on top of the rarity guarantee. A banner may give the featured item a percentage chance on the first five-star, then guarantee the featured item after a non-featured result. The percentage and the consequence of losing that featured roll vary by game and banner.

How the pity counter changes

Building the counter

Each qualifying pull increases the counter for its own banner type. A high-rarity result ends that streak and resets the relevant counter under the cited Genshin rules. HoYoverse’s official wording is: “This wish counter, or ‘pity,’ resets as soon as you obtain any 5-star item from that specific banner type.” The reset occurs when the item is obtained, not when a player reaches a preferred number and stops.

Separate counters

Do not treat “pity” as one account-wide number. Star Rail’s official guidance states: “Each Warp banner type, such as the Character Event Warp, Light Cone Event Warp, and Regular Warp has its own independent pity counter.” A count on a character banner therefore does not become a count on a Light Cone banner or the regular banner.

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Carryover between reruns

Carryover is usually limited to later banners of the same defined type. Star Rail’s Light Cone Event Warp guidance says accumulated count carries to subsequent Light Cone Event Warps. That means an unfinished Light Cone counter can continue on the next Light Cone Event Warp, subject to the game’s current rules. It does not imply that the count moves to Character Event Warp or Regular Warp.

Reruns can preserve a counter because the banner type remains the same, but an individual game’s notice is controlling. Check the current View Details or Wish Details screen instead of inferring carryover from a previous cycle.

Official comparison: Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail

The following values come from HoYoverse help-center guidance updated September 17, 2025 for the Genshin Wish guarantee article and September 23, 2025 for the Star Rail banner articles. They are banner-specific examples.

Banner type Rarity guarantee and listed rate Featured rule Counter scope
Genshin Character Event Wish Five-star character within 90 wishes. The five-star has a 50% chance to be promotional. After a non-promotional five-star, the next five-star is guaranteed promotional. Resets when a five-star item is obtained from that specific banner type. Verify the active Wish details.
Genshin Weapon Event Wish Five-star weapon within 80 wishes. The first five-star weapon has a 75% chance to be one of the promotional weapons. After a non-promotional result, the next five-star weapon is guaranteed promotional. Use the current in-game Wish details for the active weapon banner.
Star Rail Character Event Warp Five-star character at least once every 90 Warps; 0.600% base rate and 1.600% consolidated rate including the guarantee. Check the relevant banner’s View Details for the current featured-character rules. Independent Character Event Warp counter.
Star Rail Light Cone Event Warp Five-star Light Cone at least once every 80 Warps; 0.800% base rate. A four-star-or-higher item appears at least once every 10 Warps. A five-star Light Cone has a 75% chance to be featured. If it is not, the next five-star Light Cone from this Warp is guaranteed featured. Accumulated count carries to subsequent Light Cone Event Warps. Other Warp categories are calculated independently.
Star Rail Regular Warp Five-star character or Light Cone at least once every 90 Warps; 0.600% base rate split into 0.300% characters and 0.300% Light Cones. A four-star-or-higher item appears at least once every 10 Warps; the listed four-star base rate is 5.100% split between characters and Light Cones. Standard-banner pool and rules apply; there is no event-feature rule in the cited summary. Independent Regular Warp counter.

Comparing “90” and “80” without naming the banner is misleading. A 90-Wish character threshold and an 80-Wish weapon threshold govern different item pools and different featured outcomes.

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Genshin Impact: how the two cited Wish examples work

Character Event Wish

Start with the Character Event Wish counter. If a five-star character appears before 90 wishes, the counter ends at that result. If no five-star has appeared earlier, the rules require one within 90 wishes. The identity roll is separate: the first five-star has a 50% chance of being promotional. If that five-star is non-promotional, the next five-star character is guaranteed promotional under the official guidance.

For example, a player could receive the featured character on wish 63 and have the relevant five-star counter reset immediately. Alternatively, the player could reach the maximum threshold and receive a non-promotional five-star; the next five-star event-character result then carries the promotional guarantee. The number of wishes used to reach either result does not transfer to a different banner type.

Weapon Event Wish

Weapon Event Wish uses a separate counter and an 80-wish five-star-weapon ceiling in the cited guide. The first five-star weapon has a 75% chance of being one of the promotional weapons. If that result is non-promotional, the next five-star weapon is guaranteed promotional.

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Because the pool and threshold differ from Character Event Wish, a character-banner count cannot be used to calculate how close a weapon banner is to its guarantee. Read the live banner description for any additional active weapon-selection rules and the current promotional pool.

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Honkai: Star Rail: character, Light Cone and regular banners

Character Event Warp

Star Rail’s Character Event Warp guarantees a five-star character at least once every 90 Warps. The official page lists a 0.600% base five-star rate and a 1.600% consolidated rate that includes the guarantee. The same page states that a four-star-or-higher item appears at least once every 10 Warps.

The cited general guidance does not replace the active banner’s featured-character details. Open View Details on that specific Character Event Warp to see which items are featured and how the featured result is handled.

Light Cone Event Warp

Light Cone Event Warp guarantees a five-star Light Cone at least once every 80 Warps and lists a 0.800% base five-star rate. It also guarantees a four-star-or-higher item at least once every 10 Warps.

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When a five-star Light Cone is awarded, the featured chance is 75%. If the result is not featured, the next five-star Light Cone from this Warp is guaranteed featured. The accumulated Light Cone count carries to subsequent Light Cone Event Warps, while the game’s other listed Warp categories use independent calculations.

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Regular Warp

The Regular Warp has its own pool and counter. A five-star character or Light Cone appears at least once every 90 Warps. The listed 0.600% base five-star rate is split evenly in the cited guidance: 0.300% for characters and 0.300% for Light Cones. A four-star-or-higher item appears at least once every 10 Warps, with a 5.100% base four-star rate split between characters and Light Cones.

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Base rate, consolidated rate and “average” language

Suppose a page says “0.600% base rate” and “1.600% consolidated rate including the guarantee.” The first is the stated chance associated with an ordinary pull under the published rules. The second reflects the complete mechanism over pulls in which the guarantee can intervene. It is not correct to describe 1.600% as the chance on every individual Warp, or to use 0.600% as if pity did not exist.

When comparing games, record the label exactly: base, consolidated, or another term used by that game’s rules. Also record whether the number refers to a five-star item, a four-star-or-higher item, a character-only pool or a mixed pool. A mixed Regular Warp rate cannot be compared directly with a character-only event rate without explaining the different outcomes.

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What “soft pity” does and does not tell you

Players often use “soft pity” to describe an observed increase in odds before hard pity. The official pages cited here state base or consolidated figures and maximum guarantees, but they do not establish an exact soft-pity threshold or a per-pull soft-pity curve for these examples.

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Do not present a community estimate as an official number. If you use a separately documented estimate elsewhere, label its data source, sample, method and uncertainty. For decisions based on the official rules alone, rely on the stated maximum, the listed rates and the featured guarantee rather than an assumed curve.

How to check your own pity before pulling

  1. Identify the banner type. Confirm whether you are viewing Character Event, Weapon Event, Light Cone Event or Regular. Do not combine counts from different types.
  2. Open the banner’s details. In Genshin, read the current Wish description and notices. In Star Rail, use the banner’s View Details screen. These screens show the active item pool and the applicable rates or guarantees.
  3. Review your records. Genshin’s Wish Records cover the past year and can take up to one hour to update. A recently made pull may therefore be absent temporarily.
  4. Count from the last qualifying high-rarity result. Under the cited Genshin rule, any five-star item from that specific banner type resets the relevant counter.
  5. Check the featured state. Note whether your last five-star was promotional. A missed featured result can create a next-five-star featured guarantee, but only within the banner system that defines it.
  6. Confirm carryover. Before a banner ends, read the notice describing which future banner of the same type inherits the count and featured state. Never assume a character count transfers to a weapon or Light Cone banner.
  7. Recheck after maintenance or a rerun. Event pools and displayed rules can change. Use the current in-game text rather than an old screenshot or remembered threshold.

Worked scenarios

You stop before a character-banner five-star

Suppose your Character Event Wish counter is below 90 when the event ends. The unfinished count is relevant only to the banner type and only if the game’s current rules carry it to the next applicable event banner. It does not become Weapon Event Wish progress.

You lose the featured roll

On the cited Genshin character and weapon examples, a non-promotional five-star changes the next-five-star outcome to promotional. On Star Rail Light Cone Event Warp, a non-featured five-star makes the next five-star Light Cone from that Warp guaranteed featured. The rarity counter still resets when the five-star appears; the featured state is a separate piece of information.

You get an early high-rarity item

An early five-star or five-star Light Cone ends the current high-rarity streak immediately. Continuing to pull afterward starts a new counter; it does not preserve the old near-threshold number.

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Common mistakes and how to avoid them

  • Calling hard pity a probability. “Within 90” is a maximum, not a 1-in-90 chance on every pull.
  • Confusing rarity with identity. A five-star guarantee can produce a non-featured item unless the banner’s featured rule says otherwise.
  • Combining banner counters. Character, weapon, Light Cone and regular banners can be independent even within the same game.
  • Using a consolidated rate as a per-pull rate. Include the words “including the guarantee” when quoting Star Rail’s 1.600% figure.
  • Assuming every rerun behaves identically. Check the current item pool, threshold and carryover wording on the live banner.
  • Trusting stale records. Genshin’s history may take up to one hour to update and covers the past year, so verify the timing of recent pulls.
  • Treating soft-pity estimates as official. The cited official pages do not publish an exact curve for these examples.

Why designers use pity at all

In a theoretical paper, “Gacha Game: When Prospect Theory Meets Optimal Pricing,” pity is analyzed as part of a model for repeated random purchases. The paper provides a framework for thinking about how a known ceiling can affect perceived value and continued participation under its assumptions. It is not a current rules document for any particular game and does not show that every gacha system produces the same player or economic effects.

For practical play, the useful conclusion is narrower: pity changes the distribution of outcomes by limiting the worst-case streak, while featured rules determine whether the rare result is the item you wanted. Those mechanisms should be evaluated separately.

A reliable decision checklist

  • Write down the exact banner name and type.
  • Record the published base rate and, if supplied, the consolidated rate with its qualification.
  • Record the hard rarity threshold and the four-star-or-higher threshold.
  • Record the first high-rarity featured chance and what happens after a miss.
  • Check whether the counter and featured state carry to the next banner of the same type.
  • Use the game’s current details and records, including any stated update delay.
  • Do not substitute an assumed soft-pity curve for an official guarantee.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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