Genshin Impact Level 100 Explained: Ascension Basics and Masterless Stella Fortuna

Levelling in Genshin Impact has two halves. The first is the familiar one every player knows: feed a character EXP books, hit a level cap, ascend them with materials, repeat. The second half arrived years into the game's life and rewrote the ceiling entirely — characters can now reach level 100. Here is how both halves work, and why the second one is aimed at a very specific kind of player.

Ascension: The Road to Level 90

A character's level is divided into bands by ascension phases. A fresh character caps at level 20; each ascension raises the cap — 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and finally 90 at the sixth phase. Ascending costs a package of materials every time: elemental gems matching the character's vision, a boss drop from a specific world boss, a regional specialty plant or item, common enemy drops, and a growing pile of Mora. Your Adventure Rank gates the phases, because the higher ascensions only unlock as your World Level rises. Talents follow a parallel track with their own separate materials and weekly-boss drops, which is why "building" a character is really several different grinds wearing a trench coat. Reaching level 90 with maxed talents is, for almost every player, a finished character.

Masterless Stella Fortuna: Levels 91 to 100

The Luna I version added an item called Masterless Stella Fortuna, and its source tells you exactly who it is for: you receive one when you pull a 5-star character whose constellations are already complete — a duplicate beyond the maximum. HoYoverse applied this retroactively, converting every such excess duplicate pulled since the game's launch into the item, so veteran collectors received a stockpile on day one.

Using a Masterless Stella Fortuna on a character who is already at their maximum level raises their cap by 5 levels, so two of them take a level 90 character to level 100. The gains are real but specific: higher base stats (which everything else multiplies from) and increased base damage for the character's elemental reactions. There is no new ascension quest or material hunt — the item is the entire cost.

Should You Care About Level 100?

For the overwhelming majority of players, honestly, no — and that is by design. The item only drops from duplicates of maxed-constellation 5-stars, which means it flows to players who pull heavily on banners and have already spent the most. Level 100 is a prestige capstone for them, not a requirement for anyone else: no content in the game is balanced around it, and a well-built level 90 team with good artifacts clears everything Genshin offers. If a Masterless Stella Fortuna ever lands in your inventory, spend it on your most-used damage dealer and enjoy the bonus. If it never does, your account is missing nothing it needs. The road to 90 — bosses, specialties, Mora, talent books and all — remains the real game for everyone, and it is a road every single player can finish for free.