Kinich in Genshin Impact: Best Build Guide

In Genshin Impact, Kinich is a 5-star character who belongs to the Dendro element and uses a greatsword in battles. In a team, he can act as the main damage dealer. In this guide, you can learn about his best build, weapons and artifacts, as well as the squads recommended for him.

Note: The Huitztlan Zaurivan Hunter has not yet been officially released, so the data presented here is based on information obtained during beta testing. We will update the guide if necessary when the hero appears in the game.

Kinich's Main Features

How to Get Kinich

In the second phase of the 5.0 update, this warrior will appear in the banner, which will increase the chance of its drop. In the future, this character can only be obtained through Prayers. Unfortunately, HoYoverse has never held an event in which the reward would be a 5-star event fighter, so it is definitely not possible to get the Zavrivan Hunter from Huitztlan for free.

Kinich Stat Progression

The table below shows how a character's basic stats change as they level up.

The default critical damage and critical hit chance are 50% and 5%, respectively.

Kinich's Abilities

When performing a normal attack “Night Sun Style”, the hero performs up to 3 strikes in a row, and when charged, he spends a small amount of stamina and throws his sword in front of him at his opponents. When performing a strike while falling, he quickly rushes to the ground, hitting all enemies in his path, and after landing, he deals damage to the area. In the case of a jump using E-shka, Kinich can perform one normal attack in the air.

Explanation: Normal attacks that are unremarkable for most swordsmen, which you are unlikely to use outside of an elemental skill.

After using the elemental skill Kron Hunter: Riding on the Heightsthe hero either throws a hook at the target, attaches to it and activates the Night Spirit Blessing mode from 0 points (if there is an enemy creature or object nearby), or throws a hook in front of him and jumps (if there are no enemies nearby). In the latter case, the cooldown is reduced by 60%. Long pressing the skill button makes it possible to make an aimed throw.

Kinich's Night Spirit Blessing lasts for 10 seconds and generates 2 Night Spirit every second. In this state, he hooks himself to the nearest target and begins performing the following attacks:

• When attacking normally, he fires ring shots around the attached enemy in the direction of movement, dealing damage to a Night Spirit-affiliated Dendro and restoring 3 Night Spirit. Ring shot damage is considered elemental skill damage.
• When the maximum number of Night Spirit points is accumulated, he gets the opportunity to use the Scalebreaker skill, spending all the points and inflicting increased damage to Dendro. By long pressing, you can switch to aiming mode. After firing, the hero tries to attach to his new target.

When the Blessing of the Night Spirit is active, the hunter creates a Blind Zone near the enemy after attaching the hook to him or firing from Scalebreaker. If the Blind Zone is entered, the character receives 4 Night Spirit points, and the area itself disappears.

If the distance to the hooked target is exceeded or the connection is interrupted for any other reason, the next normal attack will hook the new closest hostile mob, and then ring shots will be performed.

Explanation: As with Mualani, there is a lot of text, but in fact everything is quite simple – we approach the enemy, press E, hook onto him and start spinning to the right or left, pressing the normal attack button and throwing green spheres at the enemy, which inflict damage to Dendro. If the “rope” suddenly breaks, then we are hooked again with a simple blow.

In this case, you will need to quickly accumulate 20 Night Spirit points to perform Scalebreaker (an enhanced shot that deals huge Dendro damage) by pressing the E key again. The corresponding scale constantly follows the character (see the screenshot below). For example, at level 10, the scalebreaker multiplier is a gigantic 1237.39%. For one E key, you will be able to perform 3-4 such attacks.

Elemental Burst “Glory to the Draconic Majesty” allows the hero to summon the dragon Ahab, who deals area-of-effect damage to Dendro with the Night Spirit property. Ahab periodically emits dragon breath, dealing area-of-effect damage to Dendro.
If the character is in the Blessing of the Night Spirit state during activation, the duration of the current effect is increased by 1.7 seconds.

Explanation: The ult first hits the area, and then for 15 seconds the dragon fires a laser beam at enemies in front of him. He manages to fire 6 times, dealing damage in a radius of about 12 meters. Overall, Ahab does little damage, but it allows you to apply an additional Dendro status with a cooldown of 2.5 seconds, which is useful for some reactions.

You can ignore the extra time, since 1.7 seconds is only enough to play the animation of the ultimate if it is activated under the influence of E. Let's add that the cost of this ability is 70 units, so without a second Dendro character or a support with a Favonius weapon, you will most likely be able to use it only through rotation.

It is also impossible not to mention the extremely useful passive talents of the tourist guide. The first of them is called “The Price of Desolation”. Enemies hit by the hero's elemental skill in Night Spirit Blessing enter a state of Desolation. When damaged by Burning or Blooming reactions, they grant the character 7 Night Spirit points. Points can be gained in this way no more than once every 0.8 seconds. The debuff lasts until Kinich's current blessing ends.

Explanation: A useful passive that will allow you to use Scalebreaker much more often. Burning can deal damage every quarter of a second, so it will be more effective in terms of accumulating points. However, on the other hand, Bloom deals much more damage. Therefore, you can experiment with squads, choosing the most interesting option for yourself.

The second – Fire Spirit Pact – gives 1 level of Hunter Experience, lasting 15 seconds, when any team member activates Night Spirit Flash. This effect can be stacked up to 2 times. Each stack spent can increase Scalebreaker's damage by 320% of the hero's attack power.

Explanation: Only Natlan characters can trigger Night Spirit Flash when dealing elemental damage, and the more of them there are in the team, the more often it can be activated: from 18 seconds with one Natlan and up to 9 seconds with 3 or 4. Therefore, to activate the effect, you will need at least one more Pyro Kingdom resident in the party. However, it does not greatly increase Kinich's damage, so you can easily get by with regular characters.

As for the third passive “Gift of the Night Realm: Full Restitution”, when Kinich is in areas of Natlan with phlogiston mechanics, he is able to use Night Spirit Transfer. When the active character uses sprint, is in the movement state of some talents, or is at a certain height in the air, when changing the character to Kinich, depending on the conditions, one of the following actions will be performed:

• There is a Twisted Leaf Seal ahead that can be interacted with: Kinich will release a hook at it and continue moving.
• There are enemies nearby and the character is in combat – Kinich will activate the skill Cron Hunter: Riding on High Ground against them.

If these conditions are not met, Kinich will release a hook and perform an aerial attack with a swing. When choosing a target for the hook, Kinich will prioritize Twisted Leaf Seals that meet the conditions. Night Spirit Transfer can be activated by your party once every 10 sec.

When interacting with Twisted Leaf Seals and other items that Yumkasaurs can interact with, the skill Cron Hunter: High Riding will change to Mimic Yumkasaur. However, such items will follow the rules for interacting with Yumkasaurs, and Cron Hunter: High Riding will not go into cooldown.

Explanation: In short, this passive will allow you to move around Natlan faster.

The hero also has a special innate passive “Nimble Messenger”, which increases the party's movement speed by 15% for 10 seconds in areas with relevant mechanics in Natlan when interacting with certain items. Plus, it reveals local curiosities on the minimap.

Kinich Constellations

To unlock them, you need to accumulate the character's Luck, which is given out when you drop duplicates of the hero, which is, of course, random. Considering the low chance of getting 5-star characters, you will need to spend a lot of time and money to unlock all the constellations. However, even without them, Kinich plays the role of a main DD without any problems.

Here is the full list of constellations:

1. Parrot's Beak – After the hero lands after performing a jump from the skill Cron Hunter: Riding on High, his movement speed will increase by 30% for 6 seconds. In addition, Scalebreaker's critical damage will increase by 100%.
2. Jumping Beetle Palm – E-shka, hitting enemies, reduces their Dendro resistance by 30% for 6 seconds. Plus, the first shot from Scalebreaker in the Blessing of the Night Spirit state has an increased area of ​​​​damage, and its damage is increased by 100%.
3. Protosuchian Claws – the skill level increases by three. Maximum level: 15. A very useful constellation, significantly increasing the heroine's overall damage.
4. Hummingbird Feather – After performing ring shots or using Scalebreaker in the Night Spirit Blessing state, the hero restores 5 units of energy. You can restore energy in this way no more than once every 2.8 seconds. In addition, the damage of the Glory of the Dragon Majesty skill is increased by 70%.
5. Howler Tail – the level of the ult increases by three. Maximum level: 15th.
6. The silhouette of the Annunciation Beast – Scalebreaker, having hit an enemy, will ricochet once between enemies, dealing 700% Dendro damage from Kinich's attack power. If this Scalebreaker activates the buffs provided to it by the passive talent Pact of the Fire Spirit or the constellation Palm of the Jumping Beetle, then the ricochet also receives the corresponding buffs.

If you decide to try your luck, then we recommend you stop at C1 and C2, which allow you to significantly enhance his elemental skill, which is Kinich's main source of damage. We will add that if you have a choice between the first Constellation and a signature weapon, then we advise you to choose the second option, since it is significantly superior to its alternatives. However, be prepared to spend more primogems to knock it out.

How to play Kinich

We covered the basics of his gameplay in his Elemental Skill explanation. In short, you need to get close to the enemy you want to attack, then activate the skill and start performing normal attacks (ring shots) while moving left and right of the enemy, and then perform Scalebreak by pressing the skill button again.

To perform the final attack, you need to gain 20 Night Spirit points. You can do this by doing the following:

• Ring shots will earn you 3 points.
• Every second that the E is active, you will get 2 points for free.
• Entering the Blind Spot (the green square that appears on the ground; see screenshot below) will earn you another 4 points.
• Burning or Blooming reactions will earn you another 7 points.

So, in good conditions and in teams with Burn, you can quite easily manage to perform 4 scalebreakers per action of one skill, while performing two normal hits. Bloom is less frequent, so you will most likely be able to perform no more than 3 scalebreakers, making three ring shots. However, do not forget that Bloom does much more damage.

Note that when performing ring shots and scale-breakers, the character's resistance to interruptions increases slightly (at the level of Xing Qiu's Rain Swords). When an enemy is hit once per skill action, the enhanced attack brings 5 ​​energy particles. However, this is still not enough to perform the ult every rotation without a “battery” in the squad.

So, the optimal rotation for Kinich will look like this:

1. Once the battle starts, use your support and sub-DD abilities to boost your damage output and apply Hydro and Pyro statuses to your enemies.
2. Switch to Kinich and use his E on the closest enemy. Start moving towards the Blind Spot and perform normal attacks (2 for Burning and 3 for Blooming), then perform Scalebreaker, filling your Night Spirit gauge.
3. If the ult is ready, you can use it at the end of the E-shka to prolong its action a little and get an additional Dendro application. Without a “battery”, you can activate the elemental explosion once every 2 rotations.

In general, in terms of damage, he can easily compete with al-Haytham, but unlike the Secretary of the Academy, he is mainly aimed at inflicting damage to single targets and is more focused on the Burning and Blooming reactions than on Catalysis.

Advantages and disadvantages of Kinich

Using his unique abilities, this hero can inflict significant Dendro damage to nearby enemies. His advantages also include:

• Has an unusual, but at the same time relatively easy to master gameplay, which is strikingly different from the usual swinging of a sword.
• Has a relatively high base attack, and critical damage increases with his elevation. All this somewhat simplifies the construction of his build and balancing of crits.
• Capable of inflicting huge Dendro damage to enemies (ring shots and scalebreaker), being on the level of the top damage dealers in the game.
• Great for closing the Burning and Blooming reactions, so it goes well with Pyro, Hydro and Dendro characters.
• Well suited for quickly destroying strong single opponents (elite enemies and bosses)
• Very convenient for exploring locations, as he can use his hook to quickly rise to a height or overcome obstacles and large distances.
• Can play the role of main DD perfectly even without constellations.

However, it is still impossible to call Kinich an ideal character, as he also has his drawbacks:

• Although the gameplay is easy to learn (theoretical part), in practice there may be problems, since you need to be able to keep your distance from enemies, correctly target opponents (if the battle is with a large group of mobs), choosing the most powerful monster first and monitoring the filling of the Night Spirit scale in order to use Scalebreakers in time.
• Not very convenient when fighting large enemy groups. The reason was indicated above.
• His abilities are mainly aimed at Burning and Blooming, so Catalysis will be much weaker, which is why he has a limited pool of characters suitable for him.
• It is highly recommended to get a signature weapon, as it is significantly ahead of alternative options. This will probably not please F2P players.

Best build for Kinich

Best weapon

When choosing a two-handed sword, priority should be given to those items that increase critical damage, critical hit chance, and attack power. The table below presents the most interesting options.

Best Artifacts

As with two-handed swords, we recommend taking artifacts that can increase critical hits and attack power, as well as enhance elemental skill. The table below shows the best options.

As for the main characteristics of the artifacts, then take the hourglass for attack power, the cup (bowl) for the Dendro damage bonus, and the crown (hat) for crit. chance/crit. damage in a ratio of 1 to 2. The priority of choosing secondary parameters looks like this: crits, attack power and energy recovery.

If we talk about optimal hero attribute indicators, they look like this:

• Attack power: 2000+
• Critical hit chance: 60-70%
• Critical damage: 120-140%
• Energy recovery: at least 110-120%

Best Teams for Kinich

So, given Kinich's first passive talent, he can do the most damage in teams with Bloom and Burn. You can, of course, try to build a team with Catalysis, but the output from it will be significantly lower. It should also be remembered that the multiplier of Scalebreaker, which is the hero's main source of damage, is heavily dependent on ATK bonuses, but does not affect Catalysis' damage in any way.

Thus, Kinich is best combined with Pyro, Hydro and other Dendro characters. The best assistant for him in this case can be Bennett, who not only gives a huge buff to attack power, but also helps activate Burning. For Pyro application, you can also take Dehyu, Tomu or Xiangling.

You may also need a second Dendro character for a more stable Dendro status. The best option, of course, is Emilia, who can do considerable damage herself in Burning teams. Nahida or Bai Zhu can also be of great benefit.

Let's add that in packs for Burning you can also use a Geo character, which will not affect reactions, because Crystal uses up auras very little. So you can easily take Kachina, Tiori or Albedo to your team.

If you intend to create a group for Blooming, you should take at least one Hydro Applicator, for example, Furina, Ye Lan or Xing Qiu. The first one, although it gives fewer cores, can significantly strengthen the main DD and heal him if necessary. You can also try experimenting and assemble a squad with Nile for Budding. The table below shows the most interesting options.

Kinich Leveling Up

How to Improve Skills

You will have to search and collect a variety of materials, namely:

• Teachings, Directions, and Philosophies of the Burn – Dropped on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays in the Flame Ruins dungeon.
• Young Fang, Adult Fang, Tyrant Fang – Dropped by Natlan Saurians, purchased with Star Glitter, or crafted with Alchemy.
• Denial and Verdict – Dropped by the weekly Servant boss.
• Crown of Insight – Dropped by events, as well as by leveling up the Sacred Cherry Blossom, Everfrost Tree, Dream Tree, and Lucine Fountain.

If we talk about priority of leveling up talents, then the first thing you should do is increase the hero's elemental skill, since it is his main source of damage. Then take on the elemental explosion and only then level up regular attacks.

How to level up a character

Get ready to search and collect a large number of different materials. Their list and methods of extraction are given below.

You can get a fragment of the Nagadus Emerald from Dendro Hypostasis, Feathered Moldling, and Oasis Guardian Apep. It also drops from the Ravenous Yumkasaurus Mountain King, from which you can also knock out Overripe Flame Grenades. Saurian Paws are a local curiosity of Natlan – in a separate guide, we indicated their location.