If you’ve played Genshin Impact before, you know farming relics is the core of boosting your character’s damage output. But as you progress through your adventure, your inventory quickly gets stuffed full of 5-star relics. Dismantling extra relics to get relic scraps, which you can exchange for specific relic pieces you actually need, is a key step in keeping your inventory organized. But many new players, even veteran ones, struggle to decide which 5-star relics are safe to break down without accidentally losing a great usable piece. Below, we break down clear criteria to help you make the right call.
Pre-Decomposition Guidelines You Need To Know First
First off, we need to clarify that decomposing 5-star relics isn’t recommended for every stage of gameplay. If you’re still early in your Trailblaze journey and most of your teams aren’t fully built out yet, you should hold onto every 5-star relic you earn. Only start sorting and decomposing extra relics once your core teams are fully leveled and you actually run out of inventory space. Additionally, relic scraps are primarily for long-time players to exchange for specific targeted relic pieces. New players don’t need to rush hoarding scraps right away, so you shouldn’t break down useful relics just to collect more scraps.
Types of 5-Star Relics You Can Safely Decompose
1. Completely Conflicting Stat Combos With No Usable Characters
These are the most obvious candidates for immediate decomposition: relics that literally no character can use. For example, a damage-focused set with a main stat of Energy Regeneration Rate or Defense, and substats stacked entirely with HP and Defense? No damage dealer will ever want that. On the flip side, a support-focused set with Crit Rate or Crit Damage main stats and all attack-focused substats doesn’t fit any support character’s needs either. Any relic that can’t pull together a usable stat combination for any character can be broken down immediately, no need to hold onto it.
2. Extra Duplicates of Perfect Endgame Relics
A lot of players get in the habit of hoarding every relic with great stats, but if you already have 3 or more perfect endgame relics of the same slot, you’ll never actually use the extra duplicates. No single account needs multiple identical endgame relics, so you can break down the extra copies to get scraps with zero downside. There’s no point wasting valuable inventory space on extra copies you’ll never equip.
3. Outdated Meta Relic Pieces From Old Sets
As Genshin Impact continues releasing new relic sets, many older sets have fallen out of favor and barely see use on any modern character build. For example, older general-use sets that almost no one prioritizes these days are rarely useful, even if they’re 5-star. Unless you want to keep one extra for collection purposes, you can safely decompose all extra copies of these outdated relics.
4. 5-Star Relics With Completely Wrong Main Stats
Most of the time, you can tell a relic is useless just by looking at its main stat alone. For example, a damage-focused head piece with a main stat of Defense Percentage or HP Percentage, a damage-focused body piece with a Defense main stat, or an elemental damage sphere mismatched to an element with no usable character. Even if the substats are great on these mismatched main stat relics, their overall gain is still far lower than a relic with the correct main stat. Decomposing these will never be a loss.
Types of 5-Star Relics You Should Never Decompose Randomly
Finally, we want to remind you that there are a few types of 5-star relics you should always hold onto, don’t break them down just for extra scraps: relics that characters you plan to pull in the future could use, functional relics needed for the Forgotten Hall or other specialized game modes, and relics with decent stats that can work as temporary gear for new characters you build. All of these should be marked and kept, so you don’t end up regretting your decision to decompose later.
Overall, sorting through extra relics and decomposing them for relic scraps is a regular, necessary task for veteran players to keep their inventory organized. As long as you stick to the rule of only decomposing what no character can use, and only decomposing extra duplicates, you won’t have to worry about accidentally getting rid of a great relic. You’ll also get the scraps you need to exchange for that perfect endgame piece you’ve been missing for ages.
