Why You Need a Genshin Banner History Spreadsheet and How to Actually Use One
Most Genshin Impact players have no idea how their pity system actually works until they've spent hundreds of primogems wondering why they keep getting two-star weapons. The game doesn't show you your current pity counter anywhere in the client. You're flying blind. A Genshin Banner History Spreadsheet is the only reliable way to track where you actually stand on each banner. I've been running spreadsheets for every banner since version 1.0. I've watched the system change, I've seen HoYoverse adjust rates, and I've made more mistakes than I care to admit about when pity resets. The spreadsheet keeps me honest. Without one, you're just guessing and hoping your memory serves you, which it won't.
Genshin Banner History Spreadsheet
The basic version of this tool is usually a Google Sheet or Excel file with separate tabs for each banner type: character event, weapon event, and standard. Each row represents a pull. You log the date, the banner name, what you pulled, and whether it was a guarantee or part of your soft pity range. Some community spreadsheets auto-calculate your current pity count based on the data you enter. Others just give you a raw log and you have to count manually. I use a personal spreadsheet with columns for banner ID, pull number within that banner, result rarity, character or weapon name, guarantee status (hard pity vs soft pity), and whether it's the first five-star on that banner. The key column people forget is the banner-specific pull count. Pity carries across banners of the same type only, not across different banners. A reset on one character banner does not carry over to the next character banner. That's where most players mess up. Here's the edge case nobody talks about: soft pity for characters starts around pull 74 and ramps up until guarantee at 90. For weapons, it starts earlier, around pull 60, with a guaranteed five-star at 80. But the weapon banner has a separate pity counter AND a separate guarantee system for the featured weapon. If you pull a non_featured five-star weapon on the event weapon banner, your next five-star is guaranteed to be the featured one. I learned this the hard way in version 3.3 when I spent 78 pulls on the weapon banner, got Diluc's sword instead of the featured polearm, and then had absolutely no idea why my next pull was the featured weapon. I should have written it down right then. Instead I waited two banner cycles before I remembered to start tracking.
The workaround I use now is simple. I log every pull within twenty minutes of it happening. Not the next day. Not when I feel like it. Twenty minutes. Because I forget. The spreadsheet becomes the record. I don't trust my brain to remember whether I already pulled once on the current banner or if I'm starting fresh. There are community-maintained versions out there if you don't want to build your own. Search for them and you'll find several. The problem with shared spreadsheets is they're often outdated because HoYoverse changes rates without always making it obvious. Version 2.0 shifted some weapon banner mechanics, and a few popular sheets hadn't been updated for months. Always verify the current soft pity thresholds against the in-game data or a reputable news source before you start relying on the calculations your sheet produces. Another thing that catches people off guard: standard banner pity does not carry over to event banners and vice versa. They are completely separate counters. You can have 85 pity on standard and zero pity on a character event banner at the same time. Your spreadsheet needs to track these independently. One sheet, separate tabs. Don't mix them into the same list.
Get the Full Details
If you're building your own, here's what I'd suggest. Start with a single Google Sheet. Create three tabs: Character Event, Weapon Event, Standard. Column headers should be: Date, Pull Number, Result, Guaranteed, Notes. The pull number is your pity counter for that specific banner. When you pull a five-star, the next five-star pull number resets to one for that banner. Add a formula that counts how many pulls since your last five-star so you always know your current standing without manual counting. A simple COUNTIFS formula on the result column will do it. The downside of tracking manually is that it's easy to skip entries when you're tired or distracted. I've had weeks where I just didn't log anything and then couldn't reconstruct where I was. The only real fix is to make logging part of the pull process itself. Open the sheet on your phone while you're pulling. Don't pull first and log later. Log as you go. It takes three seconds per pull and saves you from days of reconstruction work. Some people use third-party apps or browser extensions that claim to auto-track by reading your pull history from the game data. These exist but they're unreliable. HoYoverse doesn't expose a public API for banner history, and any tool claiming to do this is either reading cached data incorrectly or scraping in ways that could get your account flagged. I've seen it happen. A couple of players in my Discord lost access to their accounts for using unofficial tracking tools. Not worth the convenience.
The spreadsheet approach is slow and tedious but it's accurate and it can't get you banned. You enter the data yourself and you own the record. That's the trade-off. I'd rather spend five minutes a week logging pulls than lose my account because some script tried to read my client data. One more counter-intuitive point: having a high pity count on one banner doesn't help you on a new banner of the same type. If you have 70 pity on the Jean banner and it ends, your next banner starts at zero. The pity counter does not transfer between character event banners. I've seen players hoard their spreadsheet entries thinking their 80-pity counter would carry forward. It doesn't. Every new character event banner gives you a fresh start on the pity counter. The only thing that carries is the guarantee counter if you've already pulled a five-star that wasn't featured. After your first five-star on a banner, your next five-star is guaranteed to be the featured one. That guarantee persists across banners of the same type. So the real value of the spreadsheet isn't just tracking your current pity. It's tracking those guarantees. Knowing whether your next five-star is locked to the featured character or could be a wildcard is the difference between pulling now and waiting. Without that data, you're just guessing. And guessing costs primogems.
I keep mine updated every banner cycle. It usually takes me about ten minutes total to log everything from a full banner run. Ten minutes for data that would otherwise take me hours to reconstruct from memory, if I could reconstruct it at all. The spreadsheet pays for itself the first time you need to know whether to pull or wait and you actually have the answer.
