Automating the Grind: BetterGI Brings Computer Vision to Genshin Impact
You know the drill. You log into Genshin Impact with good intentions—maybe just to knock out your dailies or grab a few resources—and somehow three hours vanish into artifact runs, fishing minigames, and dialogue you've already read a dozen times. The grind is real, and it's tedious. What if you could hand a chunk of that repetitive work to a tool that watches the screen and acts for you? That's exactly what BetterGI attempts to do, using computer vision to automate the boring parts of Teyvat.
BetterGI is an open-source Windows tool that sits on top of Genshin Impact and performs a wide range of automated tasks—from auto-picking up loot to full dungeon clears. It's not a cheat that modifies the game; it reads the screen and simulates inputs, which is a cleverly safe approach for a game that takes a dim view of tampering.
What It Does
At its core, BetterGI is a computer vision pipeline. It watches your game screen, recognizes specific UI elements and world states, and then triggers keyboard and mouse actions in response. The project is built on .NET and distributed as a Windows application, so you'll need the .NET runtime installed to run it.
The feature list is organized into a few distinct categories. Real-time tasks operate continuously while you play: auto-pickup that presses F when an interactable appears (with blacklist/whitelist support), auto-dialogue that clicks through story sequences and even auto-claims your daily commission rewards from Katheryne, quick teleportation by clicking waypoints on the map, and semi-automatic fishing where AI handles casting and reeling.
Standalone tasks are one-shot automations you trigger manually. There's fully automatic Genius Invokation TCG matches for PVE content, auto-logging that uses the "Wangshu" gadget to farm wood, fully automated domains that loop through battles and claim rewards, and even auto-cooking that hits the perfect timing zone every time.
Full-auto modes go bigger: a "one-stop" daily completion system that uses your daily points and claims rewards, plus auto-collection/mining/exploration routes that navigate by reading the minimap in the corner of your screen.
Finally, there are control assists—small macros like a keybind that spins your camera continuously (useful for a certain Hydro Dragon character's charged attack) and a one-click artifact enhancement that skips the animation cycles to get to +20 faster.
Why It's Cool
The clever part of BetterGI is that it doesn't touch the game's memory or files. It's purely observational—it looks at pixels, figures out what's happening, and simulates inputs like a human would. That's a meaningful design choice for a few reasons:
- It's safer by design. Since it doesn't modify the game client, it's fundamentally different from traditional cheat tools. There's still risk in any automation, but the approach is far less invasive.
- Computer vision is the right tool for the job. The game's UI is consistent and readable, which makes it a perfect target for screen recognition. The minimap-based navigation for auto-collection is genuinely clever—it's using the same visual cues a player would.
- The scope is ambitious. This isn't just a single macro. It's a suite of dozens of automations covering everything from dialogue to fishing to card games. The "one-stop" daily mode alone could save you fifteen minutes a day.
- It's configurable. Auto-pickup supports blacklists and whitelists, artifact salvage can follow custom match rules, and keyboard/mouse recording lets you script your own sequences. You're not locked into the defaults.
That said, it's worth being honest about the nature of this tool. Using any automation in a live-service game carries account risk. The README is upfront about what it does, but it doesn't downplay that this is a gray area. If you value your account and play seriously, you'll want to weigh that carefully.
How to Try It
Getting started is straightforward. Head over to the BetterGI GitHub repository and grab the latest release from the releases page. You'll need to install the latest .NET runtime for Windows first, which the README links to directly.
Once you've downloaded and extracted the tool:
- Install the .NET runtime if you don't already have it.
- Launch BetterGI before or alongside Genshin Impact.
- Configure your hotkeys and task settings in the UI.
- Start with a simple task like auto-pickup to verify everything works, then experiment with the standalone tasks like auto-cooking or auto-domain runs.
The project has a comprehensive documentation site (linked from the README) with per-feature guides, and the repository supports multiple languages including English, Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese. If you run into issues, the GitHub issues board is active—the "one-stop" daily feature even has its own dedicated issue thread for discussion and feedback.
Final Thoughts
BetterGI is a seriously impressive piece of open-source engineering. The breadth of what it automates—from the mundane (picking up loot) to the complex (navigating the map by minimap recognition)—shows how far computer vision tooling has come for games. If you're a casual player tired of the daily grind, or a developer curious about how screen-reading automation works in practice, this is a fascinating project to explore.
Just remember: any automation in a live game is a calculated risk. Use it on alt accounts if you're paranoid, or simply appreciate the technical craft from a distance. Either way, it's a reminder that even the most tedious game loops can be engineered away—if you're willing to write the code for it.
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