Genshin Impact Luminescent Pollen locations and Luminescent Pollen farming tips
Something in the air
Genshin Impact Luminescent Pollen is a new ascension material introduced in Genshin Impact 3.0, but it’s not the easiest thing to get your hands on. Despite being a common material and an enemy drop, Luminescent Pollen is one of the more baffling items to find. The enemy it comes from drops two kinds of item, and Luminescent Pollen seems to be the rarer of the two.
What is Luminescent Pollen for in Genshin Impact?
Luminescent Pollen has a few uses. The one you’ll probably run into first is as a Tighnari ascension material, necessary for making the most out of any Tighnari build, since the forest ranger uses Luminescent Pollen to level up and to ascend his talents. The Dendro Traveler uses it for a talent material. Dendro Traveler builds are surprisingly effective, so make sure not to neglect their talents in Sumeru if you need a Dendro character.
You also need Luminescent Pollen for two Sumeru weapons: End of the Line, the new fish-themed bow, and Fruit of Fulfillment, Sumeru’s craftable catalyst.
Genshin Impact Luminescent Pollen locations
Luminescent Pollen comes from Fungi, and the game makes no distinction between which kind of Fungi you can get it from, or so it seems. Theoretically, you can get Luminescent Pollen from any Fungi, whether it’s the large flying Winged Shrooms or the smaller elemental fungi. It seems like the most likely drop source is the flying fungi, though the drop rates are so low, we haven’t been able to verify whether this is true.
That’s also due in part to how Fungi drops work. In most cases, Fungi of all kinds drop Fungal Nucleus, which is only used for weapon ascensions. You may get Fungal Spores, which you can use in alchemy to create Luminescent Pollen, but so far it seems like the most reliable way to get Luminescent Pollen is purchasing it from Paimon’s Bargains using Masterless Stardust.
Luminescent Pollen is the mid-tier piece in this chain of items. Crystalline Cyst is the next level up, and you can get it in the same ways – just from higher-level Fungi.
Luminescent Pollen farming tips
After more testing, it seems like you're much more likely to get Fungal Spores and Luminescent Pollen if you defeat Fungi without using Electro or Pyro. Hydro is fine, and Cryo, Geo, and Anemo have no Dendro reactions anyway, so you're fine taking down 'shrooms with those. They aren't guaranteed to drop spores and pollen this way, but the rate seems significantly higher.
Fungi are the Hilichurls of Sumeru and show up fairly regularly across the entire region, but the easiest way to find them quickly is using the Adventure Journal’s tracker. Open the journal, navigate to the “Enemies” tab, and select Fungi. This option points you to the nearest Winged Shroom, and these typically have a small posse of other Fungi around as well.
One area that’s worth checking out is underneath the Jadeplume Terrorshroom’s arena. There, you’ll find four or five groups of Fungi, and while there aren’t any Winged Shrooms in this cluster, you may still wind up with some Fungal Spores or Luminescent Pollen.
HoYoverse classifies Fungi of all types as normal enemies, so you can expect Fungi to respawn 12 hours after you defeat them.
While you’re out gathering Luminescent Pollen, keep an eye out for Nilotpala Lotus locations and Rukkhashava Mushroom locations. Keep a thought for the upcoming Genshin Impact characters as well to see how they might fit, and make sure to redeem any active Genshin Impact codes because everyone loves freebies.