Six years of Fatui schemes, and the Tsaritsa still isn't a character you can pull. She is the reason the plot exists — the name behind Signora in Mondstadt, Childe in Liyue, and every Gnosis that has changed hands since — and she has never once appeared on a banner.
Version 7.3 is where that changes. The leaked lineup is two new 5-stars and two reruns — the Tsaritsa and Danica arriving, Sandrone and Lohen coming back — with the patch landing around December 16, 2026, six weeks behind Version 7.2. The rerun pair only surfaced on October 10. Before that, those two slots had no names on them at all.
Below: why December 16 holds up better than a six-week guess, the Tsaritsa's kit leaks and the Combat Intent meter behind her second Burst, what Danica brings to a Polestar Field, the one thing the rerun pair has in common that nobody is talking about, and what this patch actually costs in Primogems.
If your stash is looking thin before the Snezhnaya banners land, GamsGo has a straightforward Genshin top up option for Genesis Crystals.
📌 How to read this page. Every claim below is tagged so you know what it's resting on. Nothing here comes from a live client — the 7.3 beta hasn't opened yet.
Official HoYoverse has shown or stated it. Leak Datamines or named leakers. Estimate Pattern-based projection. Open Genuinely unknown.
Genshin 7.3 Release Date and Banner Schedule
Version 7.3 should launch on Wednesday, December 16, 2026. Genshin has run seven straight 42-day cycles, all landing on a Wednesday. Count forward from 7.1's confirmed September 23 start and you get November 4 for 7.2, then December 16 for 7.3.
There's a second piece of evidence most trackers skip. The leaked 7.2 endgame calendar ends on a specific day: Spiral Abyss runs November 16 to December 16, and Stygian Onslaught opens November 11 and closes the same date. Endgame cycles terminate when the next version goes live, so the 7.2 files themselves point at December 16.
💡 The notice that makes it official isn't the Special Program — it's the Version Update Maintenance Preview, posted the Monday before launch at around 11:10 (UTC+8). For December 16, that's Monday, December 14, 2026.
Genshin Impact 7.3 Banners: The Full Leaked Lineup
Genshin 7.3 characters come down to four names: two new limited 5-stars and two reruns. The new pair has held across every roadmap since August. The reruns come from a single October list, so they carry correspondingly less weight.
Genshin 7.3 Phase 1 and Phase 2 Banners
Banner order hasn't leaked, but the shape of the patch makes one split far more likely than the rest. The Tsaritsa is the Snezhnaya arc's headline act, and HoYoverse has never buried an Archon debut in Phase 2 — Venti, Zhongli, Raiden, Nahida, Furina and Mavuika all opened their patches.
The real question is whether Danica shares Phase 1 or anchors Phase 2. Version 7.1 ran Vesna and Vodyanitsa simultaneously, which proves the dual-new-5-star Phase 1 is on the table. But 7.1 did it because neither unit could carry a patch alone. The Tsaritsa can, and pairing her with Danica would cost HoYoverse a second peak.
⚠️ Why the phase split matters for your pity. If Danica lands in Phase 2, you get roughly three weeks after the Tsaritsa banner closes to rebuild. If they share Phase 1, you're choosing between them with one pity counter and no breathing room. Plan for the harder version: assume you need both reserves banked by December 16.
The Tsaritsa in Genshin 7.3: Kit Leaks, Weapon and Role
The leaks here are unusually detailed for a character whose beta hasn't opened. What's missing is the stuff that decides whether she's good: Talent text, multipliers, cooldowns, energy costs. What's present is enough to tell you what kind of team she wants.
Tsaritsa Weapon: Why the Bow Leak and the Polearm Both Make Sense
Pre-beta data lists her as a Bow user, while the Sudden Snow reveal shows her holding something long and bladed. That's a contradiction only if you assume Genshin characters fight with their equipped weapon type.
They often don't. Childe equips a Bow and spends most of his field time swinging summoned water blades. Raiden Shogun equips a Polearm and draws a sword out of her own chest for her Burst. If the Tsaritsa's Bow is the stat stick and the ice spear is the animation, she's following a pattern the game established years ago.
Two Bursts and the Combat Intent Meter
This is the most interesting thing in the leaks, and the detail that separates current reports from the older "she's a flexible support" framing.
She has two Elemental Bursts. The first is conventional and runs on Elemental Energy. Using it starts filling a second resource — leakers have rendered it as Combat Intent or Fighting Spirit — which charges from Stellar reactions happening around her. Once that meter fills, a separate special Burst unlocks.
The sequencing is the constraint. Her normal Burst has to go off before the special state can open at all, which means her rotation is gated twice: once on energy, once on reaction uptime. A team that can't keep Stellar-Conduct running continuously will simply never see her second Burst.
Recent reports also walk back the "universal Archon support" read. The newer consensus describes her as a specialist — built for Stellar-Conduct and Stellar-Swirl and not much else. There's an additional multiplier called Elevation attached specifically to direct Stellar-Conduct damage, which reinforces that she's designed to live inside one reaction rather than slot anywhere.
Her Stellar-Swirl build is the one to set aside for now. It depends on an artifact set that doesn't exist until 7.3 actually ships, so every team you can realistically plan in December is a Stellar-Conduct team.
⚠️ A translation trap worth knowing about. Several English write-ups have described the Tsaritsa as a "Superconduct damage dealer." That almost certainly comes from a loose rendering of Stellar Super Conduct, the damage instance inside the Stellar-Conduct system. It has nothing to do with the classic Cryo + Electro Superconduct reaction from 1.0. If you're comparing leaks across sites, check which one a source actually means before building a team around it.
CRIT Conversion and How Stellar-Conduct Actually Works
Stellar-Conduct is the confirmed part. With a Stellar Linchpin in the party, Cryo and Electro generate a Polestar Field. The field tracks hits in four-second cycles and converts those stacks into bonus damage for Cryo units, Electro units, and the direct Stellar-Conduct instances themselves. Sandrone opened the system in 6.7; Mitya turns it into a carry archetype in 7.2.
The Tsaritsa's reported twist is a CRIT conversion: she grants party CRIT buffs, then turns any CRIT Rate above the 100% cap into CRIT DMG at a 1:2 ratio. Ten points of wasted CRIT Rate would become twenty points of CRIT DMG.
What makes that genuinely hard to plan around is Cryo Resonance. Running two Cryo units already grants 15% CRIT Rate against Frozen and Cryo-affected enemies, and that bonus never appears on your character sheet. If the conversion reads your displayed CRIT Rate, that 15% is invisible to it and wasted. If it reads effective per-hit rate, it's 30 free points of CRIT DMG. Nobody outside the beta build can tell you which.
Danica in Genshin 7.3: Kit Leaks and Team Role
Danica is not a filler second banner. Danica Postelnitskaya is the head housemaid of Zapolyarny Palace, from a family that's served Snezhnaya's royal household for generations, and leaks place her alongside Vesna as one of the Tsaritsa's two right hands.
Her Sudden Snow train sequence plays the role against type — maid's posture, assassin's timing. Visually she's the warm counterweight to the Archon's palette: green-and-white uniform, pale headpiece, small red accents.
The claim that shows up in every version of her leak is the Cryo and Electro RES shred — lowering enemy resistance to exactly the two elements a Polestar Field runs on. That's a purpose-built design, not a generic support package.
The disputed part is sustain. Some accounts give her a shield, teamwide healing and interruption resistance at C0. Others put the healing behind C2. The difference decides whether a C0 Danica replaces your Bennett slot or just supplements it — which is worth knowing before you budget 360 pulls for the pair.
Best Tsaritsa and Danica Team Comps
Two shapes keep appearing in leaked comp discussion, and the second one depends on a character who hasn't been revealed yet.
- Standard Stellar-Conduct: Tsaritsa · Danica · Mitya · Odette. The Archon takes the damage window, Odette covers the Cryo side, Mitya and Danica run Electro utility and off-field damage. This is the comp the leaks mention most — though Odette is absent from the leaked 7.3 rerun list, so unless you already own her, treat this as the destination rather than the starting line.
- Three-element variant: Tsaritsa · Danica · Mitya · Noy. Noy is a leaked Dendro support for a later 7.x patch, so this one is a 2027 project, not a December plan.
- Budget version: Tsaritsa · Danica · Valeriy · any Cryo. Valeriy is the leaked 4-star from 7.2 whose shield and 120 Elemental Mastery buff reportedly overlap with the Tsaritsa's own package. If his 4-star billing holds, he's the cheapest way into a functional Conduct team.
Here's the problem nobody has solved yet. The Tsaritsa, Sandrone and Lohen are all on-field Cryo carries, and Mitya's upgraded Stellar Super Conduct effect only fires while he is standing there too. Stellar-Conduct has produced a run of characters who all want the same twelve seconds of a rotation. Which means the beta's field-time numbers will decide these comps far more than any multiplier will — and until that build opens, treat every lineup above as a shape rather than a plan.
Who Is the Tsaritsa? Lore, Name and Design
Her full name is Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya, confirmed in the 7.0 story. She became ruler of Snezhnaya and its Cryo Archon after the Belyi Tsar fell during the Cataclysm roughly 500 years ago, and she commands the Fatui Harbingers whose Gnosis hunt has shadowed the Traveler since Mondstadt.
The Sudden Snow reveal is the first proper look at her: silver-white hair, pale blue eyes and lashes, pointed ears, a layered white-and-blue royal outfit with ice detailing, and a long polearm-like weapon she doesn't obviously use.
The original Travail trailer framed her around love and a coming rebellion against the divine. "God of Love" stayed fan shorthand rather than an official title, but the theme held. Venti says she changed after the Cataclysm and cut ties with him. Childe remembers someone gentler who hardened herself while chasing peace. Arlecchino acknowledges her compassion without excusing anything.
Sudden Snow makes the loss specific. A child calls her "Mother," and Ronova tears away part of the image tied to that moment. A lost child, an erased partner, something symbolic — the trailer commits to none of it, but it does establish that the rebellion has a wound underneath it. Sympathetic motives, and several nations' worth of damage done in their name.
Genshin 7.3 Rerun Banners: Sandrone and Lohen
This section changed on October 10, 2026. A banner list circulated that day pairs Sandrone and Lohen with the two new 5-stars — the first 7.3 rerun names with any traction behind them. Before that, the two slots were blank.
Worth noting what isn't on that list: Odette. She was the popular guess for months because she covers the Cryo half of Stellar-Swirl, and several aggregators had already written her in. The October leak leaves her out. Treat her as unavailable for 7.3 planning until something contradicts it.
Sandrone Rerun in Genshin 7.3
Sandrone is a 5-star Cryo Claymore and the Seventh of the Fatui Harbingers — The Marionette, and the character who introduced Stellar-Conduct when she launched on July 1, 2026. For most of 6.7 and 7.0 she was the only unit in the game who could trigger the reaction at all.
She is also an on-field carry rather than a battery: her damage comes from Charged Attacks landed inside her own Polestar Field, and her signature claymore, A Teaspoon of Transcendence, is tuned for exactly that. Weigh that before December. If the Tsaritsa needs the field as badly as her leaks suggest, these two want the same slot, and you'll be picking one.
What a December rerun does give you is timing. It lands one patch after Mitya, which puts the entire Stellar-Conduct roster inside a single eight-week window for the first time.
Lohen Rerun in Genshin 7.3
Lohen is a 5-star Cryo Polearm from Version 6.6 — Vice Captain of the Knights of Favonius' Fifth Company, and a Hexerei character after you clear his Witch's Homework quest. His kit runs on a stance called Masterstroke and a team-fed resource called Will to Win, which other party members charge by dealing damage while he's in the stance.
He's an on-field Cryo carry, which puts him at odds with the Tsaritsa rather than beside her. His appeal in 7.3 is as a standalone — his signature polearm Disaster and Remorse is still one of the better 5-star DPS weapons, and this would be his first return since 6.6.
✅ How to use the rerun names right now. Don't pull on them — pull around them. The practical effect of a Sandrone rerun landing in 7.3 is that you no longer need to force her into a 7.2 budget. Bank through November, keep the 7.2 banners as a saving patch, and arrive in December with one decision to make instead of three.
Genshin 7.3 Weapon Banners and Featured 4-Stars
Every Genshin version runs an Epitome Invocation weapon banner carrying two featured 5-stars, usually the signature weapons of the patch's new characters. If the leaked weapon types hold, 7.3 means a Bow built around the Tsaritsa and a Claymore built around Danica. Neither has a name, stat line or passive attached to it yet.
Weapon banner pity is separate from the character banner: hard pity lands at 80 pulls with soft pity from around 63, and the Epitomized Path lets you lock which of the two featured weapons your next 5-star will be. One guaranteed weapon therefore costs up to 240 pulls in the worst case, which is why signature weapons are almost never the right call on a debut patch.
Featured 4-stars are a genuine blank. They're decided late and leak with the beta build, usually three to four weeks before launch — so expect names around mid-November if the 7.3 test opens alongside 7.2.
Genshin 7.3 Pre-Farming Checklist
Character-specific ascension and Talent materials stay locked until a unit is live, so the useful work right now is the generic stuff you'll burn through regardless of who you end up pulling.
Should You Pull the Tsaritsa in Genshin 7.3?
The question that decides your December isn't whether the Tsaritsa is good. It's whether you want her or her team. One of those is a single banner. The other is three to four units across two patches.
The underlying math: a Character Event Wish guarantees a 5-star within 90 pulls, and if it isn't the featured unit, the next one is. From zero pity that's 180 pulls, or 28,800 Primogems, as the ceiling for one limited 5-star — doubled to 360 pulls, or 57,600 Primogems, for two.
Most accounts come in well under that. Planning around the ceiling anyway is what stops a lost 50/50 in December from eating January.
✅ On Constellations and signature weapons: skip both this early. The reported C1 and C2 effects for the Tsaritsa have already shifted twice, Danica's healing may or may not be C2-gated, and neither signature weapon has a leaked passive. Get the C0 character, then decide in January whether the upgrade is worth another 240 pulls.
Genshin 7.3 Banners: Final Thoughts
Everything above is a December plan built on October information. The new pair has held steady for two months and the date has two independent things pointing at it, which is roughly as solid as pre-beta gets. The rerun pair is four days old.
What's still genuinely open is whether she's good. A specialist built for one reaction system lives or dies on how much of your roster already speaks that language. If you've been running Stellar-Conduct since Sandrone, December is your payoff patch. If you haven't, the honest cost of entry is closer to three banners than one.
The beta should open around November 4, which is when Talent text, multipliers and real rotation footage start landing. We'll update this page as it does. If you're mapping out upcoming Genshin banners past December, the leaked 7.4 lineup already points at Liyue and Lantern Rite 2027.
If your Primogems come up short when the banner drops, a Genshin top up can close the gap with extra Genesis Crystals — just set your limit before December 16, not during it.
Genshin Impact 7.3 Banner FAQ
When Is the Genshin 7.3 Release Date?
December 16, 2026 is the projected date, built on seven consecutive 42-day cycles counting forward from 7.1's confirmed September 23 launch. The leaked 7.2 endgame calendar, which ends on December 16, points the same way. It becomes official when HoYoverse posts the Update Maintenance Preview notice, historically the Monday before launch — December 14 in this case.
Who Are the Genshin 7.3 Banner Characters?
Two new 5-stars, the Tsaritsa (Cryo Bow) and Danica (Electro Claymore), plus leaked reruns for Sandrone and Lohen. Featured 4-stars haven't leaked. The Special Program in early December is where the lineup turns official.
What Should I Skip in Genshin Impact Version 7.2 to Afford the Tsaritsa?
If the Archon is your goal, treat 7.2 as a saving patch outright. Mitya is the Stellar-Conduct carry and genuinely strong, but Valeriy reportedly covers much of the Tsaritsa's buff slot at 4-star cost, and the leaked Phase 2 reruns — Zibai and Linnea, with Furina and Neuvillette on some lists — are all units that will come back again. Six weeks of a saving patch is roughly 60 to 80 pulls.
Will the Tsaritsa and Danica Share Genshin 7.3 Phase 1?
Unknown, and it's the single most consequential open question for your planning. Version 7.1 ran two new 5-stars in Phase 1 at once, so it's possible. But Archon debuts have always opened their patch, and splitting the pair gives HoYoverse two sales peaks instead of one. Budget as if you'll need both by December 16 and treat a Phase 2 Danica as a bonus.
Is Sandrone Worth Pulling Before Her 7.3 Rerun?
There's no "before" — her 7.3 rerun is the opportunity, and she isn't on any banner between now and then. The real question is whether to spend on her in December instead of the Archon. If you own nothing in the archetype, she's arguably the higher-value pull: she is the character it was all built around, and unlike the Tsaritsa, her kit is a known quantity rather than a leak.
Does Character Banner Pity Carry Over to Version 7.3?
Yes — pity and your 50/50 guarantee both carry over. The Character Event Wish counter persists across versions, and the two concurrent character banners share it. The Weapon Event Wish tracks its pity separately and does not interact with it.
Will Ronova's Weekly Boss Drops Be Needed for the Tsaritsa?
Not confirmed. Ronova became a Weekly Boss in Version 7.1, which makes her a reasonable candidate for a Snezhnaya Archon's Talent material. But no leak has tied her drops to the Tsaritsa specifically, and Weekly Boss materials can't be farmed in advance of knowing which one you need.
Does Losing a Gnosis Make an Archon Powerless?
No. A Gnosis isn't a Vision, and surrendering one doesn't strip an Archon of elemental power — Venti, Zhongli, Ei and Nahida all still use their abilities without holding theirs. The Tsaritsa's plan concerns what all seven Gnoses do together, not what any one of them does for its original owner.
What Will the Tsaritsa's Playable Name Be?
HoYoverse has used "Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya" in story content but hasn't shown her character screen, so the in-game card could read either name. Leak lists use both — "Anastasya" and "Tsaritsa" show up interchangeably across the same roadmaps.
When Will the Tsaritsa Rerun After Genshin Version 7.3?
The pattern used to be clean. Venti returned four versions after his debut, and Zhongli, Raiden and Nahida all did the same — 1.1 to 1.5, 2.1 to 2.5, 3.2 to 3.6. Then Furina broke it: she debuted in 4.2 and didn't rerun until 5.4, sixteen months later. So the range for the Tsaritsa runs from Version 7.7 in mid-2027 at the earliest to somewhere in 2028 at the other end. That's too wide to plan around, which is the argument for bringing a debut-sized reserve to December.
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