小保底

What does 小保底 mean?

Most Chinese gacha games, from Genshin Impact to Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, guarantee a rare 5-star within 80–90 pulls. The first of those guarantees is 小保底, and it is a coin flip between the featured character and a random standard one. Lose it and the community's lament is 我小保底歪了, “my small pity went sideways”; the next guarantee, 大保底, then hands you the featured character for certain. It is among the most repeated sentences in Chinese gaming, and it sits exactly between the luck of 欧皇 and the curse of the 非酋.

Where does 小保底 come from?

Genshin Impact's Chinese community settled the terminology in 2020–2021, and every gacha community copied it from there. English-speaking players picked the loanwords up through guides and streamers, which makes 小保底 genuinely international gamer vocabulary.

How to use 小保底

• 我小保底又歪了七七，心态崩了。
  Wǒ xiǎo bǎodǐ yòu wāi le Qīqī, xīntài bēng le.
  My 50/50 lost to Qiqi again — I'm devastated.
• 这个版本我攒够大保底了，新角色稳了。
  Zhège bǎnběn wǒ zǎn gòu dà bǎodǐ le, xīn juésè wěn le.
  I've saved up to hard pity this patch — the new character is guaranteed.