Yesterday we were talking about soloing the various elite world bosses in Genshin Impact and some of my friends indicated that they were hesitant to take the leap and start farming these. The thing is there is going to be a certain point in the game where you absolutely have to start killing these on a regular basis in order to get the materials needed to ascend your characters. The truth is that if you know what the fight requires of you they are all fairly easy to take down by yourself. This morning I thought I would take a bit and talk through my thoughts on each of the fights. They are by no means a definitive guide to the encounters, but more the sorts of things that I do when I need to take them down.
The Cube Family
Currently there are three elites in the game that I collectively refer to as the “cubes”. Technically they are all called “hypostasis” which doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, so I am going to continue referring to them as cubes. Essentially you have 4 cubes rotating an octahedron in the center that will glow the color of the element you are encountering. Currently this exists in an Air, Electric and Earth form and this little glowing cube is the only part of the boss that can be damaged. For the most part these encounters all involve avoiding some mechanics until you get an opening and then can burn the little octahedron. All three also are characterized by a final burn phase that requires you to take out three constructs in order to prevent the boss from healing back up. I will go into more detail as I talk about each of the encounters specifically.
Aenemo Hypostasis – Wind Cube
- Region – Mondstadt
- Closest Port – Starfell Valley
- Ascension Characters – Jean, Sucrose, Venti, Xiao
This is likely the easiest of the three cubes because it doesn’t really require much in the way of elemental matching. Air is a neutral element and as a result pretty much everything seems to damage this cube equally. Essentially you are going to be avoiding a bunch of attacks and then shortly after the octahedron will fall to the ground allowing you to get in some dps. All of the cube fights require patience and waiting until the moment you should be dpsing. During any one of these burn phases you are likely only going to get a single attack rotation before it summons back the four cubes and goes into the next avoid phase.
Final Burn Phase
When you have gotten the boss down to a sliver of health it will trigger the final burn phase. When this happens a number of updrafts appear around the arena surrounding the boss as well as a number of anemo icons floating in the air. Your goal will be to use the updrafts to collect all of the anemo icons before the phase is over. Each icon you are unable to collect will heal the boss a percentage of their health and force you to go back into the normal dps and avoid phases, until once again you have dropped the health down enough. Thankfully your will keep your progress from the earlier phase allowing you to finish off collecting the icons and ultimately ending the fight.
Electro Hypostasis – Lightning Cube
- Region – Mondstadt
- Closest Port – Eagle’s Gate
- Ascension Characters – Beidou, Fischl, Keqing, Lisa, Razor
Similar to the air cube, this fight is going to have burn phases and avoid phases. The two that are going to be most prevalent is a phase is going to be rock, paper, scissors where it summons a fist, then summons scissors and then slams down a sheet onto the ground. Another common phase will involve the cube turning into a drill of sorts. In both of these cases there will be an octahedron drop immediately following allowing you to burn. This one is more challenging than air because there are two large avoid phases that either cause it to spawn rotating lasers or a swirl of mini cubes that shoot out from the center of the arena. Side note you can abuse dash and the invulnerability frames it provides to get out of the lasers, but the mini cubes can be a bit annoying as the gaps between them are irregular. Side note to the side note… if you can dash into the center of the lasers and hit the octahedron the entire mess will stop. The secret to both of these however is if you are not good at avoiding such things… you can simply “ring out” and leave the area of the fight because the effect do not draw beyond the stone platform you are standing on.
Final Burn Phase
The burn phase for this fight is going to require you to have brought some fire damage, as that is the only way I have found to reliably dps the three octahedrons that spawn. I have a special team that I build for this fight including Amber and Xiangling, but you can in theory take care of this with any fire champion. Three copies of the octahedron will spawn surrounding the center of the ring and you have to burn all three within a time limit. Any that you do not kill will heal the boss, forcing you back into another avoid and burn phase sequence. Again you get to keep progress done between burn phases so anything you killed stays dead.
[EDIT] – After talking with my friend Grace this morning, it seems that Water works as well. So yet another example of Barbara being an absolute champ. She really is excellent!
Geo Hypostasis – Earth Cube
- Region – Liyue
- Closest Port – Sea of Clouds
- Ascension Characters – Ningguang, Noelle
This is the fight that I enjoy the least because it seems to take forever. This fight is going to involve earth constructs, which means you either need a claymore user or another earth magic wielder in your party because other attacks seem to take forever to drop these constructs. Noelle for example does a really good job of clearing earth constructs especially if her ultimate attack is up. I’ve heard Klee bombs pack the sort of punch of a Claymore and can be used for clearing as well, but I have not personally tested this. So I am going to talk about the correct way to do the fight, and the way that I often do the fight.
The Correct Way
Essentially this fight is about earth construct maintenance. If you allow them to stay up too long you can the sort of AOE earthquake damage that can be dealt during this fight can get completely out of control. There will be five pillars that spawn into the arena, one in the center and four equidistant around the edge of the arena. In this method your goal is going to be focused on always dpsing down these pillars before worrying about dealing damage on the octahedron. While dpsing down the pillars you will be avoiding attacks from the cube, but once they are all down you can go into a normal avoid and burn rotation like you have with the other cubes. The challenge there however is that they are going to be summoned multiple times during the fight, meaning it becomes a real slog to chew through them each time before you can make progress on the boss.
The Bel Way
I bring a couple of ranged damage dealers with fast attacks… more specifically I bring Venti and Amber and potentially Fischl. There are various points during the fight where the octahedron will be exposed at the top of the pillars, and when this is going on I am burning as hard as I can with my bow users. The only real danger that you run into is there will be an attack that summons a huge area effect around each of the pillars, and if all five are up it essentially blankets the arena. However remember that thing I said about Electo Cube, that you could ring out the effects? It works here as well if you are fast enough, you can just step outside of the ring area and wait until the earthquake phase is over. Then I return on slowly whittling down the octahedron until I can enter the final burn phase.
Final Burn Phase
Regardless of which method you used to whittle down the health, the final phase is going to involve three more pillars spawning around the center of the arena. These pillars have significantly less health than the normal constructs but you still realistically want probably a claymore wielder to help you burn through them. These will also be weak to earth magic as well, so if you have someone along those lines that will help significantly. Same song and dance as before in that any of these smaller pillars that you don’t manage to take out will heal up the boss a percentage of their health. You really want to one phase this if possible because it just takes so long to chew through the earlier slog to get to this point.
The Flower Family
Another type of elite boss that shares a good number of mechanics is what I call the flower family. Technically the game refers to them as “Regisvine” but when I talk about them they are general the Ice and Fire Flowers. They each are capable of doing a bunch of nonsense that progressively becomes harder as the fight goes on, but they also each have a critical weakness. If you focus on the weak spot during each phase of the fight the flower will slump over to the ground giving you a rather large unimpeded burn phase. There is no “final burn phase” for this family, just kill the weak spot and get free dps until you have managed to drop their health bar to zero.
Cryo Regisvine – Ice Flower
- Region – Mondstadt
- Closest Port – Temple of the Wolf
- Ascension Characters – Chongyun, Diona, Kaeya, Qiqi
I’ve marked a region on the image above with a red circle. When the fight begins those leaves will peel back revealing a bud of sorts, and this is the weak spot that you are going to need to dps down in order to begin the first free damage/burn phase. Given that it is ice the champions that are going to deal the most damage in my experience are Fire and Lightning. Generally speaking I swap to Xiangling and drop Gubao and swap to my Razor to wail away at the bud until the flower drops. After the burn phase the weak spot will switch to being the head of the flower, which is a bit challenging for melee to hit. If you brought amber it is often times a good idea to hang back and break the head of the flower with elemental attacks which will once again cause it to slump over when broken and trigger another free damage phase. If for some reason you need to three phase the encounter, it will begin alternating between bud and head phases until you have killed the boss.
The key for me to this fight is to burn it as fast as you can, so bring elements that interact with ice in a manner that increases your dps so that you can one or two phase it. The longer the fight goes the higher the likelihood that you end up getting frozen and taking a truly ridiculous amount of damage. One of the phases involves a frost beam that shoots out of the head of the flower and will sweep the room dealing significant damage. You can in theory use your invulnerability frames to clip through this beam and avoid taking damage. My general advice is burn hard and fast and get the fight over as soon as you can.
Pyro Regisvine – Fire Flower
- Region – Liyue
- Closest Port – Qiongji Estuary
- Ascension Characters – Amber, Bennett, Diluc, Klee, Xiangling
Same song and dance as with fire, the “bud” is marked with the circle in the above image and you will want to burn this hard as soon as the fight starts. If you have Barbara she is the MVP if this fight and she seems to be able to drop the fire flower as fast as anyone can while also healing the hell out of your party. Xingqiu is also a champ, especially if you have his ultimate up. If you don’t have a good water champion then your best bet is to either rely on the reactions with ice or lightning to get through it. I tend to break with Barbara and then swap over to a claymore champion like Razor for dealing damage to the slumped over flower. Same phases apply for fire as they did for ice in that you burn the bud, dps the slumped flower, burn the head, dps the slumped flower and then it repeats the pattern.
Once again the key to this fight is to get in and burn fast so that you don’t have to deal with the later phases. One of these involves fire to rain down from the sky putting puddles under your characters that you constantly have to keep dodging out of. There are patterns for avoiding this if you search online, but really… just abuse your elemental reactions and get through the encounter fast. A severely under leveled Barbara is likely going to beat anyone else at this fight, so legitimately if you have her take her with you for this encounter.
Oceanid – Water Ring Encounter
- Region – Liyue
- Closest Port – Bishui Plain
- Ascension Characters – Barbara, Mona, Xingqiu
Now for the fight that I find myself enjoying the least, because it is also quite possibly the strangest. In order to get here you have to swing out to a stone platform, which in itself is made up of a bunch of smaller platforms. There will be no visible boss at first, but instead a different colored puddle of water that I have marked with a circle in the above image. To begin the fight you need to just walk over to the puddle. This fight is what is referred to as a “Ring Encounter” in MMORPG terms and while there is a large boss visible flying around you can’t actually deal any damage to it. Instead you will be fighting a series of summoned water constructs that take various animal forms. Each wave of animals is going to have slightly different mechanics, but the important thing is that you focus your dps on them and take them out. Each time a wave dies it will deal a certain amount of damage to the boss, and this ultimately how you whittle down its health bar.
After two waves of adds the second aspect of the encounter begins to kick in. The boss will choose two platforms and these will begin to sink reducing the total safe area for you to be fighting on. You can’t deal any damage while you are in the water, but the constructs can absolutely deal damage to you. You need to keep burning the waves of adds and moving to safe platforms until you ultimately have dropped the boss to zero. While I have never got close to this, I am guessing the soft enrage for the encounter is when you run out of ground to stand on. Ultimately you want to use whatever characters you have with a strong reaction to water. I tend to focus on Lightning and Ice here, with Fire being a deep third that I am only using for passive damage increases.
Final Thoughts
I hope this helps someone out there gain some confidence to start taking these elites down solo. They really are not that difficult once you understand the mechanics and so long as you are mindful of your elemental reactions. If you have any specific questions I am more than happy to answer them in the comments below. I am going to try and remember to keep this post updated as new regions of the game open and with them new boss encounters.
