Genshin Impact

Every so often you just have to sit back and revel in how extremely gorgeous Genshin Impact is. There is a lot of comparrison between this game and Breath of the Wild and it is completely valid. However to me, Genshin Impact improves upon that formula in so many ways that it feels iterative. My core problem with BotW was weapon durability and it greatly hampered my enjoyment of the experience. Also the world of Hyrule felt extremely dead, which I think is the vibe they were going for… but there is at no point where I feel isolated and alone in Teyvat. Both Mondstadt and Liyue feel bustling with life and activity in spite of bumping into other people in a fairly similar cadence as that of Breath of the Wild.

I had grand goals last night of testing out the multiplayer functionality, but for whatever reason I was feeling deeply out of it. Co-Op as the game calls it is gated both on a specific part of the main story quest and on reaching Adventure Rank 16. After that point it seems like you can just pop into the same game as one of your friends, or seemingly complete strangers as that seems to be what is shown on the actual Co-Op menu. I am curious if it only works for Domains (aka Dungeons) or if it will allow folks just to roam around together in the overworld. If the later is the case I am curious how it handles each player being progressed differently in unlocking things in the overworld.

My last night instead was spent hanging out on the couch, snuggled with cats and unlocking all of the shrines in Liyue. This of course meant that I did a bunch of assorted side content while roaming the land. For me at least the game is best when I am just wandering aimlessly and doing whatever happens to be over the next hill. This is the way that I play Skyrim, and in truth my preferred method of playing games like Destiny 2 that have a more open map mode. As a result I tend to be lagging behind in the Main Story quest. I go through these phases where I burn through whatever quest is available and then go back to open world exploration. Tonight when I get settled in I am going to pick up where the story was gated at AR18.

My overarching goal this week was to hit AR20 so that I could claim the free healer and also do the dungeon that unlocks Xiangling. However on the later part I ended up getting her through a Wish pull, so when I earn her through the dungeon it will unlock a constellation. I have to say I am a little on the fence about that system, namely that the only way you can unlock the higher tiers of your characters is through getting duplicates. Getting a dupe in Dragalia Lost felt awful, but at least you got generally useful currency and that the progress was not gated. I doubt I will ever play at a level that requires to have a full party of characters with all of their constellations unlocked. That said it is a little annoying knowing that dupes are the prime vehicle for high end progression. You do however get a significant number of free pulls so maybe over time it shakes out.

I am still deeply enthralled by this game, and in truth so far there is nothing that has required me to spend any money. On the other hand I want to spend a little money because the game is so damned good, that I want to do something to support its development. It seems like they are following the release cadence of a mobile developer because there are already patch notes on the test realm for the content updates coming in 1.1 which apparently includes an entire new region of similar size to Liyue. If this game can stay this free feeling while expanding at the rate that something like Dragalia Lost did… we maybe have a new MMO sensation on our hands.

I am so sorry Noelle but you have officially been replaced. I feel confident that PizzaMaid will continue the tradition of using the big bashy battle mage, but I have a new main. Largely this is due to the fact that I made the mistake of looking at tier lists for Genshin Impact. For those unfamiliar with the concept, when a game like this comes out folks end up ranking the best characters and assigning them a value that depends on the specific list creator but S is usually at the top and then it cycles through the A/B/C rankings after that. Ever list that I found seemed to rank Razor as either S rank or A depending on who was doing the creating, and putting Noelle at C or D depending on the list.

After kitting him out with a decent weapon and some artifacts, I absolutely understand the ranking. Initially I was a huge fan of Noelle for her sheer tanky prowess and the ability to just stop taking damage. Unfortunately a lot of the encounters require you to kill X number of things within a time limit, which means you need someone with a significant amount of burst damage. Noelle is not bursty at all and Geo right now has very limited elemental reactions. Lightning on the other hand chains on water, fire and ice exceptionally well and when paired with the sword I am using that causes increased damage after an elemental debuff has been applied… I can just straight up shred things with the wolf boy.

The only negative however is that I find myself needing to eat to regenerate my health constantly. So I really need to get to Adventure Rank 20 so that I can unlock the free healer that is part of an event that is going on currently. Having someone that can top off the party would be extremely beneficial, but my new lineup tends to favor the main character, amber, razor that I spend most of my time on and Kaeya or Ice boy as I tend to refer to him as. Due to some lucky pulls I have them all equipped with four star weapons and am working on unlocking those further.

You end up unlocking a 4 star sword through Adventure Rank 10, but I found myself trying desperately to find a two hander. After some research I found a quest that would ultimately get me one. On a peninsula that is Southeast of Town there is place called Dadaupa Gorge. When you arrive there you will see the crossed trees in this watery valley and surrounding the trees will be three wind barriers and a chest inside them. There is no way to drop down from above so you ultimately have to figure out a way to drop the barriers. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take screenshots before completing this so you are just going to have to imagine the wind barriers.

Surrounding the camp are three Hilichurl camps that I have marked on the map with colored rings. Inside of each of these camps is an elemental pillar that you will need to activate. The Southwest camp will be lightning, the southeast fire and the northern camp is ice but that one is a bit tricky. Inside of that camp is a ring and when you approach it it will start an event. You will have 1 minute and 40 seconds to kill 10 monsters. These will range from frost slimes and a frost wizard to a wave of Hilichurls including one of those big brute types with the shield. Burst damage is key and the ability to exploit elemental weaknesses.

After dropping all three shields, you will be able to walk up to and open the chest in the gorge. There will of course be an assortment of random items, but there will be two guaranteed drops. The first is a four star Berserker’s feather artifact. Artifacts are randomly rolled but it should in theory always have attack power and then an assortment of random stats that may or may not help support that. I got one with defense, crit and hitpoints in addition to the attack power. It is the first four star artifact that I have found so far, and seemed to make a significant improvement in damage output.

The second guaranteed drop is Northlander Claymore Prototype, which can be forged at the Blacksmith into a Prototype Aminus. The challenge with this however is that the materials required are rather scarce. They can usually be found up in the mountains and in all of my travels and making a beeline for every type of ore/crystal that I can find… I have only gathered 13 crystal and 27 white iron. Thankfully I lucked into a few 4 star two handers off wishes, but I am likely still going to grind this out just to see how good the weapon ends up being.

I’ve found a few other of these outdoor puzzles that I am working my way through, but the solutions have seemed significantly less clear. I am sure I will post about them once I have them figured out. Hopefully the solution to the Dadaupa Gorge puzzle helps someone out there. Still greatly enjoying the game, but mostly focused on figuring out ways to raise my Adventurer level to 20 so I can unlock that healer.

Yesterday was the first official day of Genshin Impact, seeing as how the servers were not supposed to be active for nearly as long as they were last night. I am not sure how much I talked about it yesterday, but the game has two ranks an account level rank called the Adventure Rank, and a per character level. Many of the things in the game are gated on your Adventurer level and not your character level, and right now my goal is to get to rank 20. Currently there is a promotion going on and if you get to rank 20 before the 1.1 patch lands you end up getting what is supposedly the best healer in the game as a character that you can play. Currently I am Adventurer rank 12 and it feels like it is slowing down considerably already.

All of that said, the core problem folks seem to be having is an inability to download the game. I managed to get it down on PC and my phone… but when it came to installing on the tablet I was doomed with the same challenges that everyone else seems to be having of prodigiously slow download speeds. There are a bunch of “fixes” floating around but it largely seems to be random chance. I won the lottery with my first two connections, and now am in the dregs with so many other people on the tablet. Some folks say that starting and stopping the download can maybe get you a faster speed, and others claim that on the PC at least running it as administrator helps. Whatever the case this seems to be the worst part about this launch because I have not run into any issues actually playing the game on the servers.

Were it not for the download issues I would honestly consider this one of the smoothest MMORPG launches I have ever experienced. I’m now in the process of populating my friends list with players and I gotta say Yuhki is making me feel completely inadequate here. Dario is just a bit ahead of me and Namaslays just a bit behind, but I figure she will catch up rapidly. I’ve not had a chance to test out any of the multiplayer options, but I will say one of the huge positives of this game is that there will always be another character to level. Right now I am in the midst of trying to sort out what I want to be my primary team of characters.

My favorite character by far is Noelle the Battle Maid. She is a Geo character which seems to be a fairly neutral element that isn’t super weak to much of anything but also not really super strong. She is by far the most tanky character that I have because her E is a crystalline shield that she can surround herself with. It has a neat intrinsic ability of absorbing the first element that it comes into contact with and then any damage taken of that element actually heals Noelle. She is a two handed wielding character so I tend to main her and use the other characters to apply elemental debuffs that she then exploits while they are weakened.

Another character that I pulled is someone that I think Ashgar would like, because it is essentially Kevin from Trials of Mana. Instead of transforming into a werewolf however, he has a void spirit wolf that is his ultimate and allows him to take that form and dish out massive damage. Other than that he is a two hander character, which makes me highly likely not to use him much given that I am already pretty damned attached to Noelle. Had I gotten this character first though, I would have likely spent more time playing it.

The last of the characters that I have pulled is Sucrose and honestly… I am not feeling her at all. I mean I don’t love the way that the pure casters feel in this game for starters. On top of that she is the same elemental type as the Traveler so it immediately hampers her usefulness. Maybe at some point I will stop playing with the primary character, and then her value might become more evident. I was really hoping when I saw her that she would end up being a healer of some sort, but sadly instead is a wind mage.

At the moment my party looks a little like this with the main character leading, Amber in the two slot for sweet sweet fire debuffs and when I need to do ranged attacks, Noelle in the three slot as my tank and the one I end up running around the world with the most and the four slot is mostly swap space for whoever I need to run with for a specific encounter. I lean towards Lisa because she can at least apply a decent damage debuff but I am also not super thrilled with her as an actual damage dealer. If I could find a four star or better two-hander I would probably kick my traveler character to the curb and replace him with icy boy or just run a double mage combo with Sucrose giving me some wind power.

Noelle so far really is my jam and having a lot of fun playing with the character. The only problem is without having that four star weapon I am really questioning if I should be pouring resources into her weapon, which in turn limits her damage output. I’ve heard for brawler type characters that the base damage of the weapon ends up making a huge difference in how much damage they are capable of dishing out. I need to do some research to see what quests can end up getting me a two hander that is at least four star, since adventure rank 10 got me a four star one handed sword.

All in all I am super into this game. We’ve talked on AggroChat about a mobile/pc hybrid MMORPG being the next big thing. I don’t think this one works exactly like Tam had envisioned but it does make me wonder if we are witnessing the birth of a new phenomena here. I played Dragalia Lost for a really long time, and had I been able to play it on my PC I probably would STILL be playing it. I think for me the real determinant is going to be if the Switch version cross plays with PC. If that happens then I am so on board with this game because it will let me play the same characters on the two platforms that I care the most about, all the while still giving me access from a phone in the times when it is the only gaming device I have on me. I wish Sony would have not been butts about cross play yet again, because right now they are the only platform that is walled off from the others. That almost happened with Destiny 2 until Bungie and the community shamed them into supporting it.

Now that hopefully more folks have had a chance to play, any new thoughts about the game? If you are playing throw me a friend request at 600023101. I have no clue how any of the multiplayer stuff works yet but I am sure at some point there will be grouping happening. Are you feeling the game or is this going to be a pass for you? I ‘m still poking my head into World of Warcraft on a daily basis as well and I hope to finish my Rogue before the expansion pre-patch but right now I am trying real hard to hit 20 adventurer and then I can chill out a bit. I want that free healer!

Yesterday a game launch happened that was not even on my radar. Genshin Impact is a new action MMORPG from Shanghai based developer miHoYo. The sub text of their studio logo says “Game Otakus Save the World”, so it is not shocking that Genshin Impact is super anime style. I had seen the game advertised to me on Google Play but honestly didn’t think much about it. What ultimately interested me is the fact that the game is available on a number of non-Mobile platforms and reported features cross play across them all. Since the Genshin Impact website is nonsense here are some direct links.

• Windows PC
• PlayStation 4
• Android
• iOS

One word of warning is that this downloads and patches notoriously slowly. The above image appears to be about the worst case scenario that I have seen. The image is snagged from a friend of mine that posted it on twitter. For me I saw between 2 MB/s and 5 MB/s and the PC download completed in about an hour and a half. I just want you to go into this expecting that it is going to take a long time to complete the client. If you are playing on mobile, the game downloads quickly but you are slapped with an almost immediate 6 GB download, so make sure you are doing this on WiFi to keep from getting exorbitant mobile charges.

Genshin Impact is the sort of game where you collect a large number of characters who each perform slightly differently. Then you make a part of four out of that larger stable of characters. I’ve been lead to believe that playing through the main story campaign will ultimately unlock a total of six free characters, and then additionally characters are “summoned” via a “gacha” mechanic. For those not used to mobile games there is almost always some sort of a summon or “draw” mechanic that allows you to spend a currency that can be purchased or often times very slowly accumulated in game in order to get random chance at getting something good… aka like a gachapon/gashapon capsule machine. This is ultimately where these games make their money because a lot of players won’t want to wait for the currency to build up but instead spend money outright for a chance of getting new characters.

The game starts with a sequence that makes absolutely no sense, and the game does not attempt to explain it. You are fighting some sort of a god with your sibling and you the player are given the choose of which sibling to play as. I chose the male sibling which set my main character and also sets the key goal if the game… to save your sister. This is a well trodden trope for this sort of mobile game. In Dragalia Lost there is a very similar opening sequence where someone is captured and the goal is in theory to get strong enough to be able to find and get back this person. Shenanigans ensue while trying to make this happen, and I figure the same will be true with Genshin Impact. I am just wondering if they will set up my sibling to ultimately be the eventual end boss of the game as they become perverted by whatever force captured them.

Like so many of these games there is a rock paper scissors style elemental buff and resistance scheme going on. Each character you will have access to has some sort of an element associated with them. Your named character will end up being able to wield the power of wind, and the first character you encounter is an Archer that can use fire attacks. Each of these are weak or strong to various other elements. The above chart is the best I have seen as of yet, created by a beta tester. I am hoping as this game becomes more popular someone will create something that is a little more straight forward and easier to read. You can do interesting things like combo two elements together… like if there is something on fire and you cast Swirl a wind ability it will turn the Swirl into a sort of Fire Tornado.

So far the game feels very much like what would occur if you took Dragalia Lost and combined it with Breath of the Wild. In fact the game borrows an awful lot from the most recent Zelda game in the way you traverse the world and even in the way chests appear from solving simple puzzles or defeating a camp worth of enemies. Very early on you get a glider and it has a stamina bar just like in Breath of the Wild. Additionally you have surfaces that you can climb which also depletes your stamina meter, and other metal walls that you cannot traverse in such a manner. There is also a very similar cooking mechanic that takes place at campfires allowing you to convert everything that you collect into various stat buff foods.

Instead of Shrines there are various temples that you will need to delve in order to complete puzzles and get to the other side. These puzzles might involve lighting something on fire or freezing water to create a bridge. They are nowhere near as clever as Breath of the Wild but it gives you a very similar feel. Instead the temples are a number of hidden chests that you can unlock and these become more out of the way and often require you using your elemental abilities in interesting ways to get to them.

I’ve not played much of the game yet as it launched last night around 8 pm CST, but I did play enough to get a general feeling for the game. So far I am enjoying myself greatly, and the world is extremely fun to traverse. If I understand correctly the first world you visit is the world of wind, and then as new areas open up in the game they will each be themed off of an element. Much like Breath of the Wild there are a bunch of side objectives, like finding shrines of the seven gods which serve as Sheikah Towers and give you visualization into a region of the map. You have a level associated with each character and another level that seems to be associated with you the player called an adventurer rank. Doing random stuff in the world seems to make this one go up.

There are of course a ton of videos out there talking about the game and how to optimize this thing or that thing, but of the various ones I watched yesterday I found myself enjoying DemoneKim the best for delivery. I am sure I will be writing about this game some more as I figure things out, but right now it is extremely fun just to roam around and explore. If you have ever enjoyed mobile MMOs and wished you could play them on a PC… then this might be a game for you. If you find yourself easily frustrated by Gacha mechanics… then maybe give it a pass.

The game uses a friend code type system called your UID, which can be seen at the bottom of the screen in all of the screenshots I have taken. If you find yourself exploring this game over the coming weeks, feel free to throw me a friend request at 600023101. I have no clue HOW friends work as of yet, but usually there is some passive mechanic in this sort of game where it is beneficial to have active friends. Also if you are playing this game I would love to know your own thoughts. Drop me a line below in the comments to let me know what you think so far.