Yo! I hear today is Genshin Impact’s first anniversary. According to Paimon, my own first anniversary is 11/11/2020 so any looking back on the year will have to wait till then. Except I won’t do that because I’ve written about it many times before. Besides I’ll be busy still sinking my teeth into Genshin Impact‘s Inazuma updates. I kinda wish they had rationed out the islands so the Inazuma experience would last longer though. Seirai Island in particular could have been kept till the next patch.
I’m not really complaining though. It was good. It is still good. And it will be even better when they release the last island. I see a big bump in the world map next to Seirai Island where it might be located. Looking forward to it!
Quick thoughts on my experiences with patch 2.1 – 2.2
💎The major sidequests are a bit tedious but also kind of fun. Obviously I used a FAQ or guide for about 50% of them, and I’ve abandoned the more annoying ones. But the ones I’ve done so far like the Sakura tree quest and part of the Orobashi Legacy quest and Tatara tales quest feel rewarding because you’re actually changing terrain and making lasting differences. Or as lasting as a game that could go offline any day can be, anyway.
The anniversary theater was fun to watch.
💎I didn’t think much of the main archon quest, though. It all seemed a bit silly to be prancing around with Yoimiya and Ayaka and the resistance when Raiden Shogun could have wiped us all out in one go if she had wanted to. Worst parts of the quest were
1) Having to play Ayaka’s awfully boring character quest. What was that thing at the end, a mating dance? I cringed so hard.
2) Traveler getting all worked up over one generic NPC who was obviously forced on us just so he could die and make us “angry.” So obvious. It’s like animes have some random little girl give the MC a flower or something. You just know she’s going to get kidnapped so he can go save her.
Anyway, really glad to get the archon quests over with so I can get those primogems and get back to overworld exploration! Plus when Sumeru or The Chasm comes out I’ll be ready to dive straight in.
💎It’s insane the amount of AR EXP needed to level up ranks after AR55. I’ve been doing quest upon quest, opening chest upon chest and I’m still only halfway to AR56. I heard someone reached AR60 the other day. Whoa.
💎I pulled Baal or Beelzebub or Raiden Shogun or Ei or whatever you want to call her. I got her in 30 pulls so either I got really lucky or I may have had some pity built already. Probably the latter from my failed attempt to pull Zhongli. I’m saving for his eventual re-run or for the next must-have shielder character. That’s the only hole in my my lineup right now.
I have Diona, who is working hard but is still a bit squishy. I have Beidou but can’t figure out how to use her shield consistently. I don’t have C6 Noelle yet. So I’d love to pull Zhongli and just set-and-forget the shields. As a character he irritates me somehow, but his shields are the easiest to use of all the characters I’ve trialed.
💎Back to the topic of Baal, there was some controversy about how “weak” she is and when/if Mihoyo is going to buff her and the Electro element in general. There was a lot of squalling and crying and threats to quit the game etc. I didn’t follow the saga too closely, but apparently the main problem was that Mihoyo gave a skill description for her, offered a different skill and changed the description to match. It’s definitely a scummy move, but am I going to quit over it? Nah. And Mihoyo knows it, which is why they hunkered down until it all blew over. I need to keep that move in mind for real life applications…
💎So anyway, I got my Raiden Shogun. Leveled her up to 70/80. Got a basic set of Emblem artifacts for her. Even leveled up her talents a bit. There’s just one small problem: her weapon. Her best weapon can be gotten for “free” but the catch is that you have to do the horrible fishing minigame to get it. And not just once but over and over and over again. I normally love fishing in games, but in Genshin Impact it’s too tedious and goes against everything I enjoy about the game.
I won’t spend a lot of time describing it, but basically you can get locked into a lengthy battle of attrition with a single little fish. And then you have to do it again and again, hundreds of times. I want to say “I’ll never do it!” but maybe when I absolutely run out of stuff to do, I can drop a line here and there. But that will be a long time coming because when I play an open world action RPG, I want action. And when I run out of stuff to do, I’d rather drop the game for a while until it gets its act together again.
💎So how strong is my Baal? Lol, dunno. I haven’t tried her out yet. The title was misleading, just like what Mihoyo did with the character. I haven’t leveled up her artifacts much, and she’s holding a level 20 Favonius Lance, so there’s really nothing to see yet. My current teams can clear most content reliably, and whatever they can’t clear I simply won’t do so… yeah. But I played her story quest and she was pretty powerful + kinda cool. It will be fun when I can also hit all those big fancy numbers, pew pew pew.
💎Apart from Baal, I’m currently focused on building Ninguang. I tried out Childe, Yanfei, Ganyu and Ninguang during the Hyakunin Ikki event, but only Ninguang really blew me away. For a 4-star, her damage was no joke at all, and she was very easy to use unlike Ganyu and Childe. Plus I have her already, so why not build her? The only downside is farming that annoying Domain of Guyun with the flying Ruin enemy. I hate those guys.
💎As a matter of fact, I need to farm a lot of artifacts for everyone. From around AR45 to AR50 I worked hard to get everyone a basic, but not optimum set of artifacts. Now it’s time to go back and get the really good stuff. My main problem is getting enough Crit DMG without sacrificing Crit ATK. All my characters look like this when you look at their stats.
Great crtical hit rate, not enough damage. At all. Luckily I used barely any Fragile Resin during my artifact farming days, so I can pull them all out now. Even better, I’m strong enough to farm the domains by myself so I don’t have to depend on tedious co-op. Winning! Except… I get bored and tired after one or two runs of a domain so it’s going to take ages to get this done. I’ll think of it as a very long-term project for now.
Current and Future Teams
The biggest dilemma now. I have so many characters, and I’ve built many of them to 70/80. My 5-stars are Xiao, Venti, Mona, Keqing, Baal and I just pulled Qiqi on the standard banner. For 4-stars, I have them all except Sara, Sayu and… someone? I might be missing one. Otherwise I have pretty much all the 4-stars in the game.
I usually field a team of Xiao, Bennett, Xiangling and Fischl for reasons I explained last time. But lately I’ve been thinking of different teams as well. I tried the so-called “National” team of Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu and Sucrose, but without Xiao dishing out the big numbers, it was a DPS loss. I’m going to try the same team but with Xiao instead of Sucrose. But where can I fit in Fischl? Oz auto-ing away in the background is such an easy source of extra damage and reactions that I’m loath to put her away.
Bennett and Xiangling power each other + give pyro resonance so I want to keep them both. But I’d like to have Xingqiu for the vaporize and additional heals… And then I’ve heard good things about Mona so I built her up a bit, but where to fit her in… instead of Xingqiu? What about Beidou who is supposed to be really good? And what do I do with Baal and Ningguang once they’re ready for the big show? Decisions, decisions…
Don’t mind me, it’s a good sign that I’m engaging with the game a little more. I will actively try out new teams going forward, if only because I’m sick of hearing the same voice lines all the time. I had a good time with a freeze-melt team of Xiao, Bennett, Xingqiu and Diona last time I played so there’s still fun to be had in Genshin Impact yet.
As for other games… yeah haha. I’m going well in Another Eden, Shining Nikki and Love Nikki, at least. I’ll just think of 2021 as “the year I took a break from regular games.”
A very fair review. I think the Inazuma main story was mostly carried by the visuals and music to a large degree (that part I do think Mihoyo do very well). I think the main archon quest has interesting concepts on the surface, but the execution didn’t pay off:
1) Really tired of seeing the Fatui to be behind or responsible for all the “bad things” in the world as some generic evil faction. Idk, I think it would be more interesting if this world had more antagonistic factions working against one another instead of just one single evil entity. Feels very “team rocket” to me
2) Baal/Ei gets forgiven too easily. She is easily responsible for hundreds of deaths that happened in the civil war that was carried out under her name. She stayed as a hikkimori in some weird dimension due to selfish reasons, so that already makes her a terrible ruler. Then when the whole arc resolves, everyone just forgives her? I think the traveler should had went all the way and help Inazuma revolt this useless eternity brat so they can get a better ruler, period.
3) Resistance army and Kokomi had like 15% screen time and was pretty much inconsequential to the outcome of the story. What kind of deus ex machina did they pull so Kazuha and a resistance squad could arrive at the palace main gate to parry Baal’s slash at the traveler? Please explain that one, Genshin writers.
Re: your points
1) Agree. The Fatui don’t seem particularly smart or subtle and yet they’re the big bad behind everything anyway. How dumb is everyone?
2) All the archons being forgiven for mass genocide is a thing in Genshin Impact. Ei is blatantly unrepentant about it and doesn’t care much about individual Inazuma citizens, so it’s not like she needs/wants anyone’s forgiveness in the first place.
TBH I have a bigger problem with Kokomi for starting a war she had zero chance of winning, essentially sending the fighters on both sides to their deaths, and for what? Nothing. And far from forgiving her, no one even senses that she’s done anything wrong to begin with.
3) Resistance army and Kokomi were indeed meaningless. But I theorize that their sudden arrival was due to a deal Kokomi had struck with Beidou and her crew to help them invade the main island. Maybe they were planning to storm the Tenshukaku with a team of elite troops to kill the shogun and end the war, IDK.
I’d rather have Genshin writers explain why a “master strategist” would start a civil war against a dictator capable of summoning massive thunderstorms and killing giant dragons with a single blow. A civil war featuring untrained civilians without visions. A civil war launched from a waterlogged island with no access to supplies for the army, leaving them vulnerable to “mystery sponsors” since the resistance is so ill-trained they never learned not to accept gifts from strangers.