|OT| Genshin Impact - Breath of the Elements

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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Weirdest demo of all times, what the hell.

There's so much to unpack, tomorrow is going to be the make or break moment for Fontaine and Furina.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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Won the 50/50, got C6 Charlotte along the way somehow and got my first Kirara from some of the ascension and Fountain standard pulls.
Very good start to the patch!
 
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Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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Also won the 50/50 for Furina, but zero Charlottes :crying-face:
I C6 Collei which is... eh, I guess. I got a bunch of random stuff, a Sayu con, another extra Ningguang and Gorou...

No way I'm touching the weapon banner this time, I got prodigious luck last time but that was with Homa, not going to risk the green donut, even if I like Baizhu.

Now to play the story...
 
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Dandy

Bad at Games.
Apr 17, 2019
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I lost the 50/50 to Mona, but it was at 30-40 pity, so not the worst thing. I then got Furina with 60 pulls after that. Only got 1 Charlotte, which is a shame, but I did get C4 on Collei and Beidou.

I've finished the AQ and have to say, it was amazing. I plan to jump in to Furina's quest ASAP.
 
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Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
Dec 5, 2018
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Well that AQ was heart wrenching, damn. And yea I'm gonna jump into Furina's quest tomorrow first chance I get.

I lost 50/50 while pulling on Baiz's banner but I think I might go for the guarantee on Furina's. Or I might get both. IDK. I also really want Navia, Clorinde, whatsherface (the other 4.3 leaked character), and probably most Natlan characters so this is getting rough after a pretty long drought for me :face-with-open-mouth-and-cold-sweat:
 
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Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
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Overall a very strong conclusion with a lot of fantastic moments, though I think the new boss is fairly underwhelming and a weak link, unfortunately.
I liked Furina before already, but she is absolutely one of my favorite characters in the game now, no buts.
Will be doing her character quest ASAP.
 
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Dandy

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I threw 30 pulls at the Baizhu banner and got Charlotte to C1. From what I've watched, she's an amazing healer. I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest of my primos at this point. I kinda want to keep going for Baizhu/more Charlottes, but I think I'll hold off until closer to the end of the banner, and see for myself how Charlotte is at C1.

I'm thinking Neuv, Furina, Charlotte and Kazuha.
 
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Dandy

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I just finished Furina's Story Quest. I was a bit skeptical of how it started, but it did everything it needed to, and the ending was really good. She's definitely one of my favorite characters as well.

Furina's VA was really good, and her performance made it clear who Furina becomes by the ending. I liked that it touched on earlier events from the AQ, and was relieved when it showed us how she got her Vision.
 
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Ascheroth

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Hydro nation continues to be kind to me and has granted me Mona from the standard banner, after 3 freaking years. ...Finally!

Also did Furina's story quest and have mixed feelings about it.

Furina was great, the NPC storyline was good as well and the cinematic was just beautiful.
But I really disliked how Paimon and the Traveller acted. Paimon was incredibly rude and obnoxious, and the Traveller also felt weirdly harsh.
Sure, they aren't really friends with Furina, but it just felt odd since both know her backstory and also contributed in hurting her even more by setting up the final trial at the end (even if was "fated").
The way they acted just felt oddly tone-deaf.
 
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Dandy

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Hydro nation continues to be kind to me and has granted me Mona from the standard banner, after 3 freaking years. ...Finally!

Also did Furina's story quest and have mixed feelings about it.

Furina was great, the NPC storyline was good as well and the cinematic was just beautiful.
But I really disliked how Paimon and the Traveller acted. Paimon was incredibly rude and obnoxious, and the Traveller also felt weirdly harsh.
Sure, they aren't really friends with Furina, but it just felt odd since both know her backstory and also contributed in hurting her even more by setting up the final trial at the end (even if was "fated").
The way they acted just felt oddly tone-deaf.
Yeah, I agree about that and I've seen a lot of people comment the same. It was definitely a weird choice to have the protagonists of the story pick on the tragic character.

Congrats on the Mona! I also got one when I lost the 50/50 for Furina, I've wanted her for a long time, though I have no idea when or if I will actually build her!
 

spindoctor

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Jun 9, 2019
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Debated posting an update since I haven't made much progress in the game since last time but there's still some stuff to talk about...

So I finished the Inazuma archon quest early last month. The plan was to wrap up the world quests, do the electroculus collectibles and then move on to the Chasm and then Sumeru. Getting out of Inazuma took much longer than I thought it would for various reasons but mostly because I was very sick for most of the time. I did finish up as many world quests as I could do and collected the electro thingies. Finished the region with a respectable 80%+ completion percentage. Did the archon quest in the Chasm (which was quite sad when you learn about the hilichurls).

Finally arrived in Sumeru and did the first act of the archon quest there. The lush green forests are an immediate, pleasant aesthetic upgrade over Inazuma and even Liyue. The cultural influences they have used to craft the region are... intriguing. Mostly because it is a mix of many regional cultural themes. I'm sure more learned people than me have probably done more insightful theses on this matter than I can. I find it a bit jarring when you can see influences ranging all the way from western North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia) going east to the Middle East and north to Persia (Iran) and then east again all the way to India. It's actually just a mix of all these cultures together in a somewhat unnatural way. In Sumeru city you see the architectural aesthetic is from somewhere, the furniture is from somewhere else, the music is from somewhere else, the language, the names, the markets and everything else are just different cultural influences thrown together. Almost feels like the designers were told to research all these cultures and they did a good job but at the last stage they just mixed stuff up. I'm not really complaining about it... just find it intriguing. It's like if you went to a restaurant and all their furniture/wall decorations were Chinese but all the staff were wearing traditional Indian attire and their menu was all French cuisine and they're playing hip hop music on the speakers. Nothing wrong with this, just... strange, right?

Anyway... a few weeks ago Mihoyo had a competition on their forum celebrating the anniversary. You had to comment in their forum thread and 10% of all people were given a Welkin as a reward. I managed to get lucky and got it. That was nice. I know it's only 500 bucks but hey, it's 500 bucks.

This banner has been quite good to me. I was at a fairly highly pity already because of my unsuccessful half attempts to get Zhongli back when he was around. So when Furina came I did two ten pulls and got her. She is really fun to play. Her healing is great and being on her skill it's immediately better than my previous healer Barbara. She also does loads of damage with her minions although the HP loss mechanic is something to keep an eye on. Don't have a great weapon for her but what can you do. Spent a few days running around Fontaine collecting flowers for her and and farming that easy boss to get her up to level 70 (which is as high as I can go for now). A few days after pulling her, I saw in my battlepass that I had completed 40/50 pulls for this period so I thought I'll do another 10 pull to complete that quest. In that 10 pull I got a Tighnari constellation. That's really good because his C1 adds 15% crit to his charged shots which is nice but also it means I lost the 50-50 so the next pull is guaranteed. Also, being in Sumeru means I have finally started upgrading him as well and he's at level 60. Dehya is still at 40 because I haven't gone far enough west to find the boss that drops her ascension materials.

I have about 270 wishes saved up now. Still deciding who to get. These last few events have had trials for some characters I don't have and I find myself really liking Neuvillette and Nahida. Neuvillette does tons of damage with his charged attack water laser beam. It's crazy good. Nahida just applies dendro everywhere. Will see if I can get them when they roll back around. Been seeing animations for Navia on Twitter and she's another super stylish character. Not going to pull for her I don't think.

I finished act 1 of the Sumeru story. Basically looking for Lesser Lord Kusanali. Ostensibly supposed to be a mystery but I know the moment I see Nahida I'll be like, yup, there you are. Kind of wonder if playing the game 3 years late sort of dampens the narrative impact of their stories. The entire Liyue story was about solving the murder of the Geo Archon but by now you already know it's Zhongli so it was a bit of a farce.

I'll continue the Sumeru story as and when I can. Looking back at it now, I cannot believe how naive I was to think I could somehow complete Liyue, Inazuma and Sumeru within 3-4 weeks before Fontaine arrived when I had just restarted the game. There was absolutely no chance in hell of pulling that off. The new plan is to hopefully finish Sumeru, Enkanomiya, Fontaine and whatever other regions are in the game before the next expansion arrives next August or whenever. That's more achieveable I think.
 
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Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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The cultural influences can be a bit jarring, but arguably, that's not that surprising for Sumeru as there are, well, different NPC cultures for reasons (and it's very relevant, if largely skimmed over in the archon quest, but much less so in the rest).
Fontaine does the same thing as you'll see, it's based on France, but there's ton of Italian influences, and a good chunk of English and Irish ones too. Plus it looks more like Switzerland than France actually... and Mondstadt was never really German at all and more generic western fantasy :cold-sweat:
Sadly all too common for Asian developers to mix cultures that are relatively close to each other (and to throw a shit fit when western games do the same for theirs).

The archon quests in general are a bit weird, because as you say, what your character is supposed to search for is blatant to the player (even before their banners I assure you, we all knew about them), but it's also not really what the stories are about, in Sumeru and Fontaine especially.
The Li Yue storyline was more disappointing than anything, but at least it had cool cinematics... though they were more about proving the next leadership than the threat they formed, so it felt very hollow...

And well, getting a random Tighnari con that early is fantastic really. :blobcheer:
As for team building, Furina is pretty amazing, I still haven't levelled her up much, not much time to do that, I've been in the artifact mines for a while. It's interesting to note that she - and Neuvillette even more so - have skyrocketed the value of Dehya. She is a genuinely good support for both of them.

Now I need to complete the new map and most of the side quests... I enjoyed the archon quests and Furina's one, but I have lots to do. It's really the side content and exploration that takes tons of time. The main quest itself is not the biggest time sink.
 

spindoctor

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Jun 9, 2019
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The new event story was totally depressing. I'm not saying that any topics or themes should be off limits for storytelling but I can't imagine stories about the loss of a parent or child can ever leave someone feeling good about it. I guess not all stories are meant to leave you feeling good?

I'm glad this event had a trial for Raiden Shogun because she turned out to be really fun to use. Although of course you have to imagine they tailored her stats to perfection for the trial and that's probably not achievable in regular use. Still, I did like that they gave powerful trial characters like Nahida, Alhaitham, Neuvillette. Despite that, I only managed to complete the first requirement (2000 points) even though I had the 4x multiplier enabled. Not complaining though... whenever an event comes around with a combat challenge I aim for the lowest requirement which has the primogem rewards because it's not really possible for me to get the high scores with my low AR and haphazardly built characters.

I have to say I really like the QOL of events and everything else counting as daily commissions. I finished the event challenges a few days ago and now I can just log in, claim 4 rewards that are waiting for me and they count as completing the daily chores as well. Genshin could use a whole lot of QOL changes, especially when you consider how many improvements Star Rail keeps getting all the time, so this one change is very handy. I would love it if they could bring the 240 energy and stored up energy system over from Star Rail as well.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
Nov 12, 2018
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The new event story was totally depressing. I'm not saying that any topics or themes should be off limits for storytelling but I can't imagine stories about the loss of a parent or child can ever leave someone feeling good about it. I guess not all stories are meant to leave you feeling good?
I don't think most Genshin stories are purely "happy happy". Many are bittersweet or sad.
It has many of stories about loss and grief.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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That was a pretty dark event, but it does end on a lighter note and spreading hope after tragedy.
Good story, good minigames, great pacing, very nice event for Freminet, hope they will improve all events like this in the future.

Still artifact mining, Neuvillette got a pretty good set but Furina is pretty damn bad. And still isn't 90 either.

But I reached pity on the standard banner and I got


That's pretty good, I didn't have a 5* bow before.
No idea on who should get it first though...
 
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Dandy

Bad at Games.
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I'm glad this event had a trial for Raiden Shogun because she turned out to be really fun to use. Although of course you have to imagine they tailored her stats to perfection for the trial and that's probably not achievable in regular use. Still, I did like that they gave powerful trial characters like Nahida, Alhaitham, Neuvillette. Despite that, I only managed to complete the first requirement (2000 points) even though I had the 4x multiplier enabled. Not complaining though... whenever an event comes around with a combat challenge I aim for the lowest requirement which has the primogem rewards because it's not really possible for me to get the high scores with my low AR and haphazardly built characters.

I have to say I really like the QOL of events and everything else counting as daily commissions. I finished the event challenges a few days ago and now I can just log in, claim 4 rewards that are waiting for me and they count as completing the daily chores as well. Genshin could use a whole lot of QOL changes, especially when you consider how many improvements Star Rail keeps getting all the time, so this one change is very handy. I would love it if they could bring the 240 energy and stored up energy system over from Star Rail as well.
I found my score was way higher with the multiplier set at its lowest. I just used Neuvillette and he melted every enemy the second they spawned.

Energy overflow and a 240 cap is my biggest want for QoL in Genshin. I love that in HSR I don't feel like I am being punished for not playing multiple times per day.
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
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I found my score was way higher with the multiplier set at its lowest. I just used Neuvillette and he melted every enemy the second they spawned.

Energy overflow and a 240 cap is my biggest want for QoL in Genshin. I love that in HSR I don't feel like I am being punished for not playing multiple times per day.
It definetiley wouldn't hurt, but it's not as bad as the numbers make it look because they operate on different timescales. HSR is 1 every 6 minutes, Genshin is 1 every 8 minutes. 160 Resin in Genshin would be a bit over ~210 in Star Rail. 180 is 24 hours in Genshin.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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Bumping the cap to 200 so you can make 5 condensed resins would have made sense years ago.
Weird decisions they've made sometimes.

But maybe there's more coming later, since we know there's a good chunk of QOL changes for 4.3 already.
 
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spindoctor

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A couple of nights ago I did that quest in Sumeru city where the Sabzeruz festival repeats itself and I liked it for a lot of reasons. I liked that they straight up introduced science fiction into this fantasy game (even though I suppose you could point to other things like Ninguang's floating fortress as sci fi as well). I liked that they didn't go with time looping (which everyone would have expected) and went with stolen dreams instead. That was a genuine surprise. It was quite a memorable introduction for the Dendro archon and I'd say the best one so far. I liked how you were virtually locked within the city until the quest was completed... sort of gave an oppressive feeling to the proceedings. And I was really touched by this moment in the story;

It was the strongest indication in the game so far about how much Paimon truly cares for the Traveler. I've honestly never understood why people in the community seem to hate her so much. I've seen complaints about how she talks too much which is basically criticism of how verbose the script is and... I mean, it's an RPG. Storytelling is supposed to be a core aspect of the genre. Anyway I liked the quest. Also finding out that Katheryne is a Sneznayan puppet made that make sense.

I really like the music that plays when you are in Port Ormos. Possibly the first time in my life I've enjoyed music which has instruments like the tabla, sitar and basuri.


(The title of the track - Forest of Jnana and Vidya... The spelling of Jnana is incorrectly taken from Wikipedia and is actually supposed to be spelt/pronounced 'Gyan' and it means knowledge in Sanskrit. Vidya also means knowledge actually. One can interpret the title as 'forest of knowledge and wisdom'.)

Also a mini milestone for me. I crossed 313 saved up wishes which is 50,000 primogems.

I saw an interesting post on the hoyolab forum a few days ago. Someone had a couple of hundred wishes or so and was wondering if he could get Raiden C2 when she shows up. People in the replies were talking about the odds of getting C2 or advising them to get C0 and her weapon or how constellations aren't worth it for non whales and one should get other characters instead. One person had an interesting perspective on the matter.

He said that instead of saving up primogems and wishing every few banners when someone interesting shows up, he saves up until someone he really really wants comes. So while long time players may have 20-30 or more limited characters, he only has 5 or 6. But when he does pull, he goes for minimum C2 + their signature weapon. He said it's more fun that way because a C2 + signature weapon character is substantially more powerful than a C0 + whatever purple weapon you try to make work with them. Obviously people with more characters will have more flexibility and variety but he asked how much of that variety is realistically used? Outside of specific situations like events that call for specific team compositions, how often are all (or even half of) the 20-30 characters being used?

Obviously there's no right or wrong opinion in this situation but I have to say that I do find some merit in the argument based on my experience with this game and Star Rail. In Star Rail I have a majority of the characters but half of them are untouched, less than a handful of 4-stars ever get used and even 5-stars are benched now. I have 2 teams good enough to complete the Forgotten Hall but I don't really like that mode. All regular quests and events and overworld stuff and farming is done by a mostly static team that can brute force all situations. So aside from "I feel like playing this other character" (which is perfectly valid btw), I don't really see the need to have a huge roster. But the biggest thing here is that fewer characters will mean less relic/artifact farming (and in the case of Genshin, less tiresome ascension material farming). I've mentioned time and again how un-fun I find that activity in these games so I'll just say that I am genuinely surprised at how much the misery of farming relics has diminished my opinion of Star Rail. I have nothing left to do in that game except farm more relics and more and more I find myself disliking the game because of it.

Anyway, I'm not suddenly going to start going for C2+weapons on any Genshin characters but yeah I did think that was an interesting way to go about playing these games.
 
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Line

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The first story quest in Sumeru is really the moment the game found its place. I agree that it was lovely, and I loved Paimon just the same. But I do understand why people find the pacing pretty bad at times, it can drag a lot but admittedly, they've been improving on that front. I strongly disagree with the people that think there's not enough combat in the quest lines though, the best ones had the least, and I don't think shoehorning a couple of mobs that explode before you end a rotation would have helped.
Makes the actual boss fights much more memorable, too.

And music in Sumeru is still probably my favorite. Fontaine is great, so is Inazuma, but the ambiance it brings is really unique, and I hope Natlan will follow with the same quality.


As far as constellations are concerned... I think it needs to be approached on a case by case basis, as for one, not all C2 (or more) are worth it. It absolutely turns Raiden Shogun into a DPS monster, but a lot of characters receive a much smaller boost until their C6.
I would say that constellations might not be a good idea at character release, even if you like them a lot... it could be temporary, either because of story reasons later on, or because their gameplay gets dull (I'll put Ayaka in this situation for me, I don't hate playing as her but I never really want to go back, unlike Ganyu which also fits the dull gameplay but that I still use sometimes) or is too cumbersome for most of the content (like all the burst focused chars).

I'd consider the weapon before constellations, as the boost can be extreme, and having a tailor made one is usually a much bigger difference than their C1 (even if weapons do cost more on average).

However all of that changes for reruns, as I absolutely see how getting cons for your favorites units that are staples in your teams being a viable position, especially when you know that you have no interest in patches worth of reruns of other chars, along new chars that don't interest you at all.

Long term, I think you need to have some want for the collection aspect to play a gacha, as if you don't and stick to only one team, they will inevitably get boring.
How fast and how hard it hits you varies... Hoyoverse games having such lame endgames is not helping, it's just not fun to push into Spiral Abyss or Memory of Chaos...
 

Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
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Personally I can't imagine not having a wide roster, playing the same couple of teams over and over seems horribly boring. On top of that, you can clear Abyss 12 with con zero and purple weapons, so not really sure what the "value" in stronger characters even is. In the overworld you can't usually even use a full team's abilities in a fight, most of the time 1 characters skill or burst will clear the fight out. Weekly bosses can be chunky but still, not sure the lack of variety makes up for 1 rotationing instead of 2 rotationing them.

No shade on people who just love 1-2 characters and wanna max them out, that makes sense, I just don't buy any argument about how it's more valuable, since it pretty objectively isn't. Given the variety of situations, resistances, enemies, challenges, etc., team variety is gonna be valuable for way more of your playtime.