No official statement on that particular matter, but it's assumed Hu Tao's "hush-hush" delayed release is due to cultural tradition. The standard release cycle would have had her release coincide with the New Year's celebrations, during which it's considered bad karma to discuss the dead, and Hu Tao's character is heavily associated with the afterlife.

 

Which also does explain why Keching was shoved into the middle of the event, to space out Hu Tao until next month.

 

I wonder if the whole "They had to add more members to the Dev team just to keep up" played a role in why the Liyue event felt so empty. I'm going to assume that 1.3 and 1.4 were already pretty far into the pipeline and perhaps they never expected the game to be THIS popular. We'll see if next year's events are bigger than this years.

The move also feels strategic. Given that Albedo AND Ganyu had to spend a bit more time in Beta for some buffs, so they say, giving some extra time between release could give the devs more time to iron out new characters and what not.

 

We've already seen that creating four new playable characters every patch was unsustainable.

Genshin Impact is much more developer effort than a traditional Gacha game, with full 3D characters and animations, and the action combat results in more nuances in character balance beyond simple spreadsheet numbers. Means they have to make each individual character seem more meaningful, and gameplay more engaging than the standard in order to tide people over until the next release. It's definitely an ambitious design pipeline they've laid out for themselves.

I do wonder what the release slate is going to look like when Inazuma comes out. Mondstadt and Liyue felt relatively "complete" from the start because of the massive initial character roster. Not sure if Inazuma will get the same benefit, or if we'll be waiting for several updates afterward to "catch up".

 

I think we'll get the next biggest hint when Lupsi Harpustdum or whatever it's called comes around, unless that's literally just Oktoberfest in which case we'll definitely get another 'major' event happening before then.

But yeah, I think we'll definitely start seeing content ramp-ups after 1.4.

What the actual hell did Ganyu need buffs for? She's the most absurdly overpowered character in the game in terms of base damage output.

I suspect that with the new 'rerun banner' plan it'll take a few updates to 'catch up' as you say, but this is a good thing because then it gives the devs a little more time to space out new character releases. I also have to wonder if we'll be getting sequential content releases for areas to extend how long we spend there. Dragonspine is a self-contained sub-region of Monstadt but the quests count for Monstadt reputation and I wouldn't be surprised if 1.4 gives us something similar for Liyue in the form of Blackcliff Forge or the Chasm.

 

Apart from the Lantern Rite, the Genshin devs have stated that they don't want to tie any in-game events to real-world holidays. That's why we had no specific Christmas-type event. Especially with them pushing the international markets hard, they don't want to be beholden to celebrate every little thing that comes along, and all the potentials for faux pas that that also invites.

 

Ah, I thought 1.2 was supposed to be a Christmas themed thing given, well, a giant mountain of snow.

 

Yeah. I'm certainly excited to see what Mihoyo has on store.

I wonder if Ganyu's buffs was really that she was just Ice Amber so her current damage came as a result of that.

 

It was Winter themed, but there was zero celebration or merry-wishing involved.

 

So I'm progressing along as planned - Xinyan's friendship is almost at 10 which will get me the Song's End namecard which I love the look of, and when that happens I'll be ready to rotate her out with Chonggyun. He's at level 60 so far and I've given him Whiteblind since Noelle hasn't been in play since forever, but she'll get that back once I get Snow-Tombed up to par. I just need more of those Debrican tiles. Talents also do need to be brought up but he's at level 4 all around so he's fine for now.

Albedo is level 70 with heavy investment into the Gladiator's set, got a full five-star collection that happen to have strong defense in addition to crit rate bonuses. Dude's a freaking blender of damage and between Mona and Fischl always has a shield up with all the geo reactions he's causing.

Xiangling also has been making good progress as my secondary DPS. With the Jade Spear at level 60 the only real thing keeping her down is her talents which are also only at level 4 - and of course she too uses the same books as Chonggyun because it wasn't bad enough trying to grind those goddamn ballad books - and I just swap her in and out with Mona as the situation demands. Namely against the Cyro flower. I did just raise her ascencion to 5 though and I'm at the point in Spiral Abyss where you split into two teams, so she's one of my strongest secondaries.

Mona herself really hasn't had any effort put into her because she's stuck at level 60 until I can actually get some headway in kicking Oceanid's ass, I'm short two of the boss-exclusive drop items. This is why I've been investing so heavily into Chonggyun because electro doesn't do shit against those water minions fast enough.

Fischl's kind of just been coasting at 70, since even though I've discovered she is insane against the flowers when they're stunned, she's really just around to pop Oz to proc with Mona's water taunt. Truth be told I really would like to swap her with Amber but...well, without Amber having any constellations invested in her, all of her abilities are pretty weak as Baron Bunny simply isn't an effective taunt and takes too long to blow up, as compared to every other archer skill in the game which are effective taunts, support damage, or Childe who just makes water blades and goes CQC and does Riptide chain damage.

I also finally ended up beating both the wolf and the giant Primosap - admittedly I wasn't really planning on it, but I was clearing out quests and when I realized you had to kill the damn thing, I kinda just willingly sacrificed most of my stacked healing item I had equipped. And the wolf I had to solo for the investigation log and that took some hash brown sacrifices but it admittedly wasn't the worst as I'd encountered last time. Just long.

Also, I'm curious as to what the full map of Teyvat looks like, since it hit me that the Fatui/Scheznaya bank is called Northland bank, so that would imply they're in the North, but while there's definitely something to the north of Monstadt (complete with what I can only guess is the original gate to Stormterror's Lair leading into a giant nothing right now), it seems kind of odd for the Traveler's Journey to likely head south to Inazuma, presumably, especially when that country is closed to most outsiders. It's probably for plot reasons since Scheznaya being the end-point where we have our Childe rematch and most likely fight the Tsarista in a major point in the story. Not the end though, because there's absolutely no way the long-term plan isn't going to take us to see Celestia and probably reveal some uncomfortable truths.

 

I feel like this is the month where I discovered characters I've had for ages are really good. Beidou is incredible, Fischl is a fantastic energy battery, and Chongyun plus Beidou is a murderfest, a beautiful murderfest.

They make some parts of Spiral Abyss really easy. But I'm still stuck on level 7.

 

Fail Mihoyo. You had one job. The Leyline Overflow event has started, but you wouldn't know it in-game, since they've failed to post a notice of any sort. So anywho, if you find yourself at a shortfall of Mora/XP, now might be a good time to stock up a bit. Three Leylines per day will give you Condensed Resin-level rewards, for only 20 Resin (don't convert your Resin to Condensed before doing Leylines, or you won't be able to claim).

When the event was announced, I was certain that I was just going to use it all up to stock up on XP books. But as these last few weeks have progressed and we've been gifted a fair share of them, I'm realizing that I'm getting far more strapped for cash. I've only got 2-3 characters on the immediate docket for building, but upgrading artifacts costs a lot, not to mention that Lvl8 Talents cost 480K apiece, and it just goes up from there for Lvl9 and 10. So I need cash, badly.

Aesthetics aside, Snow-tombed is a craptacular weapon for Chongyun, and is the same reason why Chongyun continues to struggle as a main-DPS candidate in the current meta (well, that, and his stat-scaling, with the weakest primary attack multipliers of all Claymore users). His Cryo Infusion actively gimps most of his weapon selections. Of the available offerings at the moment, the best looks to be the Lithic Blade, but that's slightly situational, and currently only available on Limited Banners, so is not the most readily accessible. The other DPS 4*s can work, but don't necessarily have great synergy with him either. He doesn't really need energy regen because he's got a cheap, spammy burst, so Favonius and Sacrificial seem wasted.

Aside from Sneznaya, there's also set to be some sort of romp in Khaenri'ah, the blasted wasteland outside the continent of Teyvat that houses the gateway to the Abyss that all the monsters supposedly hail from, and is the home nation to Dainsleif and Kaeya.

 

I thought they did post about it and when it would start.

Also, Hu Tao has officially stolen my heart.

 

It's on the calendar in the patch overview, but there's no flashing in-game warning at the moment that says "do this now!", so it's rather easily missed, unless you're actually doing Leylines and just happen to notice it.


On Hu Tao, I like what I've seen of her character and animations so far, but I don't think I want to build her. She's another "DPS Window" character like Xiao and Tartaglia, and I can just build Tartaglia if I want in on that action.

Made my attempts on the Weapon Banner, and it gave the the wrong damned spear, in the form of the Jade Winged, instead of Staff of Homa. Boo-urns. Whelp, Rosaria's got her name on that, then, whenever she comes along. It's not a great Zhongli weapon. Thankfully, my pulls were not a complete waste there, since almost all the 4*s were useful to me. Wound up max-refinining my Widsith, collecting an R3 Sacrificial Bow for Diona, as well as claiming an R3 Lithic Spear, which I suppose is going to Xiangling. No luck on the Blade yet for Chongyun. I'm just thanking god RNG didn't decide that Lion's Roar was my dump weapon this time around. We'll see how RNG treats me in the next couple of weeks.

 

Maybe The Bell for him, then, since that just gens up a shield? Like I said, my primary reason for trying to build him up is specifically to shut down Oceanid minions by abusing the crap out of freeze reactions simply preventing them from doing anything as the frog, boar, squirrels, and crabs just do NOT chill the fuck out and give you time to recover like any other boss.

 

First Hu Tao character teaser is up:

Her dark sense of humour is on point.

 

I actually thought this was Wolf’s Gravestone so I could give it to Diluc. But this will do nicely .

 

You jerk. Gimme.

 

She dares to call my boy Zhongli a walking encyclopedia. (Even though he is.) Really though, I like her. Hopefully we get a story quest about her.

 

That's probably in part why Zhongli has a difficult time dealing with Hu Tao. As per his profile, he's very "particular" when it comes to things like customs and etiquette, and the fact that she's so willfully blase around him, not properly respecting her elder and such probably wears on his patience.