Genshin Impact | 5.2 Special Program

[Dragon Lord]

I stayed up until 8 AM to watch the livestream, and I'm way too tired to go in-depth on my thoughts right now, so I'll just say this...

THAT WAS FUCKING AMAZING!

[Moonface]

You know it was probably good when it manages to get that reaction out of @Dragon Lord.

Here's the trailer for the Version 2.0 update, which is titled "The Immovable God and the Eternal Euthymia":



From what I can gather there's no release date for the update, but if anyone is aware of one let me know and I'll edit this post. Also, there were some global codes given out during the live stream which last for 12 hours, so redeem them quickly!

• AS6BQKLY9GLD (100 Primogems, 10 Mystic Enhancement Ores)
  
• GBNA9J5H9Y4H (100 Primogems, 5 Hero's Wits)
  
• LS6T4L9ZZ7TH (100 Primogems, 50000 Mora)
  

[Mr EliteL]

Just watched the YouTube re-broadcast. As much as I appreciate seeing some of the creative team, trying to follow what they were saying and reading the subtitles was difficult for my tired brain after a 10 hour shift, but did very much liked what I saw. New codes ahoy, but them in on my PS4 version, will soon on my PC version. Looking forward to the whole of Inazuma, new enemies, new characters (either playable or as NPC in story) and new events. Gardening to get flowers in the Serenitea is good, but probably gives a little amount but fine, more than an Expedition as it's over a day or two to grow them maybe. I'm assuming the release will be after Kazuha's banner finishes which by the time it has left, the 21st or around then. Hmm, need to look into that linking my miHoYo account with my PS4 account at some point or not, just hope I don't have to choose between which one I get to play on and hope I can keep both.

[Dragon Lord]

The 2.0 update should happen right when the current banner ends, which is in 11 days. Though with how big of an update 2.0 seems to be, I have to wonder how long that maintenance is going to end up being.

I loved everything about the stream. MiHoYo really went an extra mile to showcase how much work they put into this game, and how they actually listen to fan feedback and have eyes and ears in the community to pick things up (the fact that the one guy mentioned the meme about the wait for Ayaka really shows they pay attention and also they have fun with what is going on in the community).

I love the look of Inazuma. From it being based on Japan (the cherry blossoms are just gorgeous) and the color scheme of purple for the Electro element. Lot of cool environmental details they showed off for the region. Sounds like there's going to be a lot to do in Inazuma as well, maybe even more than we had in the first two regions. Love that we're getting a Pyro Hypostatis. I said a long time ago that I'd love to see how a Pyro Hypostatis would look, and then we eventually got the Cryo one, so I had hope that would lead to a Pyro one. Though I didn't expect a Pyro one to show up in Inazuma, but I guess they couldn't really re-do the Electro Hypostatis for the region. Though I guess they could have moved it to Inazuma and maybe changed the boss up a bit, but maybe Inazuma has an Electro Regisvine waiting for us some where instead.

Loved seeing the Electro Abyss Mage in that split second as well. And the new Fatui Mage looks hot pretty awesome too. Really can't wait to see what other types of new enemies we may be getting. They showed off a lot in this stream, but I know they had to have kept a lot of goodies secret for us to discover ourselves, and I can't wait. Inazuma had a lot of hype riding on its shoulders and it certainly did not disappoint. I feel as excited for this as I did when Genshin first released.

Ayaka looked as adorable as ever as well. Glad she's gonna be the first banner, since I'm close to pity, so hopefully I can win the 50/50 quickly and then save up everything else for Yoimiya. Though I kind of want that new sword for Ayaka as well. The new bow looks awesome as hell too, and I'll probably want that for Yoimiya. Might end up being a bit of an expensive Inazuma release for me if I want to walk away with both characters + their new weapons, haha.

As for keeping both accounts, you probably can as long as you make an alternative MiHoYo account for your PS4 account. I imagine if you use your current one for it, you'll have to pick which one to keep. Or maybe they won't even let you link them together since both have separate game saves attached to them. We'll have to wait and see how it works exactly, I suppose. Thankfully it's not a problem I have to think about, as I never had time to even think about a Genshin alt account with how many other gacha games I have to play as well, haha.

I took this screenshot right when the livestream was starting, just because it was like wow. This really shows how much hype there was over this stream:



Genshin Impact took over the #1 spot on Twitch. Eventually they broke 500K viewers as well. Biibili (Chinese streaming site) had over 14,000,000 viewers for the stream, from what I heard. Just absolutely nuts. Genshin really took over for that hour. For League of Legends, which is usually always #1, to get dethroned by a gacha anime RPG, I'm sure there were a lot of people just absolutely seething over it, and I love it.

[Moonface]

The 2.0 update should happen right when the current banner ends, which is in 11 days. Though with how big of an update 2.0 seems to be, I have to wonder how long that maintenance is going to end up being.

The PlayStation Twitter account has a tweet confirming the date is July 21, so roughly 11 days out like you said.

[Dragon Lord]

Just another couple of days until Inazuma drops! Super hyped. Cannot wait to pull Ayaka. Hopefully I can get her on my 50/50 pull. I never win the character 50/50, so Ayaka would be the perfect time for it to happen. Then I can have enough Primos left over to pull for her sword as well.

Though I am super tempted to pull Kazuha at the last minute here. I had no interest in him, but after seeing how well he synergizes with so many team comps, and especially helps Keqing a ton, I'm very interested in getting him now. It just sucks that we have both Ayaka and Yoimiya coming right after, and I highly doubt I can pull Kazuha + Ayaka + Ayaka's Sword + Yoimiya + Yoimiya's bow without putting in a good chunk of money into the game to accomplish all of it. So I gotta decide if being able to have a great team comp for Keqing is worth it or not. Really want to make her better though, as I absolutely love her and it's a damn shame that Electro is such a sub-par element. She could be so much better if Electro reactions just got a buff like Geo and Anemo have gotten. Let Electro be a top-DPS element so we have more choices for high-tier damage other than Pyro and Cyro.

Really want to be able to make a good Keqing comp, but ughhhh. Decisions decisions.

Aside from that inner struggle, I also took some time to go through the Golden Apple Archipelago using the Genshin Interactive Map to clean up any treasure chests that I had missed, just to make sure I was getting every single point of Adventure Rank exp the area had to offer, since it won't be available any more after tomorrow.

---

Post-update edit:

I managed to pull both Ayaka and her sword! Started with 13K Primos and ended with 6K, so it only took me 7K to get both of them. For the first time in ages, I won the 50/50 on the character banner and got Ayaka, and then I ended up getting the Skyward Pine on the weapon banner in 20 pulls, and then 20 pulls later got another 5*. Thanks to the new system in place on the weapon banner, I was guaranteed to get the Mistsplitter regardless on what it was (ended up being the sword itself though). Very happy with these results. Now I need to decide if I want to save the 6K leftovers to put toward Yoimiya in a few weeks, or if I want to aim for C1/C2 Ayaka and/or any Refinement Ranks for the sword.

Unfortunately I have nothing to upgrade Ayaka with since I have to go exploring around Inazuma to get the materials, but at least my girl is home. Can't wait to power her up!

[Mr EliteL]

Aw damn lucky you getting Ayaka's weapon. It was the first banner I pulled on and knew I was in Soft Pity range to get one of them, and got Skyward Pine instead. Yeah I should've waited for Yoimiya's weapon for that I think. I don't pull on the weapon banner enough and it was my first time actually getting a 5* there. Right now I received Chongyun on both my PS4 and PC after missing him for all this time, I got him twice. I'll be playing PC Genshin more this time as I'm so far behind and have plenty of Primos to gather from quests and such so I may pull for Ayaka there and Yoimiya on PS4 so I have both in some way.

Done a bit on Inazuma yesterday, might try and explore first while doing the first few quests in that area but the urge to go and just unlock all Waypoints and explore in-depth later is strong again. Like the new samurai enemies, beefier like the Fatui members and longer to take down unless it's raining of course.

[Dragon Lord]

Inazuma is gorgeous. Been having so much fun admiring the scenery while exploring around. Nice thing about Inazuma so far is that I haven't encountered any Pyro Slimes, so I've been able to go on a rampage with Hu Tao and nothing can stand up to her there.

Hoping to unlock the domains for Ayaka materials after work tonight. Haven't had too much time to play the last couple of days, sadly.

Also this was just announced on Twitter like 10-15 minutes ago, and it's not a collab I would have ever expected to see in Genshin:



Man, even Genshin graphics couldn't help Aloy not look ugly.

Anyways, Aloy will be a FREE 5* Cryo Bow user. She'll be awarded via in-game mail. PlayStation players will get her in October when the 2.2 update rolls out, and players on other platforms will get her a month later when 2.3 rolls out.

Unfortunately for Aloy, she's got Ganyu to compete with as a Cryo Bow user and since she's going to be free, we 100% know she's not going to hold up against Ganyu in the slightest.

[Moonface]

I think Aloy looks fine and even a little cute with that art style.

I just saw that Genshin Impact and Prime Gaming are joining forces to offer five months of free monthly content to all players, which can be redeemed here: https://gaming.amazon.com/loot/genshinim...p_p_be_all

I don't know what the requirements are to redeem the content, but hopefully it's nothing too bad.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah yes the random Aloy reveal I saw when went on the Twitter account the other day, I don't check it often so I didn't know straight away. Cool she'll be free and of course a bow user. Was slightly disappointed she's Cryo would thought maybe Electro but that would clash with the other new Electro bow user Sara. I'll try Aloy out when she releases, well see if I like her gameplay at least but yeah doubt she'll be as good as Ganyu.
Also speaking we got to see Kokomi, Sara and Raiden coming up later, I assume Yae, Tohma and Gorou will be after them and that'll be the Inazuma lineup for now. Not interested in Gorou, the others I'll be happy with getting but not aiming for anyone in particular just yet.

I haven't playing as much as I thought I would have by now, still haven't opened everything up in Inazuma yet and still slowly getting on with the Archon quest whilst doing other stuff, but yeah I have plenty to do still.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, there's no way Alloy comes even close to the levels of Ganyu. She's going to 100% be a novelty character and I'm expecting her to de-throne Qiqi as the currently worst 5* character (not that Qiqi is inherently bad, there's just no need for her levels of healing in Genshin right now, so her usefulness really drops off). She'll probably be more at the level of a middle of the pack 4* than anything.

I'm probably going to chase C4 Ayaka, so I'm gonna have to dump some money into the game, but I love Ayaka and I'm willing to invest in her. Her C6 is very tempting, but from what I've seen around, her C4 is the last super important constellation level for her. C5 and C6 is just more for showing off than anything. While the damage increase to her charged attack at C6 is nice, 99% of Ayaka's damage is coming from her insane Burst.

People have been saying that Yoimiya is pretty bad, via playing her trial version through her character quest, but I haven't done her quest yet, so I don't know for sure. If true, that'll be pretty disappointing, because I was really looking forward to her. She looked like she was gonna be a lot of fun. Then again, people also say Ganyu is terrible because of her play style, completely ignoring her extremely broken damage output and the fact she's still by far the overall best DPS in the game, so I can't put too much merit into what others say on this matter. Overall the Genshin player base seems to be negatively biased towards bow characters other than Venti. I'll have to see for myself at some point.

I also planned on pulling on Yoimiya's banner regardless, because I really want Sayu. She's got a passive that MAKES WILD ANIMALS/CREATURES NOT RUN AWAY FROM YOU. Which means you can collect all those Crystal Cores without having to chase the Crystalflies down before they disappear, or get all that juicy crab meat without the crabs burrowing underground instantly. That passive is going to make collecting food materials + crystal cores so easy that she's worth getting for that alone. Not sure if I'll actually build her (Anemo Claymore Healer seems like an odd set up).

So yeah, I'll probably do Yoimiya's story quest, and if she ends up being kinda meh like people are saying, I'll probably go all-in on Ayaka constellations, and then start saving up for... probably Kokomi. I guess it depends on if Kokomi ends up being a better Hydro enabler for a Ganyu/Ayaka perma-freeze team (right now the best team comp for that is Ganyu/Ayaka, Venti, Diona and Mona).

Not too sure if I want Baal right now. Everyone just wants her because of "OmG sHe PuLlEd A sWoRd FrOm HeR tItS!!!!!!" and it just makes me hate her because the Genshin community is fucking trash when it comes to stupid shit like this. She might end up actually being a decent character, but right now she's a hard pass based off of how annoying people are about her right now.

[Moonface]

Did either of you two try claiming the Prime Gaming freebies?

[Dragon Lord]

I did claim mine for the current period, and will be claiming each one. Never say no to free stuff in Genshin, especially if you can get some Primogems out of it. This is the first time that having Amazon Prime has actually given me something worth my time (aside from the free Twitch sub) since they removed the gaming discount.

So I got Ayaka up to level 90 finally. Just need to finish getting her talents to 9/9/9 and her weapon to level 90 and she'll be ready to destroy. I also managed to win another 50/50 on her and got her to C1. So just need three more copies of her to reach that goal of C4 at the very least. I'm hoping that I can managed to get that done within $200, but we'll see. Gonna wait to see if I can snag any more copies with free Primos/Fates first.

Really hate how bad the item drops seem to be in Inazuma. Like, I need so many damn handguards, but the samurai enemies only drop 1 of any type when you kill them. Most enemies will drop 3-4 of the lowest tier of the item, but nope. These guys will drop no more than one of each tier at a time. Like what the hell? If this was intended, hopefully it's something they change soon, because it's been hell farming for Ayaka, and people are gonna have to do it again for Yoimiya.

[Dragon Lord]

So I decided to begin my journey chasing C4 Ayaka tonight. Just dipping in $100 just to see what I could come away with. Starting with C1 Ayaka. First 70 pulls were nothing, so it wasn't looking too good for me. But then this happened:



Holy crap, I could not believe that I pulled two copies of Ayaka in one 10! In fact, they were almost back-to-back. I got Ayaka > some 3* weapon > Ayaka. This puts me at C3 Ayaka! Just need one more, and if I can get lucky, I can get her without spending any more money. C4 Ayaka in $100 would be a pretty amazing feat.

The thing that amazes me most about this, is that I lost every 50/50 on characters since... well, back when I C6'd Ganyu and got one of her dupes on a 50/50. I've won all four 50/50s on Ayaka so far. I guess my luck was just waiting for when I really needed it, haha. If my luck keeps up like this, I might be able to go for C6 Ayaka in $200-$300.

[Mr EliteL]

Aw crap I forgot about the Prime Gaming thing for Genshin, shoot!

Also congrats on getting super lucky with pulling for Ayaka, two in one go I doubt I'll see that for me. Best I got was either three 4* characters in one 10 pull or a 5* plus one or two 4* in one 10. I'll lose my mind seeing two 5*'s. Have you got at least C4 Ayaka now?
I hope Yoimiya isn't as bad as people have said her to be like you mentioned. I've yet to try her in her quest, will soon though. I thought being able to inflict Pyro from normal attacks would help a lot like Klee can and....oh I forgot what her Elemental Skill and Burst are *checks* ah, some effects deactivate when she leaves the field or is down. I'll still wait and see.