Genshin Impact | 5.2 Special Program

[Dragon Lord]

So being the filthy whale that I am, I decided to say, "You know what? Fuck it, I'mma collect all the characters I skipped before." So I dipped into the ol' bank account and got myself a single Freedom Sworn for when Kazuha re-runs and also nabbed Albedo (thankfully I won the 50/50 to save myself a lot of coin).

Now rumors are that Xiao and Ganyu are going to be the dual re-runs in 2.4 with Shenhe as the new character banner. I'm like... I don't have Xiao and will need to pull for Shenhe... after whaling hard for Redhorn Stonethresher for Noelle, and possibly R5ing it... fuck.

Granted I don't plan to pull for any constellations for these characters. The only character I'm even slightly considering Constellations on and may C6 them is Kazuha. He is the missing piece to so many of my team compositions. I'll never get over being mad that I skipped him, haha. At least not until he comes back and I can fix that huge mistake. It's Zhongli all over again for me.

Also Lantern Rite 2.0 rumored for 2.4 as well, WITH A KEQING SKIN!!!!! Hellllllllllllll yeah!

[Mr EliteL]

I was wondering if I want every character eventually, and I'm leaning towards yes, but want to avoid spending too much. I've got like £120 or so before I hit £1k I've put into this game, so maybe I'm willing to do at least that. I know you've done it a lot already, and looks like there's more banners coming up for you too. I'm not sure if I'll try and get them on their second re-runs right now (for Albedo and then Xiao's, might go for Xiao's actually), and definitely will skip Itto's but won't be annoyed if I end up missing out on some characters in the end. When I got Hu Tao I felt she was like a present and got all giddy for some reason, possibly because I got Diluc and Thoma too I was like "Whoo, new characters~!!", and the fact I already had stuff for Hu Tao to have her in a usable state. I got both Diluc, Thoma and Sara as well all up to Lv 79 and plan to build them, and I'm getting Klee back into the mix so I can use her properly again.

Ooh another Lantern Rite, and finally a new skin possibly on it's way, perhaps there'll be two again.

Here's a code I found just now when I was looking on the Genshin Twitter, but found it on the Genshin Meme twitter page, for 60 primogems, so that's a nice little boost. ETNU2DN5NZRR, get it now! Don't know if it has a expiry date as it was posted on the 26th, I used it today on the 30th.

You're probably right about Yun Jin being a 4* but that's fine, there needs to be some more 4*'s anyway and Zhongli's more than enough to represent Liyue's Geo 5*. I also don't know what role she'll fill, perhaps one that's a lesser version that's hard to get to, or something that focuses more on something that hasn't been relevant. I know she's not Electro or Pyro, but I'm wondering when Lavawalker and Thundersoother will finally get a significant purpose. They're so pointless for artifacts, they're only good if it's a Goblet specific DMG Bonus and 5th artifact that doesn't need to be in a set.

[Dragon Lord]

It helps that Albedo apparently makes a good team with Hu Tao (Hu Tao/Xinqui/Zhongli/Albedo), because he boosts Elemental Mastery with his Burst I believe, which will make Hu Tao do more damage with her Vapes. He's also capable of having his E. Skill do 30K+ damage (especially with new arti set + his new sword from the event), which is all off-field damage and doesn't interrupt elemental reactions for Hu Tao. Plus, dual Geo makes Zhongli's shield even stronger, so I'm like.. okay Albedo, I see you. I'll give you a try on a Hu Tao team.

There will be two skins! The Keqing skin will be the one you have to buy from the shop, while there will be a Ningguang skin available to get for free via the event (according to the leak).

Also according to the leaks, there will be another Liyue 4* selector. Interestingly enough, the leaks mention that Yun Jin WILL BE ONE OF THE CHARACTERS YOU CAN SELECT WITH IT, which is pretty mind-blowing when it comes to MiHoYo. Not only will Yun Jin be a brand new 4* with the 2.4 update, but we can get her for free via the selector when Lantern Rite V2 come around? Damn. Though she'll be available on Shenhe's banner first, which is going to be the first half of 2.4, with Ganyu/Xiao re-runs and Lantern Rite being the second half.

Kind of sucks if true, because that means Redhorn Stonethresher > Shenhe banner, instead of having those re-runs in between to save me some moola (outside of what it would cost to get Xiao).

And thanks for the code. I'll be sure to claim that as soon as I hop on Genshin.

Side note: Game seems to be super laggy the last day or two. I noticed that I can't pick up items super fast any more, there's a very noticeable 1-2 second delay between pressing the d-pad button and the character switch happening, and a lot of other little delays/lag happening around the game. Not sure what's going on, but hopefully it gets fixed here. I can't imagine it's just me, since I'm not having any internet problems elsewhere. Of course as soon as I post about this here and then hop on Genshin, everything is working smoothly again.

Side Note #2: I've gotten Friendship 10 on Noelle now. Just a tad under 10 with Xiangling and Raiden is also at level 9. So hopefully those two will be done very soon here.

Side Note #3: I was farming the new artifact domain for Noelle and Albedo pieces, and ended up getting a godly Goblet for Ganyu/Ayaka instead. It's a piece of the Clam set, but it has:

Main Stat: Cryo DMG Bonus

Subs:

CRIT DMG +28.0%
Energy Recharge +11.0%
CRIT Rate +2.7%
ATK +5.8%

I wish it would have rolled once into Crit Rate instead of Energy Recharge, but even with that, this artifact is pretty amazing for those two. Have it on Ganyu right now since Ayaka has the previous one I was swapping between the two (it has 24.1% Crit DMG, but no Crit Rate on it since Ayaka's running a perma-freeze team that boosts her Crit Rate enough). I've also started running my Ganyu in a reverse Melt team with Xiangling, using Wanderer's Troupe as her arti set. Her damage is pretty insane in it. I went from my blooms hitting for 40-50K in a perma-freeze team to hitting 80K+ with Melt.

Pretty nice for Abyss, because now I can either run the Hu Tao/Xinqui team, the Ayaka perma-freeze team (makes Floor 12 a breeze) or the Ganyu Reverse Melt team, and I don't have to worry about Ayaka and Ganyu sharing artifacts like they were before.

Also C6 Hu Tao with R5 Homa is as nutty as I was hoping it'd be. I can clear 12-3 first half with Hu Tao now, when I couldn't before because she wasn't able to kill those HP bloated Ruin fuckers fast enough. C6/R5? Clears them out in like 60-90 seconds, which while not the fastest, leaves more than enough time for Ayaka perma-freeze to completely slaughter the second half. That team is major MVP of Abyss Floor 12. Ayaka's Burst is just absolutely insane (especially when you have her C6 like I do haha).

[Moonface]

So I didn't know these awards were even happening but I guess they did and since Genshin won a few, all players will be getting free Primogems starting tomorrow:

[Dragon Lord]

So apparently Yun Jin got a pretty nice buff in the beta that's going to in turn buff the likes of Yoimiya/Noelle/Keqing/etc.

Her Burst was changed so that at C6, it gives a 15% Normal Attack damage bonus for 12 seconds after use. So any character who really relies on normal attacks is going to see a nice buff from adding Yun Jin to their teams. Yoimiya will benefit the most, as her attacks are faster than the others, but Noelle can definitely see some good benefit from her (the attack buff + Geo resonance).

EDIT: Er, sorry, I misread. At C6 her Burst gives characters a 12% attack speed increase, along with her C2 buffing Normal Attacks by 15%. So she pairs even better with Yoimiya at C6, providing Yoimiya with more damage AND faster attacks (and Yoimiya already has fast attacks).

Keqing might be able to benefit from her as well, but that's only if her buff can make Keqing's normal attacks better than just spamming her Charged Attack. I definitely look forward to pairing her up with Noelle though. Gonna be tough deciding on a team for her though, because Gorou is also going to buff her pretty good. Might have to just go with Noelle/Gorou/Yun Jin and then a random fourth that can provide off-field damage (Xiangling/Ganyu/Fischl). Or just go Mono Geo with Zhongli/Albedo in there as the fourth. Albedo would provide that off-field damage as well. Hmm....

Also fuck this edition of the Spiral Abyss. The Rifthounds on Floor 12 are so stupidly HP bloated and they just move around every where and trying to hit them is SUCH A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. I finally managed to get 9*s on it by using teams of Ganyu/Xiangling/Bennett/Diona on the first half and Hu Tao/Zhongli/Xinqui/Ayaka on the second half. It was not fun though. I don't know why they think just making the enemies more and more HP bloated every time makes the Abyss fun.

[Mr EliteL]

I didn't know either so it was nice to see 200 Primogems drop on the first day, as they're giving the 800 in four sets. Don't know why they couldn't just dump the whole 800 in one go but still, last today for the final 200.

I decided not put the Cinnabar Spindle to waste and got myself Albedo, does put the risk of losing my next 50/50 though as I thought my next one was likely going to be a win, just had a feeling it would happen.
DL, yeah that's an insanely good artifact, I've never had one look that good yet. Closest was almost like that but the main stat was DEF, a sub weren't the same either, but couldn't be used for someone who needed a DEF artifact. A shame about the Crit Rate, but that may be where the luck on that ran out.

I've yet to try Floor 11 and 12 of this Spiral Abyss reset, think I can do 11 but 12 might be where I struggle. Seen in some comments on YouTube about 12 and people saying the Kenkis are easier than the Hounds so I won't be worried about room 2, if I can get to it that is. Ah, so you have tried and beaten Floor 12, I did read about how stupid they are, yeah I'm expecting to have trouble with them. 

Also need to finish up the Snowstorm event and the last part of the story, then do it all again on my PC account. I have enjoyed the story segment anyway and hope we get a bit more fight cutscenes like that in the future.

About Yun Jin, that's great to know, and I have to get her C6 and use her alongside Yoimiya as I do use her a lot.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, I ended up brute forcing my way through it. Had to tack Ayaka to my Hu Tao team though just for the extra damage. Turned out pretty well, as Xinqui Burst > Ayaka Burst > Hu Tao charged attack spam dealt out damage at a pretty high pace.

I tried my usual perma freeze Ayaka team and Hu Tao/Xinqui/Zhongli, and neither one were able to really deal with the Rifthounds all that well. Since they don't get vacuumed by Venti, it was impossible to catch them in the Permafreeze most of the time, so Ayaka's burst would miss so many of its hits on them. Hu Tao could take care of the Geo Rifthounds fine if they weren't constantly moving all of the time, making it impossible to reliably hit them.

Then I went in with Eula/Fischl/Ganyu/Noelle and Raiden/Bennett/Xiangling/Xinqui (aka The National Team w/Raiden), but my artifacts on Raiden, Xiangling and Xinqui just aren't good enough to reliably run that team on floor 12 yet, so that ended up in awful failure. They couldn't handle the three Kenkis at all.

So then I went in with Ganyu/Xiangling/Bennett/Diona (Ganyu reverse melt setup) on the first half and Hu Tao/Zhongli/Xinqui/Ayaka (typical Hu Tao team with Ayaka for added damage support) on the second half, and these teams were enough to get through. Thankfully Ganyu melt is pretty powerful, despite my Xiangling's artifacts still lacking. With Ayaka freezing off Xinqui's water swords, and then switching to Hu Tao, she got to attack them while they couldn't move for a bit, and the Melt damage was a nice bonus before Hydro took over and she vaped the rest of her attacks.

I hope to be able to get good enough artifacts for Noelle by next week, so that I can pull that wonderful Claymore for her and then hopefully take her into Floor 12 and watch her do some good work down there. She'd be a wonderful counter to the Rifthounds with her wide AoE during her Burst and healing.

Random side note like usual: I have a hoarding problem and I'm sitting on 185 Fragile Resins. I should really learn to let go of these. That's 11,100 Resin I'm just sitting on that I could use for some hardcore artifact farming, or farming up talent books/ascension materials I need for characters. I don't know why I'm so stubborn in using these things. They don't do me any good sitting in my inventory, and there's nothing that will ever come where I need them. In other Gacha games, it can be beneficial to hoard stamina recovery items until an event where you want to hardcore farm event points/drops from an event stage, but Genshin doesn't have that kind of thing going on, so I need to pull myself away from that mentality and actually use these damn things.

[Moonface]

A new trailer showcasing Arataki Itto was shown tonight at The Game Awards. Genshin Impact also won Best Mobile Game at the show too.

[Dragon Lord]

In celebration of winning Mobile Game of the Year, MiHoYo will be giving every player 1,600 Primogems, given out over the span of four days (400 Primos each day).

MiHoYo getting a little more generous than usual with this one.

[Dragon Lord]

So, uh...



This happened in my pulling for R5 Redhorn. That's my second and third Skyward Harps and my second Redhorn thus far. Man, if only it was Amos' Bow on this banner instead so I could buff up my Ganyu even more with my Noelle.

Or if all three of them could have been Redhorns instead.

EDIT: So $400 in and I'm sitting on R4 Redhorn. I've gotten a total of 9 5* weapons so far, which is actually pretty insanely lucky. Just too bad that one of the five non-Redhorns I got couldn't have been one so I'd be done now. My 5* pulls have gone...

Skyward Harp
Redhorn Stonethresher
Skyward Harp
Skyward Harp
Redhorn Stonethresher
Skyward Pride
Redhorn Stonethresher
Wolf's Gravestone
Redhorn Stonethresher

Unfortunately I've reached the limit of my "safe" spending for now, so I'll have to wait until payday next week to go for that last Redhorn that I need.

[Moonface]

So what happens when you pull two of the same thing with the exact same star ranking? Is there a thing that stacks them together or does the duplicate become something else? If they do stack, what would happen if you got another when you've got the maximum level already?

[Dragon Lord]

Duplicate weapons can be refined into each other up to a max of Refinement 5, which is what I'm going for with the Redhorn Stonetresher. It's not a smart decision to try to R5 a 5* weapon, due to how the weapon banner and its pity system works, but this sword is such an incredible power boost for one of my favorite characters that I'm willing to take the dive on it.

So in the end I need a total of 5 copies of the weapon (first one is Refinement 1, then four duplicates). If I were to get a sixth copy of Redhorn Stonethresher, then I'd just have an extra copy of it to use on another character if I wanted (granted at R1). Most of the time this isn't needed, but there are a few weapons that are good to have multiple copies of at R5. Mostly 4* weapons, thankfully, which are much easier to R5 than 5*, but the Staff of Homa is a good example of a 5* weapon that having multiple copies of wouldn't be such a bad idea, due to how many spear users can actually make great use of it.

As a status update on my Noelle, since I mentioned all this spending is just for her, this sword has been a MAJOR power boost for her already. I've gotten it to level 90 (R4) and she's slapping enemies for 10K damage on her normal hits (out of Burst) and 30k+ on crits during her Burst. The reason why this is major is because my Noelle has shit artifacts and they are NOT the DEF set. They are still the Bolide set. Before, to have Noelle hit 30K damage during her Burst with Whiteblind/Serpent Spine + Bolide set, you'd need near perfect sub-stats on your artifacts.

The fact my Noelle is now hitting 30K+ during her Burst with bad artifacts and no Gorou buff yet (using Bennett for now instead), is absolutely nuts. I could see her getting up to 50K+ a hit once I get good enough Husk pieces + C6 Gorou. Add in C6 Yun Jin coming up who will boost normal attack damage even further AND make Noelle attack faster, and I can see Noelle doing some absolutely batshit crazy things in this game.

I'm so fucking excited to see what her new ceiling is going to be.

[Mr EliteL]

Aw can't see the image again. Did you get a multiple of something in that screenshot? Although damn, 9 5*'s is nuts, how many pulls do you think you did? Still a shame it took you that long to get to R4, so I hope your next one is the last Redhorn you need. How good do you think an R1 of that is though? I haven't taken the plunge yet but I don't particularly want to go too much into the weapon banner again. Although I do kinda want the Redhorn, but amn my Pity is barely off from the second Staff of Homa I got. *checks* Wait wtf, I'm at 45 Pity there, I know I did some pulls but didn't realise it was that many!

I did enjoy the entirety of the Snowstorm event, the Batan....dog thingy event was OK to go through but it was just another event for some Primos. Looking forward to trying the new Trial event though. Happy we got a pretty good sum from Genshin winning the Mobile Game of the Year.

Oh yeah, Shenhe and Yun Jin are on their way and...the spare Polearms I have R4 Wavebreaker's Fin, R3 Favonious Lance and R1 Kitain Cross Spear, so hope one of them can be useful for them or swap with one in use, but in turn one of them being useful for the character I swap with. Although saying that, those three remain on Lv 1, and I need to farm other things too, AAHHH the pain of it all!!

I did pull on Eula's banner on my PC account only in the hopes her appearing before the soft pity, but she didn't show and I didn't want to go all the way to 70 so I sit at 68 Pity. Want to make it count for the next hopeful 5* character I get. Needs to be on that's really good at C0, not Ganyu and not a Claymore user as I have Beidou as my main at the moment and need a proper second team to start forming soon. Although saying that, my current isn't really a proper team yet anyway. I don't want to get too serious on there anyway but would be great to have a character can than help in some big way.

[Dragon Lord]

Whoops. Here's the image again:



Also I ended up topping up one more time the day after that post and got my last copy of Redhorn for R5. Also managed to secure a C0 Gorou (not sure if I'll chase C6 yet or wait until he's on a banner that has a 5* I actually wouldn't mind getting).

I'm glad the dog event ended up being super easy and quick to finish. It sounded like it was going to be unbelievably annoying prior to releasing, but ended up being a snoozefest. 

Loving the Misty Dungeon 2.0! Getting to play Kazuha FELT SO GOOD! But it just adds to my endless sadness over skipping him, and the pain of having to wait until he finally re-runs. Sadge

So far cleared all of the trials ezpz. Been seeing a lot of topics of people struggling to clear a couple of them (especially the Desirous Trial). My teams for each one so far have been...

Thundershock Trial: Raiden-Childe-Sucrose-Barbara 

Childe was able to just slaughter everything with Raiden's E.Skill in effect. Sucrose was there just to gather enemies up and Barbara for emergency healing in case something went horribly wrong.

Freezing Trial: Ayaka-Mona-Diona-Xinqui

Extremely easy. Basically the typical Ayaka freeze team, just lacking the normal Anemo unit to VV/group/mass spread Cryo. Brought Xinqui because he pairs up realy well with Ayaka for keeping enemies frozen indefinitely.

Windswept Trial: Kazuha-Keqing-Xiangling-Fischl

Kazuha just slaughters everything. Even with a shitty trial build, his E.Skill just shreds enemies up. General strategy here was Oz > Kazuha E. Skill + Burst > Xinqui Burst > Keqing E. Skill and then charged attack spam. Anything that survived past Kazuha got cleaned up easily by Keqing. 

Desirous Trial: Raiden-Eula-Sara-Sayu

Raiden/Eula combo is a no-brainer. Anyone who goes into this trial without taking these two together is either unaware of how godly they are together or looking to make things a lot harder on themselves. Brought Sara to buff Raiden since the Trial one actually has a build and is leveled, unlike mine. Sayu was just there for healing. It was between her for healing or Beidou for shielding. Sayu's healing proved more than sufficient enough. 

Sadly the trial Raiden in this does more damage than my actual Raiden does, haha. Probably due to artifact sub-stats, which mine lack greatly.

But yeah, overall super easy. Not sure what people are complaining about. I do have to take into account that my Constellation levels do count in this, so I got to go in with C6 Raiden, C6 Ayaka, C6 Mona, and all the four stars at C6 too. Though while that did give me a power boost, I wouldn't see myself struggling through this with C0 Raiden/Ayaka/Mona either. The people complaining about the difficulty of this are either really bad, not using characters properly/taking in very bad team comps, or are helpless without the eternal protection of Zhongli's shield and don't know how to dodge properly.

As for Shenhe, leaks indicate that she's going to be a support character that buffs Cryo. Which means she's basically going to be a Ganyu and Ayaka supportbot and not much else. Apparently they lowered her damage multipliers on her skill, so her damage has tanked quite a bit from what it originally was. Not sure if she's going to end up being good enough of a support unit to replace Diona for permafreeze teams. Diona brings decent shielding + healing + battery + cryo application. Gonna be hard for Shenhe to replace all of that. The only thing I've heard that she supplies is a damage buff, so it's not sounding too good for her.

In other leak news: There's leaks that 2.5 will bring us a new artifact domain that will introduce a new Electro set that will be extremely good for Keqing! Oddly, the set is apparently not good for Yae, who is also rumored to be releasing in 2.5, so that's kind of weird if true. Either way, I'm super excited at the prospect of Keqing getting a much deserved power boost.

[Mr EliteL]

Wow, THREE 5*s?! Awesome! Even it was a shame that the double wasn't the Redhorn, but if was Wolf's Gravestone appearing then instead of that, it would've somehow been a very lucky yet very unlucky triple 5* drops. I haven't had two 5*s in a 10 Wish yet, is that your first triple, or perhaps first multiple 5* in a 10 Wish? Can't remember if you said if you had but know the last screenshot you shared was Hu Tao with three 4*s.

My Noelle hasn't even got maxed artifacts that I have on her yet, but her damage is unfortunately abysmal at the moment, well rather not where I thought she was at, thought she was at least getting 4k normal hits but only half that. I need to check her talents again, they're probably too low, but just got to try and get a Redhorn at least and see what that can do. Watched a video on Itto only to see what was Whiteblind was like with him compared against Redhorn Stonethresher plus two other Claymores and R1 Redhorn was better than their R5's, so I assume that'll be the same with Noelle.

Holy shit, people are complaining about Mist Dungeon? Geez, I got all the rest done today easily, and I even went with some I thought were bad teams and got through without any hassle. Yeah they're probably butthurt there's no Ganyu, Hu Tao or Zhongli, yeesh there's other decent characters that are allowed in here!

Thundershock Trial: I used Raiden, Barbara, Beidou, plus I can't exactly remember the fourth character, mainly to try C6 Beidou in there. Was my fastest clear time out of all trials.

Freezing Trial: Same team as yours, wanted to try Ayaka out and the Perma Freeze comp with her, and yeah was simple, although slower than Thundershock trial. I probably didn't play optimally but then again I don't have C6 for her (or any of the other 5* available, only C1 Keqing)

Windswept Trial: Also same team, and agreed about Kazuha, damn.

Desirous Trial: Knew I was going with Raiden and Eula if they were going to be available in a trial together, but yeah I again went with the same as you. Had my Strongest Single Strike score in this trial, and it could've been higher if two other instances where it could've been higher I didn't kill the enemies before the Lightfall Sword came down, or the enemy just evaded me.

Amplifying Trial: Saw Ayaka there but went with Diluc, Xingqiu, Rosaria and Xiangling. Was fine to get through.

Transformative Trial: Albedo, Yoimiya, Diona, Sucrose. Though I could've had Fischl instead somewhere but as it wanted four different reactions and there were many Electro opponents included I decided not to. Then again they likely meant even if you made 30 Crystallize reactions alone it would still count. In this one I took less damage than the rest of the trials, only 10k and second best was 36k in the Thundershock.

Lightbringer Trial: Kaeya, Raiden, Xiangling, Albedo. I went "screw it" because I just wanted to use Kaeya in one of these even if he wasn't built like I have mine (more towards Physical), like having Raiden and/or Xiangling in teams with him and added Albedo as he did well in the trial before this one. Didn't do massive damage but got through it well enough. Tried two more times with different teams, will perhaps one more as 8 minutes is too long. I know there's no time to beat or getting a reward beating your own time, but just feel the need to do better in it. Or just save that when I do this event in my PC account, yeah.

Sucks Shenhe seems to got a nerf already even before release, they better not make her worthless. As much as it would be cool to have both her and Ganyu in a team together for lore reasons, would be nice to give her some significance. Diona will be hard to beat though. Just another use for a different team perhaps then. Hm. Will be a bit harder to decide on whether to pull for her not for me then as Yun Jin sounds like she will be useful but then if Shenhe brings nothing, then there's Xiao/Ganyu and Yae on their way afterwards supposedly, which one do I go for or avoid?! I know I got two accounts to try on, I'll get at least 1, or two if 50/50 doesn't screw me over on 5*.

A new Electro set domain suited for Keqing sounds great. Hm, perhaps the alternate set in that domain will be more for Yae instead then?