Genshin Impact / Tropes A to D

Main Page | Tropes A To D | Tropes E to G | Tropes H to N | Tropes O to S | Tropes T to Z

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• 2½D: The Preprint puzzles in the Veluriyam Mirage during version 3.8's "Secret Summer Paradise" event were presented in a pseudo 2D sidescrolling format where the player had to navigate their character across 2D mini-levels to find treasure chests for rewards.

A

• Abandoned Mine: Mingyun Village is an abandoned mining town, evacuated after the mines became unstable and the owner's death divided them amongst his feuding sons. They each believed he had hidden treasure in the mines when really... it was under a tree they planted as children.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Characters can climb the terrain with just their bare hands or even wearing high-heeled shoes, even when it is raining! There are no climbing tools or magic applied to their hands, and there are no footholds to support them in place either. Regardless, scaling up walls is an essential method for reaching the high ground or certain platforms.
  • Standing in rain or even stepping in a puddle of soles-deep water is enough that any attack with the Cryo element can freeze a character or enemy's whole body. It is often necessary to weaponize rain (both natural and summoned with Hydro Stones) against enemies.
  • Stone puzzle torches can be lit even in the rain and won't be extinguished by it. This ensures that you don't need to wait out or skip time through the rain to engage with a torch puzzle and you'll never lose progress in one even if the rain starts before you finish. They can be put out by using Hydro or Electro Elemental Skills and Bursts, in the event that they need to be extinguished for some reason.
• Achievement Mockery: A few hidden achievements are rewarded for Epic Fails such as getting killed by a wild boar (the weakest "enemy" in the game), massively over/undercooking 10 dishes, or getting struck by lightning.
• Achievement System: There are various in-game achievements and rewards for completing gameplay-related activities or milestones. The PS4/PS5 version also has them as Trophies.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The total cost of upgrading characters, weapons, and artifacts goes up with each level. Among the various character progression systems, refining weapons to their highest rank quickly eats up a significant amount of Mora, especially when done during the early-game stages. Justified in that Mora is a magical Practical Currency.
• Adorable Evil Minions: Because of the game's colorful art style, the various monsters in the world look surprisingly cute. Yes, even the hilichurls and vishaps.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: The nation of Khaenri'ah from 500 years ago was an advanced society built purely by humans without the influence of the gods, and their technology is said to be leagues ahead of the current tech in present-day Teyvat (including the tech used by the Fatui). The Ruin Machines (at the time called "Field Tillers") are one such technology leftover from that time as the Khaenri'ah people originally built them as weapons of war.
• Aerith and Bob: There's a mix of realistic names and unusual, fantasy-themed names. For example, your first three party members are Amber, Lisa, and Kaeya, along with Paimon, your cherub companion.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Trials are decided in Fontaine by the Oratrice, a device that converts the people's belief in justice into energy. However, though its verdicts are usually sound, the Oratrice deems Childe guilty of being behind the serial disappearances, despite it having already convicted the culprit and Neuvillette coming to the opposite conclusion, with Childe being sentenced regardless of the truth. It's later revealed the Oratrice was actually controlled by Focalors the entire time, and she convicted either Childe due to his tangential connection to the Primordial Sea, or because she hoped he would delay the All-Devouring Narwhal's arrival.
• Airplane Arms: "Little girl"-type characters^note Klee, Diona, Qiqi, Sayu, Dori, and Nahida sprint with their arms spread out.
• Akashic Records:
  • In Sumeru, there's a database that anyone with a special earpiece can access known as the Akasha Terminal. Using the power of the Dendro Archon, it taps into Irminsul to access the combined knowledge and memories of the people of Sumeru. The end result is like Google searching using an external device, and it can't answer every question as the knowledge available to the public is controlled by the Akademiya. The Akademiya is using it to steal the dreams of the people of Sumeru so they can exploit the mind's enhanced ability to process information while dreaming.
  • Irminsul itself contains all knowledge ever recorded in Teyvat, and deleting something from Irminsul makes as if that thing never existed in the first place, and history and Teyvat citizens' memory would change to fit the new narrative. The Traveler, being fundamentally alien to the world of Teyvat is immune to this effect, and has no record in Irminsul. Which makes the reveal that Irminsul has recorded history of their sibling absolutely baffling, as that can only mean they’re a native of Teyvat.
• Alertness Blink: An exclamation mark will appear on enemies if you get close enough to them, if they spot you from a distance, or if you attack them from far away.
• All According to Plan: The good guys' plan to rescue Lesser Lord Kusanali in Sumeru Act V has this happen through the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. After Alhaitham and the Traveler's seemingly failed confrontation with Azar, Alhaitham is taken away by the guards while the Traveler and Paimon are subsequently thrown into prison... except Alhaitham did his job of swapping the Knowledge Capsules for the next phase of the plan, and the cell the Traveler was thrown into was actually the perfect place for them to contact Nahida.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: Despite the Great Red Sand in Sumeru being based on the Sahara Desert with sprawling sand dunes and ruins that bear Egyptian architecture, there is still the presence of cacti plants across the entire region, which are a group of mostly American desert plants that are associated with The Wild West. They mostly appear to be Saguaro cacti (native to the Sonoran desert) which grow Henna Berries.
• Allohistorical Allusion: The Vision Hunt being conducted in the Japan-inspired Inazuma is a reference to the various sword hunts conducted throughout Japanese history.
• Almighty Janitor: The characters in the events of the story mention that Lisa is no ordinary librarian. There is also an NPC fisherman with an ordinary NPC model outside of Wangshu Inn who has a Vision and he can one shot a Ruin Hunter without using his Vision; an enemy that usually requires the player trouble KO. Said fisherman, when asked, mentions that the owner of the inn and the chef are not ordinary people either.
• Alternate Character Reading:
  • The word 原神^note meaning "Original/Proto God" is normally pronounced as "Yuánshén" in Chinese. However, the game officially uses its Japanese reading, "Genshin", in regions outside of China.
  • The characters from Liyue are all pronounced differently in the Japanese dub, i.e., with onyomi. For example, Beidou is "Hokuto", and Qiqi is "Nana". However, "Liyue" itself and Xiangling^note Her name 香菱 is more properly read in Japanese as "Kouryou", but the game's Japanese dub decides not to follow it are still pronounced that way, even in Japanese. Likewise, the voice actors pronounce Inazuma and its residents' names in the Chinese way in the Chinese dub and the Japanese way in their dub.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: How collectibles usually appear since the game scatters them liberally in the environment.
  • Treasure chests might appear near a cliff, behind a rock, in the corner of walls, inside a hut...
  • Meanwhile, the game deliberately places Oculi in hard-to-reach areas and only appears on the mini-map if you are near one.
  • The Mysterious Seelie can be easy to spot from a distance, but others are often hard to reach, requiring you to traverse or climb up the environment first.
  • Many open world puzzles not relying on the area's special mechanics tend to have one cleverly hidden puzzle element (e.g. a well-hidden torch).
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The Battle Pass plays a cutscene each time it reset, telling a story of a princess who tries to purify a corrupted kingdom before being corrupted herself and becoming its queen. Her father then sends her brother to try to save her. On the one hand, this can been seen as an allegory for the Traveler and their sibling in the main plot^SpoilersThat is, it could be an interpretation of how the Traveler is not part of the Irminsul's Akashic Records, but their sibling is as well as being the Prince/Princess of the Abyss Order.. On the other, it could also be one of their prior adventures that are only hinted at by the Traveler.
  • How are Visions granted, exactly? No new Electro Visions have been granted for a while now, and Beelzebul confirms that she, and the Archons by extension, have nothing to do with granting Vision. Meanwhile, Visions are said to be granted when someone catches the attention of the gods, so that leaves Celestia... But the conclusion of Fontaine Act and Furina's Story Quest means Celestia couldn't be involved either, as the people of Fontaine defied Celestia and restored one of their most ancient enemies to full power, and yet Furina gets a Hydro Vision. If Celestia were involved, the only explanation is they grant it out of respect for Focalors' gambit, but that's an Epileptic Trees at best.
• Ambition Is Evil: Inverted. In this game, most playable characters are Vision holders. How do you receive a Vision? By having ambition and drive strong enough that the Powers That Be recognize it and grant you Elemental Powers so you can achieve whatever you set out to accomplish. There are examples of immoral characters who go to extreme ends to achieve their goals, and some characters who believe this trope is in effect like the Raiden Shogun, but overall the view the game takes of ambition is very positive.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • A pre-Industrial era setting... with modern culinary dishes and practices. Among others, pizza and hash browns were not invented (or at least popularized as a concept) until the late 1800s, while the architecture and level of technology suggest much earlier.
  • The Fatui Skirmishers have guns like matchlock rifles (except they fire in semi-auto). By comparison, all the ranged playable characters use either elemental magic or bows. The setting implies that Snezhnaya as a whole (and Fatui in particular) are more technologically advanced than other nations.
  • Xinyan is a rock star with an electric guitar. Rock music is from Fontaine and is still an underground genre in Liyue, though it still exists too early based on the technology seen by real world standards. Granted, Fontaine has also invented photography and is beginning to export cameras (called in-game "Kamera") to other countries, so perhaps like Snezhnaya, it is simply an advanced nation.
  • Inazuma has the technology level of feudal Japan, but also modern forms of entertainment like trading card games and light novels (with similarly currently popular tropes like harems and reincarnating protagonists).
  • The setting seemingly has electrical technology including machines and lighting despite also seemingly still being entirely reliant on artisan production. This is largely due to Electro elemental energy easily being harnessed from ley lines rather than through power plants.
• An Adventurer Is You: While there is no explicit class system and all characters have different moves (down to even their normal combos and charge attacks not being the same for each user of the same weapon), most do fall into known categories:
  • DPS units make up the bulk of 5-star characters, and a sizable number of 4-stars—either ranged (catalysts like Klee or bow-users like Ganyu) or melee (Diluc, Keqing, Xiao, Razor). All of them can synergize with the other characters in your party, but you tend to keep them on the field the bulk of the time, only swapping out to let the supports use their skills and swap back (this is especially true of "selfish" fighters like Xiao and Razor whose self-buffs get deactivated when they swap out).
  • Status Effect Guy is another heavily represented role, with characters who apply buffs to the party. Often in the form of an area-of-effect, such as Chongyun's skill that converts melee attacks within a small area to Cryo damage but can also directly buff stats or apply bonus attacks like Xingqiu's "rain swords" that combine with your active character's normal attacks. Players tend to use most Anemo characters for a combination of stunning/corralling enemies and reducing their elemental resistance with the Viridescent Venerer artifact set.
  • The Medic role falls to party members like Barbara and Qiqi, who can restore HP to active characters or even the entire party. With enough constellation upgrades, a few can even revive fallen characters in combat.
  • The Tank applies to Geo characters in general since they can create shield crystals by reacting with other elements, particularly Noelle and Zhongli, who can directly create stronger all-purpose Geo shields. Like Barbara and Qiqi, the game gives the former to you automatically from the wishing tutorial, while the latter (with better shields and extra abilities) is a limited 5-star.
    • There's also a straight example of the Tank in the form of Dehya, who has an ability that allows her to take damage in the place of allies while it's active. She's generally agreed upon to be underwhelming compared to the game's Barrier Warriors, since it's impossible for her to mitigate damage completely.
  • A handful of characters combine multiple classes to varying degrees, often combining healing with something else. Bennett can both heal and increase attack power, and Noelle and Diona can both heal and create shields. Multi-skilled characters usually are not as good at any one thing as their competitors but can be extremely useful since the game limits you to 4 per party. As one example, Venti has the strongest crowd-gathering ability of all characters by far, along with the usual Swirl debuff ability of Anemo characters, and can regenerate energy for party members with his ult.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: As the Traveler and Paimon is under arrest by the Akademiya in Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises, we get to play Nilou for some time to bait Akademiya's guards into searching the city for the supposedly escaping Nahida and Isak, who disguises himself as Nahida to lure the guards into a single location in which they're taken care of by the Eremites.
• And That's Terrible: Characters, mostly Paimon, often feel the need to verbally point out how sad some event was, how evil a certain villain is, or otherwise give an emotional reaction the player is supposed to have at the moment.
  • In Xinyan's Mirage in Golden Apple Archipelago we see a memory of several people criticizing her appearance and interest in music. All the other characters are visibly displeased when listening to this, but Paimon additionally bursts out with "Why are they being so mean!?"
  • In Act I of Sumeru Archon Quest, Dunyazard tells a story of the Sabzeruz Festival and how it's disregarded by Akademiya and other citizens. Then, the following exchange occurs:
    Paimon: Aw, but that's awful!
    Dunyarzad: It is. It's absolutely terrible!
• Animesque: The game's main art style takes visual cues from Anime. The prequel comics are this as well, though it is far clearer in that case. Despite appearances, and the high popularity of the Japanese voices, the game's parent company is Chinese.
• Anti-Debuff: Domains and Spiral Abyss (particularly on the higher floors) have debilitating elemental debuffs that may periodically affect your characters. One common way to rid them of the debuffs is to have a way to inflict another element to the character themselves that reacts to the debuff's element. Player circles commonly call this "(element) cleanse". Examples include Jean's Elemental Burst (applies Anemo to teammates who walk into the circle) and Diona's elemental skill (applies Cryo to the character whenever her shield is active).
• Antidote Effect: Adepti's Seeker Stove creates a portable cooking stove, allowing you to cook anywhere in the world, even in dungeons and Co-Op mode. Problem is, it requires some relatively valuable materials to create,^*Flaming Essential Oil is better used for combat, and Crystal Core is commonly used to create Condensed Resins lasts for 5 minutes max, and is destroyed upon combat. To add insult to injury, there are plenty of cooking spots in the overworld which can easily be reached using a teleport waypoint. With the release of the Serenitea pot, there is no real reason to create this item anymore as the player is able to place a permanent stove and waypoint in their personal realm.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Unlike many gacha-based hero collectors that justify their limited hero inventory, Genshin has no limits on the number of heroes you can collect aside from how many of them are in the game itself. After all, the playable characters are presented as people with lives and concerns beyond your quest and you are simply calling on their help. Therefore, you do not need to worry about "storing" them, and any "duplicates" you pull simply become Constellation upgrade materials to make them stronger.
  • The World Level will raise after the player's Adventure Rank grows enough, and it not only makes enemies drop better items and unlocks some upgrade options and Domain levels, but it makes combat significantly harder. To prevent this from blindsiding players, the World Level isn't an automatic change. Players must first complete the recurring Ascension Quest, a combat challenge with most types of enemies and a boss, to raise their World Level. The challenge in the quest serves as a preview for the next World Level so the player can gauge their readiness for the changes. If the player struggles to complete the challenge, then they can turn back and keep building characters at their current World Level, and if they ace it, they'll be fine in the World Level they just unlocked.
  • The inventory was originally "capped" at 30 thousand items, but Version 1.1 completely removed the global cap. Weapons, artifacts, and individual types of items (e.g. apples) are each capped at 2,000, far more than you could ever really need unless your character collection hits 400 or so since each one holds up to 5 artifacts. At the time of writing there are only 68 playable characters, so that is not an issue for anyone. Even with item collection being a factor, managing the inventory is not at all a challenge.
  • Statues of the Seven and Domain doors also double as teleport waypoints, allowing you to access them easily.
  • When forming a party of characters to bring into a dungeon, the game shows which elements are likely to be useful in dealing with the dungeon's enemy types. Also, if a dungeon has puzzles or enemy encounters that will require a character of a specific element or weapon type to solve, then the game ensures to give the player a temporary party member who can finish those for the duration of the dungeon. This is usually a playable character involved in whatever questline brought the player to that dungeon in the first place.
  • If you fail a time-limited gliding goal, the game will reset the timer and respawn you to a specific point until you manage to complete it, making retries easier than restarting the entire quest from scratch. You can also choose to reset before the timer ends.
  • You can only get the rewards from Ley Line Blossoms and certain Treasure Chests after killing nearby enemies. The game would then show a HUD indicator that points to the direction of the rewards just in case the player has not noticed them after the fights.
  • The Wish system has a "Pity" mechanic that guarantees characters/weapons of a certain rarity if you get too many low-rarity pulls without getting any high-rarity items. It guarantees 4★ items for every 10 pulls, and 5★ items at 90 pulls. Also, the Pity counter carries over between featured banners so players who did not get the featured item within the limited period will have a better chance at getting the next one.
  • The quests in each chapter of the Adventurer Handbook retroactively track any progress that you have already made even before each quest becomes active. For instance, when tasked with opening 45 chests, if you have already opened 42, you only must open three more instead of having to start at zero and open 45 more.
  • The Adventurer Handbook can show you the exact location of a certain enemy type. It also shows you the list of available domains and the item drops in each domain, and you can directly go to the main map and show its location by tapping the icon to the right of the domain's entry list.
  • Accidentally provoked a tough enemy or a raid boss in the open-world map? Just run a significant distance away, or teleport out, and you are good to go! Enemies drop their aggro and retreat if they are too far away from their spawn point, and being in combat doesn't prevent using quick-travel. Of course, this comes as a double-edged sword in that the enemies knocking you too far away (or knocking them off a cliff, or simply not watching how far you ran while in the heat of battle) will also make the enemy stop aggroing you, causing frustration as you need to restart the fight again. Additionally, this shuts down most opportunities to abuse the environment beyond the immediate area, like luring enemies to the ocean to drown them.
  • Bosses' weaknesses are easily manageable even by the F2P who rely on low-rarity characters, as they cover all the elemental counters, ensuring the player never ends up with an unbeatable boss. Amber's charged attacks can bring down the Cryo and Electro bosses easily, Lisa can hit the Oceanid's creations easily, especially the raptors, Noelle’s elemental burst can take down the Geo Hypostasis's columns, and Barbara’s Hydro-elemental attacks can quickly take down the Pyro Regisvine's core and corolla. This means that anyone has a chance at getting ahead in the game. Do not expect any one-shots though.
  • In the open-world map, falling from a great height can instantly kill the character. This doesn't apply inside Domains or boss arenas (such as Stormterror's Lair) though, since falling in the bottomless pits will respawn your characters to the previous platform, albeit taking a fraction of HP as damage instead of dying instantly. That being said, you also lose your Elemental Burst if you have it charged up.
  • Later updates also introduced more QoL features, such as Version 1.1 allowing players to lock weapons and artifacts of their choice, preventing you from accidentally selling or using them as upgrade material. This update also introduced the Resonance Stone gadgets, alleviating the Last Lousy Point and Guide Dang It! situation when searching for Oculi, since they not only circle the area of an Oculus but also provide a marker of its location when near including indicating whether it is above or below your current location (which the basic map indicator does not do).
  • Whenever you obtain high-rarity (4★-5★) weapons or artifacts, they are automatically locked in your inventory. This QoL is a step up over a similar feature in Honkai Impact 3rd.
  • If enemies die from drowning, their item drops will spawn either on the nearest ground or on the water's surface. If the drops do end up underwater for some reason you can just reload the area and they will be placed on the surface.
  • The Condensed Resin craftable item added in Version 1.1 grants a quick way to store Resins until you can find a better time to use them later. Want to use Resin in the morning so it does not hit cap, but you do not have the time to do 4 domains (which will take 15 minutes for most players)? Just craft 2, and that's easily 10 hours’ worth of Resins.
  • Version 1.2 introduces a new gadget called "Kamera" that lets you take pictures in any situation with a press of a button, unlike the earlier "taking picture" mechanic that has restrictions on its use (such as its inability to take pictures in the middle of attacks). You get the gadget by completing a short world quest in Liyue.
  • Version 1.2 makes loot from bosses, Ley Line Blossoms and Domains automatically go to the inventory instead of physically appearing for the players to pick. This makes picking the drops faster and simpler, and you do not have to worry about missing the drops in any way (short of forgetting to use the Resin to get the drops in the first place).
  • During the Hypostatic Symphony and Energy Amplifier Initiation events, entering the event domain restores everyone's HP and readies their Elemental Burst. This way, you challenge the bosses repeatedly, without having to waste time restoring HP and energy in between fights.
  • Hangout Events have multiple endings, and getting each one, and then, all of them, gives rewards and achievements. To make it easier to complete them, each Hangout Event has a screen showing the different steps in the sequence and their branching paths, and you can restart the event from any unlocked point in the sequence. This allows you to go right to the point where a decision branches a path to pursue the next ending rather than restarting the event from the beginning when you don't need to. This also makes it easier to retry certain sequences if you make a choice or fail a challenge that ends the event. 2.2 also changed it so a check mark appears over dialogue tree options you've already selected, which helps to prevent players from selecting options they've already done and wasting time.
  • Alchemy is useful for making potions and gadgets, or converting low-tier character/talent/weapon ascension material into its higher tier equivalent (Damaged Mask —> Stained Mask —> Ominous Mask, for example), cutting down on the need to farm enemies, bosses, and Domains for rare resources.
  • Most timers that last several days, like the Parametric Transformer and plants in the Serenetea Pot, have times that end in 22 hours, not 24. This ensures that the time you need to check on them won't slowly creep further and further into the day.
  • Ley Line Outcrops are a pretty useful mechanic in the periods between updates when the player has essentially cleared out the one-time content (chests, sidequests, Archon Quest) in the current update version. While ascension materials and powerful artifacts must be located and replenished from exploration and Domain challenges, EXP materials and Mora are more easily earned through finite sources (chests and quests) while playing through a region. When these sources dry up with completion and characters require more EXP to level up as they grow, Mora and especially EXP materials become scarce. Fortunately, the two types of Ley Line Outcrop serve as a replenishing source for them that instantly respawn somewhere on the map after claiming their reward and have a low Resin cost, ensuring there is no obstacle to character-building during the downtime between region exhaustion and the next update.
  • Certain Daily Commissions aren't the routine challenges and can create a change in the world (like the two that repair the staircase at Wangshu Inn), have an achievement tied to them (like the Hilichurl Exchange), or unlock a standard sidequest after being completed (like Tales of Winter). As such, some of these commissions are more desirable, but the game chooses which commissions you'll get randomly each day. Version 2.0 changed the commissions' spawning from taking place in a random region each day to a toggle for which region the commissions are generated in until your next say-so. This can help narrow down your chances of getting a special commission as a result when you know which region the special commissions take place in and are able to fix which region you'll get commissions in.
  • Temporary event challenges motivate players to participate by offering rewards, primarily Primogems, which are valuable for similarly-fleeting event gacha banners. While each event challenge is designed with multiple difficulty layers for the player to engage with, the Primogems are awarded for the lower difficulties or more basic engagement so players who just want the Primogems can get in and out without the temporary event's challenge level locking players out of the desirable Primogem reward.
  • Placing certain specialty furniture sets in the Serenitea Pot will make certain companions the player owns and has in the teapot happy, and talking to them in the area will get you a gift. Not only does each special furniture set tell you which companions will give you gifts from it, but their icons will gain a check mark once their gift event has occurred so there's no confusion on who's given a gift from that set, especially when you get new characters who will resonate with it.
  • Inazuma, being closed off from the outside world through the ocean and a thunderstorm, can only be entered during the Archon Quest. To prevent an Unintentionally Unwinnable state caused by the player dying or leaving the archipelago without unlocking a teleport waypoint, one is automatically unlocked when the Traveler first sets foot on Ritou, right in the harbor so they can continue their quest. Similarly, you can only leave Ritou during the same Archon Quest, and a waypoint just next to Konda Village will be unlocked when you do so for the same reasons. The same happens in The Chasm: Underground Mines, which is treated as a separate map, where another teleport waypoint in the Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel is automatically unlocked when the Traveler first enters the Chasm.
  • When fishing, enemies can still become alerted to the Traveler but will remain neutral until they stop fishing. Likewise, the fishing spot on Dragonspine has a bonfire on the shore to keep players from freezing to death.
  • Version 2.3 added an option to use the Alchemy Crafting table in Mondstadt by talking to Timaeus, mitigating the frustration of players just trying to use the table but instead interacting with Timaeus and having to exit dialogue with him. This function was also added to all crafting table owners in future versions.
  • A case which significantly downplays Boss Bonanza: When you defeat Signora in the mission "Duel Before the Throne", you will return to the open world; however, the game will automatically take control of the Traveler when leaving Tenshukaku. After a while, a cutscene will occur, which will eventually pit you against the Raiden Shogun for a second time without giving you a chance beforehand to heal, change party members, or restock on items. Fortunately, the two consecutive boss battles are part of two separate missions (with the first one automatically completed with Signora's defeat), so if the first battle against Signora drained your stock of healing items considerably or you need to change your party setup for the next battle, you are allowed to leave the Raiden Shogun fight to prepare. When you are ready, all you need to do is interact with a small spot in front of the Statue of the Omnipresent God to return to the fight.
  • From version 4.0 onwards, upon completing the Mondstadt story arc, a few Teleport Waypoints will be automatically unlocked, granting players immediate access to Fontaine and Chenyu Vale after completing the prologue. This is done so that new players who pulled any characters requiring materials from those regions early on can immediately go there and collect their level-up materials without needing to trek a long distance across Liyue and/or Sumeru.
  • To mitigate newer released characters having their talent level up materials from weekly bosses being gated by loads of story content, version 4.2 introduces the ability to Quick Start the boss domains from the Adventurers Handbook, regardless of your own story progress. However, you cannot co-op with other players through this way, and accessing the weekly bosses far earlier than expected has the possibility of encountering heavy story spoilers.
  • Prior to 4.0, Anemo Traveler and Sucrose were the Crutch Characters of Anemo since the other 4* Anemo units available at the time either had their Ascension materials located in story-locked Inazuma (Sayu, Heizou) or on the very far side of the map from Mondstadt (Faruzan). The 4.0 update adds not only an additional Anemo charcter for free upon reaching Adventure Rank 25 (Lynette), but also a Teleport Waypoint in the Realm of Farakhkert, right on the northern edge of Sumeru's deserts and across the bay from Fontaine, that automatically unlocks upon completing the Archon Quest Prologue. This allows players to level up more Anemo units (Faruzan and Lynette) without having to trek across the entire map.
  • Version 4.6 added one related to the Treasure Compasses: before, whenever you used one, it would only track the treasure's location relative to the point you used it. Now, it will mark its exact location in the map even if you leave the area. Using it near a different treasure chest will make the map mark that one instead and unmarking the previous chest.
  • Arlecchino cannot be healed while in battle without using her elemental burst. But once out of combat, one can heal her just like any other character, mitigating the frustration of getting her healthy again while still maintaining her Glass Cannon playstyle.
• Anti-Grinding:
  • It is nigh-impossible to level grind in the open-world map because slain enemies give very little EXP.^note*Each enemy slain gives 10-20 EXP, while characters will need tens of thousands of EXP per level before they even hit level 20. The player instead needs to grind Character EXP materials which can be obtained by participating in events, treasure chests, doing main and side quests, etc.
  • The Original Resin also serves as this, so that you cannot grind materials and develop your characters too quickly.
  • Enemies need time to respawn in the open-world map, so you will have to wait for a while before you can farm their item drops again for your character progression needs. Lesser enemies and Elite Mooks stop spawning if you kill a lot of the same type (they will all respawn on the next daily reset), Normal Bosses respawn 3 minutes after their rewards are claimed. While Weekly Bosses (e.g. Stormterror, Andrius, Tartaglia, Azhdaha) can be refought as many times as the player wants (Andrius being the only one with a lenghty respawn period), their rewards can only be claimed once per week.
  • There is a daily limit to how many "Interact" spots a player can visit in a day (100 Interacts) if they try to farm for fodder Artifacts or fodder Weapons. This prevents players from farming massive numbers of fodder items each day.
• Anti-Hoarding:
  • Even if Version 1.1 removed the initial inventory cap, specific item types still have a limit on how much you can hold at any given time. You can only hold a maximum of 1,000 Artifacts and 2,000 weapons, while all other consumables and items (e.g. apples, cheese and sunsettias) are each limited to 2,000 depending on their type.
  • You can only forge up to 300,000 EXP worth of Enhancement Ores daily. Once you have reached that cap and attempt to create more on that day, an "Unable to forge" message will appear. Enhancement Ores forged from Magic Crystal Chunks don't count towards this, but that requires using Resin.
  • Event-specific materials and currencies have expiration dates.
  • You can only hold up to a maximum of 5 Condensed Resin.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Original Resin is this game's energy/stamina resource which you consume to obtain rewards from Ley Line Blossoms, Abyssal Domains, and open-world bosses (You can still do these things without Resin, but you will not get rewards). Original Resin automatically refills on its own until it reaches its cap of 160. You can use Primogems and Fragile Resins to restore it by 60 each, but the game limits Primogem refills to 6 times a day, at an increasing cost that does not reset until the next day.
• Anti-Regeneration: Some Fontaine craftable weapons (Finale of the Deep and Flowing Purity) and Fatui Operatives apply a Bond of Life effect that absorbs a certain amount of healing that would otherwise heal the player. If applied from a weapon and then healed away, buffs are provided based on the amount healed.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The Lunar New Year event introduces Plaustrite, a naturally occurring element that is a byproduct of mining for about a month or so, but can make things float, like the Xiao lanterns (rather than rely on the heated air from the candles). It also explains Ningguang's floating Jade Palace and the Floating Continent seen in the sky at certain times.
• April Fools' Day: The game's official social media channels will do something to commemorate the occasion on that day:
  • In 2021, Hu Tao took over the game's official Twitter account because Paimon had a stomachache. The game's logo also changed to Hu Tao on Twitter and Discord, with a fake notification in the latter.
  • In 2022, a Stop Motion Character Demo of the fandom's favourite Abyss Lector was published on YouTube.
  • In 2023, official designs of Diluc, Keqing, Kuki Shinobu and the Wanderer as cats were revealed, sparking a trend of artists drawing other playable characters as cats under the hashtag #GenshinImpactMeow on Twitter.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Parties can only have up to 4 characters at once. A Guest-Star Party Member can temporarily bring it up to 5.
• Arc Number: If a number shows up, it's most likely going to be seven. There are seven nations, with seven Archons, who match the seven elements. It also shows up in minor ways; one of the light novels in Inazuma is mentioned to be a story about a man with seven love interests, there are supposedly Seven Ideals of Wisdom that the Dendro Archon possesses, and "Genshin" has seven letters.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The four-pointed star symbol appears prominently: It is the shape of the portal that the Unknown God created in the prologue, it is the shape of Paimon's hairclip, it is in Dvalin's chest, Ruin Guard eyes are surrounded by one, it is in the stylized symbol for "eclipse", and most notably, it is the shape of the gacha currency Primogems.
  • To a much lesser extent, Paimon's circlet/halo appears multiple times in the game as a symbol, such as the title screen.
• Arc Villain: While the Fatui and the Abyss Order are the overall main antagonists of the story, each chapter tends to have at least one villain that is responsible for the main conflict of the chapter.
  • Prologue: Dvalin (a.k.a. Stormterror) who the Abyss Order brainwashed into thinking that Humans Are Bastards, and Barbatos betrayed him.
  • Chapter 1: Tartaglia (a.k.a. Childe), as the Fatui sent him to Liyue to cause as much chaos as possible, and make him summon Osial. In actuality, all of Childe's antics were done so that La Signora can convince Zhongli to surrender his gnosis without Childe even knowing.
  • Chapter 2: The Raiden Shogun, who has been enforcing the Vision Hunt Degree in Inazuma, which ends up causing mass depression for everyone who lost their Visions. However, the Raiden Shogun's puppet turns out to be manipulated by the Fatui, making her an Unwitting Pawn for the Fatui's plans. She still serves as the final boss however, and the arc concludes with her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Chapter 3: The Akedemiya alongside Il Dottore and Scaramouche, as the former two wish to see the latter replacing Kusanali as the new Sumeru Archon.
  • Chapter 4: Marcel/Vacher serves as this for the two first acts of the Chapter, being responsible for Cowell's attempted murder on Liliane, the frame-up of Callas for the death of Jacques, and the serial disappearances of young women in Fontaine. After his death at the end of Act II, the All-Devouring Narwhal replaces him as the new Arc Villain, as it seeks to fulfill the prophecy that would wipe-out all of Fontaine.
• Arc Welding: PlayedWith, as the game never says which branches of the Hangout Events are canon, but one branch of Beidou’s Hangout Event has ties to one branch of Heizou‘s Hangout Event. The branch in Beidou’s event reveals that the Crux is involved in a smuggling operation to move goods out of Liyue without the Millelith knowing, with the branch in Heizou’s event revealing that the goods are sent to Watatsumi Island.
• Arc Words:
  • Each chapter of the Archon Quest has one that corresponds to the country and its god in the story. The Prologue in Mondstadt has "freedom", the Chapter 1 in Liyue has "contracts", Chapter 2 in Inazuma has "eternity", Chapter 3 in Sumeru has "wisdom" and "dreams". Chapter 4 in Fontaine has "justice".
  • In addition to "eternity," Chapter 2 has "ambition." The chapter examines the worth of people's ambitions, how the pursuit of one's dreams can end up being self-destructive, and why they are still worth pursuing despite this.
  • "The true nature of this world" is a recurring cryptic phrase in the story, mostly said by certain antagonists (such as Tartaglia and The Traveler's Sibling) to the Traveler.
  • 天理 / "Tiānlǐ" / "Tenri", which can roughly be translated as "the will of Heaven" gets brought up repeatedly by the likes of the Unknown God, the Abyss Order, Morax, and Beelzebul. Downplayed in the English version of the script, where the term in not translated consistently, appearing as multiple synonyms such as "Heavenly Principles", "Heaven", "Destiny", and "the Natural Order".
  • "Erosion" is starting to be mentioned from chapter 1. Rex Lapis notes how water can erode the hardest rock over time, Azhdaha's current state of mind is brought by Erosion, Ei specifically made the Raiden puppet to be able to withstand Erosion, and the Raiden puppet itself demands proof that Ei's change of heart is not a product of Erosion. Chapter 2 even reveals that the original citizens of Khaenri'ah are cursed and have been eroded, body and soul, into Hilichurls.
  • Sumeru is surprisingly full of "Dreams", which is ironic since the citizens take pride that they never dream, seeing it as sign of irrational thought, unfit for the nation of "Wisdom". This turns out to be a lie. The citizens don't dream because their dreams are being stolen, and the Dendro Archon states that dreams are rich bundles of human wisdom. And a major world quest takes you adventuring with a race of nature spirits who speak a lot of dreams, and they live in a dream world version of Sumeru.
  • "Power from beyond this world" is first mentioned by Dainsleif in his chapter narrations, and how he will use it to defy (presumably) Celestia. But the appearance of Tartaglia's master who mentions the exact same phrase indicates this is not just a generic boast, but rather a technical term for something that's yet to be detailed.
• Area of Effect: Playable characters, Mooks and bosses have abilities that can hit everything inside an area.
• Armor Meter: The Shield Bearing Mooks' shields, the Abyss Mages' Deflector Shields, and some Large Slimes and Fatui Skirmishers' Elemental Armor, have gauges that will deplete if you attack them enough. To break them faster, you can use certain attacks depending on the shield's type (e.g., wooden shields can catch fire, which will deplete their gauge quickly).
• Arrange Mode: The "Hypostatic Symphony" event features fights with stronger versions of the existing Hypostases in the game. Before the battle, you can adjust the difficulty of the battle in specific ways; from increasing the boss' level to making a stricter time limit, to "crippling" your characters in a way. The more "difficult" it is, the more points you will get when you beat the boss; reach a certain number of points to get rewards.
• The Artifact:
  • For a good chunk of time, Ulfr wanted to confess his feelings towards the flower shop owner Flora... who is a child. This is a leftover from the beta, where Flora originally had an adult model before the release version changed her to a child model, and eventually they changed the dialogue to Ulfr seeing Flora as the little sister he never had.
  • The adult NPC Dr. Edith refers to Ella Musk as her older sister. Ella Musk is a child. In the beta, Ella Musk had an adult model, just like Flora.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • While mooks will try not to enter deep waters as much as possible, sometimes their attacks may make them run into deep waters regardless, where they cannot swim while you can. The Pyro Abyss Mages, though, take the cake: other Abyss Mages can safely teleport onto deep water as they levitate, but Pyro ones will find their shields vaporized by the water and end up falling and drowning.
  • In relation to the above, Pyro-element enemies are by far the easiest enemies to fight in the rain due to their capacity for poor-decision making. Namely, Pyro Abyss Mages, Pyro Whopperflowers, and Pyro Fatui Skirmishers will activate their shields when engaging you in combat despite the downpour, which will then get depleted by the rain water and leave them stunned and vulnerable.
  • Campfires and similar burning objects deal a small amount of damage to anything standing too close. Hilichurls sometimes end up spawned on top of one and are incapable of moving unless you get close enough to aggro them—allowing you to just watch from a distance as they slowly burn to death.
  • One of the random events involves giving overworld items such as apples or mushrooms to a randomly spawned NPC, Troubled Lianne/Lilian. Hilariousness ensues when Lianne spawns right next to the resource she is asking for (e.g., saying that she has had no luck finding apples while looking directly at an apple tree).
  • Fischl's Elemental Skill, "Nightrider", summons her raven familiar Oz to seek out and attack any available targets nearby. This can be become a problem in the Chapter 2-3 boss fight against Signora, which requires the player to stand near sources of heat or cold, depending on the phase, or suffer damage. While Oz will automatically target the boss when summoned, if the boss teleports to the other side of the arena while Oz is out, Oz will then begin targeting and attacking the source of heat/cold, potentially destroying a necessary resource for the player.
• Artistic License – Space: The celestial motions in Teyvat's sky doesn't make a lot of sense when applied to Real Life logic. Both the sun and moon are always on opposite sides of each other (meaning there's always a simultaneous sunset and moonrise happening in the sky or vice versa), the moon itself doesn't change orbital positions and phases so it's always full, and the stars in the night sky don't move relative to the world's rotation. It was stated by Scaramouche in "Unreconciled Stars" and later Dottore at the end of Sumeru's Archon Quest that Teyvat's sky is fake.
• Art Shift:
  • The game uses 2D-animated videos during backstory segments and narrations, narrating most like a fairytale.
  • Starting from Version 1.1, a web event may play out like a Visual Novel with 2D Chibi-fied depictions of the characters.
  • The webcomic shifts into a chibi or cartoony art style in the more light-hearted and comical moments.
  • There are also some promotional videos that utilize Stop Motion animation, such as the Abyss Lector's Character Demo and the 2nd Anniversary recap video.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Great heroes receive immortality after the gods have chosen them to dwell with them in Celestia. They would then have the task of protecting the world alongside the gods. It's also possible for them to assume the form of something else, such as Vennessa turning into a falcon that watches over Mondstadt.
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: The Windtrace event features a multiplayer mode which pits three rebels, who have the ability to disguise themselves as certain objects in the world, against a hunter, who has the ability to track and capture the rebels. The rebels' goal is to evade capture until time runs out, while the hunter's goal is to capture all the rebels within the time limit.
• Atlantis: Enkanomiya is practically Atlantis, remnant of an advanced Crystal Spires and Togas civilization under Watatsumi, and the ancient people of Enkanomiya is said to have names such as Spartacus or Argos.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The bulk of mooks and bosses have weak points that let you deal higher damage if you can hit them, and for certain enemies, hitting those points can stun them temporarily. In most cases, you need an archer to hit a mook's weak point, usually its head. For example, you can temporarily stun a Ruin Guard if you hit the glowing core on its head. Archers' weak point shots will always guarantee a Critical Hit.
• Attack of the Town Festival:
  • Subverted in the 2021 Lantern Rite event. The Traveler and Paimon witness a shady figure loitering around the pyrotechnics for the Lantern Rite and run around all of Liyue trying to get somebody to care enough to investigate what could potentially be a mass-casualty event. They end up having to do the bulk of the investigating themselves; turns out the shady figure is nothing more than a bumbling thief trying to impress his way into a notorious gang, and who had no plans to attack the festival.
  • Played Straight however with the 2022 Lantern Rite event. The Traveler and Paimon aids Keqing who are investigating a strew of fireworks theft that has occured in Qingce Village and enlists the help of Xingqiu and Chongyun who happened to be there for the same reason. It's revealed that the one in charge of the theft planned on setting off fireworks by Liyue's inner capital so that they can make a huge heist while the Millelith are distracted by the explosions occuring. Thankfully the plan was foiled before it was set into motion.
• Aura Vision: Elemental Sight is an ability possessed by Vision holders that lets them detect elemental traces within the world. Such traces are highlighted as trails or markings on the ground in gameplay.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Completing Part II of Raiden Shogun's Story Quest will lift the storm around Inazuma, allowing you to take your Waverider across the ocean into the main landmass, specifically Mondstadt and Liyue waters. While this is fine and dandy on paper, in practice, the lengthy time it takes to cross the vast ocean combined with Mondstadt and Liyue lacking Waverider spawn waypoints makes it an impractical novelty at best since both regions were never designed with ocean exploration in mind (aside from Sequence Breaking Musk Reef and the unnamed sun dial island off Mondstadt's coast if you somehow never bothered to visit these places via gliding or "ice-bridging" beforehand). There's also a broken bridge near Yaoguang Shoal that prevents your Waverider from accessing Dihua Marsh and the rest of the Bishui River. Sumeru also have Waverider spawn waypoint, but their Waveriders are limited to only traversing the rivers and cannot be taken beyond south of Port Ormos and enter the ocean.

B

• Backbench-Hitting Attack:
  • The Corrosion status effect drains HP from the entire party just by hitting the active party member, it also bypasses any shield effects. It can only bring non-active party members down to 15% HP however before it stops damaging them.
  • In-universe the Genius Invocation TCG also has backbench characters, who can take various forms of splash damage from the active character being targeted.
  • The character Wanderer's Elemental Skill can enhance his Normal Attack to allow him to directly hit backbenched character cards of the opponent
• Backtracking: Fortunately, there are Teleport Waypoints nearby to alleviate this.
  • Some fetch quests may involve this, like in Prologue Act 3 where after spending a significant time climbing Stormterror's Lair, you are forced to return to the ground level, activate three mechanisms, then return to the top of the lair.
  • Even if you are already in the second region, Liyue, certain quests there may still require you to return to the earlier region, Mondstadt. While this happens as a part of the main story such as Chapter 1 Act 2, the "Unreconciled Stars" event also has quests that constantly move you back and forth between the two regions.
• Badass Boast: Characters' voiced lines upon activating their Elemental Bursts tend to be this.
  Amber: No one escapes my sights!
  Beidou: Power that ended Haishan!
  Ningguang: Your life is mine!
  Tartaglia: You can run, but you can't hide!
• Badass Bystander: A generic fisherman named Jiangxue has a commission where you are supposed to defend him from monsters. When a Ruin Hunter shows up, the screen cuts to black momentarily as he destroys it... somehow. Paimon notes that he did not even visibly move. If you talk to him outside the quest, he only tells you that he has a Vision (of an unknown type), but after a disastrous incident, he swore to never use it again.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic:
  • The "Wish" gacha system consists of "banners" in which you can pay primogems to get random items, or occasionally characters. Some banners feature increased odds of receiving certain pulls, but five-star pulls are still pretty rare. However, the game tracks how long you've gone without a four- or five-star pull. If you've done nine pulls without getting at least a four-star, the tenth is guaranteed to be at least four-star. If you go 89 pulls (or 79, depending on the banner) without getting a five-star, the next is guaranteed to be five-star. The game also increases the odds of getting a five-star pull when you're within 15 pulls of the hard mercy limit. This is referred to in the game community as the "pity system." Players often treat pity as a resource, and try to manage it so that max pity will coincide with a banner featuring a desired 5-star character or weapon. Sometimes, the RNG will mess up their plans by being generous before the desired banner arrives, resulting in the player getting a 5-star, but not the one they were gunning for.
  • Each character banner has a featured five-star character. When you pull a five-star character, it has a 50% chance of being the featured character. If it's not, the next time you pull a five-star character is guaranteed to be the featured one, this carries over between banners. The weapon banner behaves similarly.
  • Version 2.0 adds the "Epitomized Path" mechanic to the weapons banner, which allows players to select a desired five-star weapon. When a player pulls a five-star weapon that isn't the one they want, they receive a "Fate Point." Receiving enough Fate Points guarantees their desired weapon on the next five-star pull.
• Baffled by Own Biology: Played for Drama. Fontainians are all Oceanids in incomplete human bodies, and thus Primordial Seawater reverts them back to their true forms. In present day, their origins have been forgotten, causing fear and confusion when people are seen dissolving after coming into contact with the Primordial Sea.
• Bag of Holding: Lyney's Magic Pockets function exactly like a typical Bag of Holding.
  • There is also an item called the NRE (Menu 30), which is capable of storing way more food than what would normally fit inside a bag of its size.
• Beach Episode: The entire premise of Version 1.6 is investigating the Golden Apple Archipelago - a cluster of small tropical islands - for a limited time, complete with Jean and Barbara getting their swimsuit outfits (a first for alternative costumes in Genshin Impact as a whole).
  • The premise returns in the 2.8 event, which is a return to the Golden Apple Archipelago.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The three main 5* female Sumeru units have this dynamic going on.
  • Beauty - Nilou, as she is a popular Nice Girl that enjoys dancing and performance arts.
  • Brains - Nahida, being the God of Wisdom, is incredibly intelligent despite her apparent age..
  • Brawn - Dehya, a Hot-Blooded tomboy who works as a mercenary.
• Begin with a Finisher: While in the open world (including fighting bosses) you can always open a battle with an Elemental Burst, certain places directly encourage this: in the Spiral Abyss domain and in some events like "Hypostatic Symphony" and "Energy Amplifier Initiation", your characters will always start with their Elemental Bursts ready even if you have not collected energy for them before.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Besides the Unknown God who kickstarted the plot by separating the twin Travelers in the first place and is currently in the background of the game's overall narrative, there are two prominent villainous factions who are responsible for causing several incidents and conflicts all over Teyvat, the Fatui and the Abyss Order, and both have their dark, disturbing plans for Teyvat. Since neither group has struck an alliance with each other, this implies both are in direct competition over total control of the continent, something Fatui agents later confirm. Even the Raiden Shogun, the ruler and Archon of Inazuma, is set up as an antagonist within her nation.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Chapter 1 Act 1, the Traveler is caught in a dead end by the Millelith and almost arrested for murder, when they were suddenly saved in the nick of time by Childe who made quick work of the Millelith and escapes with the Traveler.
• Bigger on the Inside:
  • All domains are like this to varying degrees, no matter what kind of entrance or where exactly you find it. Even Domains that should be behind small crevices and caves inexplicably hold massive fortresses. The ones in Liyue are particularly egregious since they just straight-up look like pocket dimensions with a permanent evening sky, clouds near or that are the floor, and floating islands.
  • In Liyue, the Adepti are spirits who often make their abodes small on the outside but massive on the inside. The biggest example in the story is Madame Ping's teapot.
  • Alhaitham's house, which can be briefly visited during his Character Quest, is much larger on the inside than the outside conveys, having a spacious living room, a large study, an annex, two lengthy hallways leading to two inaccessible doors that are presumably the bedrooms. It's certainly larger than the one-room home the traveler and Paimon are afforded despite their homes being the same size on the outside.
• Blackout Basement: The Chasm: Underground Mines is a network of dimly-lit caves that requires a Gadget called the Lumenstone Adjuvant to traverse through, as not only does it light your surroundings to make it easier to see where you're going, but it's also needed to solve the area's light-based puzzles.
• Black Swords Are Better: Played quite literally with "The Black Sword" from the premium battle pass. It comes with a crit-rate boost and the unusual ability to heal you as you slash enemies.
• Bladder of Steel: Content and stages that you can play on co-op do not freeze the enemies, unlike when you are playing solo in the open world. This means that mooks or bosses can still attack you as you browse your inventory. The NRE gadget introduced in Version 1.1 allows you to quickly consume food with the press of a button without getting into the inventory, to help with this issue.
• Blade Spam: A handful of claymore characters' Charged Attack is a series of quick, relentless slashes with their claymore that slowly drains their stamina.
• Bleak Level:
  • Each of the 3 first nations (Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma) have an area that is more ominous and/or dangerous than the rest of the map. Seirai Island and Tsurumi Island in Inazuma, however, take the cake. Seirai Island has a post-apocalyptic feel, being the place where a powerful god was slain and presenting a raging thunderstorm that the main character has to find a way to stop. The place remains mostly deserted with the exception of the occasional bandits and Fatui you have to beat (with the only refuge in the entire place being the Neko sanctuary, where the stray cats of the island live), giving a desolate vibe to an already hostile environment. Tsurumi Island manages to be even worse, presenting a landscape perpetually engulfed in a thick fog that locked the island from the outside world and making it eerily similar to a Silent Hill stage. To top it all off the soundtrack of this area is bittersweet at best and utterly depressing at worst. All this perfectly matching the dark and tragic story of Tsurumi Island and its inhabitants.
  • The Chasm: Underground Mines in Liyue is a bleak network of dimly-lit caverns that offers an unpleasant atmosphere. The upper levels are an Abandoned Mine occupied by Treasure Hoarders and leftover remnants of the Fatui, and toxic sludge called Oozing Concentrations creeps out at nearly every corner. Once you go deeper from the mines into the Temple of Doom below, you exit human-occupied territory and enter Abyss Order territory, making it apparent that things will only continue to get more bleak and hostile further down. Deeper down are untamed waterways inhabited by wild creatures like Geovishaps and Floating Fungi, and at the very bottom lies the Chasm Nail; a remnant of Celestia being corrupted by the Abyss Order. But... even that is not the end. Below the Nail lies the Chasm's Bed; an Eldritch Location of warped time and space that maliciously seeks to trap and devour its prey with illusions. All of these combined makes The Chasm: Underground Mines a very unnerving place to explore.
  • Sumeru has 2 different areas that fit in this trope. First, there is Old Vanarana, the ancient home of the Aranara, which, after the spread of Marana, has become the closest the game has to offer to a Death World, where the Withering mechanic is at its most vicious, Rifthounds and other Abyss creatures fill the fields and caves, and what little soundtrack it has sounds ominous for the most part. If it wasn't enough, the lowest level of the Lost Nursery houses the very incarnation of the Marana who has been withering the land. Second, there is the Desert of Hadramaveth, a part of the Great Red Sand that manages to be even more hostile than the previous desert territories. Tribespeople live in a harsher environment where treachery (and the cruel punition to it) are common, fierce sandstorms batter the land continously, and ferocious underground beasts, the Wenut, may surprise Travelers. The soundtrack ranges from foreboding to wistful and heartwrenching, and it all culminates with the Eternal Oasis, a beautiful and deserted area with a perpetual One-Woman Wail playing in the background, proving that Scenery Porn can also be incredibly sad.
• Blithe Spirit: Whether they like it or not, the Traveler is very known to bring peace to cities that were on the verge of collapse from defeating monsters and overthrow humanity’s most corrupted social systems.
• Booked Full of Mooks: Huffman interrogates the patrons at the Angel's Share tavern to see whether Diluc left, and they all say that he stayed there the entire time. It's later revealed that Diluc had the entire tavern booked full of associates to cover for him. The only exception was Kaeya who secretly went to the tavern without him knowing. However, he decides not to report the fact that Diluc was the darknight hero.
• Boom, Headshot!: When playing as a bow user, hitting human or hilichurl enemies in the head deals extra damage and knocks them back.
• Border Patrol: A non-enemy example, as your Fairy Companion Paimon can also act like this. If you walk too far out of bounds beyond what the game currently has in its overworld, then Paimon will automatically take control of your character and take you back in-bounds, saying it is best to explore them later. Justified because said out-of-bounds areas are locations in development and mihoyo has not implemented them.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Sweet Madame and Matsutake Meat Rolls are 2★ healing food. Not the best, but you can farm their ingredients easily through Expedition instead of having to manually harvest them, and they heal enough to be your mainstay healing items throughout the game. Version 4.0 adds Tasses Ragout, which heals the same amount as the aforementioned Sweet Madame and Matsutake Meat Rolls, but has the benefit of having its ingredients available to purchase in high quantities every day from every region's General Goods store.
  • The Blessing of the Welkin Moon microtransaction deposits 90 Primogems per day over a course of 30 days (adding up to a total of 2,700 gems + an added 300 from the Genesis Crystals at purchase) for only $4.99 US, making it a slow but very efficient way to stock up on Primogems for wish banners.
  • 3★ weapons might have lower stats and less flashy passives compared to their higher-rarity counterparts, but being common drops means that they can be refined and ascended much faster. With enough investment, they allow early-to-midgame players to have strong placeholders until they can acquire 4-5★ weapons.
    • The Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers catalyst is considered very useful on certain builds, even in place of 4 or 5 star catalysts. This is due to its passive which, when fully refined, causes the next party member to take the field after the holder to gain a nearly 50% damage increase for 10 seconds. This is great on its own, but for catalyst users like Baizhu whose skills scale off their HP, T To DS also has HP as its secondary stat, allowing for stronger HP based skills. And as it is a 3 star weapon, you'll be easily able to max its refinement level out just through all the 3 stars you get from wishing.
    • The Harbinger of Dawn sword in particular is one of the stronger 3-star weapons, as it offers a 28% critical rate at above 90% HP at max refinement, and also comes with a critical damage secondary stat, making it a surprisingly great weapon for any sword-wielding damage dealer for a little while.
  • Unlike other reactions, Vaporize and Melt have no secondary effects besides simply amplifying the triggering element's damage. However, they directly multiply your base damage and thus mainly benefit from your character's ATK stat^note Elemental Mastery can still contribute to the damage multipliers nonetheless, allowing you to consistently hit hard with your attacks.
  • Geo^note and Anemo to a lesser extent with Swirl units can't do Elemental Reaction other than Crystallize, and in terms of potential damage output, they won't reach the level of Melt/Vaporize teams. But that means they can just keep on pummeling the enemy with brute force without having to bother with switching and set-ups, and some Geo chars like Itto can deal truly ludicrous DPS that can rival Melt/Vaporize teams. Geo characters are also often compensated by having their attack increased based on their DEF or HP stats, which results in a heavy hitter with significant durability.
  • Thanks to Power Creep, the 5-star characters offered in Standard Banner have lost their spot as top-tier character in the meta. That being said, they remain very reliable to use especially for new players, with straightforward kit and requiring less investment to get them up and running.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The terrestrial Local Legends, souped-up versions of regular overworld enemies. Normally, overworld bosses are threats, but are only a slight challenge at worst. Terrestrial Local Legends, on the other hand, have inflated HP pools in the millions, more dangerous attack patterns (including one that uses an overworld boss' attack patterns), and souped-up damage values that make dodging essential. Unlike underwater Local Legends, there are no special mechanics that chew through their healthbar when correctly executed. To further illustrate their strength, terrestrial Local Legends have been featured in Spiral Abyss lineups, but only as significantly nerfed "Veteran" versions of the overworld variants with reduced ATK and HP. Version 4.3 would add a tutorial warning players of the immense strength of Local Legends, as well as add a symbol near the healthbar of Local Legends indicating their status.
• Boss Rush: The final challenge of the Hypostatic Symphony event pits you against all three of the Hypostasis bosses in sequential rounds, in order from Anemo to Electro to finally Geo.
• Boss Subtitles: Major bosses have a long description or title going with their names close to their health meter.
• Bottomless Magazines: Archers never run out of arrows (and mages never run out of mana). A weirder example involves Hilichurl Grenadiers who yank Pyro slimes out of the ground every few seconds, and the exact spot they happen to be standing always has another slime at the ready; unless they are in shallow water, where they always fail to find a Pyro slime for obvious reasons (getting this to happen gives you an achievement).
• Bows and Errors: Childe's technique when using a bow makes one question how it's even remotely possible for him to hit anything, as he stands hunched over with his bow held awkwardly and the string drawn only partway back. It may be a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, as Childe mentions he uses bows specifically because he's weakest at them, and the other archers in the game have better form.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Hitting Adventure Rank 60 is this as things currently stand. The last 5 ranks require more than 3 times the experience needed to go from rank 1 to 55. It takes around a year or so of regular play to gain those last 5 ranks, especially since by the time you hit 55, you will likely have found most of the one time sources of adventure experience such as chests. And the rank up rewards are nothing particularly impressive (Primogems, Mora, some Acquaint Fate, Fragile Resin, and character and weapon experience items), nothing that you won't be able to get plenty of elsewhere. So as it stands, the only real reason to rush the journey to rank 60 is just for the pleasure of saying that you hit max rank.
  • Downplayed in the "Secret Summer Paradise" event. The last Joyeux Voucher milestone for collecting 270 of them rewards you with the Felicitous Joyspar, a gadget that will reveal the remaining Joyeux Voucher locations in the Veluriyam Mirage and incentivizing collecting them all. Since you only need 150 vouchers to claim all Primogems and Kaeya's Sailwind Shadow outfit and 270 vouchers to claim all milestone rewards there is to offer, collecting all 315 vouchers doesn't net you any special rewards; however, since each treasure chest in the Veluriyam Mirage contains a Joyeux Voucher, the gadget can serve the purpose of a treasure compass and help locate the remaining chests.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Every patch always introduce at least one new character that makes their playable debut. Version 3.8 is the first patch where no new characters are released.
  • For a very long time since the game launch, the Battle Pass always contained the same weapons each time. With the release of Fontaine in version 4.0, five more new weapons are added to the BP weapon pool, granting more options for players to choose from.
  • The Fontaine-style Visions have distinct designs, meant to denote the holder's Pneuma or Ousia alignment, a stark contrast to the Visions seen prior, which only had one consistent design per region. After the events of her Story Quest, Furina gets a Vision with a completely unique design.
  • Version 4.3's Roses and Muskets event story broke several trends regarding themed outfits. Previously, themed outfits were worn for one scene as part of the Version Event in which they were introduced. After that, they were never seen again unless you got the outfit, in which case you could wear it in gameplay. In a couple of cases, the outfit was also worn for one scene during a Hangout Event, but while Hangout Events are not Temporary Online Content like Version Events, the Hangout Event was always released at the same time. In the Roses and Muskets event, Kamisato Ayaka wears her "Springbloom Missive" themed outfit, which was added in an earlier patch, throughout the entire story.
  • Most World Quests only have one ending no matter what dialogue the player picks. In Fontaine, the Leroy World Quest series has two radically different endings depending on the player's final choice.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • As usual for gacha games, you can spend real money for more Primogems, giving you more chances to get the characters and weapons you want from the Wishes, or allowing you to replenish your Original Resin to claim more challenge rewards.
  • The Blessing of the Welkin Moon grants you paid currency up-front, and then gives you a daily stipend of Primogems for the next 30 days.
  • At Adventure Rank 20, you gain access to a battle pass, which grants you rewards after completing enough challenges listed on the pass. While you can get stuff with the free version, you can gain substantially more rewards if you splurge for a paid version. In particular, the paid battle pass grants substantial amounts of Mora, level-up books, weapon EXP materials, Fragile Resin, the latest two regions' talent level-up materials (which are otherwise quite annoying to grind) and exclusive 4★ weapons, including the extremely competitive Serpent Spine claymore.
  • The latter part of the Spiral Abyss can be frustrating to try to complete without any 5★ weapons or units, due to the time limits getting stricter, the game splitting your party up into two groups, and the encounters getting progressively tougher the higher-up you go. It is doable, as there are workable 4★ teams, but you better be a pro at Min-Maxing.
  • The Blessings of the Abyssal Moon, a changing set of buffs that apply to Spiral Abyss runs, are almost always tuned to favour a 5★ limited character on the latest character banner (with priority generally being given to new 5★ characters). Less obviously, enemy lineups may also favour the said 5★ limited character (e.g. filling a chamber with Spectres of various elements except those matching the element of the 5★ character). This gives those who have obtained the character a significant leg-up in finishing the endgame content with the full 36 stars.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Dihua Marsh is a beautiful wetland and (if following the intended path) the player's introduction to the Liyue region.
• Bullying a Dragon: For all the fame and recognition The Traveler has gained through their journey across Teyvat, bandits and other baddies never fail to pick a fight with them. Inazuman Nobushi and Kairagi might get a pass due to their nation's isolationism, but trans-national organizations such as Treasure Hoarders, Eremites, and the Fatui have no such excuse.
• But Thou Must!:
  • The game does not give you significant leeway in how the Traveler responds to certain dialogue. Among others, you must find Keqing more trustworthy than Ningguang, you must act distrustful towards Childe, and you must accept dinner invitations from Lisa and Zhongli. You do usually get two dialog buttons, but in most cases, they either do the same thing or only change the very next line of dialog. Increasingly, the text of the second dialog button will be the continuation of the text in the first one. Often the only real decision you get to make is whether to make fun of Paimon and how sarcastically you choose to answer.
  • Averted, however, in Hangout Events: depending on the Traveler's dialogue choices, the story can split off into various "routes" and reach different endings that can wildly vary, and even the replies that do not shift the story's route have the possibility of offending the character you are hanging out with. They can even make the event end abruptly if you run out of hearts.
  • When activating the Ruin Golem at Devantaka Mountain, Jazari tells the Traveler that it's important to follow the instructions. However, the player is not given any instructions, and the only prompt is to activate the machine and use it to "punch." This results in the Golem's arm falling off, and Jazari then chews you out for breaking it.
  • In version 3.2's Fabulous Fungi Frenzy event, all the available options to name the Floating Hydro Fungus that the Traveler catches read "Bongo-Head". The Traveler quickly called Paimon out on it. Justified out-of-universe, as Bongo-Head became the Traveler's signature Fungus, was referenced in the event's voiced dialogue and has cameos in most Fungi events.
  • While a large majority of character story quests are optional, at least four of them so far are mandatory to progress through the main Archon quest. Specifically, Amber's must be completed to unlock Razor's which itself needs to be completed alongside the world quest Chapter I Act IV prologue to meet Dainsleif in order to unlock chapter I Act IV itself while Ayaka's and Yoimiya's must be completed in order to unlock Chapter II Act II.
  • Just like the above example, a few World Quests are also mandatory in order to progress through the game like all of the ones that grant you access to the Chasm in order to continue Chapter II Act IV prior to version 4.3 where a teleport waypoint would take you to the next major location instead, the above mentioned Chapter I Act IV prologue in order to meet Dainsleif and some of the adventure rank ascension quests due to each Archon Quest being locked behind a certain rank needed in order to start them.

C

• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
  • Within the universe, cameras are called Kameras.
  • Blubberbeasts are the the setting's version of seals.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Dandelions in this game are flowers with seeds that are scattered in the wind, but that's about where the similarities with real dandelions end. They're a source of Anemo energy and can be made into a potent enough wine that official real-world recipes suggest substituting absinthe for it.
• Call-Back:
  • In Mona's story quest, Mr Zhu wants you to defeat a slime that swallowed his ring. Paimon then suggests luring the slimes to their place since she kept the slime bait that you previously used in Diluc's story quest.
  • In the "Chalk Prince and the Dragon" event, Albedo explains that the Festering Desire is a cursed sword that can corrupt and poison its wielder. After remembering how the Traveler had a unique ability that allowed them to purify Dvalin's corrupted tears (which happened in the Prologue chapter), he concludes that they can properly wield the sword without any consequences.
  • During the "Three to Get Ready, and Here We Go" quest in the Moonlight Merriment event from Version 2.1, the Traveler and Paimon at one point came across Xinyan having a conversation in Liyue Harbor with Beidou about taking her to Inazuma. During the Labyrinth Warriors event in Version 2.2, the plot is kickstarted by Xinyan's permission to stay in Inazuma being brought to a sudden end when the event she came for is cancelled.
• Calling Parents by Their Name:
  • Much to her father Kuan's annoyance, Yiran insists on calling him "Manager Kuan" because she thinks he needs to set an example as the supervisor of the Blackcliff Forge.
  • Kujou Sara refers to her adoptive father as "Takayuki," likely because Kujou Takayuki raised her solely to be obedient with little familial love.
• Capture Balls: During the mid game you gain access to the Omni-Ubiquity Net, which is a spherical device that you can throw at wild animals to capture their essence, and place them inside your Serenitea Pot.
• Cartoon Creature: Dusk Bird, Sumeru's endemic bird species in Dharma Forest, shares the characteristics of three species: chameleons, toucans, & parrots.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: So far, all playable male characters are some form of Bishōnen.
• Cast Herd: Most characters are affiliated with a faction or categorized into groups, such as The Seven, the Knights of Favonius, the Liyue Qixing, the Fatui, the Abyss Order...
• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, Yūichi Iguchi voices the Watatsumi Island resistance soldier Teppei, an NPC that the Traveler meets during the Inazuma Archon Quest that yearned to have more useful combat abilities to serve in the frontlines, which lead to him dying due to accepting the life-draining powers of a Delusion. Afterwards, he was cast as the playable character Shikanoin Heizou, who is not only a Vision holder but is also a Doushin from the opposing Shogunate that debuted in Version 2.8, the last version update related to Inazuma before Sumeru's debut. As a bonus, Heizou visited Watatsumi as a tourist and loved the island so much that he was willing to stay there for a few months in one of his hangout routes.
• Cataclysm Backstory:
  • 500 years ago, every nation in Teyvat suffered a disastrous incursion of abyssal monstrosities and corruption, which still effects the setting to this day. This event is believed to be connected to Khaenri'ah, an ancient civilization in Teyvat, being punished by Celestia for reasons that are still unclear. The various ruin machines are the remnants of its technology, while The Abyss Order and the Hilichurls are the remnants of its people.
  • Within the Brightcrown Canyon, the storm god Decarabian built a ring-shaped ancient city, complete with a tall tower serving as his residence. Unfortunately for him, a war broke out to dethrone and slay him, and his people deserted that place. Sometime later, Dvalin made the ruins of the tower his resting place, leading the people to call it "Stormterror's Lair" when Dvalin became corrupted.
  • The various "sky nails" across the game world caused different smaller scaled cataclysms, from turning the once fertile Dragonspine into a frozen wasteland to creating the desert that covers 3/4 of Sumeru. It is later revealed that the sky nails are the god Phanes' attempt to fix the ley lines after an even earlier cataclysmic event.
• Card Battle Game: Update 3.3 introduced Genius Invocation TCG, an in-universe card game that can be played against in-game characters or other players.
• Cat Girl:
  • In Mondstadt, the village of Springvale is home to the Kätzlein Bloodline, whose most recognizable features are a pair of cat ears. So far, three members of this family are present in the game: Draff, his daughter Diona, and their ancestor, Olaf.
  • In Inazuma, Kirara, a courier, happens to be a nekomata who has enough youkai power to manifest as a human. While her cat ears are just hair decorations, her two tails and her hind paws are real. Her elemental skill allows her to completely transform into a cat in a box.
  • In Fontaine, Lynette has a cat tail and ears. Unlike in Mondstadt, her appearance is stated to be unusual in Fontaine, and is attributed to some distant feline ancestry that didn't manifest in Lyney.
• Central Theme:
  • Both the main quest and several character quests seem to carry a consistent theme: The consequences of refusing to let go of old grudges.^*The Abyss Order is an Anti-Human Alliance that seeks revenge on Celestia for the destruction of Khaenri'ah 500 years ago, and generally don't care if they have to burn Teyvat down first to get to them, Kokomi's Story Quest revolves around a renegade faction of the resistance dissatisifed with the civil war's relatively peaceful resolution and want revenge for the deaths of their comrades, a few members of the Harbingers serve the Tsaritsa out of an obsessive hatred for their resident Archons, the Akademiya kept Lesser Lord Kusanali locked up for 500 years and ultimately conspired to replace her with Scaramouche because they felt that, since the day they discovered her, that she wasn't good enough to be Rukkhadevata's replacement, among many other instances of long-term resentment backfiring on people who can't let bygones be bygones.
  • The passing of old gods and dawn of a new era. Four of the nations visited so far have lost their previous Archons^*No one has seen Barbatos for centuries though he keeps watch over the nation, Morax is "killed" in public, Inazuma and Sumeru lost Makoto and Rukkhadevata, and Fontaine has Focalors dying and usher in the new age of humanity or a new Archon.^*The Qixing taking over Liyue, a reformed Ei takes the rein of Inazuma, Kusanali taking her spot as Rukkhadevata's successor, and Neuvillette becoming the new leader of Fontaine
  • The power of humanity, and how collectively they can be greater than the gods.^*The Qixing takes down Osial and later Beisht after Morax's departure, the wishes of Inazuma people overcoming the Vision Hunt Decree, the collective wisdom of Sumeru giving birth to an artificial god, and the collective belief of Fontainians in the form of Indemnidium granting enough power to not only kill an Archon, but also shatter her seat, meaning The Seven is now The Six. This isn't always a good thing, as it could lead to arrogance, and is implied to be behind the destruction of Khaenri'ah.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Mondstadt is pretty standard fantasy fare and Liyue, while touching on somewhat heavier topics, is still pretty tame. Inazuma however, holds nothing back. Foreign merchants are trapped in Ritou, unable to leave the city, let alone the country, there's an outright civil war raging against its borderline fascist shogunate, and the wilderness is devastated by excessive Electro energy, leaving very little safe routes to navigate each island. And that's without going into the main story or the sidequests, where things range from the first few on-screen deaths, bandits perfectly willing to kill children and their own men to get what they want, a Serial Killer disguised as a rambling old coot, and an island of perpetual fog where its long-deceased habitants are trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop as a result of attempting to sacrifice a child to their patron god. Inazuma's darker tone sets up the tone for the rest of the game as a result.
• Chain Lightning: When you hit an enemy with an Electro-Charged reaction, the lightning will also affect another nearby enemy with the Hydro status.
• Challenge Run: In the "Hypostatic Symphony" and "Energy Amplifier Initiation" events, you can choose to impose added conditions for the fights, like time limits, increased boss HP, or resistance to certain elements, to increase your score.
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: In the early game, the focus is more on the exploration aspect and the story. It is easy to become sidetracked on the open-world finding collectibles like treasure chests, Mysterious Seelie, and elemental Oculi. But once you find most or all of those, and when you have caught up with the story quests, the focus of the endgame shifts more on character progression such as finding rarer weapons/artifacts and upgrading them to tackle the harder content... All while waiting for new story content to arrive.
• Character Name Limits: The Traveler's name can only be a maximum of 14 characters and cannot contain spaces. The same applies to the Wanderer's custom name as well.
• Character Narrator:
  • Dainsleif is the main narrator for the various Character Miscellany videos on YouTube that explain the gameplay mechanics of the playable characters. However, Alice replaces him for Aloy, Dori and the Wanderer.
  • The Ferrylady narrates Zhongli's debut trailer.
  • A handful of NPCs tell major backstories with in-game 2D animated clips. For example, the bard Venti narrates the story of the two dragons in Mondstadt, while Iron-Tongue Tian in Liyue tells you a story about Ningguang.
  • Venti is also the narrator for the Battle Pass cutscene, which can be interpreted a number of ways.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Given the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors in the game, many enemies will encourage the use of certain elements through one or more of damage resistances, elemental shield weaknesses and mechanics related to specific elemental reactions, with the degree of forcing varying between enemies. A basic example is the Wooden Shieldwall Mitachurls (use Pyro to burn the shield), while a more complex example is the Solitary Suanni (at its first transition phase, it is weakened by inflicting Freeze, then clearing the Freeze status). A handful of bosses directly force the use of a specific element (e.g. Dendro Hypostasis requiring Dendro in the revival phase).
  • Beyond elements, some enemies may force the use of certain characters with certain kit features. Traits favoured may include blunt attacks (e.g. Geo Hypostasis), shields (e.g. Azhdaha, Primo Geovishap) or the ability to hit midair targets (e.g. Rhodeia, Shouki no Kami).
  • Some Spiral Abyss variants of overworld bosses tend to invoke this even more strongly than their overworld variants, usually by increased resistances or alteration of their attack patterns to heavily prioritise the attack that requires specific characters to handle. For example, in the Spiral Abyss, the Aeonblight Drake will immediately enter its airborne state. An archer is thus needed in the team to hit its weak points.
  • Story-related quests inside Temples involve puzzles and out-of-reach areas that only certain characters can solve. For example, the "Outrider Style" quest has doors that only open by killing the enemies on out-of-reach platforms. This situation forces the player to use an archer to snipe them from the ground. Fortunately, there is an Anti-Frustration Feature in place, where a "Trial" character joins your party that can easily handle the challenges within the domain.
  • Certain domains have traits that either give you gameplay bonuses or punishes you when you are playing characters with one or more certain elements. Spiral Abyss also has "blessings" that give you a buff towards certain elements or mechanics (such as having a shield).
  • Some Sumeru domains have Clusterleaves of Cultivation, which require Dendro to activate, and no nearby Dendrograna (which would allow characters of other elements to apply Dendro). A Dendro character is thus mandatory in the party.
  • Zig-zagged by Fontaine's Pneuma and Ousia system. Many Fontaine enemies and overworld puzzles have Pneuma or Ousia alignments, and hitting them with attacks of the opposite alignment disables the enemy or solves the puzzle. While most characters have to find Pneuma or Ousia Blocks in the overworld to apply Pneuma or Ousia with their attacks, most Fontaine characters have a Talent that applies an additional Pneuma or Ousia-aligned attack. In the overworld, this is less of an issue, since enemies can be brute-forced and puzzles supply all Pneuma and/or Ousia blocks required to solve them. However, in Domains and Spiral Abyss (where enemy health values are significantly higher) and when facing the Icewind Suite boss (whose ultimate attacks require Pneuma/Ousia to efficiently interrupt), Pneuma and Ousia Blocks are lacking and the forcing of Fontaine characters becomes much stronger. To compensate for this, players have access to one free character of each alignment (Hydro Traveler for Pneuma and Lynette for Ousia). There is also the Sword of Narzissenkreuz, which grants non-Fontainian Sword-users access to a passive that occassionally deals Pneuma or Ousia damage.
• Charged Attack:
  • The playable characters can unleash a more powerful attack (at the cost of Stamina) by holding down the main attack button. The properties and animations of the charged attacks differ depending on the character.^note In general, only Bow units have a mostly common damage multiplier (43.86–92.82% for aimed shots and 124–235.6% for fully-charged shots; the exceptions are a higher minimum aimed-shot multiplier of 43.9% for Yoimiya and Sara and maximum of 93.71% for Venti and Diona, who additionally have a higher full-charge multiplier of 236.1%). Other than that, characters of any one weapon type have a common Stamina cost—20 for Bow and Sword units (except 25 for Keqing), 25 for Polearm, 40 per second for Claymore (who can pull sustained attacks for up to five seconds, hence a maximum of 200; the exception is Itto, who has a unique mechanic), and 50 for Catalyst (except 25 for Heizou).
  • You can also charge certain abilities as well, creating a completely different but more powerful ability.
• Checkpoint: Dungeons have Doors of Resurrection that serve as respawn checkpoints in case you fell off a bottomless pit.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In a back alley of Mondstadt, there is a door blocked by a circular magic seal. No one seems to know how to open it. Much later, at Adventure Rank 38 or above, you can access Mona's Story Quest. In it, you travel with Mona from Liyue to Mondstadt, and (after shenanigans) she decides to stay there for a while. Her hydro-magic skills allow her to remove the seal, and the magic lab inside becomes her new home.
  • In Sal Terrae, Liyue, there is a big hole with a magic seal that leads into an underground cave. There seems to be no way to open the seal. Only in Zhongli's story quest (you have to hit Adventure Rank 40) do you open it^note the mechanism that allows you to unlock the seal does not appear until you play this quest, leading to the Traveler discovering what lies inside the Goddess of Salt's hideout.
  • Early in Chapter III, Act 6, a broken mirror is found. It sets up the reveal of the twist at the end of the Archon Quest - that most of the quest was the Traveler in a vision of their sibling's memories.
  • In Chapter IV, Act I, Freminet mentions a legend about how it rains when the Hydro Dragon weeps. By observing when it rains throughout Chapter IV, it is possible to deduce that Neuvillette is the Dragon Sovereign of Water long before the reveal.
• Chest Monster: Whopperflowers disguise themselves amongst the flora that you can pick in the wild. However, hints allow you to spot them; they do not produce a spark unlike the actual flowers, elemental sight does not highlight them, and their icon shows a speech bubble when interacted.
• The Chosen Many: Lore-wise, the gods grant a "Vision" onto people who keep holding onto their ambition even in desperate times. The Traveler, being from another world, is outside this "system"; however, they have an as-of-yet unexplained trait where they can take on an elemental power without a Vision simply by interacting with the Statues of the Seven. Venti later explains that the Vision is a sign of Celestia accepting their holders as future gods, calling the holders "allogenes". If we believe their names, allogenes - aka the "Genshin" - are Semi-Divine beings, somewhere between a mortal and a god.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Babel betrayed a lot of people for power, but she would have accomplished her primary goal if she had simply refrained from betraying Jeht or the Traveler. Not a smart move to cross your most capable assassin.
• Clown Car: The Waverider can apparently carry up to 5 passengers... except closer inspection shows that the boat's size can barely fit the 4 (which includes Paimon) inside. Beidou and Xinyan are quick to hang a lampshade at this.
  Beidou: So... this is it? This is your boat? It's really, uh... *beat* compact. But, it works... It's about the right size for sweeping up junk from the water's surface.
  Xinyan: Only thing is... we're packed in like sardines here. There's nowhere to put my guitar...
• Collection Sidequest:
  • The Oculi (e.g., "Anemoculus" in Mondstadt and "Geoculus" in Liyue) are orb-like collectibles usually found in the wild, in tricky-to-reach places. You can "offer" them in the Statues of the Seven to increase the statues' level; the level increase gives your characters added stats (including stamina) and increases the "healing limit" of the statues, as well as the Traveler's constellation upgrades for each element and some other valuable items.
  • In Version 1.2, the "Crimson Agate" in Dragonspine works similarly to the Oculi, in that you must look for them and then offer them to the "Frostbearing Tree" to get rewards. The difference is that a handful of Agates appear inside special chests, and once the tree reaches a certain level, you will be able to take five combat and timed challenges (which refresh twice a week) that you can complete, getting more Agates to level the tree up.
  • There are achievements for finding and following Seelies to their destinations.
  • For a more minor case, there are achievements for collecting all books within the same series.
• Color-Coded Elements: The seven elements of Teyvat are all heavily associated with a vibrant, well-differentiated color because of their importance within the game's mechanics, and most Vision bearers' elements can be identified due to similar color schemes. The Traveler, lacking a Vision, gains the color of their current element in the details of their costume.
  • Anemo is a light mint green color.
  • Geo is a vibrant, goldenrod yellow.
  • Electro is a very vivid purple.
  • Dendro is associated with a bright yellow-green or chartreuse. Also brown, as wooden objects (shields and brambles, for example) have Dendro properties.
  • Hydro is blue.
  • Pyro is orange, though red takes priority in the colors of most Pyro characters.
  • Cryo is a light, almost white, shade of cyan.
  • Lack of an element is grey, which can only been seen in the background of the character menu at the start of the game before interacting with the Statue of the Seven. This is also the color an inactive Vision takes when its bearer dies. Attacks that deal physical damage have their weapon trails colored yellow, similarly to Geo.
  • The Arkhe energy of Fontaine are also color coded, with Ousia being bluish purple, while Pneuma is colored bright yellow.
• Color-Coded Eyes: The easiest way to identify the Archon in each country is by their eyes, which will always be a brilliant shade of the color that represents their element.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • To differentiate between the two types of Ley Line Outcrops, the Blossoms of Revelation are colored blue, while the Blossoms of Wealth are colored gold.
  • Vision gems have distinct colors according to their elements. Although the Traveler does not carry one, the gem accessories on their clothing also glow the same way, which is useful to tell which element they are currently using.
  • The game highlights story-related quests with yellow waypoints, circles, or pillars of light in the open-world map and color-coding Daily Commissions with purple. World Quests, Random Events and limited-time event objectives (such as those from "Unreconciled Stars") are colored blue to separate them from the rest.
  • Teleport Waypoints (including Domains and Statues of the Seven) initially glow red but turn blue once you have activated them.
  • Zig-Zagged with Vision holders. They have similar color schemes to the Vision they have, such as Cryo and Hydro Vision holders wearing various shades of blue, making it easy to identify which Vision they have if it isn't clearly seen on their person. However, there are some notable outliers for every Element:
    • Rosaria has a Cryo Vision, but her red, white, and black color scheme doesn't match the element she is using.
    • In terms of color palettes, Anemo Vision holders appear to be the most diverse, as the only character other than Venti, the nation's Archon, to wear green is Xiao. The most common color the others opt for is various shades of blue, but even then, Heizou and Sayu avert this by wearing yellow-brown and cream colors, respectively, while Kazuha wears maple red.
    • Yae Miko bear a color palette that make her look closer to a Pyro Vision holder, averting the usual purple color motif that other Electro Vision holders have. Meanwhile, Razor's design doesn't necessarily place him into any Vision color motif category.
    • Tartaglia is a Hydro Vision holder but has a gray and red color motif, representing his alignment with the Fatui.
    • Yun Jin is a Geo Vision holder but the decorations on her clothing are pink and blue rather than the usual gold and brown colors.
    • Kaveh is a Dendro Vision holder, but his color scheme is primarily red and gold, with shades of blue and turquoise. The only green part of his color scheme is his Vision.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: All items (weapons, artifacts, food, ingredients, materials, etc.) have colored backgrounds associated with their rarity (in ascending order: gray, green, blue, purple, orange/gold). Characters also share the same color coding scheme, though they are only tiered 4★-5★.
• Color Wash: Certain Elemental Bursts will tint the screen with colors depending on the element. For example, Fischl's Burst covers the screen with purple, while Diluc's Burst makes the screen glow bright orange (akin to the dawn sky, his Burst's namesake).
• Combat and Support: As many characters have purposely weak basic attacks, there's a limited number of characters that are viable as field units. Because of this and the game's Tag Team setup, a common team structure is for one or two characters to fill the combat role while others support them. Some teams avert this by instead having characters use all their special abilities in quick succession, and there are others where the "support" is the muscle, all thanks to not needing to be on the field to deal damage using their special abilities.
• Combat Stilettos: Almost all the female characters have either full-on high heels or raised-heel boots, including claymore-swinging tanks like Noelle. Special mentions go to Keqing—who, in addition to wearing stilettos, has a combat ability called "Lightning Stiletto"^note Though "stiletto" in this case refers to the dagger she throws and not the heeled footwear—and Diona, who does not wear high heels but stands on tiptoes all the time anyway.
• Combat Tentacles: While exploring underwater in Fontaine, your only means of attacks in most cases is through a "Transoceanic Sourcewater", an orb floating beside you which can extend a thin tendril towards targets as a means of attack, with a 1-second cooldown between usage. It can also target Xenochromatic Creatures, allowing the player to absorb different abilities.
• Comet of Doom: A meteor shower kickstarts the plot of the "Unreconciled Stars" event. Problem is, the meteorites have scattered across the land, and those who touched the meteorite shards have gone into a deep sleep that no one can wake them up from. Only by getting rid of the meteorites can the Traveler and Fischl save the people from their condition.
• Commonplace Rare:
  • Carrots can be obtained from the wild and expedition, but can only purchased from Wanmin Restaurant. Most other vegetables can be purchased at food vendors, but strangely, carrots aren't among them.
  • Fowl and raw meat can't be purchased from any restaurants or food vendors. Both can by bought from Draff in Springvale in limited quantities each day, but he's the only vendor in the entire game to sell fowl. Two other vendors sell raw meat, but both are in Sumeru. Both can be harvested from expeditions, but they take 4 hours to complete (3 with Fischl) and only give you a handful each time. Your most reliable source of meat is Giant Scorpions in Sumeru Desert, which are treated as enemy units instead of wild animals, meaning you have to fight for it.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • All enemies have numerical levels, which mostly keep pace with the maximum level your characters can currently achieve. The last few levels of the Spiral Abyss, however, have enemy levels go all the way up to 100; your units cannot level past 90. You cannot even go above 80 until Adventure Rank 50, and you will unlock level 90 enemies in domains well before this point.
  • Played With when it comes to environmental effects. While enemies do take damage from Mist/Flaming Flowers, Electro Crystals, Anemo Barriers, and Poisonous Mushrooms (and rarely Dendro Vines), Electro Barriers that can obstruct or knockback a character cannot do the same to them, and they never need to worry about Sheer Cold or Balethunder.
• Completion Meter: In the world map, there is a percentage counter that tracks how much you have explored in a certain region. Once you reach specific thresholds of exploration, up to 60%, you can receive experience points that increase the respective region’s reputation level.
• Content Warning: Similar with Honkai Impact 3rd, the PC port of the game starts with a warning of possible ill feelings like flashing effects-induced epilepsy and headaches due to visual motion sickness while playing, and advices players to stop playing and seek help if such happens.
• Continuity Drift: Barbatos is stated to be the weakest of the Archons in the Prologue, which is unlikely to have been a lie as he had the artifact that gave him divinity taken away by La Signora at the end of the chapter. Note that La Signora is a mortal, albeit a very powerful one. Barbatos didn't even put up a fight. However, Chapter 3, which was released about two years later, introduced Lesser Lord Kusanali. Kusanali is technically an Archon, but is noted to lack the power of one. In fact, she was imprisoned by her followers for not living up to their expectations. This suggests that the idea that Barbatos is the weakest of the Archons is no longer true, as Barbatos is more Overshadowed by Awesome.
• Continuity Nod:
  • You can only receive the Daily Commission Quest from Godwin after you completed Glory's. The dialogue lines upon meeting him for the first time also mention that the player already met Glory before. There are also commission quests from Glory that, story-wise, happens after you finish Godwin's.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Most bosses are immune to Frozen and other disabling effects that may be included in each character's movelist. Bosses can appear in the Abyssal Moon Spire too, hampering the effectiveness of teams that revolve around these effects.
• Contrived Coincidence: A few NPCs mention that no-one has gotten an Electro Vision for over a year since before the beginning of the game’s events. The Electro Archon isolated Inazuma and began the Vision Hunt Decree around that same time as well. However, Ei’s voice lines reveal that she doesn’t give out Electro Visions, and that the element of a vision is determined by a person’s ambitions and some other criteria that she can’t describe. This ultimately leaves it up in the air as to why no-one has gotten an Electro Vision since that time.
• Controllable Helplessness: An unusual example in version 3.8's flagship event. At one point, the Traveler becomes a stagehand for a performance of Zosimos' play. While some scenes do require the Traveler to perform certain actions to manipulate props, others don't. For those scenes, the game places the Traveler in an isolated area with a button, whose only function is to shake some prop stars hanging from the ceiling.
• Cooking Mechanics: You can collect ingredients in the wild and then cook them whenever you find a bonfire and a pot. The cooking process involves pressing a button with the right timing to get superior results. Having done enough "perfect" cooking for certain food (the number of times needed differs depending on the food's quality tier) leads to you "mastering" the dish, allowing you to cook multiple of the same food automatically at the same time. There are various dishes that you can cook, granting different effects such as replenishing HP or giving you a temporary buff. Characters are also better at cooking certain food than others, either making unique versions of specific dishes or having a chance to double the yield of foods of a particular buff category.
• Cooldown Manipulation:
  • The "Slowing Water" Ley Line disorder (that appears in certain domains) increases your skills' cooldown timers by 80%.
  • A handful of characters have skills, passives or Constellation upgrades that speed up or reset skill cooldowns for themselves, or the other party members.
  • Certain weapons also have this as their passive effect, such as the Sacrificial Sword having a chance to end an elemental skill's cooldown after damaging an enemy with that skill.
• Cool Boat: 1.6 introduces Waveriders, tiny boats that run by magic and allows you to explore the oceans without having to be concerned about Stamina. They're also surprisingly well-armed, and can take on sea fortifications with ease.
• Cool Sword: A good proportion of weapons have intricate designs or flashy decorations, especially when they receive visual upgrades when ascended. A number even have lore-wise justifications on why they look this way, such as the Royal Longsword's carvings and embellishments testifying the stature of its owner.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: There's a Co-Op mode that allows up to four players to explore and battle enemies together in real-time. It comes with limitations though; it pauses Story Quests for everyone, and guests cannot access shops, cannot pick up Oculi and cannot open chests, even if the host can.
• Cosmetic Award:
  • You can get special namecards for your profile from clearing certain achievements, maxing out your characters' Relationship Values, reaching Reputation lv 7 in each city, as event rewards…
  • You can get custom Wind Gliders from reaching Reputation lv 8 (the maximum) in each city and leveling the Frostbearing Tree in Dragonspine to 12.
• Cosmic Horror Story: As the story progresses, more and more information is revealed that suggests that Celestia is trying to keep the world of Tevyat ignorant of the threats that exist both beyond^note The implication that the skies are an illusion. and below the world^note There exists an Eldritch Location at the bottom of the Chasm, along with the Abyss that exists below the surface..
• Cosmic Motifs:
  • All characters are associated with a fictional constellation^note Although some like Leo Minor, Crater and Corvus does exist in real life though shaped differently.
  • Mondstadt ("Moon Town") and Liyue (璃月, roughly "glassy moon") have the Moon in their names.
  • The Qixing refers to the Big Dipper stars. The titles for each member (Yuheng, Tianquan) refer to the Chinese names of the stars of the Big Dipper. It is even the Chinese name of one of the characters (Beidou), whose meaning In-Universe is also associated with death.
  • The Eclipse is a recurring motif in the backstories; the Hilichurls have an occult tribe that worships a symbol of the eclipsed sun, while the "Breeze Amidst the Forest" book mentions something about the Eclipse Dynasty (which is then renamed Blacksun Dynasty since Version 1.1).
• The Coup: The plot of Chapter III Act V is the Traveler banding together with the various Sumeru characters that they had met previously to cripple the corrupt Akademiya and rescue the Dendro Archon that they've kept imprisoned.
• Courtroom Antics: There are a few times in Fontaine where people in the audience shout about a case or evidence they want to go over. The Chief Justice ONLY allows it because it helps make progress in the case each time it happens.
• Courtroom Episode: Chapter 4 of the Archon quest is this, with the Traveler and Paimon getting involved in Fontaines judicial court system for a few reasons.
• Crapsaccharine World: Within the first few minutes of your journey through Teyvat, you are treated to an absolutely gorgeous view of Mondstadt's countryside.◊ A few minutes after that, and you see a dragon flying threateningly just above you, and the further you go down the story, it's evident there's something sinister brewing in the darkest corners of Teyvat.
• Crapsack World: As time goes on, it becomes apparent that the current state of Teyvat is not good. The destruction of Khaenri'ah resulted in a Great Offscreen War so cataclysmic in scale that it resulted in the deaths of untold millions, including several Adepti and at least two Archons. Several imprisoned gods lie dormant beneath the earth waiting for a chance to escape so they can resume their war with the present Archons, uncaring of the many mortal lives that will be lost in the process. The Abyss Order operates on a scale from anywhere between trying to turn humanity against the gods and actively trying to annihilate them, and the Fatui are also scheming to conquer Teyvat one Gnosis at a time. And the gods of Celestia are suggested to be not much better, and will destroy any civilizations that go far enough in defying them. And the grand majority of humanity remains largely oblivious to the sheer number of world-ending threats on their doorstep.
  • Inazuma, thanks to the Electro Archon's efforts, is a highly isolated nation where everything will be frozen for all eternity. There won't be anything new from the outside world, and the Vision Hunt Decree ensures there won't be anything new from inside either. And this is before taking into account the lethal conditions in some parts of the nation, the constant thunderstorms, and the roaming bandits and ronins. It's an And I Must Scream on a nation level.
  • Sumeru is ruled with an iron fist by the Akademiya, who placed their own Archon under house arrest out of staunch refusal to accept that her predecessor is dead, and despise the arts and anything "unproductive" to such a degree that they actively persecute anyone who attempts to indulge in such. And the Akasha Terminal, which was initially believed to simply be an advanced piece of technology used for quick access to information, turns out to actively harvest the people of Sumeru's dreams, culminating in the Akademiya's sages trapping the entire city's population in a Lotus-Eater Machine in a bid to harvest a large amount of dreams in a short timeframe. Sumeru is also threatened by the Eremites, a race of desert warriors trying to resurrect their patron deity so they can wage open warfare with the Akademiya-ruled government.
  • Snezhnaya is implied to be one. Ruled by an Archon with no love, the country is enveloped in eternal winter where you can freeze to death just by standing still. Such an environment naturally breeds grim, pragmatic people, as evidenced by the Snezhnaya Does not Believe in Tears achievement and Teucer's nursery rhyme.^note "You break a pinkie promise, I throw you on the ice. The cold will kill the pinkie that once betrayed your friend, the frost will freeze your tongue off so you never lie again." It's later revealed that the Tsaritsa's plans are at least in part driven by her rage at the declining state of the world.
• Crate Expectations: In the wild, you may find breakable crates and barrels that may occasionally hold Mora, items, and chests. However, crates and barrels within the cities are unbreakable.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • Purely offensive characters such as Razor, Xiao, and Klee suffer from this if without support. Those who have kits purely focused on attacking eventually fall due to lack of recovery or have attacks the enemy greatly resists or is immune to. This is especially prominent if their buffs encourage them to stay in the field by deactivating during switch-outs.
  • Discussed In-Universe with the Kamuijima Cannons in Inazuma. They're powerful weapons built by the Shogunate Army which fire explosive Electro projectiles at targets and are even capable of bringing down the containment dome around Tatarasuna, and Xavier notes that it's because of these cannons that the Sangonomiya Resistance was unable to push their forces any closer to Narukami Island. However, they're completely immobile and cannot be relocated, so once the front line was pushed back to Nazuchi Beach (far out of the cannon's range), they have fallen into disuse by the army, meaning they're only ever good at defending the Kujou Encampment. This flaw inevitably works in the Traveler's favor, however, since it allows them to freely use the cannons to break into Tatarasuna and scare the Fatui.
• Critical Hit: Characters have stats that increase the chance and percent-based damage of their critical hits. A handful of weapons and artifacts also give their users an increase in either critical hit rate or damage, as well as effects that occur on a critical hit.
• Critical Hit Class: Cryo characters tend to specialize in dealing critical hits. The Cryo Resonance effect (put 2 Cryo characters in a party) increases the crit rate of the whole party by 15% against enemies that are affected by Cryo or frozen. The Blizzard Strayer artifact set increases crit rate against ememies affected by Cryo by 20%, and further increases it by another 20% if the enemy is frozen.
• Crystalline Creature:
  • Geovishaps are Rock Monsters whose bodies are primarily made out of crystal, with rocky outgrowths of spikes on their backs and limbs.
  • Azhdaha is an enormous dragon made of golden crystal — an in-universe legend claims that he was originally a single massive crystal that was carved into the shape of a dragon by Morax, the patron god of Liyue.
• Crosshair Aware:
  • The game highlights Area of Effect attacks as circles on the ground, showing their destination and radius.
  • If a Ruin Guard's missiles lock on to you, a crosshair will appear on the character's body.
• Crossover: The first one this game did was with Horizon Zero Dawn, with Aloy as a new Playable Character.
• Crow's Nest Cartography: You fill in the map by visiting the Statues of the Seven. Their waypoint markers are the only visible things on blank portions of the map.
• Crutch Character:
  • The three Starter Mon characters have useful skills, abilities, and elemental synergy but have inborn traits that lower their overall effectiveness, giving you the incentive to build other characters to fill their weakpoints. They are never a part of any banners, so even if you want to invest in them, getting their constellations is an exercise in RNG.
    • As an archer, Amber is useful in puzzle-solving segments, especially the timed challenges where you need ranged Pyro units to shoot and light things up. However, she cannot do too much to increase her overall DPS output, and it is not particularly high in the first place, and her special ability only does damage after a set amount of time, and in a small area when you're likely already kiting monsters out of the blast range. Most bench her in favor of the much higher DPS or utilities that the other archers have.
    • Lisa is the most useful among the three when it is constantly raining or on a body of water. Otherwise, her reliance on charged attacks becomes much more of a liability than anything. While she does synergize with fellow newbie starter Kaeya, as Kaeya can freeze enemies and Cryo reacts explosively with Electro, or any other Hydro character, you've likely already got another Cataylst user who can DPS harder.
    • Kaeya's kit gives him the best longevity among the three, as his abilities are solid but not remarkable. Most critically, he is not that useful when fighting ice-elemental enemies (like Cryo slimes, Cryo Regisvine as his special attack only freezes enemies, so you must invest in other characters if you want to get anywhere past level 40.
  • Noelle, the character granted by the Beginner's Wish banner, is a complicated example. Noelle can be made to hit hard, tank huge hits, generates a shield that protects all party members, and is capable of healing the party, but her Elemental Skill cooldown is a lengthy 27 seconds and her Elemental Burst has the second highest energy cost level at 80. Combine that with Geo's lack of offensive reactions and her weapon class that doesn't DPS well and attacks slowly, and you get a character who's good for much of the early game, but lags behind in crucial damage dealing, shielding, and debuffing that other characters can benefit from. However, there are also several means to mitigate her energy issues with "battery" teammates, and Noelle has continued to benefit from a weapon and artifact set meant to empower 5-star Geo claymore user Itto, since they both scale of the same stats. She has further benefitted from the release of Furina and the Marechaussee Hunter artifact set, whose buffs are triggered by the lowering and healing of team and individual HP.
  • Guest Fighter Aloy has great stats, a good 4-star weapon made for her and abilities given to players for free. Unfortunately she doesn't have constellations when she came out so her potential lags behind others. Even worse for new players is that she cannot get above level 20 because her materials are in Inazuma and getting into the area requires several Archon quests locked behind more than one Fame Gate.
  • The Gladiator's Finale and Wanderer's Troupe are crutch artifact sets, which respectively give a useful but not great boost to your basic attacks for melee characters and a boost to charged attacks for ranged characters. They are useful in the early-game because they can be farmed from the open world bosses, but if you want to do real damage, you should invest in the artifacts dropped from the domains for more significant boosts in power.
• Cut and Paste Environments: Single-room Domains for farming materials have the same layout of a circular arena, plus a tree near the exit where you receive the rewards.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In both the cutscenes and the manga, all characters can do many things with their elemental powers. However in the actual game, their abilities are limited to a very narrow arsenal of skills to make the gameplay as balanced as possible. Ningguang and Childe, for example, are the most notorious case.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • Your playable characters become stunned for a moment as they take damage. Unfortunately, it is also possible to get stun-locked if the enemies use their multi-hitting attacks and combos, especially if surrounded. For example, the Whopperflowers have a sequence of projectile volleys that are normally hard to recover from once they hit you since the succeeding projectiles come rapidly.
  • Amusingly, Pyro Abyss Mages near a body of water are prone to this too. If you can bait them to teleport above the water body, this effectively defeats them. The constant Wet effect will break their shield, stunning them. After a while, they will do Pyro attacks while revitalizing their shield... except they still stay hovering above the said body of water, which will result in their shield getting depleted and stunning them over and over. Rainfall will also make them stuck in the same loop without any body of water. And if they happen to teleport over deep water, they will drown after their shields are down.
  • Players can invoke this by luring enemies inside small tents (like the ones near Fatui or Treasure Hoarder Camps), and then spamming the Charged Attacks of a sword-wielder. The knockback will prevent them from getting up, and the lack of space will ensure they stay in place for you to beat them up.

D

• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Vaporize and Melt reactions directly increase the damage of the attack that triggers it, so that the Pyro, Cryo or Hydro afflictions (whether inflicted naturally, through a self-buff, or another character's attack) become this for an attack of the elements that trigger Vaporize or Melt with them. The Superconduct reaction (Electro + Cryo) also inflicts physical resistance reduction on its victims, so that your characters can deal higher physical damage onto them.
• Damage-Sponge Boss:
  • Spiral Abyss Floor 12 has a 2.5x enemy HP multiplier, turning most enemies on Floor 12 into one of these. It's significant enough that some of the more evasive bosses (Ruin Serpent, Coral Defenders and Golden Wolflord) needed special HP nerfs for their Floor 12 appearances to keep the DPS check reasonable.
  • Fontaine's terrestrial "Local Legends" minibosses pack absolutely massive HP pools despite merely being named versions of regular overworld enemies. Unlike the underwater "Local Legends", there are no mechanics that allow the player to instantly shave off large chunks of their health.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • You can miss the Luxurious treasure chest that you get at the end of every World Ascension quest in its entirety if the last Electro particle of Electro Hypostasis you destroy happens to be the one that is right next to where the domain exit shows up. This can be a result of instinctively trying to interact with the pop-up, only realizing too late that it is the exit, not the treasure chest.
  • For PC players, when you are alternating between Portable Waypoints and Custom Pins in the map screen, muscle memory can make it hard to realize that the Delete button actually swaps positions◊ between the two user interfaces.
  • On mobile phones, the control layout for Honkai Impact 3rd isn't the same as Genshin Impact, so switching between these two miHoYo games can require adjustments. For instance, the ultimate ability button sits above the attack button in Honkai, yet it's located on the lower left of the attack button in Genshin.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Ironically for a game initially pitched as a Lighter and Softer counterpart to Honkai Impact 3rd, as the game progressed Genshin Impact begins delving into more mature themes as it began prying into its Cataclysm Backstory with inklings of a Cosmic Horror Story, as well as the people of Teyvat showing a relatively broader spectrum of morality, ranging from genuinely nice but flawed to quite a bit of a jerk but still have some good in them to straight up evil and psychopathic. In addition, the game doesn't even bother to hide just how flawed humanity in Teyvat is as a whole, with some NPCs being downright nasty, a complete contrast to HI3's portrayal of humanity as flawed yet genuinely good with the game's heavier lean on White and Gray Morality.
  • The Fontaine Archon Quest is significantly darker in several places than the previous Quests, with three onscreen deaths early on, a looming prophecy that involves all of its citizens dying, an incredibly dark backstory involving Human Trafficking with two of its characters, and culminating with a disastrous flood that killed dozens and ends with the death of an active Archon in a Heroic Sacrifice while leaving behind a traumatized Body Double.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: According to Kaedehara Kazuha, Tatarigami magnifies interests into dangerous obsessions. A blade that was tainted by Tatarigami turned someone's hobby for collecting swords into a hoarding addiction, and once he was finally persuaded to sell that blade it immediately took control of the buyer by playing on his desire to prove his skill in the martial arts. The sword is itself an example of this, as its ambition to reach Inazuma after its smith was exiled was twisted into a desire for revenge against the Shogun.
• Dating Sim: Hangout Events are character stories formatted like this, with dialog choices that alter the story (unlike how it usually goes in Genshin), a choice to restart them to see different paths/endings, and an obvious (G-rated) romantic atmosphere. These were introduced in Version 1.4, but more are added in later updates.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Playable characters have the spotlight in their Story Quests while the Traveler and Paimon help them for a series of missions.
  • Each region explores the backstory of its respective Archon (e.g., Barbatos in Mondstadt, Rex Lapis Morax in Liyue)
• Deadly Dodging: You can dodge special projectile attacks (such as the Large Hydro Slimes and Hydro Abyss Mages' water ball attack) and make enemies hit their ally instead.
• Death from Above: All characters' Normal Attack styles include a "Plunge Attack" that can be performed from midair, causing them to fall straight down and deal damage to a wide area of enemies and objects, with greater damage should they fall from higher elevations; in addition to the impact, they also deal damage in half-second intervals while falling down.^note With a few exceptions, most characters of any one weapon type share common multipliers for midair, low-elevation, and high-elevation damage. In general, Claymore units have the highest multipliers (74.59–157.85%, 149.14–315.63%, and 186.29–394.24%), followed by Sword and Polearm units (63.93–135.3%, 127.84–270.54%, and 159.68–337.92%), and then Bow and Catalyst units (56.83–120.27%, 113.63–240.48%, and 141.93–300.37%).
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Losing all four active party members will not result in a Game Over but will merely respawn you at a nearby spawn point since the game works on a drop-in/drop-out basis like most mobile MMORPGs. The only real penalty is that whatever resources you spent in tough battles like cooked food will not reset, so you will have to replenish them manually.
• Death Mountain: The Dragonspine mountain, covered in perpetual snow. It is so cold that there is a special 'Sheer Cold' mechanic slowly freezing you until you start to quickly take damage, which requires you to keep warm near a heat source. It is so cold that the grass will not ignite from Pyro attacks. And there are certain ice formations that you can only break by imbuing yourself with magical heat from certain gemstones; normal flames simply will not do.
• Death of the Old Gods: Something that comes up often in the backstory is that besides the Seven Archons, there used to be more gods ruling over Teyvat – who appear to have died or disappeared. For example, the God of Salt used to rule over the area called "Sal Terrae" before her followers betrayed and killed her. Furthermore, not even all of the Seven Archons are the first in their roles.
• Debating Names: A Running Gag with the Traveler's Paimon, their companion who's also The Nicknamer. Paimon usually got nicknames for almost everyone they met, but sometimes she debates with the Traveler and friends to decide which nickname would be better for the character they met recently.
• Decoy Backstory: In Kaeya's Story Quest, Kaeya claims that his grandfather was a pirate who hid an important legacy treasure in Mondstadt that only his family would know, and the Eyepatch of Power he wears is supposedly inherited from him. In actuality, Kaeya's pirate backstory was just a ruse to bait and capture a greedy eavesdropping Treasure Hoarder who has been wanted by the Knights of Favonius for quite some time, and he decided to get the Traveler in on the fake treasure hunt simply because it amused him. Kaeya is actually a descendant of the Alberich Clan from Khaenri'ah, whose ancestor; Chlothar Alberich, founded the Abyss Order.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Theater Mechanicus from the 2021 Lunar New Year event. It appears at first to be a tabletop game with a Dungeons & Dragons vibe to it, then gameplay starts, and you are right there in the middle of it, battling waves of Mooks and setting up your towers by hand. Considering the Magitek nature of this universe, it could just be something else...
• Deity of Mortal Creation: In the Sumeru chapters, the Sages of the Akademiya are thoroughly disappointed in Lesser Lord Kusanali as a replacement for Greater Lord Rukkadevata, and so with Il Dottore's help try to create a new god for Sumeru.
• Department of Redundancy Department: One reputation-related request has the name "Manly Jack's Manly Journey of Manliness." He wants you to give him cooked meat.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Quite a few quests will change their dialogue to take into account the content the player has completed. Factors taken into account include: whether quest sub-objectives are completed before the quest-relevant NPC is met (e.g. "In Search of Lost Time: South"), whether it is the first time players encounter a gameplay mechanic ("Aranyaka") or a character ("Soloist's Prologue"), and whether segments of the Archon Quest which have implications on relevant characters have been completed (several Sumeru Story Quests).
  • The Contending Tides challenge automatically disables weather gimmicks like rain and thunderstorms to keep them from interfering with the fights. This ensures that players are unable to abuse the Electro-Charged, Frozen and Vaporize reactions, as well as prevent random lightning strikes from getting cheap KOs on either you or the enemies.
  • Pyro Hilichurl Grenadiers, who throw Pyro Slimes at the player, have plenty of consideration put towards them. Hitting them with Hydro while they're holding a slime will put it out and make the thrown slime only deal physical damage, while Electro will cause the slime to blow up in their face. And while they can dig Pyro Slimes out from most locations, they'll fail if they try to dig one out if they're standing in a pool of water.
  • The Perpetual Mechanical Array is located inside underwater ruins that unlock through progression of the "Sacred Sakura Cleansing Ritual" World Quest chain. However, since the boss drops Ayaka and Gorou's ascension materials, a temporary shortcut portal is made available to directly warp players to the boss. At the same time, the boss room pre-unlock will have transparent barriers to prevent players from cheesing the ruins that way.
  • At the end of the Archon Quest Interlude Chapter 3, the player is given the chance to rename The Wanderer/Balladeer/Scaramouche. Attempting to reenter their original name will force the player to enter a new one, with a special line of dialogue rejecting it.
  • Furina's seat inside the Opera Epiclese in Fontaine is located in an area that, under most circumstances, would be unreachable by the player. However, a sit function is programmed into the seat, giving players a chance to interact with it should they managed to find a way to get to where it is.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • The climax of Chapter 1 Act 3 has the Traveler, the Liyue Qixing and the Adepti teaming up to fight against Osial, God of the Vortex, culminating in Ningguang dropping the entire Jade Palace on top of the ancient god, ending the threat for good.
  • Chapter 2 Act 3 has the Traveler defeat Ei in single combat, due to a combination of the Traveler being empowered by the Visions in the Statue of the Omnipresent God and Ei not having her Gnosis.
  • In the past, the head of the Kujou Clan challenged the Raiden Shogun and won against her, becoming the first head of the Tenryou Commission. If her duel against Kamaji is any indication, she probably fought like a normal and didn't use any of her elemental or divine powers; still, it's an impressive feat to beat an immortal warrior with thousands of years to hone their skill.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Certain objects in the overworld and domains are destructible by varying degrees: storage objects like jars and crates are breakable by any attack, cracked piles of stones are meant to be broken by strong impact attacks (Geo, claymore, explosion)^note Normal attacks only deal Scratch Damage, and thorny vines can only be destroyed by fire and are otherwise indestructible.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Overload is generally considered the hardest reaction to utilize in combat as it can cause harm to the player themselves, set grass on fire that will burn the player, or send smaller enemies flying out of melee range. However, when used successfully (such as combining Xiangling's Guoba with Keqing's Stellar Restoration), the result it setting off explosion after explosion in the enemy's face, absolutely decimating small to mid sized opponents and dealing massive damage to large opponents and bosses.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • As with most gacha games, lucking out and getting a 5★ or unintentionally overpowered character in your first few draws can trivialize combat in the early game... and, to an extent, the late game. A handful of players opt to "reroll" by playing the first ~30 minutes of the game on a series of new accounts until a lucky wish happens.
  • ATK buff food in general, as all ATK buffs from food are flat buffs, meaning, compared to your current ATK stat, they offer a greater proportional increase to your damage output. The strongest of them, the 5★ Adeptus Temptation, buffs up to 372 points, which can easily double or even triple your damage output when compared to your attack stat (though good luck getting it that early unless you know what you are doing). They tend to fall off in the late game since 372 attack is not as large of a margin compared to your characters, but they are still useful for speeding up fights.
  • Noelle is guaranteed to come with your first 10 wishes in the Beginner's Wish. Although highly reliant on specific teams in the endgame, she is very useful at the start of the game. Noelle is much more durable than the starting team and due to being a Claymore user, she hits harder but slower. Her Elemental skill blocks damage and heals, while her Burst is very accurate, deals plenty of damage, and lasts a decent time. Due to her durability, simple kit, and access to weapons with heavier damage, Noelle makes the early game easier until a better character is acquired or has more investment.
  • The Slingshot, a 3★ Bow that with Crit Rate substat and increases Normal or Charged Attack damage within 0.3s after firing, which covers most enemy encounters anyway.
  • The Sword of Descension, a 4★ Sword, can be gained extremely early into the game, being effectively handed out for free with no extra steps required, does extremely good damage, and comes with a good passive that also increases ATK only when equipped by the Traveler. The catch? It can only be obtained when logging via PS4/PS5 and said passive only applies when playing via said platforms.
• Discount Card: Reaching Reputation Level 4 in a particular region gives you a discount at shops in that region.
• Divided Deity: Focalors divided her divine self and her mortal body into two separate entities.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: During the Tatara Tales quest chain in Inazuma, you work with a man named Xavier to attend to Mikage Furnace, a massive plant where Jade Steel was forged until civil war broke out and production had to be halted. To wit, the Furnace: is kept under a massive containment dome you can't go through until later on, being fueled by an extremely powerful yet dangerous energy source, has a cracked central core dumping out hazardous material that'll drain your health unless you shield yourself, and is at a risk of eventually exploding the entire island it's on unless someone manages to patch up this core. Balethunder even makes a popping, clicking noise that sounds a little like a Geiger counter going off. No wonder fans speculate about whether it's meant to be one big reference to the Fukushima plant disaster of 2011.
  • Similar symbolism is used in in Chapter IV Act IV of the main story, with the Fortress of Meropide being built on top of a container for the Primordial Sea, similar to current day speculation that later generations might not recognize the dangers of toxic waste and settle around it. The Primordial Sea is contaminated water which is deadly to Fontaine's residents, and when it begins to leak the evacuation resembles a nuclear meltdown, with alarms going off and the lights on the seal turning red as it steams.
• Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Anemo-elemental characters and enemies usually have access to skills that create mini-tornadoes or spheres of wind that suck in and damage the nearby opposition like a vacuum. Emphasis on "nearby" since the winds have a very limited range.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • Kokomi's "Flawless Strategy" talent gives you a 25% bonus to her healing ability, but at a 100% loss to Crit Rate, making her the one character who never benefits from any crit enhancing stats unless one makes a meme build.
  • Weapons such as the Serpent Spine will deal increased damage the longer the character who wields it is on the field, but at the risk of taking more damage the longer they are on the field.
• Double Entendre: The "Scent of Spring" shop in Liyue sells vases, but the shopkeeper's dialog deliberately makes it sound like something... else.
  Ying'er: Just imagine, the warmth of their bodies, the smoothness of their curves under your hands...
• Downer Beginning: The game starts with the twin Travelers attacked by the Unknown God, a mysterious individual whom they cannot even fight back, and is also the one who took away their dimension-traveling abilities. At least, that is what the player twin narrates to Paimon.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect:
  • Some achievements require stalling out a boss until it enters a certain phase or performs a certain attack, even if the player's team would be able to down the boss before it reached that phase. A few require allowing the boss to perform its Limit Break, which the player should normally prevent from happening.
  • Some follow-up Daily Commissions, often with associated achievements, only unlock by performing certain actions incorrectly in the previous Daily Commission in the series. For example, to unlock "So-called Work", the wrong number of ships must be reported in "One Ship, Two Ships, Three Ships...".
  • "Adventure Encounters" points, which can be redeemed in lieu of Daily Commissions, are mostly reliant on non-repeatable region exploration, quest and event activities. A player who speedruns region exploration and the version's active events may thus find themselves forced to do Daily Commissions, potentially including a time-consuming NPC Commission. On the other hand, pacing out exploration allows the "Adventure Encounter" points from region exploration to be used in lieu of Daily Commissions on more days.
• Dramatic Irony: There's a humorous example at the end of one of the branches of Faruzan's Hangout Event. She reads the back of an Inazuman light novel and sees some fan mail from an anonymous writer who comments on how the book reminds them of their dark past. Being a Fish out of Temporal Water, she asks the person she was speaking to what this means, and he explains that some kids like to think they're brooding and mysterious. Little do they know that the writer of that letter is Collei, who was with Faruzan at the time and genuinely did have a Dark and Troubled Past that was eerily similar to that of the novel. Collei immediately tries to change the subject out of embarassment.
• Draw Extra Cards: In the Genius Invokation TCG, the card Strategize allows the player to draw 2 cards for a one Dice cost.
• Draw Sword, Draw Blood: The Black Sword is a cursed blade that thirsts after fresh blood, driving its wielder to bloodshed just to nourish itself. In-game, it restores HP for critical hits, but only once every 5 seconds.
• Dream Apocalypse: In Chapter III Act II, the population of Sumeru City is trapped in a dream world where they are forced to relive the day of the Sabzeruz Festival over and over. At first, Dunyarzad is alive and well, but repeatedly having her dreams extracted exhausts her to the point she becomes too weak to continue taking part in the festival, forcing the Akademiya to substitute her with an emotionless puppet. The main characters are concerned that after ending the dream, they will never get to see Dunyarzad again. The Traveler is so upset after recovering a letter from Dunyarzad that was intended to assist them in their search for Lesser Lord Kusanali that they thank the puppet. Fortunately, this trope is Subverted, as Nahida is able to save Dunyarzad's life. Everyone else is a real person who was trapped in the dream with them, so they continue to exist after the dream ends.
• Driving Question: Double Subverted. At the very beginning, the question is "where is the Traveler's sibling?" This is answered very quickly, and it then becomes "Why did they join the Abyss Order?" This question has been significantly more persistent, and the biggest mysteries of the setting all have something to do with it.
• Drunk Rolling: In the Drunkard Gorge road of Mondstadt, you may come across an NPC named Greg. If you talk to him, he at first tries to strike a friendly conversation with you, in which you can have a dialog choice where you are saying nonsense. But later, one dialog choice can make Greg point out that you are pretending to be drunk, and he chooses to stop talking with you. He is one of the Treasure Hoarders, who you commonly find as enemies.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: At the end of Chapter III Act V, everybody ends up forgetting all memories of Rukkhadevata, and they all have their memories be rewritten in that they think Kusanali was the Sumeru Archon all this time. However, despite that, characters still refer to Kusanali as Lesser Lord Kusanali which begs the question- Who is Kusanali supposed to be lesser of when they don't have any memories of Rukkhadevata anymore? This isn't as much of a plot hole in the original Chinese version of the game though as in that version of the game, she gets called 小吉祥草王, which translates literally to "Little Lucky-Grass Monarch".
• Dub Name Change: Multiple, mostly concerning the English translation. To name a handful: "Genshin" as the in-story concept to "Allogenes", "God's Eye" to "Vision", "Heart of God" to "Gnosis".
• Dub Pronunciation Change: In the German-themed nation of Mondstadt, Klee's name should be pronounced like "kleh" since it's the German word for "clover". The Japanese dub pronounces it the German way, but in the English dub it's pronounciation rhymes with "tree".
• Duel to the Death: The Raiden Shogun oversees a variation in Inazuma. Duelers challenge each other in her throne room, and the Shogun executes the loser. This scenario killed Kazuha's friend, and she dispassionately does Teyvat a great service by obliterating Signora, the loser of a duel with the Traveler.
• Dug Too Deep: The Chasm was at one point closed off because of some unknown incident that occurred in the past. What’s more, there exist an Eldritch Location that was sealed off by a Skyward Nail called the Chasm’s Bed, that nearly traps the Traveller and their friends.
• Dump Stat:
  • A downplayed example; for artifacts, if their main stat is either DEF increase, HP increase or Healing Bonus, players tend to sideline them in favor of artifacts with more offensive stats. It is not that those stats are useless, as characters do gain from those stats - the catch is that those characters tend to be support ones. Players also consider artifacts that have two or more of these as their sub-stats lacking. This is inverted for HP scaling characters such as Yelan and Neuvillette and DEF scaling characters such as Albedo and Itto.
  • When it comes to artifact set bonuses, those that provide RES (resistance) of any kind are rarely favored. Enemies frequently come in assorted elements so maximizing resistance for one element won't protect from another. Artifact sets that provide that bonus are meant for the early game, or require a 4-piece set to unlock a bonus with offensive stats.
• Dungeon Crawling: A core gameplay element wherein your party members enter dungeons (called "domains") to clear quests inside. These areas can also include platforming sections and/or environmental hazards that you must navigate.
• Dutch Angle: Numerous cutscenes, especially those related to the Abyss, feature both static and rotating versions of these to add to the unsettling ambience of the situation.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • If a teammate's Elemental Burst is ready, its icon will appear beside their portrait. Tapping that (or, on PC, pressing Alt + their assigned number) makes them swap out with the current character and instantly unleash their Limit Break.
  • Nothing's stopping you from gliding way above an enemy and open a battle with a Plunging Attack. As bonuses, it also greatly reduces fall damage and there is an Achievement for Plunging for 5 seconds before hitting your target.