Genshin Impact / Tropes E to G

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E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview features characters who represent Inazuma, Sumeru, Fontaine, Natlan, Snezhnaya and Khaenri'ah even if the game launched with just the Mondstadt and Liyue regions. These characters would then appear in later updates. The characters shown in order are: Diluc (prologue), Ningguang (Chapter I), Kamisato Ayaka (Chapter II), Cyno (Chapter III), Lyney and Lynette (Chapter IV), Iansan (Chapter V), Pulcinella (Chapter VI), and Dainsleif (Chapter ??).
  • The legend cutscene at the end of the Moonchase Festival event shows people in modern Liyue's streets, including three player characters yet unseen. Certain unseen future playable characters are also only named in voice lines and signposts.
• Early Game Hell: While Inazuma is the third chapter of the game, its internal structure plays out this way, beginning with hostile elements all over— Thunder Sakura trees that will constantly zap you with lightning bolts when near, an island plagued by constant lightning storms, and an island with unchecked Balethunder energy that applies a health-sapping electric effect on your character as long as you don't have an Electrograna floating around you...and Seirai Island, which features Balethunder and lightning storms. Furthermore, the Electrograna system locks off a lot of content until exploration can upgrade its level. Partaking in Inazuma's lengthy major sidequests, however, sees each of these environmental threats neutralized, allowing for stress-free exploration of the region once complete, and this makes upgrading Electrograna much faster and safer.
  • The overall game is subject to this due to a relative aversion of Healer Signs On Early. The game doesn't give you a free dedicated healer, Barbara, until the end of the Prologue, which can only be accessed at Adventure Rank 18. Before that, the earliest reliably available survivability unit is Noelle from the Beginner's Wish. She can provide shields, but they have limited uptime, and her limited healing is tied to said shield being active. So until that point (unless you get a lucky Wish before then), your only source of healing will be food and Archon statues. And if you choose to explore a lot and fight world bosses before then, you may find yourself burning through your healing food at a pretty fast pace. Once you are given Barbara or pull a healer through wishing, you gain a lot more breathing room.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The launch of the game included story quests for Amber, Lisa, Kaeya, Razor, Xiangling, and Xingqiu, all of whom are 4★ units. Later patches would make it so that going forward, only 5★ units got story quests, with new 4★ units (including launch 4★ characters that did not get story quests like the aforementioned characters) getting Hangout Events instead. In v3.8, Kaeya would become the first of these characters to get a Hangout instead of a continuation of his Story Quest, with it being left up in the air if his Story Quest will ever get a second part.
  • For the first two weekly bosses, Andrius and Dvalin, players could not quick match with other players to fight them (Andrius did not have his own domain, Dvalin didn't allow co-op at all). This was changed with the Liyue weekly bosses, which sets a precedent for all weekly bosses released afterwards.
  • Prior to the release of Rosaria, all characters had two separate artworks for their playable units, one representing a normal standing pose and the other closely resembling the movement they do in their Elemental Burst. After Rosaria's release, all character announcement art nearly all are now identical to their in-game wish arts from then on out, with only exceptions being Wanderer, who has a different hand movement and no hat between poses.^note This includes Ayaka, who briefly appears during the "Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview: Travail"
  • The Archon Quest Prologue and Amber's character quest both featured unexpected shmup levels. This kind of complete combat change has not been featured in the game since.
  • The Reputation level and reward system for Mondstadt and Liyue is notably different compared to the Reputation system of Inazuma onward. For one, the first two region's Reputation level caps at level 8 as opposed to 10, and the blueprints for crafting Oculus Resonance Stones and Treasure Compasses are obtainable far earlier at Reputation levels 2 and 6, respectively.
  • Earlier non-grind Domains in Mondstadt and Liyue have Doors of Resurrection, which are essentially checkpoints that respawn your party at said doors should they fall. From Inazuma onward, Domains would ditch the Doors of Resurrection in favor of invisible checkpoints that are more intuitive and on-the-spot. While the "Door of Resurrection activated" text still displays in these Domains, it's likely that Hoyoverse reused this function for the invisible checkpoints to save up on development time and resources, making it a leftover artifact.
  • Bounty Hunts in Mondstadt and Liyue have hide-and-seek sections where you would use Elemental Sight to seek out three clues hidden among the environment, sometimes with a small battle involved, before engaging your bounty target directly. From Inazuma onward, Bounty Hunts would ditch this feature and outright show you where your target is from the beginning, which was likely done to cut out a major source of lost time leading to frustration for many players. To compensate, the targets have additional buffs and traits besides elemental immunity and weaknesses.
  • Anemo and Geo sigils did not have an Offering System where you can spend them to earn rewards, instead being exclusively used for buying items from souvenir shops in their respective regions. Starting from Inazuma, elemental sigils are primarily used in the region's main Offering System; while a souvenir shop still exists in the nation's major city, it will not be available to the player until they maxed out the main Offering System, after which excess elemental sigils can be used to purchase items there.
  • Earlier Hangout Events had some Downer Endings outside a simple Game Over from having the main character's Heartbeat Value fall to zero. For instance, in Act II of Noelle's Hangout Event, if she doesn't do perfect on the Knights of Favonius entrance exam with your help, she freaks out, ending the story on a bitter note. Later Hangout Events either don't give the player the option to steer things in the wrong direction, or if they do, things turn out well regardless. For instance, in Faruzan's Hangout Event, if you advise her to not simplify a game she's making for children, the kids unsurprisingly have too difficult of a time grasping it to learn from and enjoy it. However, an architect stops by and offers to pay Faruzan for its use as an educational tool. This leaves her a windfall she is visibly elated with, in spite of the original deal of making games for childen falling through.
  • Earlier farmable Domains had Ley Line Disorders that severely punished using the "wrong" characters through crippling debuffs that farming teams had to be built around. One of the most extreme examples is Cecilia Garden, whose cooldown extension debuff forced the use of characters primarily reliant on their Normal Attacks for damage. Later farmable Domains shifted to Ley Line Disorders that promoted the use of certain characters through conditional buffs, without directly punishing the use of other characters.
  • Some Mondstadt and Liyue farmable Domains had to be unlocked by solving puzzles. Save for "The Lost Valley" Artifact Domain in the Chasm, which is part of Liyue, puzzle-based unlocks for farmable domains have been dealt away with since Inazuma.
  • Mondstadt and Liyue do not have any beetle local specialty, which would appear in every region fron Inazuma onward. This also somewhat applies to Inazuma's Onikabuto, as unlike Scarabs and Subdetection Units, they can't be captured with the Omni-Ubiquity net due to predating the net by 3 patches.
• Earth/Wind Juxtaposition:
  • The first two archons the player meets are the Anemo and Geo archons, Barbatos and Rex Lapis. Barbatos calls Lapis an old blockhead and Lapis calls Barbatos a drunkard.
  • In the Anemo archon's nation of Mondstadt, the defacto ruling group is the Knights of Favonius; their maid, Noelle, desperately wants to become a full knight but is distressed when the elemental vision she gained was Geo and not Anemo.
  • Similar to Liyue's story between the aforementioned two archons, we have Xiao, the last living Yaksha and Zhongli/Rex Lapis' protected, who received the Anemo element instead of Geo and also having some relationship with Venti/Barbatos.
  • In the case of gameplay, these elements also contrast each other, being the only 2 of the 7 elements that do nothing when you combine them against enemies.
• Easter Egg: Adjusting the dialog volume in the settings has Paimon chime in and ask if the current volume level is okay. Fiddling with the slider to make Paimon repeat herself multiple times will have her get annoyed and ask if you're just messing with her, and also netting you an achievement.
• Easy Level Trick: You can cheese certain minigames in Peculiar Wonderland with the right characters.
  • Characters that have Anti-Frustration Features to prevent them from inadvertently falling off a cliff (e.g., archers while aiming, Mona and Ayaka's sprint) can take advantage of the feature during Shimmering Path and the invisible floors in the Sumeru desert. The edge detection still kicks in even if the path is invisible, so you can safely maneuver your way across.
  • The Geo Traveler's Starfell Sword can block everything but the shockwaves in Barrage Minuet, so your only real concerns are the targeted explosions and the final few seconds.
  • A handful of characters can evade the bubbles in The Great Bubble Crash and Bubble Speedster. For example, Hu Tao can dash through them, Xiao can jump over them, and Fischl can pass through them with her Elemental Burst. Barring that, in co-op, other players can get caught in the bubbles on purpose to clear a path for their allies.
  • Characters with a wide range of mobility options can bypass One-Way Traffic. Some examples include Keqing using her stiletto to warp to the other side of the course, Venti using his Elemental Skill to levitate over the wrong tile barrier and glide across, and Kaeya going under the tiles and using his Elemental Skill to create ice bridges across the water^note This will not count as a failure because he's still considered above water, and characters need to be fully submerged for the fail trigger to activate. (though he would need either Venti, Geo Traveler or Zhongli to get out).
• Elephant in the Living Room: In Chapter IV Act I of the main story, it's revealed that Lyney and Lynette are Fatui members in court. They weren't the true culprits of that case, but given that they are performers, you'd think that this would have an effect on their day-to-day life. It doesn't; Lyney's Story Quest makes it clear that they are just as popular as before, and when they're arrested in Act III it's because they committed a small crime to get into the Fortress of Meropide, rather than being arrested for anything in their presumably extensive criminal history. Their partner in crime Freminet was let out in time for the next Version Event released weeks later. Strangely, in Lyney's Story Quest and that Version Event, their background as Fatui members is reinforced, yet no one seems to care. For comparison, Childe was outed as a Fatui Harbinger at the end of the Liyue arc, and while the Traveler forgives him, his occupation is not swept under the rug; Before then Childe was able to walk around as if he wasn't a terrorist, but whenever he shows up after that it's as someone on the fringes of society. The Traveler actually has to conceal his occupation at times.
• Eldritch Abomination: At one point, you get to face the embodiment of The Corruption that's been plaguing Sumeru, appropriately called Marana's Avatar. One look at it and you know this thing is bad news, but its nature is even worse, as Marana is 'truth' from the Abyss that not even gods can comprehend. This thing can actually harm The Traveler, who has previously been shown to be immune to corruption effects on account of being an outsider, thus requiring the aid of a fully powered Aranara to put it down.
• Eldritch Location:
  • Mare Jivari, a desert that saps a person's will and destroys their drive for adventure. Many an adventurer has perished there, and Nahida, the Dendro Archon, both says it is "completely empty" and yet "out of her reach".
  • "The Border", a Domain accessible during Hu Tao's story quest. It is the boundary between life and death, and just getting in requires a bit of effort and knowledge of the nature of death (which Hu Tao can provide). Reaching the end of the Domain will reveal that it has ghosts who still have a lingering attachment to the world and are not ready to move on yet.
  • The pits of The Chasm are a Genius Loci that attempts to trap whoever wanders in in an inescapable labyrinth. It also won't just kill whoever wanders in, it steals their need for food and water and sleep in order to torment them further.
  • Even the Golden Apple Archipelago qualifies to a degree, as a strange location in the world that only appears to be traveled to once a year and which does not operate the same way through time as the rest of the world. When the Fatui traveled there to test their dream machine, it distorted the world further, driving the weak-willed insane and morphing the landscape to reflect Vision holders' fears and desires.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The Aerosiderite materials' descriptions mention something about the Dark Sea, the coastal region beyond the protection of the Seven, and where the defeated gods fled and became evil. Legends say that all lies beyond is "unknown chaos".
• Elemental Barrier:
  • The Abyss Mages usually come with bubble shields made of a certain element. To break them, you must use an elemental attack that reacts with the shield's element.
  • If a Geo attack hits a target with certain elemental attributes, an "element crystal" will drop; when picked up, the player character can gain a bubble shield of that element. The shield can protect against all attacks but will be especially effective against attacks of the same element; however, elements that react to the shield's own can break them.
• Elemental Dragon: Much like how there is an Archon of each element, there is also a dragon referred to as the Sovereign. It is eventually revealed that the authority the Archons hold was taken from the Sovereigns by Celestia. As of right now, the known Sovereigns are Apep, a Dendro dragon residing in Sumeru's desert, and Neuvillette, a Hydro dragon who reincarnated into a human and now works as the Chief Justice of Fontaine.
• Elemental Fusion: A major gameplay element are Elemental Reactions, which occurs if enemies affected by an element is hit by an attack of another element. Most such reactions either deal additional damage that ignores Defense and whose potency depends on the attacker's level, or provide damage multipliers for the attack that triggers the reaction. As of writing (v4.5), there are eleven primary reactions and five sub-reactions:
  • Vaporize (Pyro × Hydro): Multiplies base damage of the attack (2.0 if Hydro hits a Pyro-affected opponent, 1.5 vice versa).
  • Overload (Pyro × Electro): Deals an additional, wide-ranging Pyro damage with a high knockback rate.
  • Melt (Pyro × Cryo): Multiplies base damage of the attack (2.0 if Pyro hits a Cryo-affected opponent, 1.5 vice versa).
  • Electro-charge (Hydro × Electro): Deals gradual Electro damage to affected unit and nearby Hydro-affected units within one-second intervals.
  • Freeze (Hydro × Cryo): Renders affected unit immobile; in addition, if they are struck by hard-hitting attacks such as claymores, Overload reactions, plunging attacks from melee weapons (swords, claymores, and polearms), and certain Elemental Talents (usually Geo), the Shatter sub-reaction occurs, which is counted as a second damage.
  • Superconduct (Electro × Cryo): Deals wide-ranging Cryo damage and imposes a 40% Physical Resistance penalty for twelve seconds.
  • Burn (Dendro × Pyro): Deals gradual Pyro damage.
  • Bloom (Dendro × Hydro): Produces a fruit-shaped Dendro Core that explodes and deals damage to players and enemies alike (though the former only take 5% of the damage that the latter do); on its own, it explodes after six seconds and has a five-meter radius; if applied with Pyro, the Burgeon reaction occurs, which explodes with increased width; if Electro, Hyperbloom, which turns it into a Sprawling Shot that homes in on enemies and detonates with a one-meter radius on impact.
  • Quicken (Dendro × Electro): Generates an aura which lasts for a few seconds and can in turn trigger Spread or Aggravate whenever the affected unit is struck with another Dendro or Electro attack, respectively, adding a fixed damage bonus to said attack (the former having a higher damage multiplier than the latter, 1.25 to 1.15).
  • Swirl (Anemo × Pyro/Hydro/Electro/Cryo): Deals an additional, wide-ranging damage based on the second element, which will then linger for a few seconds, allowing for additional reactions.
  • Crystallize (Geo × Pyro/Hydro/Electro/Cryo): Creates a shard that, when picked up, generates shields based on the second element that absorb all kinds of damage, with a 250% resistance boost against attacks of the same element. Its "HP" depends on the level of the combatant that generates them, with an additional bonus depending on their Elemental Mastery, with its damage intake further reduced depending on the affected character's Shield Strength attribute.
• Elemental Nation: The seven regions follow each of the seven elements and receive protection from one of the seven Archons (e.g., Mondstadt is the region of Wind, blessed by the Anemo Archon, Barbatos). The characters who come from each nation, however, do not necessarily wield the designated element (e.g., among the playable characters from Mondstadt, only three wield Anemo). There are also other regions aside from the seven (which may or may not follow any elemental motif), such as Khaenri'ah.
• Elemental Personalities:
  • Anemo users tend to be free-spirited and flighty. For example, Heizou and Kazuha have decided not to be chained down by regulations, something rarely seen in their home nation of Inazuma.
  • Cryo users tend to seem cold or unapproachable on the surface. Diona, Eula, and Rosaria have Tsundere qualities. Kaeya keeps plenty of secrets to himself. Ganyu, Mika, and Chongyun are rather shy.
  • Dendro users tend to be curious, seeking knowledge for themselves.
  • Electro users easily take charge of the situation, with Razor being the only one of the 11 as of 3.8 to be an exception.
  • Geo users tend to be determined and hardy. For example, Albedo relentlessly studies alchemy to figure out the 'truths of this world', while Noelle is dead set on becoming part of the Knights of Favonius at all costs.
  • Pyro users are highly energetic and spunky. All the female ones save Dehya can be considered a Genki Girl, even if they have professions like funeral director or legal advisor. Diluc's the only notable exception, with his stoic demeanor being due to family trauma some time ago.
• Elemental Powers:
  • Teyvat is built on the intermingling of seven elements: Anemo (Blow You Away), Geo (Dishing Out Dirt), Electro (Shock and Awe), Dendro (Green Thumb), Hydro (Making a Splash), Pyro (Playing with Fire), and Cryo (An Ice Person). All playable characters wield one element at a time, and certain enemies and obstacles have their elemental attributes as well.
  • While Visions are the primary source of elemental power in Teyvat, there are other ways to wield the elements, as demonstrated by various enemies such as the Eremites, who infuse their weapons with elemental spirits, and the Fatui, who have Delusions (or, in the Skirmisher's case, through technology). Other methods include alchemy and hydromancy, the latter of which has so far only been demonstrated by Mona.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Most Elemental Barriers can be damaged with the appropriate reaction. For example, Pyro shields are weak to Hydro, Cryo are weak to Pyro, Electro are weak to Cryo, Pyro, or Dendro, and Hydro are weak to Electro. The sole exception are Geo armors, which only suffer significant damage from blunt attacks, such as claymore attacks and Overload reactions.
• Elemental Variation: Exposure to elemental forces transmutes the creatures in Teyvat into different forms. In Sumeru this extends to the wildlife, where regular animals are given various aggressive Elemental variations due to contaminations, creating the Consecrated Beasts.
• The Empire: Snezhnaya is one in all but name, being a country ruled by a quite literal God Empress who is conspiring against all other nations in Teyvat. In an unusual example, they have yet to go into a full-on war with other nations, and the agents of Snezhnaya, the Fatui, prefer subterfuge, espionage, and forceful diplomacy rather than raw military power, though that does not mean that they do not also have that in spades.
• Empty Levels: Stat increases from leveling up are typically very low, with the lion's share of such boosts being provided by weapons, artifacts, and ascensions, which is especially egregious when later levels demand large numbers of Hero's Wits and hundreds of thousands of Mora for miniscule boosts. Because of this, leveling a character from 80 to 90 is regarded as a waste of resources, unless either their kit's potency scales off of their Max HP and/or Defense (since those aren't expected to be made up for by a weapon, they aren't nearly as low as Attack) or they rely on Elemental Reactions as their main source of damage (since the damage those deal scales by level).
• The End... Or Is It?: At the end of the second act of the Shadows Amidst Snowstorms event, the Traveler fights and defeats a mutated Whopperflower that learned how to impersonate Albedo. While everyone is lead to assume that it was the Whopperflower that tried to lead a kid named Joel into danger earlier, the cutscene that plays at the end suggests that it wasn't the mutant Whopperflower, but was actually another Albedo, as the playable Albedo spots the other looking down at him from an elevated position, and he draws his sword to go after him.
• Equipment Upgrade: Both weapons and artifacts can be leveled up, or "enhanced," by consuming either spare equipment or, respectively, [Fine/Mystic] Enhancement Ore and Sanctifying Unction/Essence. In addition, weapons have a level cap that can be raised, or "ascended," with certain items up to six times, with changes in appearance from the second ascension; furthermore, those 3★ and above have passive effects which can be "refined" by sacrificing duplicates (or, in the case of certain quest and/or event-exclusive weapons, special items).
• Escort Mission: The "Safe Conduct" daily commission quest requires you to protect a large floating balloon from the nearby hilichurls as it moves forward to the recipient NPC.
• Essence Drop: The "elemental energy" used to fuel each characters' Elemental Bursts appears from defeating enemies, breaking certain objects, or successfully hitting enemies with elemental attacks.
• Everyone Is Bi: Nearly every playable character, male and female alike, will flirt with the Traveler regardless of their gender.
• Everything Fades: Almost all enemies and all playable characters fade into different particle effects when defeated, typically after a brief period of ragdolling. Notably averted in four cases: Treasure Horders drop a smoke bomb and escape when defeated, the Eremites escape by melting into sand, Slimes pop like balloons, and enemies defeated while frozen will shatter into pieces.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Evil-Detecting Cat rather, but downplayed. Nabiya the fortuneteller in Sumeru has two cats, Harut and Marut, who are friendly. But the moment the Traveler possesses Nabiya, courtesy of the Dendro Archon, they become agitated, knowing something is up.
• Evil Weapon:
  • The Festering Desire is a cursed sword forged from the remains of the dark dragon Durin, yearns for life, can grow in power as you use it, and drips with a venom that can corrupt dragons. Albedo also mentions that it can corrupt the wielder's body (which does not happen in actual gameplay).
  • The Prized Isshin Blade that features in Kaedehara Kazuha's Story Quest is this. He's the Big Bad of that storyline, taking Demonic Possession of Amenoma Yuuya's body and hunting down Kaedehara Kazuha so that the latter can use him to defeat the Raiden Shogun. He was originally forged in Snezhnaya by an exiled Isshin bladesmith who only wanted him to be used in real battle in the nation of his birth. In order to fulfill his mission, he used countless people as pawns, losing sight of his original goal along the way.
• Evolving Title Screen: The background of the start-up screen changes between day, noon and night cycles depending on your device's current time.
• Excuse Plot:
  • The entire plot of the "Midsummer Islands Adventure" event is an In-Universe example. In it, Klee searches the Golden Apple Archipelago for the mysterious Dodo-King so she can challenge him for the right to remain with Dodoco, but then it turns out in the end that it was all just a setup by Klee's mother Alice, just so she can have her daughter have a fun summer vacation with her loved ones.
  • The "Summertime Odyssey" event, taking place in the same location, does that too. The whole plot with Fatui's machine doesn't get much focus and is there just to show us each character's backstory.
  • Version 4.0's "Mega Meka Melee" event story includes a brief anecdote about a toy based on Bennett, likely simply to justify Bennett being the free character given out for that event.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Most of the playable cast has unique eye coloring, though some characters stand out with unique eye designs, which at times will suggest that something is special about them backstory-wise, and other times, not. For some examples of unique eye designs among the playable cast:
  • Kaeya is one of the earliest examples of a playable character with a distinct eye design, as his four-pointed star pupils hint at him being a Khaenri'ahn descendant, the same as Dainsleif.
  • Hu Tao's pupils are shaped like white flowers, giving her the appearance of having permanent Wingding Eyes.
  • Zhongli's irises resemble a golden ring around a diamond shape, hinting at his otherwordly nature as an Archon.
  • Chongyun, Xiao, Baizhu, Cyno, Kaveh, Dehya, and Layla have catlike (or snake-like in Baihu's case) pupils; however, Chongyun, Cyno, Baizhu, Xiao's pupils are thinner and solid black, while the latter three's eyes are larger and filled in with a different color.
  • Shenhe's pupils are white and doubled ringed with a purple outline.
  • Alhaitham has green irises and red, diamond-shaped pupils with white highlights at the center.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: At the climax of Furina's trial in Chapter IV, Act V, the heroes try to interpret the prophecy they're trying to avert in order to make sense of the Oratrice sentencing the Hydro Archon to death. However, the Traveler believes that the third and fourth slates are out of order, since the third slate seemingly depicts the Hydro Archon falling into the Primodial Sea surrounded by her people sometime after the calamity foretold by the prophecy, while the fourth slate depicts the immediate aftermath, with the Hydro Archon on her throne weeping at the devastation. However, Neuvillette explains that the slates are actually in the correct order, as the third slate doesn't depict an event literally, but metaphorically. What it actually depicts is the Hydro Archon being held for trial by her own people. Which is exactly what's happening now. Oops.
• Exploding Barrels: They have a distinct dark-red color to differentiate from the ordinary breakable objects. A closer look shows that these explosive barrels actually have Pyro Slimes stuffed inside◊. Dragonspine introduces the Cryo version of the barrels. The Chasm introduces Geo versions. Sumeru introduces both Dendro and Electro explosive barrels. Fontaine introduces Hydro explosive barrels.
• Exploited Immunity: It's a legitimate combat tactic to avoid enemy attacks using the invulnerability granted by Elemental Bursts, given its generous time window compared to standard dodge.
• Exposed to the Elements: Version 1.2 added Dragonspine, a mountain so cold that you will start freezing to death a minute or two after straying away from a heat source. None of the characters considered changing their outfits for this, even ones who wear shorts like Xiangling and Xingqiu, though the cold does not affect them any more than ones with thicker clothes.
• Extradimensional Emergency Exit: Defied Trope. At the beginning of the game when the gods of Celestia attack the nation of Khaenri'ah, the Twin Travelers Aether and Lumine try to escape from the ensuing cataclysm by opening a portal to another world. However, they're immediately stopped by the Unknown God who proceeds to defeat the twins in a Curb-Stomp Battle, denying them their escape and separating them from each other. This kickstarts the main story of the protagonist twin searching for their lost sibling in the world of Teyvat.
• Eyepatch of Power: A popular accessory; Kaeya, Fischl, and Beidou all have one, and that is just out of the playable characters in Version 1.0.

F

• Face Your Fears: The game has a small fable story about this that Amber likes to read, titled "Wind, Courage, and Wings". In the past, the first birds could not fly despite having wings. The birds asked the Wind God to help them, and the god told them to find a place with blowing winds. The birds first tried to fly from a breezy hill, but they failed. Then they chose to go to a tall gorge with extraordinarily fierce winds. Despite their fears, they tried anyway, and they eventually succeed. They then returned to meet the Wind God and told that they finally managed to do it because of the high winds, but the god said that it is not the winds that helped them fly, it is their courage.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • The Traveler manages to get out Ritou by posing as additional escort detail for a cart headed out. In their unfamiliarity with the situation in Inazuma and their haste to get to the capital however, they overlook some strange details: first, that the cart is headed for Watatsumi Island, which is literally at war with the Shogunate at present, and second, that it's loaded with Crystal Marrow, which they have already learned that the Kanjou Commission is forcing outlanders to pay their taxes in. In other words, Ritou's taxes are being sent towards a warzone. Had anyone stopped to consider how odd this situation was, the Fatui plot may have been uncovered much sooner.
  • Speaking of the Fatui plot in Inazuma, the second time the Traveler and Paimon meet Teppei after he recieved his promotions, his hair has very clearly turned grey from it's normal black. But all the Traveler and Paimon seem to notice is his cough and they watch him go back to work with only a little concern. They were unaware of the Fatui's schemes at that point, but they might have figured out faster if they had noticed that "small" detail. Unfortunately, by the time they realize what's going on, Teppei has been fatally drained of his life force by the Delusion he was given.
• Failure Is the Only Option: In Chapter IV Act 1, at one point when defending Lyney in his trial, none of the evidence on hand works, making it impossible for the Traveler to fully refute Furina's narrative.
• Fake Longevity:
  • Archon Quest stages and Story Quests are gated behind Adventure Ranks, requiring you to grind levels for a while even if you are only playing for the lore.
  • The RNG layers on Artifacts mean that it is hard to find the ideal or perfect equipment since their sub-stats are based on luck, encouraging players to grind increasingly, hoping to find better Artifacts to replace their currently equipped ones.
  • Floors 9-12 of the Spiral Abyss are better sources of replenishable Primogems needed for summoning from the gacha. Unfortunately, Spiral Abyss stages are end-game content, and it only gets harder starting from floors 9-12. This puts the largest source of replenishable Primogems behind the end-game wall, which is out of reach for free-to-play or light spending players until they can put entire teams together to deal with the gimmicks and have passable gears to deal with the enemies.
  • All forms of character, weapon, and artifact enhancement, as well as claiming rewards from the weekly bosses, require the use of Resin. Resin regenerates at a rate of one every eight minutes and consumed in multiples of twenty, requiring three hours for the smallest amount needed. While there is Fragile Resin (regenerates 60 Resin) given out for free through various means, they are exceedingly rare.
• Faking the Dead: It is heavily implied that Huachu, an NPC you can find at Stone Gate, did this to elope with her lover. In Liyue Harbor, you can find her father Gentry De'an mourning her suicide.
• Fall Damage: Falling from a great enough height will deal damage to or outright kill your characters. This also applies to the enemies; if you knock them over from a great enough height, they will get damaged as they hit the ground.
• Fame Gate:
  • To advance the story, you must raise your Adventure Rank, which you do by exploring the world, completing side quests, and opening chests.
  • Version 1.1 introduces the "Reputation" mechanic: In each city, you have a "reputation level" that you can raise by gaining enough "reputation points" through various means, such as completing Requests (Fetch Quests involving NPCs in each region), completing Bounties (where you hunt a certain empowered monster), and finishing Archon Quests and World Quests. Leveling up your reputation comes with rewards of new recipes, gadget blueprints, namecard styles, and wind glider styles.
• Family Theme Naming: Rosemary and Parsley, the parents of Sage, outside Mondstadt.
• Fanservice:
  • To be expected of a gacha game, though not quite as gratuitous as others in the genre. It's harder to name a female character that doesn't have either an exposed back, bare shoulders, slender or bare legs, exposed cleavage, or any combination thereof, and there are a select few characters with bare midriffs. Even the Traveler is more fanservice-y than the usual gacha game protagonist, with Aether having a bare stomach while Lumine's dress features not only the aforementioned exposed back and bare shoulders, but also creates a Cleavage Window with its straps.
  • Several playable characters flirt with the Traveler, whether through their birthday letters, where they'll often ask the player character to spend time with them, or some of their voice lines. Some 4☆ character hangouts will also occasionally play out like the player going on a date with the star character, and the CG's will reflect this depending on the ending. In Japanese, these are straight-up translated as "Date Events," whether the story involves an actual date between the Traveler and the star character or not.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Each nation in Teyvat is based on real life countries and regions. Their names even reflect the meaning of common words in their respective languages.^note Mondstadt means "Moon city" in German, Liyue means "Lapis Moon" in Mandarin, Inazuma means "lightning" in Japanese, Fontaine means "fountain" in French, Snezhnaya means "snowy" in Russian
  • Mondstadt is based on Germany. Its buildings have distinct traits of Germanic architecture right down to the wooden beams on their houses, its people have names that vary in their European origins and two characters (Fischl and Albedo) both have German titles, and the Favonius Cathedral is inspired from the Cologne Cathedral. It also has some flavors with the United States as well, with the Anemo Archon statue being based on the Statue of Liberty, and the nation being founded on a rebellion where freedom and individuality is highly valued and frequently taught.
  • Liyue is based on China, judging from its architecture, attire, and dishes. Their patron Archon and the Qixing dictate their entire economy every year, striking both hope and terror from the merchants in the game's own words, not too unlike the policies of the Chinese Communist Party since it took power in 1949.
  • Inazuma is based on Japan, specifically the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868), whose founder Tokugawa Ieyasu is a direct inspiration for the Raiden Shogun, complete with sharing the name sakoku for their isolationist policies. During the Inazuma Archon Quest there is also an ongoing Vision Hunt Decree, not unlike the "sword hunts" under Ieyasu's predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Finally, the simmering conflict between the Shogunate to the east and Watatsumi Island to the west, loyalists to the late deity Orobashi, whose death they blame on the Shogun, bring to mind the conflict between the samurai clans of eastern Japan loyal to Ieyasu and those of the west loyal to the Toyotomi clan, led by Ishida Mitsunari, culminating in the fateful Battle of Sekigahara in which the former won and consolidated his rule over Japan.
  • Sumeru is an amalgam of India, Persia, Arabia, and Ancient Egypt; Persia, specifically the First Persian Empire, would arguably be the best fit for a direct counterpart since it had control or influence over all four of these territories. The eastern half of the country is a lush rainforest whose people bear Indian names, and among whose hostile wildlife are tigers, a national symbol of the Indian subcontinent, while the western half is a desert with a prominent serpentine theme (one character in Liyue even mentions "Sumeru snake wine"), with Cyno bearing a jackal hood that resembles the Anubis, Egyptian god of embalmers. The land's Archon Quest name is "Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana", purana being a Sanskrit word referring to ancient legends and mythology. The Sumeru Akademiya is heavily themed after Iranian Zoroastrianism, while the Sabzeruz Festival is directly based on the Nowruz. The country's name is derived from Sumer, an ancient Mesopotamian civilization.
  • Fontaine is inspired by France and to a lesser extent Italy. The former, specifically the late 19th century Belle Époque period, which was characterized by technological advancement and artistic flourishing. And the latter, owing to the existence of The Mafia, and the waterways that evoke the feel of Venice (albeit, one with aquabuses rather than gondolas). There are also some occasional minor influences from other Western European nations as seen by Wriothesley's archaic English name and Sigewinne's Middle High German name. There also seems to be some inclusion of elements from select Eastern European histories as one moves northward, such as Ukraine and the Chernobyl Disaster.
  • The civilization that came before Fontaine's establishment, Remuria, is strongly influenced by Ancient Rome.
  • Natlan is implied to be based on a mixture of Pre-Columbia America and Africa. Iansan one of the teased characters from the eponymous nation has a tribal look.
  • Snezhnaya is based on Russia. The Cryo Archon's title is "Tsaritsa", meaning Empress in Russian. The country is said to be very cold and snowy, just like Russia in real life, and the name of the nation more or less means 'Snowy'. The heavy industrialisation, as seen in Fatui enemies' equipment, could be a reference to the Soviet Union's heavy and rapid industrialisation in the 1930's. Fatui also tend to refer to each other as 'Comrade(s)', a literal translation of the Russian word 'Tovarishch'.
  • The unnamed unified human civilization from ancient Teyvat which Enkanomiya was a part of is based on the Greco-Roman civilization. Their people have Greek/Latin based names, their gods take their names from the Greco-Roman pantheon, and their architecture is heavily inspired by Greco-Roman architecture (most clearly distinguished by their use of arches). The ancient Chasm civilization is also suspected by some players to have been a part of this unified civilization, due to the use of Enkanomiyan architecture in the Chasm.
  • Khaenri'ah appears to be based on Scandinavian and Germanic myth, as the characters who hail from there bear names from that mythos, with Dainsleif being named after the sword of King Hogni, Durin being named after a dwarf from the Poetic Edda, and Rhinedottir (aka Gold) takes her name from the river that the cursed gold of Fafnir was taken from in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Additionally, Kaeya's surname, Alberich, is also taken from a character in the opera.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The only users that have access to firearms are the Fatui Skirmishers, Ruin Hunters (the Ruin Guard uses missiles), and Fontainean Specialist Meks (Construction and Suppression) and some locals (such as Clorinde). Everyone else resort to bows and crossbows (even in Inazuma where, despite being based on Feudal Japan, they don't have flintlocks on their arsenal, as a Nobushi - Kikouban pulls out a crossbow for ranged attacks instead).
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Teyvat incorporates names and supernatural beings based on a wide range of cultures' mythologies and pop culture, including Chinese Mythology, Japanese Mythology, Classical Mythology, the Ars Goetia, a variety of Little Bit Beastly people, multiple varieties of Our Spirits Are Different, and more.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: A visual design choice that's prominent in nearly every main character design going through at least version 2.3, it'd be easier to count those who actually have symmetrical outfits.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: A skip mechanic in the menu allows you to fast-forward the In-Universe Game Clock to a specific time.
• Fast-Killing Radiation: Balethunder is the game's equivalent to radioactive fallout, being concentrated Electro energy so potent, it can be fatal in short doses. Exposure to raw Balethunder will whittle down your character's health bar to zero in 20-30 seconds without Electrograna protection (depending on how beefy their HP is), but if you're unfortunate enough to end up in Electro water contaminated by Balethunder, then it will take less than 5 seconds for your characters to die in it.
• Females Are More Innocent:
  • While the majority of the playable roster are female, only four of The Eleven Fatui Harbingers are women.^{Further context (spoilers!)}La Signora, while truly evil, is killed in Chapter II. Arlecchino (the current one), on the other hand, is Affably Evil and becomes a genuine ally to the Traveler and Fontainians as a whole in Chapter IV. It's also rare to see any women in other hostile groups (outside the Fatui and Eremites), such as the Treasure Hoarders. The main antagonist in Chapter II is a woman, but she isn't truly evil and soon becomes an ally to the Traveler.
  • Whenever a quest requires some one-time villainous or just Jerkass NPCs it, bar five exceptions (Babel, Crucabena, Janaki, Little Que'er, and Tae), will almost always be a man. Additionally, if there's an NPC we are trying to help, they will usually be female.
    • "A Teapot to Call Home" quest is about helping a woman from Liyue who has lost a necklace belonging to a Snezhnayan merchant. Later Yanfei and Traveler discover proofs that he was trying to scam her.
    • In Zhongli's Story Quest, Zhongli and Traveler go to Sal Terrae together with Kliment and Wanyan, both of whom claim to be archaeologists. Kliment, a Fatui Agent, is clearly greedy and egoistic, breaks the contract with Wanyan and tries to steal her artifact, for which he gets beaten up. Wanyan was also lying, but had a much more noble goal: she's a follower of God of Salt and was trying to find out the truth about her past. When Zhongli decides to punish her for breaking the contract too, Paimon even insists he absolutely cannot hit her, which he fortunately doesn't, instead choosing to show what happened to her God as her punishment. Ironically, Wanyan took her punishment far worse than Kliment, due to getting emotionally shattered upon what she witnessed.
    • Before the introduction of Lessig, Eula is the only sympathetic member of the Lawrence family. Her Story Quest requires us to deal with an extremely arrogant and disdainful Schubert who conspires with Fatui in order to regain the clan's power in Mondstadt.
    • In Ayato's Story Quest, we're trying to prevent a marriage between heads of Hiiragi and Kujou clans. It turns out to be a political plot by Matsuura, a member of Hiiragi clan, who also kidnaps one of their soldiers and threatens Ayato. We manage to stop him and help the manipulated would-be bride gain better authority in her family.
    • In Archon Quest Chapter III, Dunyarzad and Nilou are organizing Sabzeruz Festival, but two Akademyia Sages come in and forbid it. Later, Nahida decides that the female one is most likely less evil and a good candidate for a person who might help them. Indeed, Setaria feels guilty about the experiment done on Sumeru citizens and betraying her homeland.
• Fetch Quest: Quests may require the player to obtain items or solve puzzles from a specific area and return to the quest giver to complete the quest and/or move the story forward. If you already have the requested item before taking the quest, however, you can give the item to the quest giver right away.
• Field of Blades: The Sword Cemetery in Dadaupa Gorge, Mondstadt is a site where an ancient battle took place and the fallen comrades' graves have swords marking them.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief:
  • The three starting characters all fit the bill. Kaeya is the Fighter, whose gameplay prioritizes getting into the thick of battle, with his exploration talent reducing the sprint stamina usage, and his Elemental Burst surrounding him with an Orbiting Particle Shield. Lisa is the Mage who uses a catalyst slinging electrical shocks from afar, her Elemental Burst creates a lamp that sends shocks in an area, and her exploration talent has a chance to refund a portion of materials when crafting potions, keeping up her Hot Witch look. Amber is the Thief, being able to glide the longest thanks to her exploration talent, avoid direct combat with the help of her Draw Aggro bunny, and solve torch puzzles with her arrows.
  • The first three resident Token Mini-Moe fit the mold, with Qiqi being the Fighter who goes mano-a-mano with her enemies using her sword while healing her allies at the same time, Klee being the Mage who blows her enemies up with massive AOE Pyro explosives, and Diona being the Thief who snipes her enemies from afar using her arrows and Cryo abilities.
    • The fourth Mini-Moe, Sayu, can be all three, as her using a claymore as her weapon makes her the Fighter, her Elemental Burst being an instant heal that summons a Muji-Muji Daruma to further heal and/or attack makes her the Mage, and her Elemental Skill letting her excel at hit-and-run tactics, alongside being a ninja, makes her the Thief.
  • The first four playable Archons also fit this mold, to a degree. Raiden Shogun is the Fighter, as she is the best-geared towards physical combat, and her support abilities mainly increase other characters' effectiveness at that same niche. Zhongli and Nahida are the Mages; Zhongli uses using his Elemental Skill and Burst to craft barriers and debuff enemies, while Nahida's attacks innately deal elemental damage and inflicts status effects on enemies to bolster her team's damage against them. Venti is the Thief, as while his offensive abilities are somewhat lacking, he excels at support and crowd-control and has the fastest firing speed out of all the bow-users in the game.
  • As of 3.1, the three characters obtainable after the prologue possess this dynamic: Xiangling is the Fighter who wields a polearm, has a passive that can boost the party's attack after using her Elemental Skill, and her exploration talent has a chance to double any attack increasing dishes she cooks; Barbara is the Mage, being a Hydro catalyst user who specializes in applying Hydro to her enemies and healing her fellow party members with her talents, and her exploration talent has a chance to double recovery dishes; Collei is the Thief, specializing in ranged combat with her bow, using her Dendro element to enable complex reactions, and her exploration talent reduces the party's stamina usage when gliding.
  • The three most prominent youkai races in Inazuma exemplify this as well; the Oni are the Fighter, possessing great strength and a zest for combat; the Kitsune are the Mage, known for their strong youkai abilities and skill with practices such as warding off or sealing evil; and the tengu are the Thief, with their near unmatched agility and speed, and their incredible talent for archery. Their three playable representatives, Arataki Itto, Yae Miko, and Kujou Sara, match these archetypes in terms of their gameplay. Itto is a brute force focused claymore user whose normal and charged attacks behave more like a sword user, Miko is a catalyst character whose skill and burst are both centered around summoning copious amounts of Electro, and Sara is a bow user with a kit featuring a decent amount of evasion.
  • The Hotel Bouffes d'ete triad have this dynamic with Freminet as the fighter, who swings his claymore around and does most of the physical labor, Lyney being the mage, a skilled stage magician who possesses mastery over Pyrotechnics, and Lynette is the thief, possessing high mobility in combat and specializing in disappearing acts.
  • The three notable high-ranking members of the Fontanian Court: Clorinde, Neuvillette, and Furina (albeit formerly affiliated in her case), also have this going on. Clorinde is the Fighter, hailed as the strongest Champion Duelist and is very skilled in wielding a Sword and Gun. Neuvillette is the Mage, as a Hydro catalylst wielder who can unleash powerful Hydro spells to blast the bad guys. Furina is the Thief, who can create Hydro summons that provide combat or healing utility, and can passively reduce the cooldown of abilities borrowed by Xenochromatic Creatures.
• First-Episode Twist: Or in this case, "Prologue Twist" - the end of the prologue's story shows that the Traveler's twin is much closer to them than they thought, but the missing twin is working with the Abyss Mages for some kind of goal. One teaser video released in the official YouTube channel shows that the other twin has a sort of business/goal they are working towards (preventing the devastation by the "Unknown God") before they can meet each other again. When they do meet again at the end of Chapter I, Act IV, the traveler learns that the new leader of the Abyss Order, the prince/princess, is actually their missing sibling who is later revealed to be a native of Teyvat as well as the former prince/princess of Khaenri'ah and Dainslef's former travel companion.
• First Town: Mondstadt is the region where the prologue is set in, and where the playable Traveler begins their journey.
• Fishing Minigame: In addition to releasing the rest of the Inazuma chapter, the 2.1 update added fishing, with each region having fish that can be caught with a rod to fill out a collection, cook as food, and exchange with the regional Fishing Association to get bait recipes and a region-specific rod.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: In Xiangling's story, you meet an NPC from Springvale named Olaf who was out hunting a boar when it escaped into a very cold domain, giving him severe frostbite when he tried to chase it. After you defeat the Cryo Regisvine inside and bring the boar back out, it turns out that Olaf had become frozen in the domain for hundreds of years, making him a distant ancestor to Draff and Diona. For the rest of the game, Olaf laments about how familiar yet disconnected the present-day Springvale is to him.
• Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: A heavy case of this is present, where almost every single non-playable character, no matter how narratively important, is composed of interchangeable generic features on a base NPC model within their societal group and gender, while the playable and future-playable characters can be identified from a mile away with their colorful and/or extravagant designs. A few significant non-playable characters have unique alterations on a generic NPC model (such as Jiu aka Azhdaha's child guise) or an outfit unique to them (such as Takuya and Azar) but rarely anything on par with the playable characters. The only exceptions are a privileged few Posthumous Characters like the Five Yakshas, and some villains, who are not necessarily playable as La Signora's death suggests.
• Flat World: Averted. The orientation of the world map does not portray the directions in a standard way. According to the Teyvat Travel Guide entries, Brightcrown Canyon (the area leading to Stormterror's Lair) is northeast of Cider Lake (the body of water surrounding Mondstadt City), except to the player, this is seemingly incorrect as Brightcrown Canyon appears west of Cider Lake. However, the directions are correct for the entries about Liyue. Also made stranger in that the Knights of Favonius's office has a map oriented in the same way as the player's world map. Given that this is the only case of directions on the world map not matching in-game text, it's probable that this is an error.
• Flavor Text:
  • Everything that you can collect has its item description. A handful may just be basic or mundane, while others give added lore and worldbuilding. Even "suspicious" or "delicious" versions of the same cooked dish have different descriptions!
  • Even the characters' abilities/Talents have lore tidbits in their descriptions.
• Flying Weapon: The master swordsman Leap used the Skyrider Sword as a flying weapon that he rode to pierce the clouds.
• Food Porn: The game draws and describes food items in so detail that it can make you salivate. And there are channels and threads dedicated to Defictionalizing Genshin's foods. miHoYo even posts recipes on the Chinese website under the title "The Steambird | Teyvat Food Notes" for players to cook at home (provided one can read Chinese, of course). The official Youtube channel even has the "Liyue's Cuisine Collection" playlist, where a real chef portraying Yanxiao makes various real versions of Liyue dishes.
• Forced Sleep: The "Unreconciled Stars" event involves a meteor shower causing this. Anyone who touches the fallen meteorites would fall into a deep sleep and will not wake up until the heroes discover and deal with the meteorites.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview showcases the order each nation will be visited/released past launch,^note Inazuma, Sumeru, Fontaine, Natlan, Snezhnaya glimpses of future playable characters who'll play important roles in their chapter,^note Ayaka, Cyno, Lyney and Lynette, Iansan a quote by Dainsleif vaguely hinting at each chapter's plot, and that Khaenri'ah will also be a future chapter at some point.^note The chapter number is blurred out, leaving its placement in the story ambiguous
  • In Chapter 1, Childe acts friendly and helpful to the Traveler but was revealed in Act III to be manipulating them all along and is an Ax-Crazy Cute and Psycho Blood Knight. His true nature was foreshadowed if the Traveler picks the dialogue option in Act II to say that he talks too much, which he responds with a smile and threatening to fight the Traveler, before laughing it off as a joke.
  • The Maguu Kenki bosses, which debuted during the Midsummer Island Adventure event prior to the release of Inazuma and which are featured within Inazuma itself, are highly intricate mechanical puppets that serve as dangerous warriors, noted as a technical specialty of the country. Their presence helps it make more sense when the Raiden Shogun and Scaramouche are revealed to also be the products of Inazuman puppet technology. The Electro Archon turns out to have been inhabiting a super-advanced puppet body that she mostly lets carry out her decrees autonomously while she stays in her isolated mental plane, resulting in the emotionless and rigid tyrannical persona the Shogun projects. Scaramouche then is revealed to be a prototype for the Raiden Shogun body who gained sentience and joined the Harbingers.
  • In Klee's Character Tale, she recounts a story Kaeya told her about monsters that can disguise themselves as humans to attack unsuspecting victims. While it was originally framed as a prank by Kaeya, given that he and Albedo are both from Khaenri'ah, Kaeya may have known what he was talking about after all concerning the Fell Flower.
  • In Lisa's story quest, an Abyss mage stole a fairy tale book from Mondstadt Library because it holds knowledge that's important to the Abyss Order; however, if you read the book afterwards (which you get from clearing the quest), it seems to really be just a fairy tale book, which makes you wonder why the Abyss Order tried to get it in the first place. Sumeru's Interlude Quest reveals that fairy tales can withstand information erasure and alteration from the Irminsul, meaning that in Tevyat, fairy tales and fictional books can be more accurate than historical ones, thus explaining why the Abyss Order tried to get their hands on the Pale Princess and the Six Pygmies.
  • In Chapter 3 Act 6 "Caribert", a broken mirror is encountered early in the quest. Later in the quest, Eide expresses shock that the said mirror is broken, and the Traveler notices this discrepancy. This is one of the first big hints that the Traveler is experiencing a vision of the past.
  • In the cutscene where the Traveler was shown to be harnessing the power of various Visions in the battle with the Raiden Shogun, amongst them was a Dendro Vision. A subtle hint both towards the next nation the Traveler would be heading to at the time, but also to the existence of Kirara.
  • During the Version 2.8 Summer Event, the main cast of said event experience the past of each member through special domains in the Golden Apple Archipelago in the order of Kazuha, Xinyan, Fischl, and Mona and later learn that they were being caused by a Lotus-Eater Machine created by a Fatui member that used to serve the Second Harbinger based on the powers of one of the Seven Archons and are assisted by a mysterious voice. Many of the events of the Sumeru Archon Quest end up being based on this since the Archon in question that inspired the creation of the machine was Lesser Lord Kusanali, the Dendro Archon, who was actually the mysterious voice that the traveler heard in said event and the Akademyia also use another Lotus-Eater Machine in the form of the Subzaruz Festival Samsara to harvest the dreams of the people of Sumeru in order to assist the Second Harbinger, Il Dottore, with creating a new god using Scaramouche.
  • Since Sumeru, one of the main city themes will seem out of place as a main city theme and also lack a Radiant Spincrystal. A variation of this theme will play in the climatic cutscene of the region's Archon Quest storyline, and the city theme hints at the mood at that moment. In Sumeru, this is For Riddles, for Wonders, and in Fontaine, this is Le Souvenir avec le crepuscule.
  • The Version 3.8 Summer Event has the main cast for the event go to a special domain in Sumeru's Desert and meet multiple people inside like Alice's friend Idyia who all strangely have Blue hair and eyes. The ending of the event reveals that Idyia is actually an Oceanid originally from Fontaine disguised as a human who left the country due to Fontaine's waters being tainted by "pain and suffering" while the other humans in the domain are actually just hydro mimics created by her based on humans that went to the domain in the past. This is a big hint towards the fact that Oceanids can become human mimics since it's eventually revealed that every Fontainian is actually an Oceanid that look human and return to their real forms after coming into contact with the Primordial Sea until the end of the Archon Quest when they are freed by Neuvillette.
  • Each of the Traveler's kits generally resembles a nerfed version of the Archon's kit, but the Hydro Traveler's kit resembles a nerfed version of Neuvillette's kit. This subtly hints that Furina herself is not the Hydro Archon, and Neuvillette holds the real power in Fontaine as the Dragon Sovereign of Water.
• Framing Device: Certain NPCs narrate backstories and lore like a fairytale, accompanied by a 2D animation sequence:
  • The "Wind, Courage and Wings" book is a story about the Anemo God and the first two birds that could fly.
  • In the plaza, Venti sings a bard song about a dragon who shed crystallized tears.
  • In the "Unreconciled Stars" event's climax, right before you destroy the "main" meteorite, a cutscene shows the life and dreams of Leonard the adventurer (who's linked to the meteorite) who planned to create the first Wind Glider to conquer a very tall mountain.
  • Opening the Battle Pass for the first time each month shows a story about the heir to a kingdom going off to purify a tainted land, only to be corrupted themselves and believing themselves to be its rightful ruler. Their younger sibling goes after them to purify them. This is either an allegory for how the Traveler sees their adventure, or is something that happened to them prior to coming to Teyvat. which one is unclear.
• Free-Range Children: Monstadt, being the city of freedom, ends up with several cases of this.
  • Ella Musk is the best known one, since her studies of hilichurl culture takes her well out of city limits, sometimes as far as Stormterror's lair!
  • Flora's sister Chloris is one of the lesser-known shop NPCs, due to spawning in the wilds of eastern Monstadt.
• Friendly Fireproof:
  • Most player-triggered reactions, especially area-of-effect ones like Superconduct or Overloaded generally do not affect other players in Co-Op.
  • Downplayed with exploding Dendro Cores and Burgeon triggered by a teammate; they do minor damage to allied units in the explosion range.
  • Averted with player-controlled Ruin Golems, whose Eye Beams can damage other players.
• Frustrating Lie: During the Fontaine Archon Quest, nearly every character who speaks with Furina gets frustrated at her blatant lies about having a plan to deal with an upcoming prophecy, that threatens to destroy their entire nation in a giant flood. This reaches a boiling point after Poisson gets flooded (with several deaths), leading several characters to lose all patience with Furina and orchestrate a trial to force her to be honest about what she knows.
• Full-Name Basis: Inazuma characters from important clans have their names rendered by their full names, resulting in Overly Long Names in languages with Roman letters, but it's not a big issue in Chinese and Japanese, since the names of Inazuma characters are written in kanji and thus save a lot more characters space. Names like Kaedehara Kazuha or Kamisato Ayaka are written in only four kanji each.
• Funny Background Event:
  • If you do not attract their attention first, you can see mobs doing silly things as you roam Teyvat, like hilichurls looking at a dead(?) Ruin Guard or two foxes meeting each other at the border in Stormbearer Mountain.
  • In the "Moonlight Merriment" event, during cutscenes Xiangling's bear Guoba can be seen running around while the others are talking.

G

• Game-Favored Gender: In every height category (tall, medium, small; though there are no small males currently), male characters are always taller than females of the corresponding height category. Because of this, they also cover more distance when sprinting.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Each character has a signature twist on a certain dish, and their signature dishes (and which ones they're produced from) all tend to align with their roles and food preferences; for example, Chongyun, who avoids spicy food to temper his Yang energy, will make a chilled version of the Noodles with Mountain Delicacies, and Ningguang has a twist on the Mora Meat, a simple street food that simultaneously aligns with her unexpected humble tastes and invokes her love of money.
  • It's been mentioned several times in the story that reaching Inazuma is currently difficult due to storms preventing others from entering or even leaving Inazuma easily. Sure enough, if you do try to enter or leave Inazuma (via Waverider boats or the "Ice-Bridge" method), storms would appear and eventually forcefully teleport the players to Liyue Harbor or Ritou, respectively. Only when you complete Ei's 2nd Story Quest when her Character Development is fully cemented will said storms finally dissipate.
  • Usually a characters' skills and elemental powers will conform to their personality and goals. Hard rocker Xinyan is all about big critical hits and crowd control, battle maid Noelle is noted to take on all tasks on herself and can tank, deal damage and heal, but isn't a full fledged knight, so she requires a lot of work put into her.
  • Interpersonal relationships are taken into account when designing character combat synergy. Sara, Raiden's loyal right hand woman, has abilities that were specifically tailored to benefit Raiden's own damage output when paired together.
  • The Archons themselves guide their lands with an even hand but have frightening power they bring to bear on those who disrupt their laws. Venti, Zhongli, Ei, and Nahida all have supportive Elemental skills and massively powerful Bursts and are the best-in-class: Venti is the strongest at crowd control; Zhongli is the strongest shieldcaster; Ei is the strongest battery for team energy regeneration and Nahida is the strongest at Elemental Mastery support for various Dendro-related reactions.
  • Speaking of the Archons, some quests require you to hunt for certain items; with it being noted that Visions will glow when you get close to them. This mechanic will not work when using the Traveler or any Archon character due to the fact that they don't have Visions.
  • The first quest of the Sumeru Archon questline introduces the Withering and the rangers who help fight back against it. If you have done the first quest of the Aranara questline, Paimon will note that you have already dealt with the Withering before and Tighnari will realize you have met other rangers.
  • At the end of Act I of Sumeru's Archon Quest, the Traveler uses Canned Knowledge of sword-fighting techniques to improve their combat ability. Alhaitham notes that the improvement was a mere 0.073%, which is reflected when your playable Traveler's ATK is permanently increased by 3.
  • As Nilou isn't the Traveler and thus probably doesn't have any idea of Teleport Waypoints (nor does she's able to use them), when players get to control her in Chapter III: Act V to lure the guards into searching the city for the supposedly escaping Nahida, the existing Teleport Waypoints on the map will disappear and you'll be forced into taking her to the Akademiya on foot on her particular segment.
  • At several points of Sumeru's Archon Quest, the game removes almost every reference to Rukkhadevata and later Scaramouche, both of which are rendered Ret-Gone through Irminsul, from item descriptions, NPC dialogues and even character voice lines.
  • Version 3.7 introduces a World Quest named "A Guest From Liyue". Upon completion, the Invitation Board will be updated (from a cat drawing a card to that of Tubby's), and will change the game room (going from one of The Cat's Tail's rooms to that of the Invitation Duel Room created by Tubby using Adeptus Arts). This allow players to invite Inazuman characters for a match, while the Sakoku Decree is in effect prior to its abolition.
  • During Sumeru's Archon Quest, you and Paimon are given Akasha Terminals upon entering the city; with it being noted that they only function within the borders of Sumeru. True to form, it will appear on both the Traveler's and Paimon's character models upon entering the city.
  • Local Legends are extremely powerful miniboss enemies. Furina's lore confirms that these special enemies are not merely gameplay elements, as after obtaining her Vision, she tries to take revenge on a Local Legend, which ends poorly for her.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In general, the game acts as though the player only ever always has the Traveler in their party.
    • Unlike most other gachas of this type, there is no plot explanation for why you have a team of adventurers in combat. It's largely explicit (except in certain quests) that the Traveler is canonically doing heroic deeds alone most of the time, and that the other characters are not actually in a party with them plotwise^note While you can play as a Traveler solo in a party, they will likely struggle on their own, and if confronted with puzzles that require a non-sword weapon or an element they can't resonate with as of the current game version, they are roadblocked from progressing - most of the time only ever seeing him/her when a story or event features them.
    • Because playable characters appear in the main story as NPCs, the game does not also consider whom your current character is when speaking to them. This can lead to scenarios such as talking to Amber as Amber, or Albert gushing over how wonderful and adorable Barbara is to Barbara herself, or Thoma going to the ceremony held at the Statue of the Omnipresent God to rescue himself from having his Vision confiscated, or coming to Inazuma's La Résistance camp with both Raiden and Sara in your party and get them involved in defense against their own troops. Some quests - and always voiced ones - are an aversion to this, however, in that they will automatically change to Traveler when the scene occurs (and change back to your current character when it ends), even if the Traveler him/herself is not in the party.
  • Speaking of playable characters.
    • The gacha aspect allows you to obtain and play as a specific character even if you have not properly met them yet, or even if they they do not have a relevance in the main story, or even if they did not erase and abandon their previous identity and take up a new, playable one yet. For an example of the second example, it's possible to play as Amber in the second fight against Stormterror, yet the aftermath shows Amber outside of the city expressing how she didn't participate in the frontline (and given how your roster is limited at this point, this is very likely to happen). The reverse can happen as well—near the end of the "Unreconciled Stars" event, Fischl explicitly says goodbye to you and Mona, and she does not appear in the last few cutscenes; but by that point, you may have earned the free copy of her from the event quests, making her a permanent squad member.
    • Similarly, new players around the time of the "Midsummer Island Adventure" quest's release will have met most of the characters involved due to the prerequisite quests — except for Albedo, who will treat you as being familiar with him despite not being involved in the prerequisites, and the event being available to players before they can access Story Quests and meet Albedo for the canonical first time (hence the use of "Quick Start" feature in later updates). You can also play as the Wanderer as early as the prologue even though, at this point, he is still active as the 6th ranked Fatui Harbinger, Scaramouche.
  • With the arrival of Fontaine, players were able to play as several more Fatui members, including Lyney, Lynette and Freminet. Regardless, Fatui enemies will still attack the player on sight even if they are playing as a Fatui character, even a high-ranking Harbinger like Childe, and there is no penalty or comment by the characters for defeating Fatui enemies while playing as them.
  • During story missions, a character may send you on a Fetch Quest for an item you already have. By talking to them again, you can continue to the next chapter right away... but they will still talk as if you left and returned, sometimes claiming they went somewhere while you were gone.
  • Playable characters' rarity and/or stats may not reflect their actual strength and capabilities in the story. A shared backstory between Diluc and Kaeya narrates how they once fought each other on equal footing to the point where their clashing elemental powers knocked them both. But gameplay-wise, Kaeya is a 4★ character who is statistically weaker and has lesser ATK and HP values than Diluc, a 5★ character. Meanwhile, Ningguang is one of the members of Liyue Qixing and a powerful sorceress who has command over her entire Jade Chamber, but she is only a 4★ character; her colleague Keqing is a 5★ character. There are even other oddities such as a formidable Frontline General of the Tenryou Commission being a 4★, while a Sumeru dancer who isn't known to partake in combat storywise, nor is it known where she got her swordsmanship from, is designated as a 5★ in-game.
  • According to the story, the "Chalk Prince and the Dragon" event's prize sword, Festering Desire, is an Evil Weapon that only the Traveler and Albedo can wield safely. In gameplay, though, you can let any sword character wield it.
  • Most characters have a least favorite food that they will tell the player about in their voice lines. This has no reflection in gameplay, so feel free to stuff Chongyun with Jueyun Chili dishes with no repercussions or give a heaping of meat to the vegan Ganyu. This is Averted in the event "Spices From The West", where giving characters their least favorite foods will have them vocalize their dislike for the dishes, or outright reject them.
  • As part of the intro to the Windblume Festival, Katheryne tells you she does not have any commissions for you. Mondstadt tradition considers it bad luck to get help from others during the festival. But you still get the standard 4 daily commission quests anyway and can still turn them in to Katheryne as usual.
  • In the "Midsummer Island Adventure" event, Diluc's Pyro vision traps him and Kaeya on an island, because it melts the ice Kaeya makes as a bridge too fast for them to walk across it. In-game, Pyro characters have no problem walking across Cryo-generated ice unless they melt it with an elemental attack.
  • Despite what Diona may tell you while sneaking past hilichurls during her Hangout Event, hiding behind bushes will not render you hidden from them.
  • It's implied that characters that possess a Cryo Vision are resistant to cold temperatures. Rosaria mentions that she isn't bothered by the frigidity of Dragonspine in Albedo's Story Quest, Kaeya may tease the player for not being able to handle the cold when it snows, and during the Shadows Amidst Snowstorms event Eula takes an ice bath in a frozen lake offscreen. Despite this, Cryo characters are just as susceptible to the Subzero Climate effect and will freeze to death at the same rate as any other.
  • Raiden Ei seals your characters' Visions during the battle with her and as such they cannot use their elemental abilities. This even works on the Archons (including her playable self) and Neuvillette, despite the fact that their powers are innate and not derived from a Vision. However, she can't seal off bow characters' ability to fire elemental charged shots at her, catalyst characters' basic elemental attacks, or certain other talents that allow a character to deal elemental damage without using their skills or burst.
  • As a contrast to the above point about how the game knows if you've dealt with the Withering in a quest before, the first Sumeru Archon quest does not take into account whether you've properly been introduced to the Aranara before. The Traveler and Paimon will have no idea what the Aranara they meet is at first. This is especially notable since the flag involving the Withering is from the same questline that introduces the Aranara, so it's certainly a bit odd that one thing is noticed by the Archon quest but not another.
  • The introduction of the Genius Invokation TCG invoked this trope strongly. You can invite people to duel with you and they'll act like they know you, even if you haven't met them ingame yet. In fact, when the event was introduced, Paimon and The Traveler spoke to Sucrose at the Mondstadt Crafting Station even if you haven't done her character event yet, acting as if you did. That said, you cannot invite Inazuman characters until you complete Raiden's second Story Quest to remove the Sakoku Decree preventing them from leaving their homeland.
  • There is a house just north of the Avidya Forest Statue of the Seven, which act as the main setting for "Caribert". While both Paimon and Dain note that the house is deserted and has very little human activity, if you visit that location during normal gameplay (or even before you started the quest), the house is actually inhabited; there are 3 Eremites just outside the house's leaf screen and another acting as a lookout, and the house's interior has 1 shroomboar and 2 offsprings inside. The fields outside, despite Paimon's word, has Sweet Flowers growing on it surrounding the Giant Dendro Slime in the middle.
  • In a lot of cases, unit rarity is not determined by a character's relevance to the plot of their respective regions' overarching storyline or lore, as some characters that have done little to nothing to influence the plot can still be 5★ and some of those that have contributed a lot can be 4★. As of the time of writing, how Hoyoverse determines which characters will be 5★ and who will be 4★ is still unknown, and the presumed qualifications seem to change on a whim.
  • In the "Place of Secrets" quest domain visited during the Archon Quest "Meeting is also Parting", there are some platforming sections you need to navigate without falling into the water below, which is Primordial Seawater. Falling into the water won't cause you to lose HP or drain energy from your party, but it will place you back on the last solid ground you touched, regardless of who your character is; even if you're playing as a Fontaine character, the water won't hurt or kill them, even though story-wise, it will dissolve them upon contact.
  • A lot of characters established to be close/related don't really work together as a cohesive team. Chiori and Kirara, for example, are very close friends but in battle have two different playstyles that do not work well, with Chiori being a Geo DPS and Kirara being a Dendro applier, along with Geo and Dendro not having any reactions together.
  • From a lore perspective, the fact that most event 5 stars' weapons work perfectly with them and share similar design elements is a coincidence. Splendor of Tranquil Waters, for example, is Remurian in origin but works perfectly with Furina.
• Gang Up on the Human:
  • In theory, multiple enemy factions populate the overworld, such as the Treasure Hoarders, Fatui, Hilichurls, and the assorted wildlife. In practice, all of them ignore each other and focus solely and relentlessly on you and will gang up on you if you manage to aggro multiple groups at once. The game tries to avoid this by keeping enemy groups separated^note More specifically, the game tries to keep the "human" enemies (such as Fatui, Treasure Hoarders, Nobushi/Kairagi, Eremites, etc.) away from the "non-human" enemies (Hilichurls, Abyss Order, Ruin Machines, etc.), and in Domains and the Spiral Abyss, the game almost never have the "humans" and "non-humans" fight alongside each other via separating them through enemy waves, but occasional quests or randomly-generated content can bump into each other, leading to the odd sight of Fatui soldiers (a human faction) walking past the Abyss Order (a faction consisting of monsters) without a care in the world. The only "non-human" enemy group that is intentionally set up to fight alongside "human" enemies are the Clockwerk Meka.
  • The most egregious case is the Ruin Machines as despite being implied to attack everything indiscriminately, there are rare occasions where the Hilichurls or Treasure Hoarders are found next to dormant Ruin Machines, treating them as training dummies and examining them respectively. Yet when said machines activate, they will focus exclusively on you, completely ignoring their offenders next to them. And the other factions don't look the least bit surprised or frightened at the Ruin Machines suddenly coming to life.
  • The Desert of Hadramaveth has a very rare instance of "human" and "non-human" enemies interacting (negatively) with each other, namely an Eremite soldier being harassed by a group of Hilichurls. Yet if you get too close for them to notice you, they will all set aside their differences and join forces to attack you.
• Gathering Steam: A handful of weapons have passives that grant stacking benefits, such as the Blackcliff Longsword temporarily increasing ATK for every defeated enemy, or the Royal Longsword increasing CRIT Rate every time an opponent takes damage.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble:
  • This can be played straight for the starter team (a.k.a Traveler, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa) if the male Traveler is chosen, otherwise averted if the female Traveler is chosen.
  • In general, players can invoke this if they choose to have a team of 2 females and 2 males.
  • With the release of Baizhu and Kaveh in version 3.6 and the introduction of Kirara as a playable character in version 3.7, Dendro becomes the first element in Genshin that has an equal amount of 4 females (Collei, Nahida, Yaoyao, Kirara) and 4 males (Tighnari, Alhaitham, Baizhu, Kaveh). As of version 4.0, Anemo and Geo also become this with the addition of one more female character to each of these elements. Otherwise averted quite hard with Electro, Pyro, Hydro, and Cryo having a lot more females.
• Geo Effects: You can use certain environmental features to your advantage. For example, lightning magic deals bonus damage to enemies wading in water, and you can ignite grass to create burning areas that can hurt enemies. You can also use magic to affect the environment for platforming purposes, such as using ice magic to create passable bridges on water.
• Genre Mashup: The main game is an Open-World Fantasy RPG similar in style to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with a gacha and its elements thrown in; however the various time-limited events shake the gameplay up significantly, including but not limited to: a Tower Defence minigame, a Fall Guys-esque collection of multiplayer-based minigames, a Rhythm Game, a Prop Hunt-esque hide-and-seek minigame, and more.
• Genre Shift: The story begins as a heroic fantasy about the Traveler searching for their lost sibling. But as the story progresses, and the Traveler learns more about the world of Teyvat, it slowly shifts into a Cosmic Horror Story, with the implication that the skies above Teyvet are an illusion, to the Abyss that's located underneath the surface, along with how knowledge from the Abyss is described as a "truth" that not even the gods can comprehend.
• The Ghost: Various NPCs and playable characters' dialogues will occasionally mention other characters who have not appeared in the game at all, such as Diona or Varka. They may become added as playable characters later such as Diona in 1.1, or Yao Yao in 3.4.
• Ghostly Goals:
  • One quest in Mingyun Village involves you trying to find a ghost's treasure. Along the way, you find the ghosts of his dead sons, all of whom were looking for the treasure themselves.
  • An unmarked set of quests on Tsurumi Island is centered around taking care of any lingering regrets of its inhabitants so that they can finally get on the Boatman's boat and move on.
• Ghost Story: An NPC in Qingce Village named Uncle Ghast tells ghost stories to children in the village, including one about a little ghost girl named Dusky Ming, who later appears in one of the archon quests.
• Ghost Town:
  • Mingyun Village in Liyue, a mining town that its workers abandoned after the mine ran dry.
  • A literal example with the destroyed village in Wuwang Hill (also in Liyue). It used to be the home of five NPCs in Hu Tao's Story Quest (Meng, Little Wu, Mumu, Congzi and Big G), but it was devastated in an unknown disaster which also took Big G's life, and turned the surrounding area haunted with spirits and Liyue's version of the Hitodama Light.
  • Inazuma features a Ghost island in the form of Tsurumi Island, found south of Watatsumi Island. Even after completing the island's main questline, Tsurumi is teaming with Hitodama Lights and glowing blue human silhouettes, some of which are NPCs. It's explained in universe as being caused by severe disruption of leylines on the island caused by Kanna Kapatcir's rampage.
• Giant Mook: Larger and stronger variants of ordinary mooks exist within the same family type, such as Mitachurls compared to the standard Hilichurls, or Giant Slimes compared to Lesser Slimes, or Ruin Grader to Ruin Guards.
• Global Currency: The world's currency is "Mora", and universally used in all regions thanks to its magical transmutation properties.
• Godzilla Threshold: Osial being released from the Guyun Stone Forest immediately prompts the Adepti and the Qixing to put aside their differences and work together to contain the threat. Case in point, Cloud Retainer, ordinarily dismissive of human ingenuity, is the one to suggest that the Adepti man the reverse-engineered Guizhong Ballistae on the Jade Chamber to supply the desperately needed firepower. And when Osial finally gets the upper hand, Ningguang chooses to sacrifice her beloved Jade Chamber to put the old god back in the water.
• Good Shapeshifting, Evil Shapeshifting: Played with. Some of the Traveler's foes are able to use power from the Abyss to take on monstrous forms, such as Jakob, who can become an alien-looking Iniquitous Baptist and is a very sinister person. Another example is Childe, who can turn into a monster via Foul Legacy Transformation, but still retains many human traits, signifying that he is neither wholly good nor bad.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: The major three factions in the story's conflict ultimately fall under this.
  • The Traveler, and in turn any companions they make on their journey^note  i.e. most of the characters you're rolling, are the Good. The Travler often finds himself in the crosshairs of the other two factions in their journey to find their sibling, and put a stop to their schemes along the way. For the most part, the people they meet are either nice or well-meaning individuals, oppose the other two factions in some capacity, or both.
  • The Fatui are the bad. They're a Nebulous Evil Organisation who engage in shady actions such as political infiltration, assassination, theft, terrorism and typically being composed of Jerkasses. However, you are able to meet non-hostile Fatui who just work for them for a living and aren't as privy to the organisations more dubious actions, and it's Implied that the Tsaritsa, and by extension the Fatui Harbingers, are performing these actions and targeting the Gnosises of other Archons as part of an attempt to rebel against the Celestia, who the Unknown God from the Prologue is a part of and are progressively revealed to be Jerkass Gods, considering what they did to Khaenri'ah for supposedly defying their Heavenly Principles.
  • The Abyss Order are the evil. Their motives, Revenge against the Celestia for destroying Khaenri'ah, are also fairly understandable and not completely unlike that of the Fatui. The problem is that unlike the Tsaritsa, who's Implied to be actively making plans to rebel against them directly, the Abyss Order seek vengeance by outright destroying Teyvat to spite them, ultimately making them more of a threat to the populace at large compared to the Fatui.
• Gratuitous Greek:
  • The English localization names the seven elements after their respective Greek words - Anemo ("wind"), Geo ("earth"), Electro ("amber", a resin that produces electricity), Dendro ("tree"), Hydro ("water"), Pyro ("fire"), and Cryo ("ice"). In the Chinese and Japanese languages, they simply use their language for the elements' names.
  • Teyvat calls its Gods Archons (from the Greek word used to name someone who rules). Each Archon holds an item called a Gnosis (the Greek word for "wisdom") which allows them to directly tap energy from Celestia. Gnosticism also uses both terms.
• Gratuitous Spanish: There's a bard NPC named "Six-Fingered José", whose dialogue lines have a sprinkling of Spanish. He calls your character "amiga/amigo" (depending on your Traveler's gender), and one of your dialogue options allow you to reply to him with "por favor".
• Great Offscreen War: Multiple. To name a handful:
  • The dragons Dvalin and Durin fought when the latter threatened Mondstadt and poisoned the land. The Anemo Archon sided with the former after hearing the people's cry for help, blessing Dvalin until he managed to pierce the throat of the shadow dragon. Venti briefly recounts their rivalry in the plaza and the lore of items like the Skyward Blade gives greater details.
  • The Archon War was a war fought between countless gods, whose victors went on to become the original seven Archons. The battles fought in this war were so tremendous that they created entire landscape features, such as when Rex Lapis buried one of his foes under spears of stone that became the Guyun Stone Forest. And Osial turns out to still be alive under there.
• Grimy Water:
  • Some parts of Inazuma have bodies of electrified water that damages characters who swim in it, easily told apart from regular water by its purple hue.
  • There's also pools of boiling water in Fontaine, which too will hurt you if you swim in it, let alone stand feet deep in shallow amounts. Even climbing out will still cause you to take a bit more damage from the residual water still lingering on you.
  • And then there is the Primordial Seawater, dreaded among Fontanians as it will dissolve them upon contact, or in lesser cases, cause a severe illness as Freminet can attest to.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Subverted within Chapter Three Act Two. The main plot of that Archon quest revolves around the characters going through the Sabzeruz Festival over and over again. While the Traveller initially deduces that this trope is fully in-play, Nahida tells them that that's incorrect. In actuality, it ends up being a gigantic collective dream shared between all of Sumeru's residents.
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • Some domains and story fights may add a Trial character to your party, giving you a chance to try out their abilities for the duration of the domain. These Trial characters also come with pre-determined artifacts, which you can inspect through the character menu.
  • Some events, like Misty Dungeons and Hyakunin Ikki, give you a set of trial characters you can try out or use to fill your parties.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Hidden Achievements may require doing specific actions that are not too obvious, such as sitting on the God Statue's hands in Mondstadt or allowing a boar to kill you (not likely to happen accidentally, since boars only hit you once for barely any damage before fleeing).
  • Not all quests show their objective waypoints on the map, and it is easy to become lost on those that require investigating specific items in a large area.
  • Some chest puzzles require unintuitive solutions that are not obvious at first glance and which the game gives little or no hints for. Treasure Compasses do not work on these, since the chest only appears when the puzzle is solved. Easier examples include "dig" chests where enemies' idle poses hint where the chest is. Harder examples include breaking all pots in an area (Sumeru) or even watching two Sternshield Crabs race against each other (Fontaine).
  • Several players were stumped by chunks of Ancient Rime in Dragonspine that were nowhere near a Scarlet Quartz stone required to break the ice, since the game doesn't clarify that the Scarlet Quartz effect carries through for archers' shots as well as for melee attacks.
  • While the game is helpful enough to list any sidequests you haven't completed yet in the reputation menu, it doesn't explain to you where or how to start those quests in the first place. While it's generally a safe bet to look around each of the towns throughout Teyvat, some quests require you to examine specific objects in its massive open world. Two of the worst offenders are "Home Lies Over the Ocean", an Inazuman quest that begins in Liyue, and "Happy Birthday", a Fontainian quest that requires hours of sidequests (including completing a hidden exploration objective) to access, as it is the final part of Fontaine's chain of World Quests relating to the Narzissenkreuz Ordo.
  • In the Inazuma Archon Quest, there is a segment that requires the player to stay within a square and hit targets with a bow while avoiding hitting other targets. However, the island is initially afflicted by a permanent thunderstorm. Lightning can strike the "wrong" targets and occassional aimed bolts of lightning can knock the player out of the square, either causing immediate failure of the segment. The correct action is to temporarily abandon the Archon Quest and talk to the NPC north of the location to commence the World Quest chain "Orobashi's Legacy". Completing the first part of said quest chain clears the thunderstorm over the archery area, making it far easier for the player to complete that segment.
  • Watatsumi Island's infamous "8 cubes" puzzle. The only hint is a note left by a researcher. The first step is to realise that the "floating stone slates" refers to the stone "hats" on some of the cubes. The second step is to realise that it's a Magic Square Puzzle. And after all that, players still have to figure out the solution and translate that to the required directions of the cubes. And then they have to do it twice more.
  • In Version 2.8, Mona's island and domain (Temple of the Star Latitudes) in the Golden Apple Archipelago rerun was full of some of the hardest puzzles in the game. The main gimmick was a constellation-matching puzzle, but getting the reference constellation to show up would often be a puzzle in itself. The absolute pinnacle of this trope was the sequence of secret rooms and puzzles in the domain, including an infamous elemental monument puzzle where the solution involved looking at the reflections of the elemental monuments to reveal their true elemental alignment.
  • To interrupt Shouki no Kami's instant kill attack, the player is instructed to destroy four Nirvana Engines generated by Shouki no Kami. What isn't mentioned is that the Nirvana Engines can only be damaged by elemental damage that is not Hydro or Electro, and three of the Nirvana Engines are flying entities that cannot be hit by most melee hitboxes. Proper party setup is thus critical.
  • Patch 3.4 introduces Plinths of the Secret Rites with a previously unseen U-shaped symbol, for which even the highest level of Scarlet Sand Slate clearance from the Golden Slumber quest line is insufficient. Obtaining that clearance requires interacting with an otherwise non-descript note in the overworld.
  • In the Thinker's Theater region of the Veluriyam Mirage (Version 3.8's limited-time area), there was a Hydro Eidolon puzzle chest where the only hint was for the player to "observe" four Hydro Eidolons as they moved in a circle and transformed into boxes. The difficulty was to realise that (i) notwithstanding that they can't speak, the Hydro Eidolons were playing the "telephone game"; and (ii) the third Hydro Eidolon transformed into the wrong kind of box. The player would then have to interact with the third Hydro Eidolon (telling them to change its disguise) and restart the "telephone game" by observing the first Hydro Eidolon again.
  • One underwater chest in Fontaine resides deep within a pit of thick invisible walls, open only at the top. As a result, access via swimming from the sides, bottom or the surface is blocked, and you can't physically climb up on top of the invisible wall from the water surface. The game does not allow players to see deep into the underwater areas from the air, so precisely gliding and dropping into the pit is somewhat impractical. Ice bridging or using the Waverider's "gliding exit", while solutions, take quite a while. The intended solution relies on an undisclosed distinction - while all characters can swim indefinitely in the waters of Fontaine, only Fontainians and the Traveler perform a "dolphin leap" when surfacing while swimming fast. Simply switch to one such character, swim upwards alongside the invisible walls at full speed, and the character will surface and leap into the pit, allowing the chest to be claimed. A similar solution is also intended for some Hydroculi positioned just above the water surface in open water.
  • After completing each story phase of a version's flagship event, some of the characters involved may be found elsewhere in the overworld with extra dialogue. However, apart from some oblique hints in the cutscenes, no further information is given regarding where (or even whether) an involved character has such a cameo, and most of these cameos disappear after a single daily reset.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: A downplayed example when it comes to Catalyst users. In general, Catalyst users are Long Range Fighters, which all the female ones are. However, when it comes to male Catalyst users, some of them can be Close Range Combatants instead, such as Heizou, Baizhu, and Wriothesley; the Wanderer and Neuvillette are the only male Catalyst units who fits the standard long range fighting style of their weapon type.