Genshin Impact / Tropes O to S

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

---

O

• Obvious Rule Patch: Unlike other items with a cooldown timer between uses, all stamina restoration and revival food items will have their countdown halted if gameplay is paused (ie. opening you inventory or other menus). This is done so that you cannot cheese stamina-intensive tasks such as gliding/swimming/climbing very long distances without penalty, or attempt to revive multiple party members when near defeat.
• Odd Couple: The two playable characters who work at Wangsheng Funeral Parlor both use polearms and gain extra damage from increasing their Max HP, but in every other respect are polar opposites. Zhongli is (very much) older, male, always serious and logical, and has defensive combat skills. Hu Tao is young, female, playful and prank-prone, and fights offensively to the point of harming herself. Unsurprisingly, comments in their character profiles indicate they don't get along very well, although they work together very nicely in actual gameplay.
• Ominous Floating Castle:
  • Celestia, the "abode of the gods", which can be seen in the sky from pretty much anywhere on Teyvat. It is said to be a place of the gods and heroes of noteworthy legend, where they will "become one in the world" at the end of their life story after they're invited into it.
  • Above Liyue Harbor, there's one called the "Jade Chamber", owned by one of the playable characters, Ningguang. Liyue people often talk about it, spreading rumors such as how the palace's "magic" allows Ningguang to acquire all the information she needs, and how her "paper snow" falling from there may somehow help merchants and other business people get an edge in their business. You eventually get to visit it during Archon Quest Chapter 1 Act 3. In the climax battle against the sea god Osial, it's revealed that she fits her palace with replicas of Guizhong Ballista (a weapon made by the adepti) that the adepti can use to fight back Osial. In the end, after Osial wrecks the ballistae, Ningguang decides to slam down her entire chamber with the Traveler's help to bring Osial down again.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: The Chasm is littered with a dark mud like substance that seeps out of the ground, that is heavily implied to originate from the Abyss. Player characters are damaged by it, while enemies get stronger while standing in it.
• One-Time Dungeon: Usually for the story-related quests, there are several Domains or dungeons that can only be cleared once.
• Only One Name:
  • Downplayed; the vast majority of the playable cast and even non-playable characters are only known by one name, but there are also a few that have known last names, implying that every character has a last name, but they aren't brought up.
  • Averted by most Inazuma characters, as most are given Full-Name Basis. The only Inazuma characters who play the trope straight are Gorou, Sayu, Thoma, and Kirara, due to their surname being unknown. Interestingly, of the Inazumans with a known last name, Yoimiya is the only one who is only referred to as "Yoimiya" by the game's interface rather than "Naganohara Yoimiya".
• Only Six Faces:
  • Playable characters are all based on one of five body types: tall/medium/short female, and tall/medium male (there are no short male characters yet. Characters in the same group have similar 3D models and movement animations— all short female characters for example all do Airplane Arms while running and teeter when stopping—but (usually) have unique attack animations, and their exact body proportions vary. In the beta versions of the game, Klee had a unique walking animation in which she would confidently stride forward, but was scrapped and replaced with the standard walk animation of her body type in the released game, suggesting that this was mostly done to standardize animations across the characters.
  • Despite using the standard four body types as a base, there is a lot more variation in the body types of some non-playable humanoid characters, such as the Eremites, which came with the introduction of Sumeru. For example, the Eremite Floral-Ring Dancer uses a tall female model but is notably curvier and bustier than most female characters in the game. She also has a unique walk cycle. The male Eremites are also more muscular than playable characters that use the tall male model, surpassing even Alhaitham, the only visibly muscled playable character.
• Only the Leads Get a Downer Ending: In-universe during Furina's story quest. After much debate on how to end "The Little Oceanid", the cast pick this route. Both the Oceanid and her human lover tragically lose each other (and their dreams) forever, but in exchange the water of their society is replenished creating joy for the rest of their town. This is poignant for Furina since she ended the archon quest miserable, after sacrificing so much to save her country.
• Oppressive Immigration Enforcement: One of the Raiden Shogun's policies is the Sakokku Decree, which prohibits any travel into or out of Inazuma. This has notably caused a lot of problems in that it has stranded some of the nation's natives outside of the border and non-natives inside for over a year. It has also indirectly destroyed Inazuma's economy via hyperinflation due to there being almost no money from importing and exporting goods and services. Said decree was born from Ei's misguided concept of eternity, thinking that everything had to be forever unchanging regardless of what kinds of long-term damages it would cause. She eventually abolishes it after realizing just how much harm it and her other policies have caused for Inazuma and its populace, with Ei wanting to make up for all the needless suffering she inflicted.
• Optional Boss: There are boss fights in the open-world map that do not appear in the main story and found in optional locations. Especially the Great Snowboar King in Dragonspine, whose location does not appear on the map.
• Optional Stealth: While the objective for the Daily Commission "A Gentlemen Strikes in Broad Daylight" is to steal supplies without being seen, it can also be completed by instead beating all the enemies up and taking the supplies afterwards. The enemies don't drop anything from being defeated, though, disincentivizing you from doing so.
• Orwellian Retcon:
  • There are several item names and Flavor Text that were changed in later updates, such as the "Eclipse Dynasty" mentioned in the backstories (as seen on the "Breeze Amidst the Forest" book) being renamed "Blacksun Dynasty" from Version 1.1 onwards, the "Seelie Gardens" being renamed to "Seelie Courts", or "Prototype Aminus" changed to "Prototype Archaic" on Version 1.2, etc.
  • Some of the achievement names used to be references to other media (such as Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Fallout 3 and Earth, Wind & Fire), but were renamed on Version 1.1.
  • Some dialogue lines were also rewritten in subsequent updates. For example, the Oceanid's line when the boss battle starts went from "So, murderers from our homeland have come on a futile journey to harass the people of the Qingce waters..." (Version 1.0 to 1.2) to "An assassin from our homeland? Or a foolish trespasser upon these waters?" (Version 1.3) to "An assassin from our homeland? Or a fool who trespasses upon the waters of Qingce?" (Version 1.4).
• Our Demons Are Different: In Teyvat, 'demons' refer to the lingering resentment and hatred of dead gods. They don't seem to take physical form, instead possessing living creatures and causing abnormal mutations in the flora and fauna. In the backstory of the game, the Five Yakshas were tasked by the Geo Archon to fight against demons.
• Our Genies Are Different: According to the Flavour Text of the Ay-Khanoum's Myraid artifact, the Jinn are spirits born from water lilies. Interestingly, two types of Jinn have been shown as of Version 3.4 that could not have looked more different. Dori's jinn are purple perpetually smiling blobs with floating hands and no visible arms, while the historical Jinni queen of Gurabad, Liloupar, once had human form and had a half-Jinni child with a human husband, though in present day she appears as a two glowing yellow orbs in a bottle. Her sister Ferigees also looks like two glowing orbs but in a machine instead, having given up her original body.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: There's a small wormhole floating in the sky at the edge of Cape Oath in Mondstadt. It provides a fast travel method for reaching the Musk Reef and gaining access to the Spiral Abyss. Another one appears above Jinren Island in Inazuma which leads to an underwater location hosting the Perpetual Mechanical Array.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: At the end of Baizhu's Story Quest, Baizhu uses an Elixir of Life to extend the life of a patient. Throughout the story, Hu Tao has been watching him to make sure he doesn't do anything like that, as she believes that immortality violates the laws of nature. She's right, as immortality is always presented as a curse in this game, and the Elixir of Immortality was the result of Baizhu's research into god's remains. Unfortunately, as the method is similar, Hu Tao says that she doesn't want another Qiqi. The latter overhears this and takes this as Hu Tao wanting her dead. In fact, Hu Tao has been trying to get it into Qiqi's head that she genuinely cares for her and doesn't want to bury her for some time now.
• Out of Focus:
  • The game has a lot of playable characters, but not everyone gets to have a spotlight in the main story. Some are only relegated as minor NPCs depending on the chapter, some don't even show up in the main story just yet, and some had to wait for future updates before they receive their own character questlines. Keqing is a prime example as she's been around since the beginning of the game and yet, while she does have a minor story presence in Chapter 1, it wouldn't be until the Moonchase Festival event, a solid year after the game's release, that she would finally have A Day in the Limelight. However, as of version 3.6, she (as well as Qiqi, who similarly does not have much presence outside of a brief sequence Chapter 1 and time-limited events) has yet to have her own Story Quest unlike most other 5★s^note Shenhe and the Wanderer technically don't have their own Story Quest, but the Interlude Archon Quests that they star in counts as a stand-in.
  • A bit of an odd example. Despite great attention being drawn to the 7 Elements, Dendro was woefully underrepresented by the game's mechanics between versions 1.0 to 2.8, only interacting with one other Element (Pyro), and Baizhu (who only became playable in version 3.6) was the only character in the game to have a Dendro vision. It wasn't until 3.0 with the release of the Dendro nation, Sumeru, that two more Elemental Reactions involving the Dendro element (Catalyze and Bloom) and playable Dendro characters were added to the game.
  • As far as the different nations go, Natlan is this compared to the others. As of Version 3.5, it's only been mentioned in-game a few times and is the only nation without any NPC characters (discounting the preview of Iansan from the Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview video).
  • As of Version 3.6, Sumeru's entire cast outside generic NPCs and characters introduced after the fact is playable. Every element is represented by at least one character, except for Geo. Notably, in spite of the fact that the majority of Sumeru by area is desert, the element isn't required for exploration, either. The end result is that as of version 3.6, Geo went down with having the lowest number of playable characters, even though Dendro characters were absent from the game for such a long time.
• Outcast Refuge: Aaru Village in Sumeru's desert region is a refuge for the Village Keepers, who are former scholars and personnel of the Akademiya that were driven mad by the Divine Knowledge Capsule and exiled to the desert by the Sages. Candace goes out of her way to guard the village and make sure it remains a safe haven to all, including the Village Keepers, to the point that the Eremite Radicals were forced to lure the Village Keepers out of Aaru Village with Spirit Borneol for their plan to use them as Human Sacrifices for King Deshret's resurrection.
• Overhead Interaction Indicator: NPCs that give quests will have an exclamation point over their heads.
• Overly Generous Time Limit: After clearing a dungeon, the party is given 1000 seconds before they are automatically booted out of it. However, it only takes a few minutes or seconds to collect the loot and exit the dungeon manually.
• Overly Long Name:
  • The sword named "Harbinger of Dawn" is also identified with a longer name: "The Triumphant Harbinger of Dawn that Points Towards Victory".
  • The 4★ Claymore you can get in Version 4.3's flagship event is called the "Ultimate Overlord's Mega Magic Sword".
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Food items, like most things in the game, are separated by rarity, with higher rarity foods providing superior healing or buffs, while lower rarity foods are easier to cook and/or their ingredients are easier to acquire, giving the different food rarities advantages over the other. However, the food category that is hit the hardest by this trope are "Revival" foods. While high rarity revival food give the highest amount of HP restoration to the defeated character (1,500 HP if cooked as a "Delicious"-type food), the HP is low enough that the revived character is still within the threshold of dying in a few hits. If one needs revival items for their team, the Steak and Teyvat Fried Egg (both of which are 1★ foods) overshadows all other revival foods in the game merely due to the simplicity in acquiring their ingredients^note Steaks and Teyvat Fried Eggs only need 2 raw meats and 1 bird egg, respectively compared to higher rarity revival foods.

P

• Parasol of Pain
  • You can get a 4★ "sword" called Toukabou Shigure during the Akitsu Kimodameshi, which is basically a red umbrella that is a Karakasa. And it deals just as much damage as many other swords in the game.
  • Navia carries her "gunbrella," a parasol that conceals a firearm.
• Passing the Torch: Invoked in the 2.1 Moonchase, where multiple generations of Liyue, from Madame Ping, to Ganyu, to Ningguang, to Keqing, talk in turn about carrying on the traditions and dreams of their predecessors, including Marchosius, the now gone God of the Stove.
  Narration: The Stove God had quietly disappeared, but vendors rose early to hock their wares. People went out to buy goods, lit their stoves, and cook food. Just as they had done every day for as long as they could remember. In Liyue, things have always been this way. Nature provides, the mountains rejoice, we are blessed by heaven's good grace ... years have gone by, the world has transformed, but our way of life survives ... Fame and fortune is only a season. It is the moment we should embrace ... Past meets present, heritage becomes legacy. Long into the future may we thrive.
• Pass Through the Rings: There are a few challenges and story quests where the player must navigate through a series of rings while gliding. One event in Version 1.1 is nothing but a series of similar gliding challenges, with extra gimmicks.
• Patchwork Map: Right between the temperate nations of Mondstadt and Liyue sits Dragonspine, a massive snowy mountain that slowly freezes anyone who gets to close. It use to be more mild in the past until the Skyfrost Nail was cast down by Celestia and turned the mountain into the frozen wasteland it is today.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • Blossoms of Revelation drop Character EXP Materials upon completion.
  • Multiple events may either have character EXP materials, weapon refining/ascension materials, and talent books as rewards, or purchasable in the event shop.
  • The nameless island north-east of Mondstadt is a great place to farm crabs, which are otherwise a chore to collect. You can get ~18 crabs per visit to this island instead of having to scour the shorelines or buying from the merchants at very limited quantities, making recipes with crabs that much easier to create.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Plenty of missable stuff in the game; chests in story Domains, weapons and Serenitea Pot furniture given away in Flagship events, Guest Fighters such as Aloy, varying Namecard styles and Serenitea Pot furniture blueprints exclusive to those who purchased Gnostic Chorus for that season's Battle Pass, you name it. Once you are past the opportunity to obtain them, you're out of luck of ever getting them again.
  • In theory, 3-star weapons that are only obtainable in the overworld and not from Wishes or shops (such as the Fillet Blade) can qualify as this, since they are only available in limited quantities from chests, which do not respawn. If you collected and disposed every single possible copy of these particular weapons, they're permanently unobtainable. A specific 3-star weapon, the Dark Iron Sword, is infamous for how it is only obtainable once^note Because of this, the weapon cannot be refined despite having the option to be refined with duplicate weapons via talking to a specific NPC in Liyue and cannot be found in the overworld or obtained from Wishes. If the weapon is disposed of (ie. via using it to level up other weapons), you have no way of getting the sword ever again.
  • As of the time of writing, all of the game's major flagship events do not rerun once they've ended, even if the story was focused on uncovering important information about a specific character or Teyvat lore. The best one can hope for is that someone uploaded the event onto YouTube for those that missed it the first time around.
• Personality Power: In a way. While the criteria for why some characters receive a certain Elemental Vision is vague, there are some things that tie them together, such as Anemo Vision users experiencing loss being a recurring theme among them.
  • Some characters’ Vision powers also tend to manifest in different ways, such as Fischl’s powerful imagination as a Chuunibyou creating Oz, her animal sidekick that takes inspiration from the novels she read.
• Phonýmon: The "Fabulous Fungus Frenzy" focuses on a competition in which people capture and battle Fungi. The event is clearly inspired by the Pokémon series, complete with the idea of using a special orb to capture and tame them, learning to bond with the creatures as well as each character having a Signature Mon (The Traveler's being a Water Fungus named "Bongo-Head"). Yae Miko seems to think that it would make for an excellent light novel, which can be seen as a Lampshade Hanging.
• Pilgrimage: After the "cataclysm" 500 years ago, the Oceanids of Fontaine decide to pilgrimage to Sumeru's Girdle of the Sands region to find out what happened to their master, Egeria the 1st Hydro Archon. Apparently, after her death in battle against Abyssal creatures, she turned into a pool of water named "Amrita", and a sacred lotus "Gaokerena" grows on it and is said to house her dormant consciousness. After finding this out, the Oceanids decided to not return to Fontaine and wander the world.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Weasels carry Mora bags and digging them out will cause them to drop Mora as they run away, albeit in small amounts. However, if you catch up to them and kill them, they'll drop the entire bag with hundreds of Mora.
  • Though not a specific enemy, gold "ley lines" provide a large quantity of Mora after you beat a small group of enemies and spend Resin.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: All of the characters that use the Short Female model, some of which are children. Justified, as they’re all Vision holders.
• Play Every Day: As one would expect from a mobile game developer, there are daily login bonuses (sort of, anyway, with a bi-weekly set of 7 daily rewards, plus a small amount of battle-pass EXP for logging in), random daily guild commissions with rewards both for each quest and for completing all 4, and a slowly-regenerating supply of "resin" needed to collect certain mission rewards (capped at 160, so ideally you should use it all up every day and let it replenish when you're not playing).
• Playing Nice for Now: In Dehya's character demo, when Candace shows up in the middle of her fight with the Green-Eyed Wolf, they stop fighting, and Dehya claims that they were just sparring. Candace seems skeptical.
• Playlist Soundtrack: For most of the game, the soundtrack cycles through various short and ambient symphonic tracks depending on the area you're currently in, with each area having their own set playlists to match the atmosphere. Battle themes are not exempt from this either, but unlike area themes, the game will only switch between them if you're out of the action for more than 30 seconds. The only exception to this is inside Domains and during boss fights, where it'll just keep playing the same track on repeat to match the tension going on.
• Plot Detour: In the Traveler's journey to find their missing twin, they get pulled numerous times into the incidents and intricacies of the regions they visit. Lampshaded by Venti and later Dainsleif, who tell them that the journey is just as important as the destination.
• Plot Device: In the Prologue chapters, Venti seeks the Holy Lyre der Himmel in order to call the dragon Stormterror/Dvalin and understand what's troubling him. But that's not enough as the protagonists also had to find the dragon's crystallized tears in order to purify the lyre.
• Poison Mushroom: Plenty in Sumeru. Gameplay-wise, certain mushrooms in Sumeru emit pulses when the player is nearby, dealing Dendro damage to the player and nearby enemies alike. Said mushrooms can be hit with Pyro to disable them, or hit with Electro to cause them to emit a field of ticking Dendro damage.
• Power Crutch: If Vision bearers who had their Visions taken away during the Vision Hunt Decree are any indication, Vision bearers are incapable of using their Elemental powers if they are without their Visions, even if they don’t suffer the negative consequences associated with losing their Vision, such as depression and memory loss.
• Power at a Price:
  • Delusions are counterfeit Visions made by the Fatui. These could extremely amplify the bearer's power, but there's also a risk of backfiring. Diluc's father Crepus had one, which also led to his death a few moments after he used it.
  • Technically, having a Vision at all. Not only can a Vision holder not use their Elemental powers if they don’t have their Vision with them, but there are severe consequences that come with losing the Vision, such as depression and memory loss.
• Power Equals Rarity:
  • Higher-rarity weapons and artifacts have higher stat scaling than those of the lesser rarity.
  • 5★ characters generally have slightly higher base stats than 4★ characters, but this can be subverted or zig-zagged depending on bigger factors such as the artifacts or weapons appropriate to the character's playstyle. And because of the gacha mechanics and the significance of the Constellation system, the Constellations of 5★ characters are harder to upgrade, so a 4★ character with fully-upgraded Constellations can pretty much catch-up.
• The Power of Friendship: The passive from a 4★ claymore, Ultimate Overlord's Mega Magic Sword, increases the wielder's ATK stat even further depending on the number of Melusines you helped out in Merusea Village.
• Practical Currency: One of the loading screen texts mentions Mora as the catalyst for doing many things. This basically explains how enhancing your weapons and artifacts cost Mora, for one.
• Premium Currency: The game has multiple tiers of premium currencies:
  • The most common are the Primogems, which are your main currency for investing in the game's gacha mechanics. While they can be earned in-game by completing quests and daily commissions, solving puzzles, opening treasure chests, obtaining achievements, participating in limited-time events, etc., you can also buy them with real money with various Microtransactions, and like with many gacha games, you get more that way.
  • Next are the Genesis Crystals, which are purely premium and can only be bought with real money. They can be converted into Primogems via Crystal exchange or they can be used to buy alternate character costumes from Version 1.6 onward.
  • Finally, there are the Fates, which are the primary currency for Wish banners. These can be bought with Primogems or earned through other means like character ascension rewards, and there are two types of Fates: the Acquaint Fates (which go to the permanent standard banner), and the Intertwined Fates (which go to the limited event character and weapon banners).
• Prayer Pose: Viewing a character's Artifacts screen makes them close their eyes and pose in this manner.
• Pressure Plate: Some puzzles are solved by standing on magical pressure plates. But unlike most examples of the trope, they don't activate instantly — a character (or occasionally, summoned object) needs to remain on top of the plates for a few seconds.
• Prochronic Product: The world of Teyvat is mainly set in the equivalent of the Medieval era, but there are a few cases of advanced technology being present well ahead of their time. One such technology is the phonograph, which was invented by a well-known adventurer and The Archmage Alice. In the real world, phonographs were not invented until 1877 by Thomas Edison, making its appearance in a Medieval society all the more noticeable. Possibly Justified as Alice has shown signs of being a dimensional traveler and the fifth nation, Fontaine, has a definite steampunk theme with small blimps.
• Professional Voice Dissonance: Subverted with Katherine. She is almost never seen outside of the Adventurer's Guild reception desk where she speaks in a rather robotic tone. Come Sumeru, the Traveler and Paimon find her away from the reception desk for the first time and find her acting all cheerful with her voice having more personality to it. Then it turns out that she was just possessed by Nahida the whole time and that all of the Katherines are Fatui-made androids.
• Product Placement: There was a cross-promotion with Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC restaurants in China had specially-branded products for the game, and the "Wings of Feasting" Wind Glider, and three special recipes for Golden Chucken Burgers, Fragrant Mashed Potatoes, and Golden Fried Chicken were added in-game. The items were brought to the global versions in the "Outland Gastronomy" login bonus sans KFC promotion. Later on, there was another with Pizza Hut, where the same thing happened outside the lack of a Wind Glider.
• Prolonged Prologue: The game's "Prologue" spans three quest chains with the last one requiring you to be at least Adventure Rank 18 to access. It can take you anywhere from 15-30 hours to get to Chapter 1.
• Promoted to Playable: Many of the post-launch playable characters started off as NPCs before they got added into the Wish gacha as the game receives updates.
• Prophecy Twist: Played with. Chapter 4 of the Archon Quest revolves around a prophecy that will come true no matter what. However, the twist comes from Focalor's plans, where she gets a copy of herself to enact the prophecy while she gets enough power to remove her archon seat so that the hydro sovereign can save the people of Fontaine.
• Protection Mission:
  • Some Daily Commission Quests or Spiral Abyss Floors require you to defend a Ley Line Monolith from small waves of enemies.
  • In the battle against Osial, you are tasked to protect the Guizhong Ballistae from the Fatui.
• Proud Scholar Race: Sumeru is led by the Akademiya, Teyvat's largest scholarly organization. Sumeru prides itself on its knowledge, but unfortunately, the negative aspects of academia shine through there, with a "publish or perish" environment and a leadership which values reason over imagination, leading to Creative Sterility.
• Psychic Static: Non-individual, inanimate version. Irminsul records everything that happens in Teyvat, and tampering with it can result in Ret-Gone and Cosmic Retcon, where Teyvat inhbitants' memory and historical records get altered to fit the new timeline. Only beings alien to Teyvat are immune to this. Inversion of Genesis introduces another method; by encrypting history into a fairytale full of metaphors and symbolisms, history would be altered but the fairytale would remain as-is. With a bit of insight, the erased history can be recovered through such fairytales.
• Pun-Based Title: If they're not references to pop-culture, some of the achievements' names are made up of puns or wordplays. For example, being defeated by a wild boar earns you the "Boared to death" hidden achievement, while finishing Glory's quest five times earns you "For the Love of Godwin".
• Purple Is Powerful: Some depictions of the Primordial Sea water gives it a purpleish tint, accentuating it's supernatural properties. It's also known for being the origin of all life on Teyvat (which Egeria used to grant her Oceanid followers a human form), but is also able to take it away, being potent enough to kill Fontanians just by mere contact unless it is diluted, resulting in them dissolving into water and their consciousness merged with the Primordial Sea.

Q

• A Quest Giver Is You:
  • Depending on your Adventure Rank, Expeditions allow you to dispatch up to five characters to various locations, and they'll return after a period of time with some resources.
  • The "Vishaps and Where To Find Them" and "Spectral Secrets" events use an expanded version of the Expedition system. You can send teams of up to four characters out to four locations, and they'll return after some time with Primogems. Each location also has a bonus reward, and the odds of getting it depend on the levels and elements of the team you're dispatching.

R

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Chapter 3 breaks the trends set in the previous Archon quests, where the Traveler is fighting a threat to the nation alongside the nation's organized military, groups, and maybe the Archon too. In Sumeru the Traveler is fighting against the entire system and with the Dendro Archon put out of commission early on by the Fatui, all they have to work with to beat the Sages and restore Nahida to power are an Eremite mercenary, an Akademiya Scribe, the exiled General Mahamatra, and the resident dancer.
• Ragnarok Proof: The Scarlet King's civilization's technology is shown to still function after a thousand years, emphasizing how technologically advanced the society was. Along with the technology found in his ruins, Kaveh notably created his automated case from a machine core excavated from King Deshret's civilization, and it is shown to be able to run his case fine despite the major modifications he made to it.
• Random Drop:
  • It's all up to chance to determine what enemies drop when they are killed. Downplayed in that certain enemies always drop specific items; the random part comes in whether you get the lower or higher rarity kind. Higher leveled enemies have higher chances to drop rarer kinds of materials.
  • Clearing Spiral Abyss stages rewards Domain Reliquaries, consumable items that function like treasure chests but randomly give out Artifacts when opened.
  • Originally, clearing Domains that drop talent-enhancing materials or weapon ascension materials on Sunday lets you get all kinds of the respective materials at random (In other days, specific materials are available to drop on specific days). Averted in Version 1.2 onwards where the Sunday domains now have selections of predetermined rewards you can choose from before you start the domain, rather than being completely random.
  • The drops you can get from bosses, aside from the character ascension materials, are random artifacts. Domains that drop artifacts also drop them at random, with the higher level version increasing the chance of dropping the rarer kinds.
• Random Event: Occasionally while exploring, you’ll encounter random events that can be cleared for a reward. These are heralded by a popup literally announcing a "Random Event," along with its name. Usually, these events involve defeating a horde of monsters.
• Random Loot Exchanger: Once you reach Adventure Rank 45, you can trade in three 5-star artifacts for a random 5-star artifact of your choice of series from the Artifact Strongbox available at any crafting bench.
• Random Number God:
  • Aside from the gacha and item drop mechanics, there are several layers of RNG when it comes to Artifacts. Flowers of Life and Plumes of Death are guaranteed to have, respectively, Max HP and Attack as their main stat, but the other three types—Sands of Eon, Goblets of Eonothem, and Circlets of Logos—have randomized main stats^note All three can boost either Max HP/Attack/Defense percentages or Elemental Mastery, in addition to each set having other exclusive boosts: for Sands of Eon, Energy Recharge percentage; for Goblets of Eonothem, Physical/[Elemental] Damage Bonus percentages; and for Circlets of Logos, Critical Rate/Damage or Healing Bonus percentages. In addition, for Artifacts 2★ and above, the number of starting substats are random^note 0-1 for 2★, 1-2 for 3★, 2-3 for 4★, and 3-4 for 5★, and every four levels either a new sub-stat is added or an existing one is upgraded.
  • The four Commissions you get every day are randomly chosen from a pool of commissions. Some of them are required for specific unlockables, such as a few Achievements tied to Commissions, one recipe (Crab, Ham and Veggie Bake), and even one World Quest (unlocked after you finish a commission from Viktor in Mondstadt). Later the game implements a feature where you can limit the range of Commissions to any one region.
• Rank Inflation: Most limited-time combat events reflect the player's score with a bronze, silver or gold medal. A gold medal is no challenge for endgame players with a large roster - crank up the difficulty to maximum and assemble an appropriate team. A hidden platinum medal was then quietly introduced in Hyakunin Ikki 2.1. For the Hyakunin Ikki reruns, this was divided into a platinum medal with one, two or three stars. Subsequently, event briefings for combat events would start to subtly highlight the platinum medal's existence alongside the other three grades of medal. Some events, such as Version 4.1's "The Peaks and Troughs of Life", formalised the platinum medal in the reward list, with its own (token) rewards.
• Real-Place Background: miHoYo used several real-life locations when designing the in-game world, most notably the Liyue region. As they mentioned in this documentary video, Jueyun Karst is inspired by the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, while Mt. Tiangheng was inspired by Tianmen Mountain. These articles also mention more details, such as the in-game Luhua Pool being based off the Jade Pool located in Songpan county.
• Recurring Element:
  • So far, each region features a character using the Tall model and wielding the same element as the resident Archon who holds a major position of power and becomes a prominent ally in the main story for that region:
    • Mondstadt has Jean, Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius.
    • Liyue has Ningguang, Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing.
    • Inazuma has Miko, Guuji of the Grand Narukami Shrine.
    • Sumeru has Alhaitham, Scribe of the Akademiya.
    • Fontaine has Neuvillette, Iudex/Chief Justice of Fontaine.
  • Each region so far has a female sword wielder who is a Dance Battler, or at least carries a flair of graceful elegance in their swordsmanship. Mondstadt has Eula^note Albeit wielding a claymore (which is basically a large sword) instead of a standard sword, Liyue has Keqing, Inazuma has Ayaka, Sumeru has Nilou, and Fontaine has Furina; Keqing, Ayaka, and Nilou even have Ship Tease with the Traveler.
  • Each region also has at least one cat-themed character, either having it as an Animal Motif while not necessarily being a cat person physically, or actually having cat physiology. Mondstadt has Diona, Liyue has Keqing, Inazuma has Kirara, Sumeru has Dehya, and Fontaine has Lyney & Lynette.
  • Each Archon has a race/clan of supernatural creatures that serve them across the years. Mondstadt has the Four Winds, Liyue has the Adepti, Inazuma has the various Youkais, Sumeru has the Aranara, and Fontaine has the Oceanids and Melusines.
  • In each region, there is always at least one character who appears well-off and should be given their occupations, but has a trait that makes them terrible with Mora and causes them to suffer from poverty.
    • In Mondstadt, there's Mona, who never studied finance and is constantly blowing her paychecks on expensive equipment, keeping her just above the poverty line.
    • In Liyue, there’s Zhongli, who despite previously being the God of Wealth, has trouble understanding bantering since he has never had a need to save money or try to negotiate a better deal because he could always just make money whenever he needed it with his Gnosis. He also has a habit of forgetting to bring Mora.
    • In Sumeru, there's Kaveh, who has a princely appearance and a national reputation as a wealthy architect for his achievements, particularly for creating his magnum opus The Palace of Alcazarzaray, which, unbeknownst to most people, was also project that bankrupted him and left him heavily in debt. The work and funds required to build the palace also caused him to become homeless, forcing him to share a room with Alhaitham, a former junior of his from his days as an Akademiya student.
    • In Fontaine, there's Navia, who was born into a wealthy family because her father is the president of Spina di Rosula. That wealth and the positive reputation of that company, however, were lost over time due to her father's fall from grace after he was accused of murder, leaving her and her attendants broke, barely able to afford meals, and living in the sewers.
• Red Baron:
  • Playable characters, bosses and story-relevant major NPCs have at least one title that they are alternatively known for. Usually, it has something to do with their professions and abilities, but others simply have an adjective attached to their names. The Geo Archon turns this up to eleven since he has a lot of titles.
  • Certain weapons also have alternate titles according to their lore. The Prototype Rancour was dubbed "destroyer of rocks" after the first of its kind was accidentally dropped on the ground, yet it bore a twelve-inch hole into the mountain rock.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The skies burned red when Dvalin fought the shadow dragon Durin, as if it was the end of days for Mondstadt.
• Red Spider Lilies of Mourning: The Dendrobium flower is notable for growing in the Inazuman regions of Kannazuka and Yashiori Island, where most conflict in the nation occurs during the time of the Archon Quest. Its item description states that Dendrobium was assumed to be extinct until growing where blood is spilt and that poets explicitly call it "lycoris." One can also get an achievement for leaving a Dendrobium at each Weapon Tombstone on Yashiori Island.
• Reduced Mana Cost: In a variant, some of the available cooked food can reduce the stamina consumption of certain actions.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Sumeru, Fontaine and Snezhnaya all have technology that surpasses the Medieval Stasis of the rest of Teyvat, yet the only piece of technology shown to be imported out of those nations is the Kamera and Delusions. This is Justified, since Sumeru's technology isn't industrialized and mostly limited to ancient relics, Fontaine runs on stuff that doesn't exist outside of Fontaine, and Snezhnaya probably isn't on good enough relations with everyone else to import technology given all the schemes the Fatui get up to.
• Relationship Values: Each character has a Friendship level that can be increased by accumulating Companionship EXP, which you get by finishing world boss battles, quests and domains together with said character in a team. The friendship level will unlock their character story entries and voice-overs, and once their level hits 10 (the Level Cap), you also get unique profile card backgrounds.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
  • All beings connected to Celestia, whether the Seven or lesser gods, have an epithet taken from Ars Goetia in addition to a "common name" that may also be derived from real-world myths and legends. The one exception is Paimon, who currently has no known connection but takes her name from the book anyway. What this means could go either way.
  • The various elemental gems used to Ascend characters are named after various Hindu gods.
  • From Norse Mythology, Dainsleif takes his name from the cursed sword of King Högni, while the dragons Dvalin and Durin are named after dwarves.
  • There are also terms and concepts taken from Gnosticism, such as the seven Archons (the servants of the Demiurge) and Gnosis (knowledge of the divine).
  • Tartaglia's real name is Ajax, the famed Trojan hero in Classical Mythology and warrior of courage from Homer's The Iliad. His little brother is also named Teucer, the half-brother of Ajax in classical mythology.
  • Geri and Freki are sibling NPCs who are named after Odin's two wolves.
• Remember the New Guy?: The game in general tries to avert this by adding scattered fluff dialogue referencing upcoming playable characters before they're properly added in; but at times, completely new playable characters will be added to existing factions and organizations with no prior foreshadowing. The most noticeable is Eula, a Captain of the Knights of Favonius who, despite the Knights appearing prominently, never appeared or was even mentioned in the other Knights' profiles prior to her appearance in Version 1.5.
• Remilitarized Zone: Both Kannazuka Island and Yashiori Island in Inazuma have become a war zone between the Shogunate Army and the Sangonomiya Resistance, with ronin pirates, Hilichurls, Treasure Hoarders, the Fatui, and the Abyss Order being caught in the mix. The area is littered with scattered weapons, destroyed outposts and capsized ships as far as the eye can see, and it's mentioned that the citizens who once lived on these islands has since evacuated from the ensuing chaos.
• Reptilian Conspiracy: In the Three Realms Gateway Offering event, Enjou claims that the defeated Vishaps evolved to resemble humans and have taken over governmental positions. Kokomi later denies that. There is even a loading screen that refers to Reptilians by name.
• Ret-Gone: This is what happens to those (Rukkhadevata and Scaramouche) whose information is removed from the Irminsul. In-game, the effect is so thorough that even World Quests, lore books, NPC and character voice lines, and item descriptions were changed to omit them or attribute them to similar individuals. In Scaramouche's case, since he was still alive when this occured, he instead became an amnesiac Wanderer.
• Reused Character Design: Several of the characters are effectively recycled from Honkai Impact 3rd. Examples include Venti (effectively a Gender Flip of Wendy), Yae Miko (based on Yae Sakura) and the Raiden Shogun (based on Raiden Mei)
• The Reveal: There are several:
  • By the end of Prologue Act 2, we learn that the Abyss Order is being led by the other Traveler, and they're also behind Stormterror's corruption.
  • By the end of Chapter 1 Act 3, we learn that the friendly and helpful Childe, who repeatedly maintained that not all of the Fatui is that bad was manipulating the player to get Morax's Gnosis all along, and that in turn he was being manipulated by Morax himself (secretly Zhongli) and his colleague Signora to cause as much chaos as possible as part of Zhongli's contract with the Fatui. Neither Childe or the Traveler were amused.
  • Chapter 1 Act IV, "We Will Be Reunited". The Traveler finally meet their lost sibling but their sibling refuses to rejoin them. We learn that 500 years had actually passed since the Traveler faced the Unknown God. Their sibling then tells of the destruction of Khaenri'ah 500 years ago, and reveals that Dainsleif is one of the royal guards cursed with immortality for failing to protect it, and how the Abyss Order is actually the people of Khaenri'ah bent on vengeance.
  • In Chapter 2 Act 3 we encounter the 6th Fatui Harbinger, Scaramouche, who we discover at the end of the chapter is the prototype for the Raiden Shogun puppet that killed Signora a few cutscenes before.
  • By the end of Chapter 3 Act 5, we learn from Nahida that the Traveler’s sibling is not from another world like them, but rather from Teyvat. We also learn that the Traveler isn’t even the first character to come from another world, as there have been 4 “Descenders,” including the Heavenly Principles. Not only that, but in the cutscene before it, Il Dottore finally discloses to Nahida about the fact that "the skies of Teyvat are a lie", an information that was only briefly mentioned in a previous event.
• Reverse Grip: Some sword-wielding characters, such as the Traveler, Bennett, Ayato, and Shinobu, utilize a reverse sword grip in some of their normal or charged attacks. Sword users with the Medium Female or Tall Male body type present their weapon this way in the Weapon section of the Character menu screen.
• Rewards Pass: Battle Passes are available after Adventure Rank 20 and give rewards for completing BP Period missions and collecting enough BP EXP. The Sojourner's Battle Pass is available for free to everyone, while the Gnostic Hymn is a paid option that unlocks a second tier of rewards.
• Rewatch Bonus: The Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview released well before the game launched features a quote for each chapter that hints at the plot and whose meaning only becomes apparent after that chapter is complete (the Prologue and the meaning of freedom if demanded by a god, Chapter 1 and a contract to end all contracts).
• Ridiculously Cute Critter:
  • The Mini Seelie from the "Lost Riches" event—mainly the one you can buy after completing it, which takes the cute-amorphous-blob from the event and adds on squeaky baby noises and airborne frolicking.
  • The Aranara are a race of mystical plantlike spirits who reside in the secluded Mahavanaranapna in Sumeru, and are only visible to young children or adventurers who have received the blessing of Dendro. They are characterized by their very short height, simple and rotund body shape, a cute leafy hat as well as facial features which look like a child doodled them on. They also have a youthful singing voice, a cutesy sound to their footsteps and are overall pleasant little creatures to be around who only wish for the well-being of the Traveler and the rainforest.
  • Fontaine has Leisurely Otters, which seem to be designed to hit as many checkmarks for cuteness as possible. Just look at it. And not only are they cute, Hoyo also goes the extra mile and gives them various adorable Idle Animations.
• Route Boss: Certain Weekly Bosses (bosses who can only be fought once per week for Talent ascension materials) only become accessible after fighting them in specific Story Quests. As of version 3.1, three such bosses are Lupus Boreas (Razor's Story Quest), Azhdaha (Zhongli's second Story Quest), and Magatsu Mitake Narukami no Mikoto (Raiden Shogun's second Story Quest).
• Rule of Seven: There are 7 elements in the game, 7 major nations, and 7 Archons that watch over them and correspond to the elements. Various pieces of lore imply that the concept of the Seven was established after the end of Archon War, where the winning 7 gods become the Seven Archons.
• Rule of Three: Brought up by name by Ruu during the questline on Tsurumi Island as justification for why the Traveler has to collect three feathers at three different trees on the island.
  • Continues to be brought up by name as the adventure continues into Sumeru and Fontaine, with Paimon and the Traveler musing about why so many of their tasks need to be done in sets of three. Justified during "The Narzissenkreuz Adventure" World Quest in Fontaine, where Paimon again questions why every objective needs to be done in sets of three only for quest companion Ann to cite this "ancient principle" as the right way to do things. As Ann is subconsciously trying to fulfill the loose threads of an unfinished story, she would know about literary devices without realizing that they shouldn't be played straight in real life.
• Running Gag: The Traveler has an option to refer to Paimon as "emergency food," which sticks throughout the story. In the web series, the following conversation occurs:
  Paimon: The waiter said that no outside ingredients are allowed.
  Childe: Oh really? Then how did you get in here?

S

• Scenery as You Go:
  • The title screen uses this trick to visualize the loading time. As the game connects to the server, the platforms start forming in front. When that process is done, a door appears at the end of the platforms, allowing you to tap the screen and log in.
  • In some Temples' platforming sections, the floating blocks in the background slowly form a bridge as you try to take a step forward in what appears to be a chasm.
• Scenery Censor: As you swim underwater in Fontaine, rippling water will obscure your character's butt if viewed from behind. Turning the view towards the front will remove the rippling water, so it's obvious that the feature is done purely for censorship, for those lacking Modesty Shorts.
• Scenery Gorn:
  • The Land of Grounded Dreams, deep underneath the remains of Old Vanarana in the Fane of Ashvattha in Sumeru. Everything is withered, diseased, and decayed here with ominous purple tendrils of miasma floating through the air and gnarled arches soaring overhead give the impression of Mordor in the form of a Polluted Wasteland, as if an Unholy Nuke had gone off leaving the area cursed.
  • In an unusual combination with Scenery Porn, The Eternal Oasis is absolutely beautiful, yet at the same time absolutely chilling in its stillness. Everything is frozen in that very moment in time, fishes jumping out of the water, birds taking flight, and water has become solid that you can walk on it. As an added horror, this would be the fate of Inazuma if the Raiden Shogun continues on her initial pursuit of 'Eternity'.
• Scenery Porn: As an "open world fantasy" game, this is the game's main selling point; not long after you start your journey, you're treated to a shot of Mondstadt from far away as you're standing on a plateau surrounded by hills. Version 1.1 has "viewpoints" that you can find where the scenery is especially good.
• Schizo Tech: Teyvat is mainly a pre-industrial, High Fantasy, Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting with swords and sorcery alike, but then you get robots like the Ruin Machines found across the land, and it's said they're Lost Technology from the ancient civilization of Khaenri'ah that fell 500 years ago. Played even straighter with the Fatui whose forces are equipped with advanced technology such as semi-automatic firearms, gear that can replicate Vision powers, and machines that can rival gods, implying that their homeland, Snezhnaya, is technologically leagues ahead of every nation on the continent. The land of Fontaine is also incredibly technologically advanced, being the creators of the Kamera and even having a proper film industry as well as having automated steampunk drones and firearms though the tech runs off of a localized energy source. The Akademiya also possess spherical-shaped video players, and a video tape in the form of cylindrical-shaped devices.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty:
  • The repeatable Domains for artifacts, talent materials and weapon ascension materials vary dramatically in difficulty, without regard to date of release or the intended order of progression of the nations. Domain encounters can range from simple ones with beneficial Ley Line Disorders and enemies that can be reliably put into a weakened state (e.g. Steeple of Ignorance), to more tricky encounters (e.g. Clear Pool and Mountain Cavern in Liyue, notorious for its triple Abyss Mages), to Domains with outright debilitating Ley Line Disorders that require careful party selection or a debuff cleanser (e.g. Cecilia Garden and Forsaken Rift, both in Mondstadt). Part of this is likely attributable to a shift in challenge design away from punishing "wrong" character choices through aggressive debuffs and towards encouraging "right" character choices through buffs, reducing the level of Character Select Forcing.
  • The enemy waves when salvaging the meteorite shards in the "Unreconciled Stars" event were randomized. Which meant that the encounter could range from simple (hordes of Hilichurls or Slimes) to moderately challenging (hordes of Treasure Hoarders whose resistance to stagger and hard hitting kicks could easily kick you off the arena) to very dangerous (two Fatui elites who could kill you in seconds). And there was no way to find out the enemy waves until you start the encounter. Thankfully, the waves were the same at each location so you could always retreat and prepare to challenge them later at no cost.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • A cluster of three flowers almost always means that grabbing one of them might spawn an angry Whopperflower. Even after knowing the hints that distinguish them from ordinary flowers, it's hard to resist taking them anyway. Once you have a good enough team, you'll likely start doing this on purpose to get Whopperflower Nectar.
  • Similarly, a cluster of 4 carrots will probably produce a small gaggle of Slimes. Though, being slimes, they're not too difficult to deal with.
  • One instance of the "Operation Graze" Daily Commission (reach objective within time limit) beginning in the eastern part of the Desert of Hadramaveth has an ending sequence of Four-Leaf Sigils that, if followed, will aggro a nearby Consecrated Flying Serpent. Fortunately, the Daily Commission is complete by that point and there is plenty of time to teleport out before the monster enters attacking range. This can be avoided by ignoring the first of the last three Four-Leaf Sigils.
  • The first time new players (from Version 1.2 onwards) are likely to enter Dragonspine is from the researcher camp southeast of Springvale. Across the broken bridge, to the right of the path, is a treasure chest guarded by Treasure Hoarders, who, apart from their level being a little higher than usual, are not too difficult to deal with. However, immediately after them is a camp with another treasure chest... full of Fatui Skirmishers. This would likely be the first time players encounter Fatui Skirmishers since Fatui enemies appear in just a few, out-of-the way, locations in all of Mondstadt, and they'll quickly find out the hard way that the Skirmishers are much tougher to take down because of their elemental shields, which dramatically buff their damage resistances. Unlike Abyss Mage shields, Fatui shields are extremely resistant to all but one element and have different weaknesses from most other elemental shields in the game. Combined with the Sheer Cold mechanic in Dragonspine, a new player is likely to be forced to beat a hasty retreat. This bait is particularly effective because the intended "safe" route from Mondstadt to Liyue is not extremely obvious (it goes west for a while before going south to Liyue), and a straight line from Mondstadt to Liyue passes through Dragonspine. This can make new players think that getting to Liyue requires passing through Dragonspine.
  • Pulling on a banner solely for a specific featured 4-star character that one fancies is tempting, but while there is a guarantee of a featured 4-star character every 20 pulls, there are three featured four-star characters per banner, and no guarantees that even a single copy of that specific one will be pulled. Worse, if the banner's 5-star character is pulled early, this will saddle the player with a limited 5-star that they may have no team for and throw the player's "pity" for future banners into disarray. This applies even more strongly for 4-star character constellations, as the number of pulls to obtain multiple copies of the 4-star character should not be underestimated; for example, committing to a C6 4-star character within a single banner generaly requires committing to C2 of the corresponding limited 5-star character.
• School Festival: The main limited-time event in version 3.6, the Akademiya Extravaganza, is essentially this, featuring the Wisdom Gala, an exhibition of the Six Darshans' research with different mini-games based on their field of study, and the Interdarshan Championship, an athletics competition between the representatives of the Darshans.
• Scienceville: The nation of Sumeru prides itself with knowledge and research as a valuable resource per the values of their Archon; the God of Wisdom. Nearly every citizen is required by the Akademiya to wear Akasha Terminals which are Magitek devices that allow people to access info on the fly anytime they need it, essentially being a magic equivalent to the internet, but it comes with the tradeoff of adults being unable to dream in order to rationalize their thoughts. However, there are limits to what the Akasha Terminals can provide because certain knowledge is strictly controlled by the Akademiya and cannot be accessed by the public, such as information pertaining to their own god; Lesser Lord Kusanali, which is really because the Akademiya is trying to Unperson their god for seeing her unfit to succeed the late Greater Lord Rukkhadevata.
• Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum!: Deconstructed. Everyone in Sumeru has become so accustomed to knowledge being injected straight into their brains by the Akasha that they have ceased to think critically about what they learn. Our heroes leverage this by planting false orders in the Akasha to trick the guards into abandoning their posts, leaving Lesser Lord Kusanali unguarded.
• Scunthorpe Problem: Co-op chat is particularly overzealous in censoring words, due to the heavy censorship laws in China. This gets especially ridiculous when seemingly innocent words in English, such as "nerd" or "home", get picked up by the chat filter, making text communication a bit of a hassle.
• Sea Sinkhole: In the western area of the Inazuma archipelago lies Watatsumi Island, which is a large and colorful sinkhole whose people are descendants of an ancient underground civilization who were brought to the surface by their serpent god, Orobashi no Mikoto.
• Semi-Divine: All Vision-wielders, also called allogenes in English or genshin in the alternate language versions, as they have the potential to become gods and ascend to Celestia.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy:
  • Klee goes nowhere without Dodoco, a doll her sorceress mother Alice made for her. In the first Golden Apple Archipelago story, the plot involves someone named Dodo-king threatening to take Dodoco away from Klee as she is not worthy...turns out it was just Alice making sure that her little girl and her friends had a great summer vacation on some tropical islands.
  • The unnamed child that Scaramouche befriended made a doll in his image. It got burnt to ash along with the child's house after his death. Scaramouche, after becoming Wanderer, learns embroidery from toymakers in Sumeru and recreates the doll at some point.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • Fetch quests expect the player to fetch items somewhere else, and then return to the quest giver. However, it's possible to skip the entire fetching part if the player has already collected the required items beforehand, either by randomly looting in the open world, or by using a guide. When this happens, the quest's objective is updated as soon as it is received.
  • As far as the story goes, so far the only area that cannot be accessed earlier than intended is Inazuma, which is on the opposite side of a wide ocean from Liyue (and if you try to cheese your way there with Cryo characters, you will be struck by a bolt of lighting eventually and warped back to the shore you came from). You CAN however access Sumeru and Fontaine much earlier than intended, and as the entire world scales depending on your Adventure Rank, you can even explore a fair amount as well. One quest in particular involves telling 3 children stories about your adventures, and each story is taken from previous Archon quests that you may not even have done yet. In the other direction, one of the quests leading up to leaving for Inazuma involves a character who is able to sense that the Traveler has control over both Anemo and Geo. However, you also can have access to Dendro and Hydro by this point if you explore westward past Liyue, but no mention is made of this.
• Serial Escalation: Let's just say, the apparent Archons of each nation have suffered torments that progressively keep getting worse.
  • Venti/Barbatos lost his friend from long ago and uses their appearance for his own. But otherwise, he's living a carefree life as a bard while keeping watch on his beloved nation, so he actually has it easy compared to the rest.
  • Zhongli/Morax has lost his friends over time, but above all he is absolutely exhausted after his over 6,000 years vigil over Liyue, and really just wishes to retire.
  • And then Ei/Beelzebul lost her twin sister, Makoto/Baal, someone very dear and connected on a deeper, personal level than Morax's friends. She resolves herself to Never Be Hurt Again, and chooses to pursue eternity.
  • Nahida/Kusanali has been imprisoned by her supposed believers and followers for 500 years, just because they don't think of her as a worthy successor of the previous Dendro Archon. Her people even go so far as to try and replace her position with a manmade god of wisdom.
  • And if you think Nahida had it bad... Furina/Focalors is revealed to be just a normal human tasked by the real Focalors to act as the Hydro Archon for 500 years, effectively imprisoning her in the role. The stress of it gets to her, but she has to maintain the never-ending Masquerade of the Guilty lest Fontaine be doomed. Even imprisoned, Nahida can still communicate with others through dreams and has been known to play with children. Furina doesn't have that luxury, and has to carry her burden all alone for 500 years.
• Set Bonus:
  • A step up over Stigmata, while Artifacts usually have random main and sub stats, they can confer bonuses if you equip two of a given set, with greater bonuses if four. Each character only has one slot for each of the five types (Flowers of Life, Plumes of Death, Sands of Eon, Goblets of Eonothem, and Circlets of Logos), so they can have (at most) a pair of 2-piece sets, or a 4-piece set and zero 2-piece sets (or a 1-piece set artifact, if you have them). As of v3.4, there are 43 sets.
  • "Elemental Resonances" are status buffs conferred upon a full four-person party depending on its elemental composition. As of v3.4, there are eight effects, seven of which are triggered if there at least two party members of a given element:
    • Fervent Flames (2× Pyro): Shortens duration of Cryo effect by 40% and increases Attack by 25%.
    • Soothing Water (2× Hydro): Shortens duration of Pyro effect by 40% and increases Max HP by 25%.
    • High Voltage (2× Electro): Shortens duration of Hydro effect by 40% and allows Superconduct, Overloaded, Electro-charged, Quicken, Aggravate, and Hyperbloom reactions to generate Electro Elemental Particles (within at least five seconds).
    • Shattering Ice (2× Cryo): Shortens duration of Electro effect by 40% and increases Critical Rate by 15% against Frozen or Cryo-affected enemies.
    • Impetuous Winds (2× Anemo): Reduces Stamina consumption by 15%, increases Movement Speed by 10%, and shortens cooldown time of Elemental Skills by 5%.
    • Enduring Rock (2× Geo): Increases strength of Elemental Shields by 15%; in addition, characters with an active Shield gain a 15% damage boost, as well as grants their attacks the ability to reduce enemies' Geo Resistance by 20% for fifteen seconds.
    • Sprawling Greenery (2× Dendro): Increases Elemental Mastery by 50 points, in addition to six-second-long boosts whenever Dendro-related reactions are triggered and are counted individually—30 points for direct reactions (i.e., Burning, Quicken, and Bloom), 20 points for sub-reactions (i.e., Aggravate and Spread via Quicken, Hyperbloom and Burgeon via Bloom).
    • Protective Canopy (any four unique elements): Increases Physical and Elemental Resistances by 15%.
  • The Lithic Series of weapons does this with the party members themselves. The Lithic Series (currently only composed of the Lithic Spear and Lithic Blade) has a passive called Lithic Axiom - Unity, boosting both the wielder's ATK and CRIT Rate for every party member hailing from Liyue. At max refinement and with all four party slots filled by Liyue natives, this grants a 44% ATK boost and 28% CRIT Rate boost.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: To convince Qiqi to sell you some incense (without the required prescription), you and Zhongli have to repair an ancient siege weapon, fight off a bunch of treasure-hunting bad guys, and ultimately track down a mythical creature called a "Cocogoat". You never get anywhere on that last part and report back to her, only to learn that she thought coconut milk came from a "coco-goat." No such creature actually exists.
• Shamu Fu: The Luxurious Sea-Lord introduced in Version 2.1 is a large fish that claymore wielders use as a bludgeon. If you can get over the idea of seeing your characters bash in your enemies' heads with a fish, then the Luxurious Sea-Lord offers solid stat boosts and extra damage.
  • One of Tartaglia's attacks during his boss fight summons a breaching whale made out of water.
• She Is the King:
  • Some female characters are referred to with masculine titles, despite their people clearly knowing they're female. Examples include: Dori (Lord Sangemah Bay), Havria the God of Salt, the Raiden Shogun (with the title "Shogun" being traditionally always male in real-life Japan), and both the Dendro Archons - Greater Lord Rukkhadevata and Lesser Lord Kusanali. So far, the Tsaritsa is the only notable exception to this, with "Tsaritsa" being the Russian word for "empress".
  • Lesser Lord Kusanali is quite a heavy example of this. In the original Chinese, she is literally called "Little King", and in her second Story Quest, all of the Elemental Lifeforms always address her as "Lord of Dendro" (literally "Grass King" in the Chinese version).
• Shifting Sand Land: The Great Red Sand, the desert region located in western Sumeru, whose people and god historically developed a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Ancient Egypt (hence the existence of numerous pyramids), and is also home to Scary Scorpions, flying serpents, vultures, the giagantic Setekh Wenut boss, the Jinn as well as roving Eremite mercenaries that will fight you should they spot you.
• Ship Tease: Has it's own page.
• Shoot the Mage First:
  • Samachurls are often prime targets whenever they're spotted among Hilichurl camps, as their elemental magic can either hinder you and leave you open to the other monsters' attacks, or support their brethren to make fighting them harder.
  • If you spot Anemoboxer Vanguards among the Fatui Skirmishers, go at them first; they act as support by defending other troopers from your attacks, and they can suck you to its range for a powerful punch.
• Shoot the Medic First: Fatui Hydrogunner Legionnaires, and, to a lesser extent, Hydro Samachurls are also best taken out first among their groups, as they can heal their fellows with their water, making it harder to defeat anything until the Hydro wielder is gone.
• Shop Fodder:
  • Sigils are region-specific currencies that can be obtained by opening chests or upgrading the Statues of the Seven. They can be traded for items at the region's Souvenir Shop, but since there's a lot of Sigils in the open world map, the excess end up being traded for Mora after you've bought all the other items. In Inazuma, Sigils are instead offered to the Sacred Sakura in the way Crimson Agates are offered to the Frostbearing Tree in Dragonspine.
  • The Dull Ring is obtained near the end of the "Nine Pillars of Peace" world quest and the player is required to sell it to either Bolai or Linlang for a hefty sum of Mora. Bolai buys it at a lesser price than Linlang, but he also gives 5 Adeptus' Temptation to compensate.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: As listed further in the Shout Out tab, some groups of NPCs are collectively named after specific pop culture references, such as Athos/Porthos/Aramis and Parsley/Sage/Rosemary. Mona and Lisa are an unusual case, having no relation beside their witch theming but collectively referencing the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
• Silly Reason for War: Bounty in this case. With the exception of bounties involving the Kairagi and a few Eremites, and posts done by Melusines, their justification for putting a hit on a target is incredibly petty, trivial, and childish that would make Clitopho and Zhiqiong's arguing with each other look rational by comparison. Among these are: a woman is worried that it may ruin her make-up (Hydro Abyss Mage bounty), someone is worried that they may get a cold (Cryo Abyss Mage bounty), an out-of-work person is so insulted with the hilichurl work ethics that they put a bounty on him (Blazing Axe Mitachurl bounty), a fighter wanted to teach a Snezhnayan soldier a lesson for beating him in a (fair) match (Fatui Agent bounty), a client mistook the samachurls' ritual chant as cursing the Raiden Shogun (Electro Samachurl bounty), a novelist putting a hit on an Eremite because he chased them away for disturbing said Eremite's peace (Eremite Sunfrost bounty), etc.
• Silly Spook:
  • Dusky Ming is a child ghost who initially plays around the kitchen of the Wangshu Inn. A main story quest focuses on chasing and calming her down so that the chef can work peacefully. As a last-ditch effort, she tries to possess a Ruin Hunter just before the Traveler and Paimon cornered her in the wild.
  • The little ghost that hangs around Hu Tao. It 'helps' Hu Tao in cooking, it loves to prank and gets pranked by Hu Tao, and it's used as a bludgeon in her Burst.
• Situational Sword:
  • Some weapons may deal additional damage if certain conditions are met, such as striking the Lion's Roar sword against enemies affected by Pyro or Electro.
  • There are also weapons with conditional passive stat boosts. For example, the Sword of Descension further increases ATK by 66 only if it's equipped by the Traveler, while the Harbinger of Dawn increases CRIT Rate if the wielder's HP is above 90%.
• Small Name, Big Ego: By the present day, the Lawrence clan of aristocrats that once tyrannized Mondstadt has been reduced to complete irrelevance. This doesn't stop them from still believing they're entitled to respect.
• Snake Oil Salesman: A man in Springvale named "Hopkins the Marvelous" sells bottles of cure-all holy water, which is "indistinguishable from normal water" and has a hidden effect of restoring merely 1 HP per second. If you come by at night, you can catch him collecting plain old spring water to sell the next day.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • You can call on other players for co-op, which can make tackling bosses and domains easier.
  • Local specialties required for character ascension can also be obtained from other players' worlds. This is the only way to get around the limited spawns and 48-hour respawn timer of local specialties.
  • Certain events (both in-game and web) have elements that enable rewards to claimed more efficiently with multiplayer interaction. For example, "Graph Adversarial Technology Experiment Log" allowed players to trade randomly obtained "samples" with each other to obtain a set of samples eligible for reward exchange, while the recurring "Marvelous Merchadise" event allows players to visit other worlds to find an instance of Liben offering the desired reward.
  • The Serenitea Pot system allows players to visit their friends' Teapot to buy their traveling merchant's items or speed up their constructions. The former is required to progress the Adeptal Mirror, which is the only way to obtain some furnishing blueprints required for certain gift sets.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Proven to be an issue in Fontaine. No public service is there to lift a finger to help orphaned children like Lyney and Lynette, leaving them on the streets to fend for themselves. And should they fall into the hands of traffickers or malicious aristocrats, there is no group that will take legal action.
• Soft Water: Players falling into water deep enough to swim in take no Fall Damage no matter how high they fall from.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Early on, the standard enemies were Hilichurls and Treasure Hoarders, who are The Goomba and a Bandit Clan, respectively. The Abyss Mages that were also common are reduced to sitting ducks after you learn to exploit the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. After the Prologue, the Traveler first encounters the Fatui, who are tougher and use the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors against you. After Chapter I, the Hilichurls and Treasure Hoarders were Demoted to Extra in favor of more regional threats. These enemy factions are more skilled and use Elemental Powers like playable characters. Additionally, newer enemies that have been introduced as part of the Abyss Order eclipse almost everything that's not a boss in power.
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography:
  • The first area you visit, Mondstadt, is an idyllic Green Hill Zone where the threats are Hilichurls, Slimes and the odd Abyss Mages. The next zone is Liyue, with plenty of rocky mountains and cliffs requiring a lot of climbing, thus risking running out of stamina and falling to your death, and Fatui squads roam the countryside. The third zone is Inazuma, where there are constant thunderstorms and radiation fallout-like Balethunder area, and Kairagis infest the area. Sumeru is similarly dangerous, split between a rainforest where Withering Zones sap the life out of everything and a desert dotted with ancient ruins and Lost Technology. The wildlife is noticeably more dangerous than previous regions, and the Eremites are at least as deadly as the Kairagis. The 7th nation that's yet to be visited (also set to be the last nation visited), Snezhnaya, is implied to be even worse, where winter never ends and you can literally freeze to death simply by standing around.
  • Subverted with the temporary event location of the Golden Apple Archipelago. Despite being released between Liyue and Inazuma, the islands themselves are mostly easy-going, there's only one boss monster, and the main focus is on puzzle solving and uncovering the mystery of the islands. Justified, however, since the whole place was modified by Klee's mother Alice so her daughter could have a fun summer.
  • Fontaine is actually an aversion, at least at first. You'd think that the region where underwater exploration is the main focus would be a good place to go after the desert/rainforest if you wanted to heighten the danger level, but Fontaine's aquatic segments are deliberately designed to be relaxing, to avoid being stale. Additionally, the main new enemy type in Fontaine, the Clockwork Meka, are nowhere near as dangerous as the Kairagi and Eremites were when they were first introduced, particularly if you have a character or two from Fontaine leveled.
• Souvenir Land: Since the Veluriyam Mirage—2023's summer region—is the park to the Golden Apple Archipelago's tropical paradise, some elements of this trope were inevitable. In this case, while roller coasters can be found throughout, the parody is limited to a single quest line. In the Three-Day-Reverie World Quests, the Traveler and Paimon are in plays that are essentially theme rides. Paimon does enjoy them, but her suspension of disbelief is broken repeatedly by how cheap they are. Subverted when the Traveler and Paimon get to go "backstage" and see how intricate the set-up is and learn why the rides were so cheap in the first place, at which point they're more impressed.
• Spam Attack: The Sacrificial Series of weapons, comprising every weapon type except Polearms, has a chance to immediately end the cooldown of Elemental Skills after use. At max refinement it has an 80% chance to trigger every 16 seconds.
• Spell Book: The catalyst users may use spellbooks as an option for their weapon.
• Spin Attack: Some claymore users have this as their Charged Attack. They will keep spinning and hitting enemies around them until the stamina gauge runs out.
• Springy Spores: Sumeru introduces Bouncy Mushrooms. Regular ones in the overworld can be charged with Electro for an even greater height boost. There's even a Sumeru commission that involves bouncing on special Bouncy Mushrooms five times consecutively without touching the ground.
• Sprint Meter: There's a yellow gauge that appears and is depleted whenever the playable characters sprint, swim, climb, perform a Charged Attack (except for the bow users), or glide in the air. The gauge can refill by itself, but there exist consumables that can refill (at least some of) the gauge instantly. There are also consumables that reduce the cost of stamina for certain actions for some hundred seconds. Leveling up the Statues of the Seven also provides permanent stamina increases.
• Squishy Wizard: Catalyst-users, being de facto mages hits hard but also takes hits hard. Averted by Ningguang however due to her Geo element and defensive skills while downplayed by Barbara due to her heals and higher health.
  • Among enemy mages, it's played straight by Samachurls but averted by anything else because of their shields and even without them, would take time to bring down due to high health.
• Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting: The game took some influence from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild plus most of the contents of this trope, including a protagonist who is Trapped in Another World, characters with common anime stereotypes, enemies like Slimes and Hilichurls, and an I Will Find You main plot that will lead the protagonist Traveler across the world of Teyvat looking for the Seven Archons. It's very "Japanese Fantasy Setting" but it was made by Chinese company miHoYo, the creators of Honkai Impact 3rd.
• Starter Equipment: The gameplay starts with a Dull Blade equipped.
• Starting a New Life: In Liyue Harbor, there's a NPC named Atsuko who made a daring escape from Inazuma's Bakufu forces on a raft in stormy waters, capsizing in the process and being rescued by Liyue locals. After making it ashore, she desires to travel the world on boat, which she notes is a luxury that not many Inazuma people can experience ever since their Shogun closed their borders.
• Stat Sticks: Weapons increase your character's ATK and thus increase the damage on all of a character's abilities, but are only shown to be actively used in a character's Normal and Charged Attack animations. This creates a Stat Sticks effect for a character's Elemental Skill and Burst, which is especially noticeable for characters who don't bother using their Normal or Charged Attacks (which is a sizeable chunk of characters in the game). If the weapon has a secondary stat or passive that is more useful for a character than its ATK boost, it also applies, like with Albedo, whose primary offensive ability scales off of his DEF and thus prefers the low-ATK CRIT rate-boosting Harbinger of Dawn or his event-exclusive DEF-boosting Cinnabar Spindle over anything with high ATK. This isn't limited to support characters either, as some characters like the Raiden Shogun, Cyno, and Dehya have a Burst that replaces their Normal Attack string with another one that doesn't use their equipped weapon. These characters will generally use their Burst attacks in the place of their Normal Attacks with the right setup, making their equipped weapon as much of an accessory as it is for most support characters.
• Status Effects: Some elemental reactions inflict these, such as Frozen (temporarily freezes the target) and Burning (deals Pyro damage over time).
• Stealth-Based Mission:
  • Breaking into the church at night to steal the Holy Lyre der Himmel during Act 2 of the Prologue involves evading the patrolling knights who are guarding it.
  • Sneaking past the city guards during the first Act in Liyue after Rex Lapis has been declared dead. Not long after that, however, you're found out in a cutscene, and the city guards chase you before you're saved by Childe.
  • In one of the scenarios in Diona's Hangout Event, you get the option to either sneak into the Hilichurl tribe at Dadaupa Gorge quietly or go in battle-ready. If you choose the former option, you'll enter a stealth section where you'll have to sneak past the Hilichurls guarding the area. Getting spotted once will send you back to the start, and getting caught a total of three times will cause the Hangout Event to fail.
• Stealth Pun:
  • There are two playable characters with a witch theme, and their names are Mona and Lisa.
  • The Geo nation Liyue is also the Land of Contracts, and follows said contracts to the letter. You might even say that such contracts are set in stone.
• Sticks to the Back: After drawing out their weapon, it floats behind the character while they are moving but not attacking. Lampshaded by one Traveler's Profile conversation with Paimon, in which she asks the Traveler how they're able to do this. The Traveler's reply? It comes completely naturally and inexplicably like Paimon's flight.
• Stone Wall: The Geo element as a whole. Its elemental reaction, Crystallize, creates shields that grant resistance to corresponding elemental damage, and many of their skills revolve around shaping terrain to ward off enemies. Geo shields are also much tougher to destroy, requiring Overload (Pyro + Electro) instead of simply blasting it with any singular element it reacts to. However, Crystallize is one of two reactions (the other being Frozen) that can never deal damage.
• Story Breadcrumbs:
  • Additional lore can be read from the Flavor Text of weapons, artifacts, consumable items and quest items (especially books). There are also those that would play a video when interacted, such as the "Wind, Courage and Wings".
  • Character Story entries provide additional text-based lore for the characters which can be unlocked by increasing their Friendship Levels. The "Voice-over" part also lets you peek into their characteristics through their quotes. Aside from the Talent info, the characters' ability descriptions also provide more backstories, although bit by bit.
  • The loading screen may randomly mention additional lore and backstories aside from providing gameplay tips.
  • Random quests will sometimes reveal major details of the setting. For example, investigating a camp at Lingju Pass will lead to rescuing an NPC named Alrani, who later gives another quest that ends with the reveal of the Vision Hunt Decree ongoing in Inazuma.
• Story-Breaker Power: While almost every playable character in this game is Semi-Divine, the most impressive physical feats for most characters are something along the lines of lifting or breaking boulders. Being a Physical God in this setting means being able to singlehandedly destroy cities. Unsurprisingly, those feats are all offscreen and relegated to the backstory. Most of the Archons take a hands off approach in the present, including the one antagonistic Archon, who after she decides to get directly involved is only defeated when the Traveler taps into the Heroic Spirit of hundreds of Vision holders at once. In Story Quests and Event Stories, characters of god-level power don't fight against monsters and criminals like most other characters, since none of that poses a threat to them. One of the few exceptions (the Raiden Shogun in Act II of her Story Quest) suffers a Drama-Preserving Handicap and is matched against one of the few things that can make her sweat: herself.. This isn't limited to Archons, as there are several other characters of godlike power, all of whom have a similarly hands-off approach. The strongest of the Harbingers can compete with an Archon in terms of power, but the only one of that rank to appear on screen as of Chapter IV was too apathetic to dirty their hands. Even Lesser Lord Kusanali, who is a god but lacks the power of one, turns the tide of battle against a character that just ascended to godhood by creatively applying what powers she does have. This isn't even getting into the power boost derived from an Archon's authority, which the Archons have all lost along with their Gnosis before even using it in the present. When Neuvilette had that authority restored to him as as one of The Old Gods, he averted a prophecy that foretold the destruction of an entire nation.
• Story Difficulty Setting: When facing weekly bosses as part of Archon or Story Quests (which usually serves to unlock their domain for regular gameplay), the boss will be significantly nerfed in health and/or damage compared to their regular version. Phases may also be skipped. In extreme cases, the player character is invincible, instantly healing to full health once their HP reaches zero. This appears to have been more consciously done after the release of the Childe weekly boss fight, whose initial encounter during the Liyue Archon Quest was generally felt to be overtuned for new players and was swiftly nerfed.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: During the Dirge of Bilqis world quest, the player is forced to take Matriarch Babel's words at face value, no matter how obviously suspicious she is. Even worse, it's very likely the player will have found documents in the world along the way that blatantly spell out that she's murdered her way to the top of the Tanit tribe and colluding with the Fatui, but you have no choice but to carry out the quest.
• Suddenly Significant City: In the distant past, the Old Mondstadt was ruled by Decarabian, with his capital city being located in the Brightcrown Canyon (which is then renamed into Stormterror's Lair). When Decarabian was dethroned, Barbatos took his place as the Anemo Archon, and he established New Mondstadt with a capital city located on the island of Cider Lake.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: All enemies in the overworld will attack you as soon as you're detected, and won't let up until they're either dead or outside of their aggro range. While the Hilichurls are the most common enemies you'll encounter, the kings of this trope within the game are probably the Treasure Hoarders, who come at you with the confidence of a Fatui Skirmisher even though you're a Vision-bearer and they're mostly armed with farm implements and other improvised weapons (if at all.) This mentality is so prevalent even in-story that in Cyno's Story Quest, Paimon's downright surprised when a pair of canned knowledge smugglers decide to surrender to them immediately instead of making a futile effort to resist arrest.
• Summon to Hand: Characters don't normally wield their weapons until you press the attack button, after which they'll appear on their hands. When they stop attacking, their weapon will teleport to, and then float, behind their backs before disappearing.
• Summon Magic:
  • Vision users can summon creatures created from their powers, such as Fischl having a familiar named Oz. Yae also has a fox-like creature that appears in her animations.
  • Vision users can also be seen summoning various objects such as books, papers, and other mundane things, which they unsummon just as easily when they're done with them in the same way they do their weapons. Certain characters, such as Yaoyao with Yuegui and Kaveh with Mehrak, are also seen summoning their combat items using their Vision powers, despite the fact that these objects are not created by their powers.
• Super Cute Superpowers:
  • The Token Mini-Moe characters tend to use their Visions in this fashion, with Klee's Pyro-infused bombs looking like Cartoon Creatures, Diona's Icy Paws Skill taking the shape of several cat paws made of ice and creating a shield with cat ears, and Sayu summoning a "Muji-Muji Daruma" (basically a giant stuffed mujina doll) with her Burst. Even Dori, who is all but stated to be an adult, fights by riding around on a Jinni that looks like a purple blob with a goofy happy face.
  • Heavily Downplayed with Qiqi and Nahida, where the only thing "cute" about their abilities is the cartoony face on Qiqi's Herald of Frost and that Nahida looks like she's pretended to take a picture with her held Elemental Skill and playing hop stitch with her Normal Attacks. Given the former is an Undead Child and the other is the God of Wisdom, this is understandable.
  • Another Downplayed example is Kaveh, who is an adult man that fights using a suitcase-shaped toolbox that can emote and whom he refers to as his assistant/partner. It's not played up to be cute in the game, either, but players have taken to a liking to the animations and think they're cute.
• Super Drowning Skills: Zigzagged. Your characters can swim as long as you have stamina, but the moment that stamina reaches zero, you will drown even if you're in 50 cm-deep water (this depends on the characters' height). For most enemies, this is played straight—they die instantly in water too deep to stand in—although it's generally difficult to get larger ones to fall into a deep enough body of water. On the other hand...
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: ...when swimming in Fontaine waters after interacting with a Statue of the Seven there, you will can swim as long as you like without issue. The standard stamina meter gets replaced with a blue "Aquatic Stamina", which only affects how long you can fast swim; you won't drown if it empties. You can also dive and swim underwater without any need to come up for air. It's even a thing in the story, with Freminet, Yoimiya and Ayaka all confirming that it's possible to outright breathe underwater in Fontaine. Freminet says it's difficult to breathe (while still underwater) upon making contact with Primordial Seawater in the Archon Quest, while Yoimiya is amazed to feel like she was breathing like normal when taking a dive with Ayaka during the Roses and Muskets event.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: When 5-star characters—and Barbara—initiate an Elemental Burst, you get a small cutscene zooming in on the character’s face as they unleash their attack while their elemental color flashes in the background.
• Super Sliding: Ayaka and Mona can slide with their elements instead of running, which also work to get enemies involved with their elements, making them enable to get elemental mixes to attack them, like rushing with a Hydro element, and then changing to Electro user and shock them after.
• Super-Toughness: Indicated to be a secondary power granted by a Vision. In Lyney's Story Quest, he notes that it would be impossible to survive a fall from the ceiling of the Opera Epiclese unless you had one.
• Support Party Member: While the game does not explicitly designate any playable character with certain roles, some characters are good for supporting based on their abilities:
  • Characters who have either elemental skills or bursts whose effects linger on the field can help your main attacker perform elemental reactions.
  • Then there are characters who have direct supportive capabilities; they either heal others, buff their damage output, put up a shield, gather enemies, etc. These characters can overlap with the category above.
• Suspiciously Cracked Wall: There are walls that look like several boulders piled together, hinting that they can be broken with a weapon (ideally a claymore) or explosion, and there's something on the other side (usually a treasure chest). With Elemental Sight, they glow orange. In Inazuma there's a version that's electrified, glows purple under Elemental Sight and is best destroyed with Cryo, Pryo or Dendro attacks.
• Sword Lines: Whenever a melee weapon is swung, there's a yellow trail that comes from the blade. Some characters can enhance their attacks using their elemental Visions, which also create color-coded sword trails.