Genshin Impact / Tropes H to N

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H

• Hand Wave: "Teyvat has its own laws" is a convenient rule of thumb to explain away any incongruences or curiosities one may encounter througout the various locations. For example, the city of Fontaine is located on elevated geography... even though its Archon Quest hinges upon it flooding.
• Hard Light: Due to the massive scale of Genshin Impact, the topic of hard light is best broken down by the noting the different ways the principal nations of Teyvat (and their special regions) use it.
  • Mondstadt: Hard light isn't particularly common in the Green Hill Zone nation of Mondstadt, but it is curiously found in the dilapidated ruins that make up the lair of Stormterror.
  • Liyue: Hard light is used in the Domains of the Adepti to bridge floating islands, and can be activated or deactivated by switches scattered throughout that control the rotation of these floating islands allowing the Traveler to navigate the Domains and accomplish the challenges set forth by the various Adepti. It's also used as seals to block access to certain areas until the player unlocks them, such as adeptal abodes, Havria's temple in Sal Terrae, Azhdaha's trounce domain in Nantianmen, and the entrance to the Chasm's underground mines.
  • Enkanomiya: Hard light forms barriers called the Shield-Lights of Tokoyo, which are dispelled or formed when the Traveler alters the underground realm's day and night cycle using the Dainichi Mikoshi. Hard light also forms bridges between the islands which make up the haunted Advanced Ancient Acropolis located far underneath Inazuma's Watatsumi Island.
  • Sumeru: In Sumeru's far western desert region, there is a vast underground network linking various temples and pyramids that date back to the reign of the ancient King Deshret (aka The Scarlet King or Al-Ahmar), a rival god of wisdom who once collaborated with the previous Dendro Archon to save Sumeru (and possibly all of Teyvat) from an outbreak of The Corruption brought on by unlocking the secrets of forbidden Divine Knowledge. Throughout King Deshret's ruins there exist numerous hard light structures forming mazes, with floors and walls forming as the Traveler walks up to them, along with massive obelisks and plinths activated by glowing spiky Power Source orbs (made of hard light, naturally) that are set alight with Tron Lines thanks to King Deshret's Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology.
  • Celestia: The very beginning of the game has the twins Aether and Lumine flying through a Fluffy Cloud Heaven when they're ambushed and detained by the Unknown God, who uses red and black hard light cubes to detain the duo and kidnap the chosen Traveler's sibling kick-starting the whole adventure as a Roaring Rampage of Rescue.
• Hard Mode Perks: The more difficult the content is, the better the rewards are given out. This is more straightforward in the Domains as shown in their drop tables. As your World Level increases, enemies and Ley Line Blossoms in the open world drop rarer materials and more money for upgrading your characters even further. This also allows your newly-acquired characters to catch up faster through ascensions.
• Harder Than Hard: A trend in more recent combat events is an additional fourth difficulty mode involving souped-up enemy levels, hidden enemy health buffs and tight time limits. The difficulty of these additional challenges is often on par with a perfect Spiral Abyss Floor 12 run. However, to be fair to players not geared for the pinnacle of the endgame, the additional rewards from clearing the fourth difficulty are minimal (usually some weapon EXP materials).
• Hailfire Peaks: Sumeru is home to both lush tropical jungles and arid deserts.
• Harmless Freezing: A consequence of getting hit by a cold-magic attack (Cryo) while inflicted with the Wet effect (either from water, rain, or Hydro attacks); you can break out unscathed by mashing a button, or slightly-scathed by getting hit with a smashing attack. In one sidequest, you accidentally thaw out a man who was frozen 300 years ago, and is none the worse for wear.
• Hate Sink: While the game is full of characters whose principles and actions are hotly debated, such as Raiden Shogun, Childe/Tartaglia, and (once his backstory is explored) the Wanderer/Scaramouche, no one will bother to defend the following characters:
  • Little Que'er, an NPC you may often encounter in Liyue's daily commissions, is hated by many players for her needlessly Jerkass behavior to the Traveler, even though they've just climbed a high cliff to get Qingxin for her throat. The fact that she threatens to kill the Traveler if her crush Sun Yu isn't there only makes it worse, even moreso for being completely self-ignorant that she's a regular human who naively thinks she can win against an elemental-wielding individual who can easily wipe the floor with her. Worse still, if her dialogue in Version 1.3's Lantern Rite actively demanding information about Zhiruo from Sun Yu and her typical MO towards strangers is of any indication, she is seemingly willing to hurt and assault people who cannot defend themselves, putting herself in an even more unsympathetic light. For years since the game's launch, players had to put up with her attitude. It's not until Version 3.3 is released that she can be put in her place, where a Daily Commission, The Day the Sword Departs can be completed, which has Sun Yu acknowledging that Que'er is a detriment to his goals due to her volatile behavior and abandons her, leaving her a broken mess afterwards.
  • The heads of the Hiiragi and Kujou clans (who respectively command the Kanjou and Tenryou Comissions in Inazuma) are particularly reviled for their despicable actions, with said clan heads being willing to affiliate with the Fatui to manipulate the Shogun into starting the Sakoku and Vision Hunt Decrees, which resulted in confiscation of Visions and shutting Inazuma from the outside world, and perpetrate a civil war that was tearing Inazuma from inside out, leaving its economy and society in a shambles and with many people end up dying in the conflict, as the Archon Quest and a great portion of the World Quests make clear. All this to maintain their power and influence in the political game of the nation.
  • Azar and the Sages of the Akademiya somehow managed to be even worse (especially Azar), by neglecting the existence of Nahida and imprisoning her for not meeting their expectations of a goddess for 500 years without even giving her a chance of proving herself. Not only that, they conducted experiments by reaping the dreams of Sumeru's population, who was unknowingly part of this scheme for centuries, and went as far as causing a samsara to continuously drain information from their unwitting citizens, trapping the entire capital in an ever-repeating day that visibly started taking a toll on the health of the weakest civilians, such as Dunyarzad. All this in order to fulfill their goal of turning The Balladeer into an artificial god, both to replace Nahida for good, to have a deity they could exert control and to brag themselves about being able to create such entity. Once the Archon Quest is finally completed, even in-game characters complain that their punishment was incredibly light considering everything they have done.
• Heal It with Water: The Hydro element is commonly associated with healing.
  • From the playable characters, Barbara and Kokomi are Hydro-elemental whose skillset primarily focuses on healing the team. Xingqiu is an offensive support who can also heal on the side.
  • Among the elemental variants of certain enemy types, the Hydro Samachurls and Hydro Gunner Legionnaires can heal their allies while also having offensive moves. They are usually prime targets that are taken out first during a fight.
  • The Hydro Mimic Boars spawned by the Oceanid have Regenerating Health thanks to the constant rain in the arena. The other world bosses are not water-themed and cannot restore health.
  • The Hydro Hypostasis world boss main gimmick is healing itself mid-battle, and you have to interrupt it.
  • Zig Zagged by Hydro's Elemental Resonance. Up until 3.0, having at least two Hydro characters on your team increased all healing effects by 30%. Now it buffs max HP instead, which also has an effect on healing as healing is typically based on a character's max HP, but it also buffs some character's damage, makes many character's shields stronger, and obviously makes characters more tanky.
• Healer Signs On Early: Zig-Zagged. The first available F2P healer is Noelle, whose Breastplate skill has a 50% chance of healing, but only if you do the Beginners' Wish gacha (you're given some "Acquaint Fates" freely before the Wish is unlocked), which becomes available after clearing the first act of the Prologue and at Adventure Rank 5. The next available and first fully dedicated F2P healer is Barbara, who was given out for free on Version 1.0 after reaching Adventure Rank 20 (approximately near the end of, or after completing the Prologue chapter), which can take about 30 hours. Players who signed in from Version 1.1 onwards need to take longer and complete the whole prologue chapter to acquire her.
• Healing Checkpoint: Statues of the Seven can restore your party's HP, though it's limited by a slowly-replenishing health reserve.
• Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The life bar of your player characters are green, but turns red when at low HP. Enemies start with a red bar and definitely mean harm for you.
• Heart of Happiness: Played with during character hangout quests. While hearts are used to keep track of character happiness value, the double meaning of them as romantic was not lost on the developers. The "hangouts" straddle a middle ground as dating sims with enough plausible deniability to be interpreted in either direction.
  • Subverted with Layla's Hangout Event, where her hearts represent her anxiety instead. If she gets max hearts, the "other Layla" comes out.
• Henotheistic Society: The Archons are seven minor deities that ascended to the status of Gods collectively known as "The Seven" of Teyvat. In this world, there are seven nations that are patronized for every Archon that also represents one of the seven elements in this world. As of the 3.0 patch cycle, four of the seven nations have been visited (Mondstadt, Liyue Inazuma, and Sumeru) are patronized by the Anemo Archon Barbatos, Geo Archon Morax, Electro Archon Beelzebul, and Dendro Archon Buer (all of which are playable characters as Venti, Zhongli, the Raiden Shogun, and Nahida) respectively.
  • Archons aren't the only gods as there are gods who didn't get the title or role as Archon, although most of them are now dead. Some of the dead gods are still worshiped in the present day such as Havria by some people in Liyue, Orobaxi in Watatsumi Island, and Rukkhadevata, Kusanali's predecessor as Dendro Archon, in Sumeru.
• Heroic RRoD: While it's not possible in gameplay, with Energy being based on a Mana Meter, at the end of Navia's Story Quest, she exhausts her elemental energy after using it to create enough explosives to make Michael Bay proud.
• Hidden Elf Village: Vanarana, on the northern reaches of eastern Sumeru, is home to the Anarana, a race of diminutive, plant-like beings who largely retreated from the waking world following the Calamity five hundred years ago, and now largely appear in the dreams of Teyvatians, with only a handful still roaming the outside world.
• Highly Visible Landmark:
  • When following quest breadcrumbs, the end goal will manifest as a glowing Pillar of Light in the distance, which vanishes as you approach it.
  • Celestia is a minor example, being visible in the sky across Tevat as a mysterious floating landmass that promises future plot importance.
  • The game map has surprisingly few traditional examples, only adding about one or two per nation. This includes Dragonspine's icy peak, Seirai Island's central storm nexus, Enkanomiya's artificial sun, and The Mausoleum of King Deshret. Wangshu Inn is a minor example, only notable for being placed across the map to entice the player to venture in the direction Liyue harbor.

• Hijacked by Ganon: Played With in Chapter 2. Beelzebul serves as the primary antagonist throughout the whole chapter, but it revealed that the Fatui manipulated her into enacting the Vision Hunt Decree, in collusion with corrupt elements within the Tri-Commission, so that they could exploit the conflict to manufacture and sell Delusions.
• Hint System: Aside from providing lore, Flavor Text and backstories, the loading screens may occasionally show gameplay tips as well.
• Hired by the Oppressor: The Sumeru Akademiya has a long history of racism and oppression towards the desert dwellers of the Great Red Sand, especially the Eremites, because of the latter's traditional devotion to their long-deceased god King Deshret instead of the Dendro Archon; Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, and will actively try to keep them out of the rest of Sumeru via border security enforcement of the Wall of Samiel. That said, the Akademiya is still willing to hire the desert people into their ranks if they proved their worth enough, such as employing the Eremite faction called the Corps of Thirty for peacekeeping purposes and allowing scholars like Setaria in because of their valuable genius potential, but it essentially comes at the cost of desert dwellers giving up their culture and loyalty to King Deshret in the process.
• History Repeats: A subtle but recurring theme in the game is current events mirroring those of the past. For example:
  • The nation of Khaenri'ah lashed out against the gods long ago and was razed to the ground for it. 500 years later, the nation of Snezhnaya, lead by the Fatui under the Tsaritsa, is similarly gathering strength so they can launch their own rebellion against Celestia.
  • Ei's Story Quests reveal that her sister Makoto was actually the first Electro Archon and ruler of Inazuma, while Ei stuck to the shadows and fought various conflicts on her behalf, with only a few people knowing the Raiden Shogun had a twin. By the end of her second Story Quest, Ei has come to better understand her sister's view of Transience and how that relates to Eternity, and has become more directly involved in ruling Inazuma, while the Raiden Shogun puppet has become Ei's shadow, even directly stating how she will play the role for Ei that Ei once played for Makoto, with only a handful of people knowing of the puppet's existence.
  • A more minor example, but during the Perilous Trail questline of the second Interlude, the characters present (Yelan, Yanfei, Itto, and Shinobu) serve as counterparts to the four fallen Yakshas (Bonanus, Indarius, Menogias, and Bosacius, respectively) thanks to their Visions. And if the Traveler as Anemo equipped, then they serve as a counterpart to Xiao, while the Geo Traveler becomes one to Morax, the King of Geo the Yakshas answer directly to, furthering the parallels. Fittingly enough, Itto and Yelan nearly come to blows at the start of the quest, similar to how their Yakshas counterparts died fighting each other.
• Hit the Ground Harder: Jumped off a cliff and into free fall? Just use your Plunge Attack! Downplayed in that you'll still take up to 40% damage from the really high drops, but it's still better than taking fatal fall damage. Taken to extremes with Xiao, who takes no damage from plunging attacks whatsoever.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: With you on the receiving end; if an enemy's Electro attack or their Electro-applied body touches a Dendro Core (even those created by your team) and procs Hyperbloom, then the homing Dendro shots will go after you instead.
• Homing Projectile: Quite a handful of attacks behave as such. However, they their lose their tracking effect if the target is too far away.
  • On the player's side, some projectile-based catalyst users^note Ningguang, Yanfei, Kokomi have their attacks seek the enemy.
  • For the enemies, Ruin Guards can shoot a volley of six missiles aimed at the player after marking them with a crosshair.
  • Triggering Hyperbloom^note Hitting a Dendro Core (made by Hydro and Dendro) with Electro generates a homing projectile that deals Dendro damage on hit.
  • Beneath Fontaine waters, there are Bullet Barnacles, a Fontemer Aberrant that shoots homing projectiles at you should you swim too close.
• Hong Kong Dub: Happens quite frequently in the English voiceovers; sometimes you hear voices that go for much longer than the mouth flaps move in cutscenes.
• Hot-Blooded: One thing common among the users of Pyro Visions is that they tend to be passionate in one way or another. Diluc may seem to be an exception with his cold demeanor, but the manga shows that back when he was younger, he too was a spirited and passionate young knight.
• Human Popsicle: In Xianling's first story quest, a hunter named Olaf is found shivering in cold after being attacked by a Cryo Regisvine. He turned out to had been frozen for 300 years, and is Draff's ancestor.
• Humans Are Flawed: One of the ongoing theme in later stories is to show just how dangerous humanity could became if left unchecked. This is especially evident in Sumeru chapter with Fontaine chapter start to shows similiar thing as well.
• Humans Are Special: One of the Central Themes of the main story, most evident in Liyue and Inazuma chapter. The questions Dainsleif asks when he meets you for the first time pertain to this topic, and his character quote says that humans have their humanity, and they will defy the heavens with power from beyond. This isn't always a good thing however, as it could easily lead to hubris, and is implied to be the reason Celestia razed Khaenri'ah to the ground.
• Humble Hero: The playable Traveler is usually given the option to be in dialogue. This also extends to the first four Archons to become relevant. Barbatos and Rex Lapis are benevolent and hide among their citizenry unknown with secret identities, while Baal^note actually Beelzebul and the Tsaritsa are antagonists who are the rulers of their nations with their Archon identities fully public.
• Humongous Mecha: In Sumeru, there is a wreck of a truly colossal Ruin Guard (estimated to be ~300 meters tall) half-buried in the Devantaka Mountain. It gives a hint to the enormous technological power of Khaenri'ah at their peak, and the sheer scale of the war they waged against Celestia.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Scavenged food and cooked dishes can provide buffs, revives, and health. Your characters can eat anything instantly—even if they're currently dead and need to eat it to resurrect—but there is a limit to how many meals they can consume in a short span of time (and there's an additional cooldown limit for stamina-replenishing and reviving foods), forcing you to use healing skills in some circumstances.

I

• Idle Animation: By default, playable characters will have two of these when they are left to stand still for a while, like stretching, doing weapon flourishes, pulling out and fiddling with items they have on their person, or testing out their unique abilities. For example, Xinyan plays her guitar in her first idle animation. Some enemies also have idle animations, such as the Eremite Floral Ring-Dancers who swing on their chakrams.
• Idle Game:
  • Expeditions allow you to send a character away for up to 20 real-time hours to retrieve some items, especially crystal chunks (a relatively rare item needed in large quantities to craft weapons and high-level enhancement ore). Certain characters have passive skills that can cut the time needed for expeditions depending on the region by some percentage. Originally, characters who are sent in the expeditions couldn't be put in the party, but Version 1.1 removed this limitation.
  • The Serenitea Pot has a setup similar to an incremental game. Realm Currency is gotten at a fixed rate per hour, which can then be spent to get blueprints for furniture, or items to speed up furniture creation. Each piece of furniture put down then increases the rate of getting Realm Currency, and each new piece of furniture made increases your Trust Rank, which then lets you store more Realm Currency at a time and make more furniture at once. Near the end of Trust Rank progression, you unlock the option to exchange Realm Currency for goods useful outside the Serenita Pot like Mora and EXP Materials.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The use of Arc Words makes the name of a spot in the Fortress of Meropide—the Rift of Erosion—scarier than if it had been named Hell. As erosion is used to describe the inevitable encroach of time on what appears to be eternal, it's clear that nothing good can come from a place with that name. It doesn't quite live up to the hype, but as an abandoned Arkhium mine it's still dangerous.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Some of the actual Vision holders don't put their Visions in high regard. Lisa fears the possible truth behind the Vision's power, Keqing outright hates being given a Vision, and Jiangxue (an NPC near Wangshu Inn) swears to not use his Vision anymore after a disaster in the past, among other cases.
• I Just Want to Be Special: From the words of some NPCs to the various texts written by people, normal people wish they can get a Vision, either to raise their position in life or to help them with their work. A recurring theme in the game is just how arbitrary it is how some people get Visions while others with equal or greater ambitions do not, and the extreme lengths some non-Vision holders like Teppei and Zhiqiong can go in the pursuit of fulfilling their ambitions.
• I Know What You Fear: In "Perilous Trail", while searching for Xiao, the Traveler and company encounter a door that can read their innermost fears whenever one of them activates the switch to open it, putting that person's fears on full display for others to see, with said door being part of a trap set up by the Chasm's Bed in an attempt to lower its victim's guards by using their fears against them. Itto fears the Fantastic Racism that he endured as an oni in the past, Shinobu fears confronting her mother over abandoning her future prospect of becoming a Miko, Yanfei fears a civil dispute between clients over trivial grievances because it's one of the few cases she has difficulty dealing with, and the Traveler fears the Abyss because they know it was what corrupted their sibling to join the Abyss Order. Yelan, knowing that the door could expose confidential information about the Liyue Qixing if she opens it, refuses to participate for this reason and gives a veiled death threat to everyone that she'll have no choice but to kill them if they find out via the door.
• Illegal Religion: In Sumeru the worship of Lesser Lord Kusanali is actively suppressed by the Akademiya due to her being seen as a Sketchy Successor to Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. Most notably the Sabzeruz Festival, a celebration of Kusanali's birthday, is declared prohibited. For her part, Nahida is willing to accept the Akademiya taking charge of the nation but their schemes in attempting to trapping the populace of Sumeru City in a Lotus-Eater Machine caused her to try and take steps to stop them.
• Immortal Apathy: The Raiden Shogun's ideal is eternity. She has a difficult time understanding why the ambitions of mortals are valuable, partly because she sees them as minor in the grand scheme of things, but also because she is afraid of change. This is why she enacts the Vision Hunt Decree. Being defeated by mortals and getting to see for herself what the world is like in the present changes her mind, as she realizes mortal wishes are more meaningful than she thought.
• Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: Lynette and Lyney's magic tricks are often difficult to explain, even though they started their first show in the Opera Epiclese by temporarily putting away their Visions to make it clear they weren't using real magic. One of them is explained fully, but others leave the audience scratching their head. This is a plot point, as when Lynette appeared to be transformed into water as part of a trick, it placed Lynette and Lyney under suspicion for a crime where Water of the Primordial Sea was used to transform Fontainians into water. In reality, it was just a really good trick, as if it wasn't, it wouldn't have been so easy to reconstruct Lynette.
• Improbable Age: Although most playable characters' ages are not specified and several are immortal, many of them still seem a bit too young for the important positions they hold.
  • Diluc became a Captain in the Knights of Favonius before the age of 18.
  • Jean is Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius despite (presumably) only being in her mid-20s.
  • Jean's younger sister Barbara is a fully-ordained deaconess despite being a teenager.
  • Neither Keqing (Liyue's Yuheng) nor Ningguang (Liyue's head of government) seem to be any older than 35 at most.
  • Most of Inazuma's prominent mortal figures seem to be in their late teens to late 20s, including Kokomi (the chief political and religious leader of Watatsumi Island), Gorou (general of the Watatsumi Resistance), Kujou Sara (general of the Shogunate's armies), and Ayato (the head of the Yashiro Commission).
• Improbably Female Cast:
  • Downplayed—though a far cry from the 99% female casts of most gacha games, the playable options still lean in this direction, with the female characters outnumbering the males by a decent margin (not including the Traveler). Playables are essentially anyone who has a Vision or is an Archon, so there's no in-universe explanation for this. None of the male playable characters in particular are children, while there are 7 female characters that are that age physically.
  • In terms of weapons and elements, the Catalyst weapon type went the longest period of time without a male user until Heizou's debut, with all Catalyst users being female beforehand. The Electro element has the least amount of male characters, with only Razor and Cyno as of version 4.2. The Cryo element goes the longest time without a male 5★ character until Wriothesley's debut, for a total of 3 years in the game's lifetime ^note This does not count the Dendro element, as they had no playable characters prior to version 3.0, and one of their first characters, Tighnari, is male .
  • Initially, in 1.0-1.6, a slim majority of 5-star promotional characters were male, with 6 male characters vs. 4 female characters, meaning that men made up a significant chunk of the advertising. From 2.0 onwards, though, the discrepancy became more pronounced. Out of the 8 playable characters that were revealed to be a part of Inazuma's Archon Quest on July 9th, 2021, 2 are male.
  • Of the Seven Archons, only two are male, rather than a slightly more even 4-3 gender split.
• Improvised Weapon: The description of the Fillet Blade sword hints that it's actually just a sharp long-bladed knife used to make fish fillets.
• In a Single Bound: In addition to Xiao and Kazuha, all characters can make use of a certain object called a Spoutrock, found exclusively in the Chasm, to enhance their jumping ability, allowing them to reach super high places they previously could not.
• Inconsistent Dub: In the English dub, Klee is said to be put into "solitary confinement" when she gets into trouble, which comes across as almost Insistent Terminology, as the Knights are just asking Klee to stay in her room. As in, she's grounded. It worked for the most part, though, as Klee isn't exactly an ordinary child. However, it's translated differently in Kaeya's Hangout Event, with the characters actually using the word grounded. Presumably, this was done during the Hangout Event as Klee thinks that Kaeya was grounded. A girl thinking that her fun uncle who bails her out of trouble was grounded is cute and innocent, since it's not something that would really happen. Thinking that he's in "solitary confinement" is frightening.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Found all over the place, sitting out in the open or only manifesting after completing some sort of challenge. Some also have a magic shield, and can only be opened after killing the monsters guarding them or completing a puzzle. Special shielded shrines house chests with particularly rare items, requiring a key from a raid-type mission to get inside. Who sets up all these chests is anyone's guess.
  • The "Good Stuff, but Terrible Taste" World Quests in Fontaine have Paimon speculating that the Adventurers' Guild is responsible for setting up some of them to test prospective recruits, which is confirmed when Salsa (the quests' primary NPC) complains about "those bad guys in green...[ruining] all the beautiful scenery" with poorly placed puzzles.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Katheryne, the woman who welcomes you to the Adventure Guilds, appears in every single region. Each "Katheryne" is supposedly a different person, much to the Traveler and Paimon’s (and the player’s) confusion. The one in Inazuma tells you that she actually uses teleport points to move between different cities, but it turns out she’s just joking… maybe. Justified in that each Katheryne is revealed to be a set of robots.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • 4-star weapons are generally not as strong as 5-star weapons, but they are perfectly usable, drastically easier to obtain, and in many cases are preferred over 5-star weapons on certain characters. Among 4-star weapons, "The Catch" is especially notable for being an Infinity Minus One Sword, as it is particularly disproportionately powerful for how easy it is to obtain; you don't have to go through the RNG of Wishes to obtain and refine it at all, you just need to fish a lot, and it is much stronger comparatively than forgable weapons.
  • Some characters given for free, like Xiangling, can actually out-DPS paid-for characters with easier-to-obtain items and weapons or in how their special abilities manifest, like Xiangling's ability being simplier to use.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Most every 5-star weapon is this. Unfortunately, they tend to cost a lot of Primogems to obtain, as much as or sometimes even more than the playable characters which are the main draw of the game, so players not interested in min-maxing a few characters they really like often make do with 4-star weapons.
• Informed Equipment: Artifacts don't show up on a character's person when you have them equipped.
• In-Game Novel: The library in the Knights' headquarters contains a number of stories told throughout several volumes. Other books can be collected throughout the world as well. Many don't have anything to do with the plot and are just there for lore and entertainment purposes.
• In Place of an Eye: Hanyuuda Chizuru is a youkai. In her human form, she takes the appearance of a pale skinned woman that has kanzashi flowers over her left eye, a nod that she's Not Quite Human.
• Instant Expert: Knowledge Capsules / Canned Knowledges from Sumeru allows knowledge to be downloaded through Akasha Terminals directly to the mind. It does come with its own risks, but it allows anyone to instantly assemble a large group of experts for any project.
• Instrument of Murder:
  • The Flute is a sword with holes on its handle and blade, giving it the ability to produce flute-like sounds when wielded by those with skill. Sadly, the sword lost its ability to "sing" when it was buried and unearthed. Similarly, The Bell claymore and The Stringless bow used to be musical instruments as well.
  • Xinyan's skill whacks nearby enemies with a guitar (pulled from Hammerspace since her normal weapon is a claymore).
• An Interior Designer Is You: Version 1.5 added the Serenitea Pot, a Pocket Dimension that acts as housing to the player character. Essentially a step up version of HI3's Dorms, not only does the Serenitea Pot have a rather expansive mansion that can be decorated with many craftable furniture, but also an outdoors area that can be furnished with buildings, allowing players to, over time, effectively craft themselves a personalized village to walk around in.
• Internal Reveal: As of Chapter I, Act IV: The Traveler now knows that their twin is leading the Abyss Order.
• In-Universe Game Clock: There's a day-and-night cycle that's determined by an in-game clock separate from the server clock. It affects how certain quests can only be accessed during their specified time ranges (For example, a Stealth-Based Mission in Prologue Act 2 is only available during nighttime).
• Invisible Wall: In a sort of an overlap between this trope and Border Patrol, if you approach the unreleased regions of the map, your vision darkens and and the map gains a threatening red tint; if you keep going anyway, Paimon forces you to turn around, saying only "How about we explore the area ahead of us later?" Lampshaded in Venti's story quest where the Traveler finds out that Timmie's "imaginary friend" is a Ruin Guard of all things and you can urge Paimon to "say her favourite line", after which you turn away. As the game gets updated, the barriers are pushed back, allowing access to areas that could not be visited before. The landscape will also be altered, with generic placeholder mountains and landscape geometry being cleared out or replaced with proper assets, and sometimes roads and trails being added to create a pathway linking the new areas with existing ones.
• Invulnerable Attack: Characters with lengthy and cinematic elemental burst animations (such as Diluc) can take advantage of their burst's invincibility frames since they don't take damage, aren't knocked back by enemy attacks, and are immune to elemental reactions during the entire animation sequence.
• It Always Rains at Funerals:
  • In the comic, there was a torrential rain shortly after Diluc's father, Crepus Ragnvindr died.
  • During Arlecchino's Character Teaser, it rains as she stands in front of the graves of one of her agents.
• Item Crafting: There are four systems related to this trope; Forging (creating weapon enhancement materials and 4★ weapons), Cooking (making dishes), Alchemy (creating potions and other character progression materials), and Processing (creating Cooking ingredients from raw materials).
• Item Farming: Crafting weapons (especially high-level ones), ascending characters and weapons, and leveling the characters' skills will require you to have certain materials; many of them are either looted in the wild, taken from enemies, or acquired as prizes from domains (dungeons). In particular, the game suggests certain places have abundance of certain materials, if you check the materials' description, so that you know where to look. Expeditions also allow for passive item farming to obtain common ores and ingredients to cut down on exploration diversions for meals and forging.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Stormterror's Lair. A main story quest in Prologue Act 3 requires you to skirt around the barrier and climb up the ruins in order to reach the objective on the highest floor.
• It Will Never Catch On: A running gag during the "Shadows Amidst Snowstorms" event is Paimon asking Alchemists if they could make a gadget that could turn fruits into juice (IE, a juicer), only to be told that such a thing is either ridiculous or beyond their capabilities.
• I Will Find You: At the start of the game, the player character is separated from their sibling, and the principal story arc through the game's prologue and all of chapter one is to find them. The end of chapter one has them finally finding their sibling, only to discover that they don't want to be reunited (yet), and are working with (and possibly leading) the antagonistic Abyss faction. The story arc then changes from finding their sibling to understanding their motives.

J

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • In both of their character quests, Lisa and Diluc use their elemental abilities to interrogate some Abyss Mages after fighting them. The poor enemies usually have their butts zapped or burned until they give up. In Diluc's case, the Traveler also participates by convincing Diluc to use his powers even more.
  • In Sumeru's fourth Archon Quest, Chapter III Act IV: "King Deshret and the Three Magi", two rebels affiliated with the radical Ayn Al-Ahmar faction of Eremites dedicated to the resurrection of the Scarlet King are captured by Dehya and the Traveler, and taken back to Aaru Village for questioning as to the whereabouts of kidnapped Village Keepers. The two Desert Bandits are reticent to give up any information on Ayn Al-Ahmar or their plans for the Village Keepers, so the Guardian of Aaru Village (Candace) and the General Mahamatra (Cyno) decide that the urgent need to rescue the innocent Village Keepers from possibly becoming human sacrifices or succumbing to the harsh conditions of Sumeru's western deserts outweighs any other considerations. However, it is not known if Candace and Cyno use their elemental powers much as Lisa and Diluc did in the aforementioned example, or if they resorted to Good Old Fisticuffs to beat the vital information out of the extremist malefactors.
• Jiggle Physics: The game's physics engine is very robust, as seen in how well hair, capes, coats, etc. flow with the player's movements. Naturally, this also applies to the more well-endowed female characters exactly how you'd expect; running, jumping, and even simply turning around or idling causes their breasts to noticeably shake.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The game doesn't appear to be this at first, but when Zhongli tells the Traveler (and, by extension, the player) that It's Up to You to be an impartial chronicler, they're actually setting the tone for the rest of the story. The details of the two Great Offscreen Wars are something that is drip fed to the player as time goes on, leaving the audience guessing as to the full picture. Additionally, Teyvat has some Cosmic Horror Story elements that become more visible as time goes on, but there's never a Cosmic Horror Reveal so much as a gradual lifting of the veil on a Crapsaccharine World.
• Joke Item: Fonta is a recovery item you can get in Fontaine, but instead of healing it does nothing except create sparkles around the player for a short time.
• Jungle Japes: The Dharma Forest in eastern Sumeru is the tropical habitat of Spinocrocodiles, Rishboland Tigers and many other colouful fauna such as Dusk Birds and Shroomboars.

K

• Kaizo Trap:
  • In the Tenshukaku weekly boss fight, it is possible to succumb and die to the Blazing Heat environmental effect right when the boss is defeated (which would have simultaneously dissipate Blazing Heat); if you don't have another party member on stand-by to automatically switch with upon the death of the active character (ie. playing on Co-op Mode with other players^note Each player is designated only one of their own characters (the host can have two characters if there are less than four players in their world), you will automatically be sent you back outside to the overworld, disregarding whether or not you've collected your rewards.
  • In some domains, some enemies' attacks (like the Electro orbs from a Geovishap) can still persist for a while even after you killed all the enemies and got the "Challenge Complete" message to claim your rewards, which can kill your characters if their health is low enough; as previously stated above, if you have no (alive) off-field party members to switch out with the defeat of the active character, you will be sent out of the domain without having a chance to claim the rewards. The same thing applies to any lingering Dendro cores created from Bloom, which can blow up in your face and possibly knock out your characters if near zero health.
• Kangaroo Court: There's a lot awry with the Court of Fontaine. For starters, the trials are treated as high-class entertainment by the locals, to the point of specific tropes being name-dropped in-universe by the audience members. And then when his stagehand is killed in front of the audience, Lyney is accused of the murder on the spot by the Archon herself, before the evidence is even processed. He's desperate enough to ask that the Traveler be his lawyer, who is given but a day to build his defense. Also, the final judgments are made by a machine called the Oratrice, whose mechanizations aren't public to the people. By law, the conclusion people make does not matter. It's also possible to avoid trial altogether by dueling with one of Fontaine's top combatants, with the result of the duel determining whether the accused party is guilty.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Childe is tasked with stealing Rex Lapis' gnosis. To accomplish this, he deceives the Traveler to lead him to it, but when that doesn't pan out, he summons Osial to threaten Liyue and draw Rex Lapis out. Outside of that, he's an Axe-Crazy Blood Knight with a massive bodycount. He's later not pleased to find out La Signora and Zhongli had already negotiated for the gnosis and Childe was only an unwitting pawn used to test Liyue, who was was never meant to succeed. On top of that, due to unleashing Osial, his reputation in Liyue is ruined.
• Karmic Shunning: In the first two acts of Fontaine's Archon quests, it is discovered that somebody has been kidnapping women. It's revealed to be a man named Vacher who has been using Primordial Water to dissolve them in an effort to bring back his loved one Vigniere. After he is exposed, he finds out from the traveler of a way to see her again and begs the Traveler to let him. When he does though he finds out that she has grown to despise him for his actions and that she has merged with the souls of all the women he killed, and they drown his soul in vengeance.
• Kill Enemies to Open:
  • There are treasure chests surrounded by seals and can only be opened after the nearby enemies are defeated.
  • Inside dungeons or Temples, the doors may only open if the surrounding enemies are killed. They may also require killing such enemies in a certain manner (as part of a tutorial), or using a specific character to deal with them (such as sniping enemies out of platforms).
• Kimodameshi: The featured limited-time event in version 3.3 was the Akitsu Kimodameshi, a test-of-courage event held by the Yashiro Commission where the Traveler pairs up with a playable character of their choice (Ayaka, Kazuha or Gorou for the first round and Yoimiya, Thoma or Sayu in the second round) to find a requested item hidden in the Chinju Forest. The event's story goes like your typical slice-of-life episode at first, until the Traveler is knocked unconscious by a mysterious and hostile lady with a supernatural aura who warns them to stay away. It turns out that the festival was an elaborate joint set-up by Yae Miko and Ayato. Yae wanted to assist the youkai lady in overcoming her apprehension towards forming short-lived relationships while Ayato had heard about some young youkai wanting to revive an earlier forgotten festival to reach out and befriend humans, and organised the kimodanmeshi to attract more visitors.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Following the open-world RPG tradition, you can steal crops, ore, and other supplies right in front of people, and they never bat an eye. Some sidequests end in you claiming a treasure that clearly belongs to someone else; sometimes the owner tells you to take it, but not always.

L

• Lag Cancel:
  • Elemental Skills can be immediately chained during combos, a useful animation cancelling trick for those with long recovery animations, such as the final hit of Diluc's normal attack combo being cancelled into Searing Onslaught.
  • Pressing the Sprint button can skip recovery animations if timed properly. Offensively, this allows you to reset combos manually. Defensively, this can come in handy when you want to avoid getting stun-locked by certain enemies like the Pyro Whopperflowers.
  • It's possible to skip attack animations entirely by jumping or moving, allowing you to execute or spam attacks faster than usual. For example, this Redditor demonstrates both cancelling techniques using Klee. The recovery animations of Plunge Attacks can also be cancelled by jumping as soon as you hit the ground, although this trick is more noticeable on Xiao because he can spam them during his Elemental Burst.
  • For bow users, quickly entering then exiting Aim Mode cancels animations and resets combos. Unlike the sprint cancel method, this is faster and doesn't consume stamina, as demonstrated in this video using Fischl.
• Land of One City: Downplayed. The Nations shown so far only have one major city each. However, they also have smaller settlments or villages in their respective region, such as Springvale in Mondstadt, Qingce Village in Liyue, Ritou and Bourou Village in Inazuma, and Ghandarva Ville and Port Ormos in Sumeru.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Fontaine and 4.X in general has quite a bit of this.
  • from Navia's Story Quest onward, Story Quests feature still graphics.
  • 4.X and 3.X 5* characters have much more complex kits compared to earlier characters, often including unique features like Neuvillette's Sourcewater Droplets and Navia's unique interactions with the Crystallize reaction.
  • Compared to previous regions, which kept the local unique sapient race to either quests (Youkai, Adepti) or somewhere isolated (Aranara, Pari, Oceanids), Melusines are completely integrated into Fontaine's society, appearing as regular npcs.
  • While the World Quests of the previous regions tended to be their own things with some overlap like the Golden Slumer & Dirge of Bilqis World Quests, Most of Fontaine's World Quests are linked together, even if it isn't apparent at first.
  • 4.X and 3.X have a lot less 5* characters introduced through story quests, with them instead being introduced through the Archon Quests. Chiori is (as of 4.5) the only one after Ayato's release to be introduced during a story quest, and even then it is only if you didn't do 4.3's Roses and Muskets event.
  • Compared to the earlier Archon Quests, The Fatui aren't really doing anything harmful in the Fontaine Archon Quests, and are even helpful due to The Knave wanting to avert The Prophecy. She even gets the Gnosis from Neuvillette on good terms due to her contributions.
  • While second acts to Story Quests are nothing new, they were exclusive to Archons before Yoimiya and Cyno got second acts to their story quests in 3.7 and soon 4.6. Similarly, unlike Zhongli, Raiden and Nahida, Furina isn't getting a second act to hers 4 patches after her release despite having been an Archon.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • During Venti's story quest, when you discover that Little Timmie's "imaginary friend" is a ruin guard, Paimon is terrified, so the Traveler tells her to say her "favorite line" about "exploring the area ahead of us later." (What she says when you get too close to the unreleased parts of Teyvat.)
  • Zhongli's story quest ends with him saying that he wishes to find better ways to preserve Liyue's history, and for that, he sees the Traveler as his solution; as he/she is a traveler of worlds, Zhongli wishes that they can bring his old stories with them wherever they go. It reflects how the player themselves may have memorized or recorded the stories of the game and talk about it in other places.
  • A NPC handing out a daily commission from the huge tree outside Mondstadt is a researcher who laments that she lacks a Vision, something that almost all the playable characters have.
  "It's like only those with a Vision are the main characters in this world."
  • One of Enjou's reasons for attacking the Traveler is he finds the sheer number of Mint, Cabbages and Fowl they're carrying in their inventory to be really suspicious.
• Legendary Weapon: The flavor text given to some equippable weapons hint that they've played significant roles in the backstories of their previous wielders. For example:
  • The Black Sword was once wielded by a knight who fought for justice, but he was driven mad by the killings, causing him to don an iron mask, while the bloodstains turned his armor and the sword black.
  • The Flute was used by a sword-wielding dancer who fought bravely even when she was enslaved as a gladiator. As her sword is described to sing with the radiance of the moon's light, she was dubbed the "Dawnlight Swordswoman".
  • It's heavily hinted in the Aquila Favonia's descriptions that Vennessa is the weapon's original wielder, and it was used when she overthrew the aristocracy in Mondstadt.
• Leitmotif: Every playable character is given custom theme music that plays in their introductory Character Demos.
• Lemony Narrator: Genshin's food descriptions are usually Food Description Porn, but suspicious foods are chock-full of these.
  Suspicious Steak: Its color is a little bleak, almost as if it feels sorry for itself for being a sorry excuse for a steak.
  Suspicious Onigiri: It just about has a triangle shape, but is so loose that it threatens to disintegrate should you pick it up. Yes, disintegrate - like the expectations of your prospective guests.
• Level Cap:
  • The levels of characters, weapons, and artifacts are capped at certain thresholds, preventing further EXP acquisition. For characters and weapons, the base level cap is 20, which can be raised through Ascensions up until the hard cap of level 90 (the first Ascension raises the cap to 40, the second onwards by increments of 10); in addition, characters unlock Passive Talents for their first and fourth Ascensions, weapons change in appearance on the second. Meanwhile, those of artifacts are fixed based on their rarity (1★ and 2★ are capped at 4, 3★ at 12, 4★ at 16, and 5★ at 20).
  • Adventure Ranks are capped at certain ranks until you finish Adventure Rank ascension quests, in which you're tasked to finish a domain. As going up to certain adventure ranks will also raise the world level and the enemies' strength, this cap is helpful in order to prepare your characters before entering a higher world level.
• Level Scaling: Each time you increase your World Level, the enemies you find will be higher-leveled than before as well. The tradeoff is that they will drop better loot when you defeat them.
• Ley Line: In this game, "ley lines" are formed from a network of a certain ancient plant that grows virtually everywhere beneath the soil. They imbue elemental energy to strange plant phenomena such as the Mist Flowers, Whopperflowers, and the monstrous Regisvines.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Honkai Impact 3rd, miHoYo's previous work. While Honkai Impact 3rd is a Science Fantasy game with a bleak tone and complex storytelling, Genshin Impact is a High Fantasy game with more bright tone and easy to understand storytelling.
• Limit Break: "Elemental Bursts" are the characters' ultimate attacks that can only be used after accumulating enough Energy.
• Limited Loadout: Characters can only equip one of each Artifact type (Flower of Life, Plume of Death, Sands of Eon, Goblet of Eonothem, Circlet of Logos). There's also only 1 active skill/spell plus a Limit Break.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • Every character starts with a default outfit that they are always depicted wearing no matter how long the passage of time has been since they last spoke to the Traveler. It wasn't until the Echoing Chambers event in Version 1.6 that Jean and Barbara would lead off new unit outfit additions to the game. However, these alternate outfits get added slowly and only two at a time, meaning most playable characters won't receive their additional outfit for months or even years.
  • In Version 2.4, a new outfit style titled "Alternate" was revealed for Jean, Rosaria, Mona, and Amber and was given out to players for free. These outfits look similar to the ones they wear by default; however, they cover up any "revealing" parts of their original attire and occasionally bring a few other cosmetic changes, such as making Amber's lengthed shorts a darker red.
• Lingering Social Tensions: In the past, the serpent god Orobashi and the Watatsumi Island he ruled over waged war against the rest of Inazuma and its ruler, the Raiden Shogun, allegedly to answer the plea of his people to get more lands for living and plantation. After a fierce battle, the Shogun slayed Orobashi, and the island then went under the Shogun's rule and country's jurisdiction; while she was generous enough to let them posthumously worship their late god, Watatsumi islanders held a deep-seated grudge against her since then.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Defeating enemies while they're afflicted by the Frozen reaction will cause them to shatter into pieces, overriding their typical defeat/death animations. Even the Treasure Hoarders and the Eremites (who usually retreat from battle once their HP is depleted) are not immune from this.
• Literal Metaphor: For supernatural creatures including gods, knowledge is power. The Aranaras of Sumeru can sacrifice their memory and knowledge to perform physical feats that can harm even Eldritch Abominations, The Stove God sacrificed his powers to heal the land and lost his memory and knowledge, even the ability to speak, and during her Story Quest, Nahida was ready to sacrifice her power to heal Apep at the cost of losing her memories and reverting to a pure Irminsul branch.
• Living Memory: Ghosts are this. They spring up along the path of Ley Line Disorders, which are disruptions in the roots of the World Tree that contains the collective memories of the people of Teyvat, and therefore are technically memories themselves. At least one such ghost is aware of this and claims that this is a Distinction Without a Difference, and they should know given that they were a Youkai in life.
• Living Weapon: Played with the Luxurious Sea-Lord, which is a giant mackerel. The weapon's lore is from its perspective, saying that it was the strongest being in the sea before taking after jellyfish by learning to stop its own heart, and hopes to be able to fight its wielder when the world ends.
• Loads and Loads of Sidequests: There's quite a lot of stuff to do outside of the main story quests, most of which provide Adventure Rank EXP.
  • Looking out for collectibles such as treasure chests, Mysterious Seelie, gathering enough oculi to upgrade the Statues of the Seven, etc...
  • Character Story quests are also lengthy since they are essentially chains of consecutive quests grouped together.
  • There are a few dozen World Quests per region, and the game adds a few ones each update.
  • The Achievement System rewards you with Primogems for every completed task.
  • There are 4 Guild Commission Quests that refresh everyday.
  • Ley Line Blossoms and Domains don't go away, the former kind spawn elsewhere again after you just completed them. However, Resin is needed to claim their rewards.
  • The Adventurer Handbook has an Experience tab that provides significant rewards for completing tasks that are related to your overall progression. Other than that, there are also tabs that keep track of Commissions, Domains and Bosses. Just like Ley Line Blossoms, most minor bosses in the open world map respawn elsewhere even if you recently defeated one.
  • There are Random Events that occasionally pop up while you're exploring in the open world.
  • The Spiral Abyss is a special Domain consisting of 12 floors with 3 chambers each. Every chamber also has 3 challenges that reward Abyssal Stars. The first 8 floors are one-time challenges, while the 9th floor onward will be reset after new updates, allowing players to get their rewards again.
  • The events may come with quests of their own. In particular, the Lantern Rite event has "Lantern Rite Tales" where you help many characters in Liyue with their problems during the Lantern Rite festival.
• Logical Weakness: Though the game downplays Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors thanks to Elemental Reaction mechanic, expect Hydro to extinguish Pyro, and Pyro to melt Cryo.
• Loot Boxes: The game has a gacha system called "Wish", available after completing first few quests. Using it requires some rare currency. It also comes with a Pity mechanic wherein a high-rarity character or weapon will be available after a certain amount of pulls if you didn't get any high-rarity item in the previous pulls.
• Lost Technology:
  • Technologies such as Teleport Waypoints and Ruin Machines are remnants of a lost civilization.
  • The Scarlet King's desert civilisation was very technologically advanced, with their automatons being distinctly different to that of Ruin Machines and can still be found in the deserts of Sumeru. Kaveh's toolbox, Mehrak, was made using a modified machine core from The Scarlet King's ancient technology, suggesting that some of it functions after a thousand years even after being disassembled.
• Luck-Based Mission: Since you can't control which commissions you get each day, and many achievements require specific ones to appear, you have to rely on luck to get them done.
  • When trying to accomplish the learn-all-recipes achievement, most players get stuck on the Crab, Ham and Veggie Bake thanks to its two layers of randomness. You need to get "Food Delivery" as one of your four daily commissions, and get lucky when you complete it, since the recipe is a Rare Random Drop. Even if you don't care about the achievement, this food happens to be the best revival item (the others restore only a pitiful amount of HP), and it's also required to make Sucrose's signature dish, the "Nutritious Meal (V. 593)."
  • Getting the Beginner's Luck achievement requires the Diamond in the Rough commission to pop up (a small chance each day), and then you have to guess which of three stones contains some rare ore. You can cheat on this last part by maneuvering the camera so it phases into the rocks, but even this may not help you since quite often none of them contain anything valuable. If you guess wrong on your first try, or there's no correct rock available, you'll have to wait weeks or months for the commission to reappear.
  • The Equivalent Exchange sidequest requires randomly getting the Tales of Winter commission, which is frustratingly rare; many high-level players who've done practically everything else in the game haven't had a chance to do this yet. Just to make it more irritating, it's tracked in the reputation points menu for world quests, and there's an achievement for doing the followup quest 3 times in slightly different ways.
  • "Pirates! Argh!" is not only luck-based but also misleading, since all it says to do is "Play a game of pirates with Little Lulu, Little Fei, and Little Meng," a commission that sometimes pops up. The catch is there are three different versions of it, each starting with a different child; you have to do all three to get the achievement, and you can't choose which kid to talk to first.

M

• Mage Marksman: The playable archers (like Amber, Venti, or Fischl) can imbue their arrows with elemental power as their charged attack, or automatically when they enter Aim Mode. Some characters, like Clorinde, Chevreuse, and Fatui Skirmishers, wield firearms that shoot bullets infused with their elements.
• Magical Accessory:
  • This is what a Vision essentially is, which grants the wielder wearing it the power to harness the elements.
  • Artifacts are pieces of equipment that increase your characters' stats. They come in sets and have Set Bonus effects when you assemble two or four of any given set together.
• Magical Guide: The Seelie used to be like this towards humanity, as mentioned in a loading screen:
  Now you see them, now you don't. Once a mighty race that lived to guide mankind, now the most Seelie offer is a little treasure to willing followers.
• Magic Knight: All of the playable characters can use elemental magic, and some of them use either a sword, a claymore, or a polearm.
• Magic Square Puzzle: The second step to solving Watatsumi Island's "8 cubes" puzzle is realizing that the number of floating stone slates on each stone has to be arranged to sum the same number.
• Magic Skirt: Even when in freefall, skirts and dresses will never rise past a character's waist.
• Magic Staff: A few polearms in the game, such as the Staff of Homa or the Staff of the Scarlet Sands, take on the appearance of staves and are devoid of any sharp edges (though the former has pointed tips at the top). One bow, The First Great Magic, has a magic staff built into the center of the bow. The Spendor of Tranquil Waters is a scepter that is wielded like a sword, even having its basket-hilt near the scepter's head made of pure water.
• The Magnificent: Various characters, playable or minor NPC otherwise, have titles attached after their names. Sometimes, it's a description that's used prominently for them, or the title may just be mentioned in a brief conversation. For example, there's "Bennett the Unlucky", "Roald the Adventurer", "Lisa the Librarian", "Venti the Bard", "Chang the Ninth", etc...
• Male Might, Female Finesse: A minor case when comparing the male Catalyst users to the female ones. A majority of the female Catalyst users tend to perform their attacks with graceful arm movements, while the male ones tend to be more "physical" with their attacks. This is best seen in the first five male Catalyst users: Heizou and Wriothesley fight with brawling techniques, the Wanderer uses aggressive arm swiping when firing his Razor Wind and can do a Shockwave Stomp, Baizhu performs finger jabs as his normal attacks, and Neuvillette can unleash a forceful torrent of rushing water for his charged attack.
• Mana Meter: It's called "Energy" in this game, and is needed to unleash Elemental Bursts. It can be replenished by collecting elemental particles, attacking enemies, and equipping certain weapons or artifacts. Some characters also have abilities that grant them Regenerating Mana.
• Manchild: An NPC named Childish Jiang is one, being a grown man living alone on a mountain whose parents died when he was a child. One quest involves you playing hide and seek with him.
• Marathon Level: The "Aranyaka" World Quest chain, introduced in 3.0. What begins with saving a Forest Watcher from being attacked by fungi quickly turns into an extensive chain of quests exceeding some Archon Quests in duration.
• Market-Based Title: Interestingly, only the language versions that use roman-derived alphabets call the game "Genshin Impact" (and thus try for any implied connection to Honkai Impact 3rd^{Spoiler alert!}During title update v4.2 trailer, one of the writers briefly explain at the end of Chapter 17, Otto observed other worlds via the Imaginary Tree; one of his observations is Stormterror/Dvalin.). In Chinese and Japanese, it is simply known outright as "原神" ("Yuánshén" or "Genshin", spoken language depending). The Korean version splits the difference, giving it the main title of "원신" ("Wonsin") but giving a subtitle of "Genshin Impact" in English beneath the hangul.
• Masking the Deformity: According to books and items pertaining to them, hilichurls supposedly wear masks because they don't like it when they see their reflections. The real reason is that hilichurls are the mutated citizens of Khaenri'ah, choosing to wear masks to avoid seeing how disfigured they have become by the curses put on them by Celestia.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Ley Line Blossoms, Domains, and some Daily Commission Quests require you to kill a certain number of enemies before you can claim your rewards.
• Matrix Raining Code: Some can be seen as the illusion Nahida puts Scaramouche under falls off, emphasizing the Dungeon Punk nature of Sumeru.
• Medieval Stasis: Zig-Zagged across the different nations.
  • Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma play this straight. Technological advances and magic are virtually non-existent in the citizens' daily lives. Liyue and Inazuma downplays it somewhat, as they do employ more advanced tech and magic in certain places, such as defensive weapons (Adepti ballistae in Liyue, Kamujina Cannons in Inazuma), the Jade Chamber and Tatara Furnace.
  • Sumeru subverts this. The citizens themselves don't employ much technology, but magic use is widespread through the Akasha system, and Sumeru is home to the Akademiya, Teyvat's premier university. The Akademiya itself has multiple departments covering various topics, such as mechanical engineering, elementalism, philosophy, and more.
  • Fontaine and Snezhnaya avert this. Fontaine engineers are shown to be Muggle with a Degree in Magic, and their nation is home to a wide variety of Magitek devices, ranging from Clockwork Meks, autonomous Aquabus boats, an automatic hammer forge and even autonomous airships. Snezhnaya is known for their military technology, with power armor, cybernetic enhancements and various guns for their footsoldiers.
  • The nation of Khaen'riah is even higher, possibly up to Sufficiently Advanced Technology levels.
• Meaningful Name: Weapons usually have accompanying lore in their descriptions that explain how they got their names, such as The Flute (it once produced flute-like sounds), and the Skyrider Sword (it's a flying weapon that was used by a man named Leap to soar and pierce the clouds).
• Meaningful Rename: The ringed ruin with the tall tower in the Brightcrown Canyon was previously known as the capital of Old Mondstadt, or the city of Decarabian. But ever since he was dethroned by Barbatos, that place became abandoned. It does have a history of being used as Dvalin's resting place after he battled Durin, so it got renamed into "Stormterror's Lair".
• Memorial for the Antagonist: By the end of the Story Quest "Historia Antiqua Chapter I", Zhongli offers a tribute to his fallen foe Osial (who he defeated in the Archon War millennia ago) by offering him the relics of Havria; the Goddess of Salt, at his final resting place of Guyun Stone Forest, lamenting how the era of bygone gods is nothing but a distant memory.
  Zhongli: Osial... you and I were foes... But our ancient grudge is but a bygone memory now. May that which Havria has left behind be yours to subsume. Thus another spark of divinity departs from Liyue. My legacy shall now be left for those who come after to debate.
• Melting-Pot Nomenclature: The names of characters from Mondstadt are mostly Amero-European ones with Anglic or German roots, like Amber, Jean, or Barbara. But then we have "Venti" (Latin, maybe because he's a deity, true name Barbatos), "Sucrose" (chemical name for "sugar"^note Her name in Chinese version is even 砂糖/Shātáng, a decidedly Chinese name meaning "sugar"), and "Fischl" (though there's a lot of evidence that this is a pseudonym, and the girl herself is named Amy). For comparison, everyone from Liyue has obviously-Chinese names like Xingqiu or Chongyun. Kaeya is an Odd Name Out because he's from Khaenri'ah, a mysterious nation outside the seven primary ones.
• Merchant City: The nation of Liyue doubles as a merchant city and a Port Town. The place is well-known for its huge market activity and its local crafts. Its people, appropriately, are a Proud Merchant Race.
• Metroidvania: The Inazuma region features shades of this through its Electrograna system. Unlike previous regions where roadblocks came from story events, Adventure Rank, multiplayer-only puzzles or insufficient character strength, Inazuma features an exploration-based system of roadblocks and progress. Rather than being used as currency, Electro Sigils from chests can be offered to the Sacred Sakura to upgrade the level of the Electrograna which can let the player through the many Electro barriers and shield them from electric weather. The more basic exploration and combat one does, the more they can upgrade Electrograna, which will let them either pass through higher-level barriers or reach barriers that are further away due to the Electrograna time limit increasing. The areas reached through barriers available after upgrades will usually then allow the player to upgrade further by letting them reach more Electro Sigils and Electroculi.
• Minecart Madness: The Choo-Choo Cart in the Veluriyam Mirage plays out like a stock mine cart level in all but name, where you ride the titular Choo-Choo Cart on a track and can complete challenges along the way by popping orange balloons with Hydro projectiles. You're also given brief windows at some points to switch tracks on the fly, and some tracks become accessible at the switching station once certain tasks are done.
• Min-Maxing: It's common for players to outfit a character with weapons and artifacts that fit the character's skills and stats, particularly their inborn stat (different for each character^note For example, the Traveler has ATK%, Keqing has Crit DMG%, Diluc has Crit Rate% and so on) and whatever stat their skills rely on; e.g. Noelle tends to be given artifacts that have DEF increase as their stats, as well as the Whiteblind claymore (which has DEF% as its extra stat) because many of her skills run on her DEF stat. In the case of artifacts, it's also common to use only the 2-piece Set Bonus effects (with 2 pairs of artifacts) because they tend to be more straightforward to use than the 4-piece ones.
• Mirroring Factions: The Fatui and the Abyss Order are two villainous factions that the Traveler faces in their journey across Teyvat. They differ from each other in both origins and goals to the point that they oppose each other in-game and are in direct competition for control of the continent. The Fatui is a Corrupt Bureaucrat syndicate from Snezhnaya lead by the Cryo Archon; the Tsaritsa, whose goal is to steal every Archon's Gnosis and end their reign over Teyvat in pursuit of her dream of peace, while the Abyss Order is an Anti-Human Alliance composed of monsters from the Abyss and currently lead by the Traveler's long lost sibling, whose goal is to overthrow the Archons and Celestia entirely as revenge for destroying their original home of Khaenri'ah. Despite this, both factions do overlap in many aspects, such as their desire to challenge the divine order ruling Teyvat as well as having sympathetic motives behind them.
• Missing Secret: Since new locations or regions are only added on subsequent updates, the early versions of the game have areas or fields that are visible from a distance, yet are inaccessible. Oftentimes when exploring in the open world, you may come across a wide landscape on top of a mountain, or a secret exit from a cave. Trying to approach the unreleased areas will only cause Paimon to appear, forcing you to turn around.
• Model Museum: The "Living Beings" Archive lists every single enemy, boss, and both passive and hostile wildlife that you encounter in the game. It comes with a built-in model viewing feature that allows you to check out their models and view them in finer detail without having to engage them in the overworld, provided that you already fought the enemies or hunted (or captured) the wild animals once before.
• Modular Difficulty: Various events have challenges with difficulty settings both of the regular kind and this kind combined with there being options to have enemies have higher health of resistances to certain elements along with doing more damage. The more of these kinds of settings are on alongside the higher set difficulty, the higher the player's score can be in the event's challenge.
• Money Is Experience Points: Mora is used for almost everything from buying items at shops to leveling up weapons, artifacts and characters. In the case of the latter, levelling up characters and equipment requires mora, drops from enemies and bosses, and regional items along with exp items.
• Money Grinding: Everything you need to do for empowering characters, from levelling them up to improving their gear, costs ever-increasing amounts of Mora. There's plenty of ways to get Mora, with the most direct way being opening Blossoms of Wealth with Resin.
• Money Spider: Most enemies, whatever kind of creature they may be, drop Mora, along with a more-logical species-specific item (like damaged masks for hilichurls, and slime condensate for slimes) that has a special crafting/leveling purpose.
• Monster Arena:
  • The Contending Tides and Phantom Flow events are a series of challenges that pit you against a set of enemies. Each challenge has special conditions attached, like an aura that powers up your characters or dealing bonus damage under certain conditions, and up to three objectives to complete within the time limit. There are several difficulties for each challenge, which determines the enemies' levels and how tough the objectives are. The Phantom Flow event adds an Okuden Mode that changes the enemy lineup and may add additional stipulations to the challenge.
  • Hyakunin Ikki is a time-attack-based event in which you bring six teams of two to fight a set of enemies. Each challenge provides a bonus to different types of damage, and each team can be equipped with Garyuu Arts to bolster their abilities.
• Monster Compendium: The game has two: the "Enemies" section in your Adventurer Handbook and the "Living Beings" section in your main Archive. The former acts more like a utility piece as it lists each type of enemy, what levels they are currently at relative to your World Rank, what items they carry, and where they can be found. The latter (introduced in Version 1.3) is for general archival purposes, as it lists every distinct enemy and allows you to view their models with some flavor text. They can be added by simply defeating them in battle, and the Archive also includes both passive and hostile wildlife that can be hunted or captured. Pets like cats and dogs in settlements are included as well, and they can be added by simply passing by them.
• Mood Dissonance:
  • In the Lantern Rite of 2021, particularly the "Lantern Rite Tales" sidequests, the atmosphere is more melancholy than festive, and said quests have a strangely recurring theme of The One That Got Away.
  • The Echoing Conches from summer event Midsummer Island Adventure contrast with the summer vacation theme of the event. The stories from the conches are quite sad, involving people escaping Inazuma and being shipwrecked.
• Mood Whiplash: Act I of the Fontaine Archon Quest has quite a shocking one with Lyney's magic show, a fantastic spectacle that everyone enjoys with awe... and then the person in the stage's magic box is suddenly crushed to death by a water tank.
• Most Writers Are Writers: A large number of characters are writers for Light Novels published by Yae Publishing House. Most of these characters are NPCs, but some are playable characters working under a pen name, such as Xingqiu. Since this is an Animesque game, and light novels are as close as the setting gets to manga, this allows the characters to converse the tropes used by the story and others like it.
• Multi-Mook Melee: Much like the Superstring Dimension game mode (AKA Exalted Abyss) in Honkai Impact 3rd, the Spiral Abyss domain contains multiple floors and chambers where you have to fight multiple mooks. Each floor has a special effect that strengthens your characters in different ways, and in each floor, there are 3 chambers filled with enemies you have to tackle through. At the start of each chamber, you're given a choice of 3 buffs to help you. Finishing a floor grants various rewards; finishing the challenges in each chamber awards you with stars, which you can collect to gain Primogems as rewards. There are 12 floors; floors 1-8 are one-time challenges while floors 9-12 are much tougher but their rewards and progress are reset every 2 weeks.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Genshin is marketed to several platforms (mobile phones, PC, PS4, PS5 and an upcoming Nintendo Switch port). Visually, it is designed for anime fans. Gameplay-wise, it appeals to the RPG fans, open world fans, and gacha communities all at once.
• Multiple Endings: Hangout Events begin with a single scenario and branch out to various paths with different endings depending on the dialogue options selected by the player. It was possible to achieve a Bad Ending or end a Hangout prematurely due to losing all of your hearts in the Relationship Values system during the initial Hangout Event releases, though this mechanic has gradually been phased out with the newer Hangouts making it impossible to lose even if dialogue options that elicit a negative reaction are chosen.
• Mundane Utility:
  • One quest at the Dawn Winery has you clean up some stains inside using either Anemo or Hydro.
  • A Daily Commission Quest from Albert requires you to blow away piles of leaves using Anemo abilities. Alternatively, you can use Pyro to burn off the pile of leaves instead of blowing them away with Anemo or Hydro. Be careful not to burn the haystacks though, the quest giver won't like that.
  • Many of the character-related profiles and lore reference how they use their Visions for miscellaneous tasks, such as Diona using her ice powers to chill drinks, or Keqing using her lightning powers to cook fish when out in the wild.
  • It's common to use certain elemental skills or even elemental bursts to take out the cluster of pigeons often seen gathering in front of Timmie, as it's the easiest place to find a group of birds for Fowl gathering.
• Mythology Gag: Genshin has some references to the Honkai Gakuen universe of miHoYo, particularly in the form of expies to Honkai Impact 3rd characters, or reused concepts overall:
  • With the Unknown God's long flowing white hair, a crescent-shaped Idiot Hair and yellow eyes with cross-shaped pupils, not to mention her power over space and theatrical speeches, you'd be forgiven to think that Herrscher of the Void somehow made her way into this game.
  • Venti is basically themed after Wendy, who has a similar color scheme and ability to control the winds. Both characters also have titles that allude to their powers and godly status (Anemo Archon and Herrscher of Wind, respectively), and they lose their "power sources" (Gnosis and Herrscher Core) to mature blonde ladies affiliated with an enemy group (Signora and Cocolia).
  • Likewise, Zhongli giving his Gnosis to the Tsaritsa is a reference to the Herrscher of Earth (Owl) giving his Herrscher Core to the Herrscher of Ice (Ana).
  • In this game's supplementary manga, Murata is known as the "Lady of Fire", the Pyro Archon worshipped by a tribe with their characteristic red hair. In HI3, there's a character named Himeko Murata, who has red hair and Himeko's Previous Era counterpart was known as the Herrscher of Flames.
  • Diluc is also very similar to Himeko Murata. Both are red-headed, fiery greatsword wielders associated with alcohol. The twist is that while Himeko is The Alcoholic, Diluc actually hates alcohol.
  • The first Electro Archon Baal has the title of "Raiden Shogun", real name Raiden Ei, referencing Raiden Mei, the Herrscher of Thunder from HI3. In fact, one of HI3's supplementary comics "Escape from Nagazora" has a chapter titled "The Wrath of Baal" which showcases Mei's time as a Herrscher.
  • One of the in-game books, titled "Vera's Melancholy (I)" has Vera mention that "there is a world currently in a war against doomsday, where the noble and elegant souls of fourteen Valkyries burn bright, if only for a brief but magnificent moment". Savvy Honkai Impact 3rd players will understand that words like "doomsday" and "fourteen Valkyries" are referring to the Honkai threats and playable characters of HI3 respectively; although, for the latter, there are 13 characters in the roster at its current state.^note In context, Vera was then rebuked by her friend, saying that "you've read too many books" - implying that Honkai Impact is a fiction inside a fiction inside a fiction.
  • The Cecilia flower that only grows naturally in the heights of Mondstadt is a clear reference to Cecilia Schariac, the mother of Kiana Kaslana. The stigmata set modeled after Cecilia in Honkai Impact 3rd prominently features similar flowers in its art, and the blooming petals of the actual flower in Genshin Impact are modeled after the Schariac family crest.
  • During Chang the Ninth's daily commission, the NPC mentioned that he wants to participate a literary competition hosted by Yae Publishing House, an Inazuma-based publishing company. Many Honkai Impact 3rd players will understand that the publishing company's name is an obvious reference of Yae Sakura, one of the playable characters.
  • From the "Marvelous Merchandise" event, the NPC named Liben carries a sachet of blue crystals from HI3 on his back.
  • The co-founder of miHoYo, Forrest Wei Liu had an Author Avatar in Honkai Impact 3rd known as "Dawei".^note based from "Da Wei" (大伟哥), or "Brother Wei", a fan nickname used by the miHoYo playerbase In that game, his avatar's face◊ is only a pair of eyebrows and the hanzi for "Wei". He returns in Genshin Impact as the "Unusual Hilichurl", complete with the same "face", and the exact standard (albeit tattered) 3-piece suit. He also throws "crystals" and the plush bunny HOMU from that game as attacks, and when defeated, he drops cabbages, a reference to Ai-chan, another mascot of the game (who's often called "cabbage" because of her hair).
  • Xiao's story quest mentions that the fallen gods' lingering hatred created miasma, plagues, mutations and monsters to spring forth. They are all also how the Honkai can manifest; in particular, the "major" Honkai Beasts are named after gods and tend to cause corruptions and gathering of minor beasts by their presence alone.

N

• Named After Somebody Famous: As listed further in the Shout Out tab, some NPCs are inspired by real-life individuals. There's an author NPC named Gaiman, and a painter NPC named Vermeer. There's also Ella Musk, whose name is based from Elon Musk.
• Namedar: After Il Dottore is revealed to be the Second of the Fatui Harbingers in the Boss Subtitles, the characters recognize this immediately without needing to be told.
• National Weapon:
  • The Favonius Sword is a standard-issue longsword wielded by the Knights of Favonius.
  • The Prototype Rancour became the basis for all subsequent swords made in Liyue.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The world of Teyvat seems to a magnet for these sort of things, for in almost every event, either a portal to a domain opens up, or a leyline disorder occurs, where the Traveler and their friends can partake in to win prizes. The events all imply that this has been happening for thousands of years, which is why few people make a big deal out of them.
• Neglected Sidequest Consequence:
  • Neglecting Tsarevich's specifications in "Reliable Helper" yields a lower payout than if you complete the commission as he instructed. Note that a "successful" completion doesn't give that much of a higher payout.
  • Downplayed as there is no serious consequence for skipping out on optional event quests aside from not gaining rewards, but a lot of character interactions and stories will no longer be accessible.
    • The Midsummer Island Adventure has confirmation that Klee went on vacation with her friends without you due to Barbara leaving a note talking about her experience at the Golden Apple Archipelago. Participating in the event reveals she holds the outlander close to her despite their little interactions and that it meant a lot to her if they joined. Since Alice, Klee's mother revealed how she is part of a race that lives much longer than normal humans, this trip was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for her to spend time with all her friends that she'd eventually outlive, even moreso when the islands become inaccessible later.
    • The "holiday" events such as Lantern Rite and Windblume festival are implied to go on without the player's input due to decorations being present in the nation and commemorative items being sold in souvenir shops. However, this implies that the Traveler was not present to influence some of the events such as convincing Xiao to see the lanterns or being the Windblume Star of Mondstadt.
    • If you didn't participate in the "Shadows Amidst Snowstorms" event since it will prevent Joel from reuniting with his lost father. However there will be a World Quest where Pallad will still find Joel's father as compensation.
• New Media Are Evil: The Akasha Terminal in Sumeru is considered the ultimate creation of Greater Lord Rukkhadevaata, which grants anyone who wears it an entire library's worth of knowledge on voice command. The people of Sumeru have also become so reliant on it that most of its citizens have been robbed of their curiosity and independant thought, as almost anything they want to know about, they can look up almost instantly. Additionally, the Sages are able to control public thought and what information the population has access to by being selective about what Knowledge Capsules are uploaded into it, allowing them to easily keep them under control due to the widespread belief that anything that the Akasha says must be true. Once Nahida takes back control of the nation at the end of the Archon Quest, she decides to shut down the Akasha for good, since she thinks humanity needs their natural curiosity to be slated in order to make progress.
• Niceness Denial: Eula is a classic Tsundere who always swears vengeance on people, due to the people hating her simply for being a member of the despised Lawrence clan. That said, she repeatedly does nice things for others, especially children, and dismiss it as something she had to do as a Captain of the Knights of Favonious.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Chapter IV Act V, as it turns out, trying to get Furina to talk about the prophecy about Fontaine's doom by bringing her to court actually caused the third part of the prophecy to come true. However, it turns out that this was actually part of Focalors' plan to stop it.
• Nintendo Hard: The later floors of the Spiral Abyss and some of the more combat-focused events can fall into this. Enemies can have levels higher than 90, the maximum for a player's roster, and they're usually either bosses or multiple Elite Mooks. The game leaves little room for error in order to kill all the enemies that spawn in time to get the highest possible rank. It doesn't help that the bosses have phases where they cannot be attacked, which eat up precious time. Few games make players shout "Why Won't You Die?" as often as this one.
• No Hugging, No Kissing:
  • Among the large cast of playable characters, there is no indication that any of the characters have previously been or are currently in romantic relationships with anyone. While some have copious amounts of ship tease with each other or the player character, it's never stated to go anywhere.
  • Averted in the case of some non-playable characters, particularly important ones like La Signora, whose lover's demise kickstarted her Start of Darkness.
• Non-Combat EXP:
  • Character EXP Materials are consumable items that instantly give EXP to a character. Some Character EXP is gained through quests and defeating monsters, but the latter is such a small amount that it might as well not be there.
  • Adventure Ranks are gained by opening chests, activating teleporters and Statues of the Seven, and finishing quests and domains.
• No OSHA Compliance: Ningguang's Jade Chamber (including its rebuilt version) has no guardrails on the outside that prevents people from accidentally falling off the edge of the Chamber. Notably, this is where Yun Jin hosted an opera outside with guests, and the area where Keqing, Traveler, Ningguang, Beidou, Yun Jin and Xinyan watched the fireworks during the second Lantern Rite festival.
• No Prison Segregation: The Fortress of Meropide is shown to have both male and female convicts in it. The Unfinished Comedy questline reveals that Lanoire was born in the fortress from two convicts as a result of this.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-Universe. Being called out as Fatui members who were raised in the House of the Hearth hasn't put a dent in Lyney, Lynette and Freminet's fame at all. In fact, Lyney and Lynette seem more popular given that Lyney's story quest ends with him putting on a show in the Opera Epiclese and Lynette's hangout quest starts with her taking a break from being the main star at an event in Hotel Debord.
• Noob Bridge:
  • Version 3.0 changed the drop mechanics of Fungi enemies, giving them the distinction of being the first (and to date, only) enemies whose drop table changes depending on how they are defeated. Normally, they drop "spore" drops which are used for ascending some Sumeru characters and weapons and leveling said characters' talents. However, if hit by Pyro or Electro even once, they become "activated" or "scorched". This causes them to start dropping "nucleus" drops, exclusively a weapon ascension material, and decreases the chances of them dropping "spore" drops by 75%. This is mentioned both in the tooltip on first encountering Fungi and hinted at in the description of "spore" drops, which are stated to drop "uncommonly" from "activated" or "scorched" Fungi. Players who fail to read these tips and understand the necessity of building a team with no Pyro or Electro application for farming "spore" drops will almost certainly have difficulty getting enough "spore" drops to build their weapons and characters.
  • One variant of the Daily Commission "Gold Devouring and Mora Gathering" inadvertently punishes not paying attention to the dialogue. The objective is to "Help Hatim prepare an Apple Cider" which suggests the use of the cooking system. However, players going down this road will be leading themselves on a wild goose chase, as Apple Cider isn't a craftable food item. On the other hand, the quest dialogue reveals that Hatim knows about Diluc and his tavern, where Apple Cider is sold. This reveals the correct course of action - go to Angel's Share in Mondstadt and buy an Apple Cider from Charles.
  • When swimming in Fontaine's waters, the player can interact with Xenochromatic Creatures to gain their powers. The tutorial for the Xenochromatic Armored Crab's power informs the player that it has a counterattack mechanic - hold the skill for a shield, get hit while the shield is up, then release the skill for a more powerful blast. A second, more explicit reminder on this is given in the tutorial for Bullet Barnacles. Players who fail to take note of these will be eaten alive by Bullet Barnacle homing missiles and the "crab" Local Legend minibosses (Ocean Circuit Judge and Iron Viscount). Oh, and "Don't Get Crabby", a Fontaine Daily Commission, involves destroying three Bullet Barnacles in close proximity.
  • One of Fontaine's puzzle types involves positioning and popping Dew Bubbles, using the shockwaves to activate Harmonious Reed Pipes in the correct order. The Dew Bubble tutorial briefly mentions, at the bottom of a paragraph of text, that small Dew Bubbles can be combined to produce a big Dew Bubble with a larger area of effect. This is required to solve some Dew Bubble puzzles.
• Not Drawn to Scale:
  • Weapon size varies depending on the build of the character wielding it. While easy to miss when comparing most characters, it's very noticeable when it comes to Sayu and Dori, whose claymores are visibly smaller than those used by taller characters that they could easily be mistaken as standard swords in their own right.
  • Ruin Hunters are normally large machines, however the one that lies inactive on a forest at the south of Wangshu Inn is much, much smaller, being about the size of a large action figure.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The ending of the Fontaine Archon Quest completely destroys the long standing status quo of Celestia's control over the entirety of Teyvat due to Focalors sacrifice giving the Hydro Sovereign his power back. This has a profounding effect on the entire story with Neuvillette regaining both his power and position back, Fontaine becomes the only nation without an Archon and The Seven had permanently become The Six as a result. For the first time ever in the story, Celestia is defeated and it's all caused by their own mistakes finally catching up to them.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • The Hypostatic Symphony and Energy Amplifier Initiation event domains restore your party's HP and energy when you enter them, which is meant to let you challenge the domain repeatedly. However, this means they're also useful as general healing checkpoints which are not resource-limited like the Statues of The Seven are.
  • In the Wishful Drops event, Endora's Bubble Spit ability can also be used on other enemies besides the Hydro mimics despite not being the intended use of this mechanic. It only works in specific areas, but players took advantage of this to immobilize enemies and keep them from attacking.
  • Mona and Ayaka have an Alternate Sprint, which turns them into a fast-moving cloud of their respective element while sprinting. Unlike regular sprint, one cannot Alternate Sprint off edges. This makes these characters able to cheese "invisible platform" puzzles in Sumeru's desert by using Alternate Sprint to detect the edges of the invisible platforms.
  • The Party system is meant for the player to set up combat teams of four characters. However, since Friendship points are awarded to the characters in the party when NPC Commissions are turned in or Katheryne is visited to claim daily commission rewards, some players create "friendship parties" of characters whose Friendship points have not been maxed out, solely for the purpose of being switched to before turning in NPC Commissions or visiting Katheryne.
  • Version 3.7 included a second iteration of the "Divine Ingenuity" event, this time also allowing players to set up combat challenges with custom monster setups (as opposed to parkour challenges). Players quickly realised that some setups with Slimes could be used to cheese certain "Elemental Specialist" achievements and squeeze out some free Primogems from the game. Cue the achievement farming Domains.
• Notice This:
  • If a quest waypoint or marker is being tracked, a tall pillar of light will shine on its location when the player is still far away from it. When the objective is just close by, a sparkling trail on the ground leads to it instead.
  • Objects that give a small shine can be investigated, usually yielding some items in the process.
  • When you activate "elemental sight", on-screen enemies and objects that have an elemental attribute will be tinted with a specific color related to their element. Breakable walls are also highlighted with a vibrant color, while the Seelie Garden statues have a green mist that point to where their respective Seelies are stranded.
  • If it's your first time visiting the edge of Cape Oath, the camera will automatically focus your attention to the floating wormhole in the sky.
  • When activating a Clusterleaf of Cultivation for the first time, the camera will automatically rotate towards the Four-Leaf Sigils generated.
  • A complex puzzle in Liyue requires three crane statues to be rotated and face Qingyun Peak in order to activate a mechanism. While the game doesn't explicitly show the location of the statues on the mini-map, standing near the mechanism causes blinking lights to appear from a distance, hinting at the statues' locations.
  • During the "Unreconciled Stars" event, the playable characters' Visions glow and produce a noise when they are near a meteorite shard.
  • The "Lost Riches" event gives you a "Treasure-Seeking Seelie" that will help you locate the Iron Coins used to buy the items in the event shop. When you get closer to the coins' location, the Seelie will glow brighter; when the coins are nearby, the Seelie will emit beeping noises.
• Not So Extinct: In Xiangling's story quest, you can find an ancient species of boar, encased in ice, near where the Cryo Regisvine is fought in the quest's special domain, and the Traveler and Xiangling take its meat to Springvale. Draff notes that said boar might've been the last of its kind and thus its meat would be very pricey. But later on, after the Dragonspine update, you can find more of those boars being encased in ice on said mountain. You can even find their King Mook version, the Great Snowboar King, which will drop a lot of Chilled Meat when you beat it and respawn once every day. This initially went unremarked, but it became a plot point during the Of Ballads and Brews event, where the premise of the Autumn Crisis minigame was that a researcher from Sumeru had tasked you with capturing Snowboars so they can report to the Akademiya that the species is not extinct as was previously thought.
• Not Rare Over There: Previously, crabs were rather annoying to collect, as they don't spawn on every Mondstadt and Liyue shorelines. In contrast, the beaches of Seirai Island in Inazuma are positively crawling with the critter, easing cooking recipes requiring crabs.