3.... 2.... 1.... 1.... 2.... 3....
Our glorious Guuji-sama has finally come at last. It's been a long journey and hopefully there are no lingering scars accumulated along the way.
So the big news for you guys is probably fighting the Shogun (and more on that later) but the bigger news for me is essentially more confirmation about my theory.
Divina Vulpes. So it isn't Tonitrus Dei which means her true identity will still be hidden but I feel confident that MiHoYo isn't taking things lying down. A while back I talked about 3 possible routes MiHoYo could take with Yae after all the changes to the Archon Quest. The first one was my least favorite which is just going along with the rest of the lack luster changes they had to make between v1.6-v2.1. While it would be the safest option it also makes the story make no sense and puts Inazuma in a poor state. Option 3 was just saying "screw you Genshin's the biggest game ever so I'm gonna do what I want" but that would cause problems and politics suck.
So with Divina Vulpes it looks like we're going with Option 2 and MiHoYo's even doing it in a very creative way which I appreciate. (Although judging from the Characters Quests it might lead into Option 3 but we'll see.) There's a little more but I think it came from leaks so I'll mention it when she's out but just her Constellation itself tells us the whole story. After the Archon Quest I put up a long topic about why things were definitely changed and part of the idea that Yae is still the old Archon is because of the Constellation names. Ei's is called Imperatrix Umbrosa where Umbrosa relates to her human name Ei for shadow while Imperatrix means the feminine form of Emperor in Latin. Notice how Emperor isn't exactly a god. Our other Archons are Carmen Dei and Lapis Dei for Wind and Stone God respectively. What's Yae's Constellation? Divina vulpes. So the detail here falls into that leak territory but just out of this name we can see divina meaning goddess. It translates to Fox Goddess so there's a difference between the other Archons right? Unlike Venti and Zhongli she's not the current Archon and hasn't been for a while so it makes sense she is not the God of her element like they are. I love what MiHoYo came up with!
And this works in the Chinese version too and there's even more to it than in the English version. So there's no Dei stuff in Chinese. The Archons (until Yae) all seemed to have unrelated Constellation names. Zhongli's is literally Rex Lapis 岩王帝君. Venti's is Sage of Music 歌仙 and Ei's is the People under Heaven 天下人. But now with Yae there's a pattern. Her Chinese Constellation is 仙狐 or Fox Sage. What's a little weird to me is why Zhongli gets to be king and Venti and Yae are only sages (probably going to fit into the Phanes thing somewhere) but regardless there's that pattern. In my topic about Seelies I talked about what 仙 this word meant right? Meanwhile 人 this word means people or human being. Very clearly points out that Ei was an allogene ascended to godhood while Yae just like Venti was an Archon.
And that feels like the point of this whole update. Based on what we saw I'm going to guess the Characters Quests will uncover the reality behind what actually happened between Ei/Makoto and Yae. In my theory she was their master and then they eventually decided to depose her replacing Moment with Eternity.
Finally the last thing I can talk about is Yae's weapon. Kagura's Verity is the perfect weapon for Yae lorewise. The thing is what's called a suzu bell used in the Shinto ritual Kagura dance. Now in lore the Kagura dance was used on 1 very important occassion. The sun goddess Amaterasu didn't want to see her brother so she hid herself away in her room. But as a SUN goddess once she hid the land became dark so the other gods tried to get her to come back out. Nothing worked until they decided to try throwing a party right outside her room and then another goddess Ame-no-Uzume got drunk and danced on a table with the bell. All the gods laughed themselves silly and that got Amaterasu's attention so she finally peeked out of her room and another god was able to shut the door behind her.
This idea of a goddess getting huffy and locking herself up somewhere nobody else could get to sounds familiar doesn't it? It's literally what Ei did. Inazuma became a very dark place after that especially once the Shogun went nuts and listened to the Fatui of all people to seal off the nation and cause no shortage of suffering to her people almost like taking the sunshine right out of their lives. And to get her to come back out Yae needed to get her attention so we get the Traveler. By the end Yae uses the Traveler to finally get Ei to come back out of her room.
So I think it's fair to say the Shogun's the new weekly boss. From the looks of it the Part 2s of all the Archon Character Quests probably give us new weekly bosses. (which means man Venti's is probably going to be rough if we haven't seen it yet) Anyway I think the story will play out to the theme of Ei stepping down because with her still in charge the story can't move on for Inazuma in the Human Age. (I actually said this could be the case but I also did not expect it to come this soon. I guess it is important to leave each region to human rule before we get the next one.)
As we saw from the clips Ei's changing heart doesn't fit with the Shogun's programming and we already know from her previous Character Quest that it isn't easy to edit that programming because that was part of the design. So rather than it having happened already from the Archon Quest Ei's finally going to come to grips with Yae's God of the Moment ideal and forego her Eternity. And when you violate Eternity you get on the bad side of the Raiden Shogun. It's also really silly of Ei to have made the Shogun that crazy powerful that she gets a Herrscher of Thunder mech in her final form lol. (I don't even wanna know what this means for Scara. [emoji]) The ending cutscene is going to look incredible though. I'm not sure if Raiden Shogun will end up dismantled or if she'll end up like Azhdaha but either way we're going to beat it and free Inazuma from that whole mess that v2.1 was supposed to have solved already haha.
And that'll lead to Yae's quest which we know you can only unlock after doing Part 2. Why? Well we're likely to figure out who Yae is by then so her own Character Quest will be loaded with spoilers similar to how Zhongli was still just the funeral parlor guy until you finish the Archon Quest. As for her quest we already learned that it's about some mystery. I'm going to go and hope (because it's probably not) that it'll delve into her kitsune life instead of her Archon one. I mean when they say "urban legend" I'm reminded of Havria being "killed by Morax out of jealousy." So it could be that there are rumors maybe even with research involved that something is wrong with the history of Inazuma as the people know it and that'll be where Yae comes in. But I actually hope that it'll be more light-hearted and we'll get into it with Yae just teasing about any connections to her when she was an Archon and more of the quest will go into her life as the Guuji since we haven't gotten that yet. Both Archons have quests about their past and Ei's should already cover that. (Also papa needs to see more foxy ara ara dagnabit!)
That is going to be so annoying for the people who do Abyss because you know an OP version will be part of the next rotation. That said I've seen most endgame players using full meta teams that don't do shields at all like National or Morgana (or the newer Rosaria Morgana that's unga bunga easy to play) so not sure that'll be a problem either. As for the rest of us I'm personally always fighting under a shield. I don't like seeing my HP not at full. That said I also have ranged characters so unless they guys run around like Pyro Agents or Battle Axe Mitas I should be fine too.
I'm not sure why MiHoYo is so set on hinting at Co-op Competitions. Just do official stuff already. Your fans especially the Chinese ones are already running tournament after tournament on bilibili. Having official stuff would make their lives easier not to mention improve the quality of the existing competitions. Anyway that said it's cool to have this new addition to our Homeworlds. (if that's where it'll be found) I would really love it if we could set up enemies and bosses instead of just this obstacle course but hey it's a good start.
Overall the events seems ok. I just don't know how annoying it'll be to get this one done with how badly I've been lagging lately. The drinks one seems fun and the main one seems a little stressful but shouldn't be anywhere near as bad as the potion domain one we had to deal with. Also Hyakkunin wasn't my favorite but it was easy enough to get the prizes and MiHoYo's shown that they keep improving on their older events so I hope this one will be done better too.
I like how they explained the previews this time. That was something that was missing from things like the v1.5 livestream and got everybody confused on Yae's name.
But also Chasm right? So next update will be Liyue again. Here's the thing. v2.6 if things go in a pattern should be just like v1.6 where we got our first peek at Inazuma. The Chasm actually shares a border with Sumeru if you look on the map so getting this area now is likely a stop gap to Sumeru's release in v2.7 aka v3.0. But now you might be wondering Sumeru's got the Dendro Archon. We don't have Dendro characters yet. Are they just going to plop us into the new element with the new region? And that's why having the Chasm and therefore a Liyue based update works. Baizhu and Yaoyao are both known characters that are set to release in the future. Both of them are Dendro and Liyue-based. My guess is v2.6 will have something to do with them and probably about reopening the Chasm. So with them we'll get our first taste of Dendro and that'll be practice enough for v3.0 and Sumeru's release around May.
That said I had plans for the Chasm MiHoYo. [emoji]
Actually it's fine. If you guys look at the map the Chasm is marked at the bottom left of Liyue so there's a whole patch on top that could easily work into my whole Demon's Lament thing in the future. Will it? Who knows. But seeing how many pieces of Inazuma we got it's very likely each region will have multiple add on areas.
And that's the livestream! What was your favorite part? And how much are you looking forward to these new stories we'll be getting?
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
