It has been a long time coming. I hope she didn't get too rattled by the bumps on her road to us.
As you guys know I was lucky enough to get Qiqi in 28 pulls on Shenhe's banner. That set me up for a 90 to guarantee on Yae's banner and with my 82 Fates and 4800 (if I had done the Dailies before recording my pulls [emoji]I had everything planned so well too....) that was more than enough to secure her on my 63rd pull. I also got Thoma to C5 and a C9 Fischl thanks Mihoyo when are we not going to get useless drops? and a couple of weapons. Not too bad.
Also I realized after I recorded that video that Yae shouldn't have had a team at all. Watch this.
That's how I imagine the Archons think about combat. Easy. Don't have to think about it. Dance around opponents casually.
Now we're finally getting one that shows it off in game lol
Anyway now that Yae's here we can see a little more. Last time I tried playing it safe by only talking about the stuff I knew from rumors (more likely leaks) that further proved who she really was. Now that she's finally out I can talk about the rest.
So first check out her Burst's description. You see that kitsunetsuki term? What is that?
Bear with me Guuji-sama. I know I drone on and on about this theory but it just keeps getting juicier!
Anyway kitsunetsuki is the possession of humans by kitsune. Isn't that a little weird to mention here? Yae's just a kitsune right? Or at least in my theory she's the old Archon. So what's this about possession? Well this term alone already puts another spin on the story. And we see that in the new Character Quests but wow there was so much information to digest from those.
Like this!
So that'll take me a little longer to talk about. But as for the kitsunetsuki we see what it could mean in terms of normal possessions - Temporary hitchhikers that just want to have 1 last romp before they go off to the great beyond. But in Yae's case it could be something more relatable to Ei and the Shogun. I'm pretty sure this wasn't the original intention for the story but with all the changes that were made this was a very cool way to reorganize things. I had offered MiHoYo 3 options for figuring out how to release Yae. Option 3 was just to go ahead and tell the story like it always was but over time I started to really like Option 2.
Kitsunetsuki worked that out perfectly! So going back to Divina Vulpes vs Tonitrus Dei if Yae was the original Archon you'd expect her to have a Constellation that relates to the other 2 original Archons. (And ok in Chinese she technically does.) BUT what if she's actually not the Archon per say? What if after the Archon died she possessed a kitsune yokai and being an Archon it meant she possessed her host long-term?
In that way MiHoYo gave themselves a scapegoat for using Option 1 while at the same time doing Option 2. Because who's to say she is the Archon? Who's to say she isn't? If the story starts pulling stuff that seems incredibly unlikely that a kitsune could pull off well who's to say that a kitsune at her power level couldn't? Or maybe it's because she's more than a kitsune? As she says in the quest "Hehe. Take a guess." This also works out to be very fun for a kitsune based character.
Adding to that are all those other terms scattered across her Talents. Yakan, Tenko, Sky Fox, Spiritfox even Sesshou Sakura. All of them (minus the sakura) are Inari related. I talked about this before from the Tanuki event but when Buddhism hit Japan there was a big rewrite on all things supernatural. Tanuki got the short end of the stick. Kitsune on the other hand became godlike. But based on rank. The yakan or yako are the lowest tier of kitsune and are usually around to play tricks on humans. Most of them aren't even on Inari's payroll but you can see Yae uses them. Her skill summons 3 of them. There doesn't seem to be any mention of any of the other ranks but you can check those out yourselves thanks to this awesome video from Gaijin Goombah from a long time ago. (or actually this one that that one refers to because for some reason Gaijin took it down and now you have to watch it from this guy's reaction video [emoji]) Finally Tenko or "Sky Foxes" are at the top of the pecking order and either work directly under Inari as Gaijin says or Inari is a Tenko herself. So what's Sesshou then? Well that's from a very specific kitsune in folklore called Tamamo no Mae who is technically a tenko of the highest power level if you watched that reaction video of the Gaijin video. But she was evil because that was the folklore back then. Anyway she was eventually killed and just like Orobashi her body turned into a poisonous rock called the sesshouseki or killing stone.
All in all I have to say I'm liking what MiHoYo came up with and I was hoping to see what a retired Archon's now mortal life was like. We never got to see Zhongli's and Venti still switches to Archon mode any time it suits him so even if he is a bard we don't get to see what that's really like for him. With Yae she's sneaky enough that you never really know which version of her you're getting as the events play out and she never really demonstrates any kind of abilities that would make it too obvious.
Also in terms of gameplay it feels like because she's not just a retired Archon like Zhongli or Venti she can really show off what fighting an Archon is like. Venti made sense back then when he released as a Support character because he's the weakest Archon. But Zhongli and even Ei both released as Support too and especially for Zhongli that got people upset since he was this super badass Archon that literally buried his enemies. In terms of story Venti drowned Pilos Peak and reshaped Mondstadt into what it is today. I said it was likely all Archons would be Support built because if they really did DPS then dropping mountains on anything or slicing an island in half should kill anything no matter what. But thanks to being a kitsunetsuki Yae doesn't have to hold back. She shouldn't have power levels at those crazy heights anymore and that lends itself to being able to be balanced while still showing off Archon-like power. Her playstyle as you can see from my gif above is pretty much dancing around casually and taking enemies out without breaking a sweat.
Hope all you Yae-wanters have become Yae-havers! She's really fun both in story and in gameplay. [emoji]
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
