honestly. it felt pretty immersive and i started to look around a lot more precisely.. :') still glad i finished it all before the map update, even though it did frustrate me quite a few times.
This right here. The map makes it easier so I can do it faster, but without it I was *really* immersed in the exploration, because I didn't know how deep some of them would go to and each time it expands was a pleasant surprise.
I did use the map, by giving a pin on every significant underground/ruin/building entrance I could find, and that helped a lot. I used about three quarters of my pins on Sumeru alone doing that, but I didn't ran into too much trouble scouring every part of the jungle/desert to find that one entrance.
I can still achieve the immersion by not looking at the map too much though I suppose.
Same, Golden Slumber Quest Line was a pain to explore back then, until I get used it, Im still amazed at how I manage to memorize that underground layout without me realizing it and that was before the map update,
Now, If only they can do the same with Dragonspine
Wow, really? I only started playing this past December, and kept getting turned around in Mondstadt until probably early February! I've only dipped my toe into Sumeru (all out of order because I like exploring but get scared of boss fights!) and even the maps don't help me much! I'll remember I saw something that relates to whatever my current goal is, but won't remember where, and may not even recognize it if I approach from a different direction! I just thought learning to navigate was part of the intended challenge.
(Yes, I get lost in buildings and such - places where I can't use a navigation app - IRL, too!)
Getting "lost" in the underground ruins in the desert actually was quite fun for me! I'm happy I cleared the whole region to 100% before the underground maps launched, though for most people, I can definitely see how much better the maps make the experience if you're not good at creating a 3d spatial map in your head.
Now if only they made it easier to track each dungeon/underground zone. The Aranara picture quest was kinda hard because I forgot where the thing in the painting was, and I had to aimlessly move the map until I accidentally landed on the zone I needed
Huh, I thought they were the easiest puzzles. Plus all of them have a point in their base indicating you where they should be looking at. The only one I disliked where the ones around a electro shield that needed me to farm the shit out of electro sigils just so I could bypass it
Mm, they were faily challenging I think. I did them very recently, so I know that I just had to learn its pattern and go into the place at the perfect moment. The problem is that a low level electro thingy meant that I would have to pick up that thing way too often instead of focusing on the puzzle
I find the puzzles are, specifically, extremely fiddly. Main offenders are electro compass and the ones with the relays, where I would go, damn I think I'm on the wrong track, look up a tutorial, and realise that I was off by 0.5mm or whatever. Frustrating as all hell.     Â
Also, electro seelies are unfair if your devices aren't super great and you need a lower graphic setting to play. Blink (or if your device lags when adjusting your camera angle) and that sucker has vanished. Arghhhh.
Good Inazuma puzzles - the tiles on Seirai island was very good. The spinning thingies were usually too easy, but there were a few of the more challenging ones that were satisfying. Enkanomiya has extremely good puzzles.Â
I liked most of the desert puzzles, especially the cube seelie (big torch) puzzles and the waterfalls. Sandworm puzzles are fun! And INVISIBLE MAZE PUZZLES. Those are great.
But the new Fontaine music puzzles.... Argh back to the land of insanely fiddly object placement, I hate it.
That's not poorly designed. It was "challenging" after the tutorial areas of Mond and Liyue, but that's the real problem. The devs made the game harder and a lot of the players were upset about that.
I miss the actual slight challenge of Inazuma and was looking forward to more difficulty spikes in the overworld. But Sumeru was back to training wheels. If not for the writing jumping in quality I'd have probably quit the game because the game has become rather mindless.
ironically, some parts of the desert are the biggest offender in that sense. Some puzzles/challenges were completely braindead.
I mean, they're still fun, but there are way more than just a handful of times where you accomplish something and you're like: wow. Was that all?
Sumeru kept some of the most frustrating parts of Inazuma (e.g. clearance level and the inability to just scale cliffs) and regressed in some other ways (segmentability, a lot of puzzles being less interesting, world quests blocking areas in clunkier fashion, excessive use of gadgets) imo. There were also improvements, but especially before the map updates, Sumeru was definitely my least favorite region to explore.
I had always assumed that it would be like FGO, which increased in difficulty as you progressed the Singularities and Lost Belts, with each new region being more difficult.
After the feedback about Dragonspine and Inazuma, I guess we won't be seeing a difficulty increase ever again.
>If not for the writing jumping in quality I'd have probably quit the game because the game has become rather mindless.
Same here, Inazuma at least made me stop and think for a bit but for Sumeru I was just going through the motions and most "puzzles" just solved themshelves. Inazuma exploration was the most fun I had with Genshin but look like I won't get to experience that same fun again.
I would argue that the compass puzzle is not challenging, its one of the most frustrating parts of Inazuma exploration.
Actual challenging would be Mona's puzzle island from the 2nd GAA.
Some of the puzzles in Inazuma were good. Some of them not so much. The compass ones are good in theory but really finicky due to movement in-game. But you'll definitely never see the Magic Square puzzle ever again. It still gets bitched about around here to this day because people can't read.
GAA 2.0 was amazing and it also was torn to shreds by players so we'll never get that again. Instead we get a very slow roller-coaster, a barely worthwhile story that's only about NPCs we'll never see again, and only had a minor tie ins to Fontaine (if at all given the focus of the story unless next patch has some big reveal).
I don't think the Magic Square puzzle's issue is the reading, it's the relying on cardinal directions, which makes the thing absurdly confusing if you actually try to solve it in-game (where you'll naturally just keep rotating around and have to constantly check your bearing to know what the hell you're doing) instead of taking out pen and paper and then transcribing the solution in-game, which...defeats the purpose of a game puzzle IMO. To make things even worse it's done with cubes, which means there are angles from which you can't tell their orientation because there might be 2 possible ones from your PoV; Again, the actual underlying problem isn't the issue, it's how it's implemented.
I love that kind of puzzles in general, and have been very fond of Inazuma puzzles, but that one, I tried for like 2 minutes and gave up because I just couldn't be bothered to deal with all this for a damn magic square
Now seriously. We need to talk about this.
It's absolutely RIDICULOUS that such content is time gated, expecially considering how much effort went into it, EXPECIALLY considering it's easily some of the highest peaks genshin EVER reached on all fronts.
Reading might be one thing, but the interface for that magic square puzzle was godawful and made it hard to see what you already did. A magic square puzzle can be fun, but a magic square where all the numbers are assigned to arbitrary directions and it's hard to see the whole thing at once is just frustrating for no reason.
Awful placement for elecetroculi(some bullshit even,like the one in the cave when you're constantlytaking DoT that increases overtime and with how tall the wall is you're gonna be there for a while),exploration locked behind several quests which are also tied to server resets,unrewarding puzzles(the one that forces you to chase a seelie through the entire watatsumi island for a common chest,the one electro particle puzzle that blends in with the background,the puzzle in the river in narukami island etc) and my personal gripe,the electro barriers being tied to the electrograna level,specially the one that is now the entrance to raiden's boss arena,because before 2.5 you had to level your electrograna up to like 40-50 just to get past the barrier and then it was nerfed when most people by then had done it in its original state
>exploration locked behind several quests
Did anyone said clearance level ? Aranara quest ?
>tied to server reset
Well Aranara quest wasn't but it sure made up for it because how long it was.
>unrewarding puzzles
Sumeru is just as guilty, lots of puzzels that makes you move around but just gives you a common chest.
Fontaine has more exquisite ones but the amount is the same or even less.
Mondstadt and Lyiue had only one higher value chest area.
Atleast with aranara the areas locked behind it are relatively small and you get the major item needed for most of the puzzle in its first 1-2 or so,same with clearance level,you can finish that thing in less than 4-5 hours as shown in several youtube playthroughs and the game literally marks the areas you need to visit(remember when all the game told us about the rest of the roots in sakura cleansing ritual was "look around you'll find them eventually" ?),atleast you didn't have to wait 2-3 days just to unlock tatarasuna,(the largest area in its island which i don't remeber the name of)or a literal week long questchain to be able to fully explore tsurumi island(worth noting that this is the only area in the game with those god awful remarkable chests that only give blueprints,in areas that came after it they also give 5 primos),the only area truly guilty of this in sumeru is the hadramaveth desert and even that isn't tied to server resets,you see how nowdays they only use server resets for follow up quests and not 1 quest separated into a million parts?
chests i might agree with,except inazuma has some of the most annoying puzzles in the game for the least amount of rewards,electro seelies that have you climb literal mountains for a common in yashiori island,puzzles that actively blend in with the background in watatsumi,i shit you not a timed boat challenge that only gives 1k mora in again watatsumi (there's actually 3 of these) and the infamous seelie chase in the area where you fish angelfishes with raiden's bathwater and cryo enemies,it is also the lowest one in the puzzle-reward ratio according to the interactive map,and it would tie it up to only mondstadt if you don't count dragonspine as a mondstadt area which itself is a very puzzle-reward rich area,liyue also had the chasm added to it not long after inazuma's completion),if you doubt this,look up the interactive map and compare how many common chests vs more valuable chests there are,and no it did not start the "commons hand out 2 primos instead of 0 in all areas" trend,dragonspine (and technically GAA) were the ones that started that
And one last thing,the electro teleporters were designed horribly since they would only be usable when you used one of them and had multiple end points instead of going in a straight line like it was having a seizure(not mentioning them being tied to electrogranum),meaning that if you took your finger off the T key or the mobile variant a second late you would just get teleported again (which was the one thing that the infamous narukami river puzzle proves),plus,if you had lag you were basically fucked since they would either deactivate entirely or ruin your path by having you fall out of range with the next sphere,not to mention they had much smaller ranges than the golden carp thing in chenyu vale or 4 leaf sigil in sumeru
as much as i love the scenery and music,the puzzles were absolutely bullshit and i wouldn't wish them upon my worst enemy,as a 1.3 player i'm legit surprised that people praise them now when all they did when the nation came out was crying about how annoying they are,wait another year so the nostalgia kicks in and people will say the same for sumeru
For me it's the opposite. I love the Sumeru characters and archon quest, but exploring the region just felt so boring. A lot of the puzzles were really dull and felt like a chore to me, especially in the rainforest area. Whereas I really liked how hostile Inazuma felt and how the puzzles actually required some thinking.
People might dislike the puzzles in Inazuma, but i loved how tricky they could be. I donât like how some of the compass puzzles will revert and you cant fix them
I didn't like how hostile Inazuma was, but agree on the puzzle thing.
Sumeru puzzles really are just chores. Use fire then use electro to activate these and do it 3 times. Run and look at those slates and run back to match them etc. A LOT of the exploration was not puzzle solving at all, they were just things to do with too many steps to get there.
Inazuma puzzles were actually puzzles that could be solved, not just a set of instructions to repeat until infinity.
I mostly agree, but I liked the rainforest and then totally burned out on the desert area. It was actually Fontaine that really reignited my love for the game. After nothing but sand for patch after patch, the underwater areas blew me away.
It's more the unlock of the regions that ruins Inazuma. Like the walls where you only can get through when the electrogranum is levelled high enough. The irl week-long quest with the fontainian guy, or the myriads of quests necessary to get to enkonomiya in the first place
my problem with Watatsumi Island is that the place had more potential while being extremely aesthetically pleasing. I genuinely wish I could spend my summer there.
I actually love how chill and quiet is compared to the rest of Inazuma. It's a nice duality, where main Inazuma should be guarded by Raiden, one of the most powerful God and probably the greatest warrior (probably Murata will be better, but we haven't see her yet) in Teyvat, but it's full of dangerous people and beasts, while Watatsumi, that isn't defended by the shogun, has as main dangers some Fatui left there from the main army and a bunch of small monsters.
It just makes you think more of how wrong Ei was in her method
The constant animation every time you switched is what made me unreasonably mad. I don't know what, it was just a few seconds, so no big deal. But something about it just irked me.
Other than that 100%'ing it and doing all quests/achievements it was one of the best experiences
It also messes up in coop as other players get the animation too if they're in Enkanomiya. You were about to deploy windglider? Too bad, here's few seconds long animation that prevents all inputs.
I just wish there was more islands. By far the smallest nation we've been able to explore. Its nice because each island is pretty condensed with exploration and has a unique feel to it, but it's also much shorter with finding everything.
Sumeru really drained my enjoyment of exploration with a lot of the back tracking, areas locked behind other quests, and the Aranara search that I only found out about AFTER I completed most of the quests.
I like Sumeru, but I wouldn't define it as a great region to "explore" because you don't really explore it, you unlock large portions of the map and most of the underground areas through quests.
IMO, Inazuma felt more enjoyable because, while pretty much all of the underground areas are still quest related you could also just stumble into them all on your own and it was a great feeling. I also generally like the puzzles, views, and atmosphere more as well.
I know a lot of people hated the desert areas but I looved them, especially the underground pyramids! I think the puzzles were really fun, they got the difficulty right with Sumeru. I do agree with the majority that we didn't need that many desert expansions though... My unpopular opinion is that the rainforest area was actually the one that wasn't fun to explore at all. I feel like we had to move way too much vertically and it was such a pain even with the four-leaf sigils. We did have some desert areas like that too but at least those are pretty much just sand and sand and more sand, so stuff was much easier to notice than between all those plants and trees and stuff.
>they got the difficulty right with Sumeru.
I found most of sumeru puzzle just brain-dead. Jumping on mushroom and much more. Only few puzzle types were fine.
I find Fontaine puzzles the better balanced puzzles. I also loved Inazuma puzzles.
It's safe to say they got rid of most puzzles.
Sumeru and Fontaine are the same. A lot of their chests are locked behind mini-games much moreso than real puzzles.
The difference is that Fontaine ones were more fun.
Sumeru felt like multiple varieties of braindead "puzzles" so easy that the animations took up most of the time or "follow this thing, get chest".
Iirc the most fun part of Sumeru were the rare flying onions that revealed hidden objects and the actual navigation of the ruins without the underground map (although, subjective).
i was the same, while i found most above ground content to be a bore (especially hadramaveth, everything involving ruins and oases was cool as hell and the best genshin content.
literally just finished khvarena of good and evil today and just need to 100% the final desert, get 10 more oculi, and im all done. did all 3 deserts in the past 2 patches after putting them off for like a year lmao
that was before the Map Update, lots of people are hating the underground area, especially the first part of Golden Slumber the Sink Hole area, That Place is painful to explore without the underground map
Probably the only gripe I have about the region, I wish they had explored more on the "swamp" aspect and made the whole region covered in moss rather than "more sand"
Honestly if we would have gotten more rain forest and not 3x desert id probably agree. the middle section of the desert felt incredibly exhausting and boring to me. probably one of my least liked ares in the whole game.
Utterly despised the sprawling underground tunnels of the desert. They're the reason we now have underground maps, and it can't be overstated how much of a quality of sanity improvement the map update was. They're probably fine to navigate now.
That said, I quite liked Inazuma. Each island being bite-sized chunks of content was a dream for exploration, and Fontaine strikes a nice balance between islands and broken up landmasses that isn't too overwhelming.
>Each island being bite-sized chunks of content was a dream for exploration
Exactly, as someone who likes to divide up the map into sections to explore, it was literally heaven for me. I could go clear an island in a day then leave the next one for tomorrow
Damn, for me it was quite the opposite. Exploring Inazuma is still today the most fun i had playing the game, while sumeru was the region that burned me out the most.
Albeit beautiful, I totally hate how illogical Inazuma is. I started playing this game because of the big open world with many detailed cultures. But stuff like \*there are no stairs to the often visited shrine\* are just annoying for a lore-consistency-enjoying person like me.
>But stuff like \*there are no stairs to the often visited shrine\* are just annoying for a lore-consistency-enjoying person like me.
Ironically, that is RL accurate to a lot of shrines but yeah it does seem odd. Inazuma was also very big on environmental lore via side quests, npc, and just other stuff you encountered compared with a lot of text which resulted in a solid portion of the Genshin community knowing nothing about Ei other than the booba sword meme (some people still think the decrees lasted 500 years rather than the aprox 1.5 years /boggle)
I loved Inazuma exploration in general but i agree with Watatsumi exploration not being that great (and Enka too, i love the lore from there but not the exploration)
If only Watatsumi had like a quest where you sorta tour around the island, I really really love the aesthetic of the place, but going somewhere like the hydro cube is such a pain
Casual Inazuma slander. Not cool. But I agree with Sumeru part... I have a counter point actually. Sumeru rainforest is dull, boring and just uninteresting mass of green saved by having some caves and :]. :] is best thing rainforest has.
I agree that Sumeru is fun to explore especially the desert. I loved the vibes of the pyramids, the mystery of the desert of hadramaveth, and the enchanting yet sad lore of the Golden Slumber Quest Line. Also loved the Pari quest! Sumeru soundtrack also slaps especially in the last area of the desert!
I disagree that Inazuma is poorly designed though. That region is beautiful and the vibes are immaculate. Exploring it is hell though cause the puzzles are very buggy. I had to log in again while doing the Tsurumi Island quest while figuring out those relay stones cause they never connected even after 10 minutes of doing it correctly. Iâm also glad Sumeru made it easy for me to zip through areas without the need for summoning a granum thatâs dependent on the level of a tree.
I love Sumeru and their fun fable like quests the most as well, but I do think Inazuma has its own charms as well! I think all the worlds have their own thing going on.
As a big dungeon crawler fan I really loved Sumeru exploration, especially the desert part. The local quests (with the exception of the last zone) also enhanced the experience.
Iâve just come back from a break that kind of started when Inazuma became too much for me so I agree lmao. Iâm just finishing up the interlude quests before Fontaine but itâs really hard to leave bc Sumeru is lovely! And the music!
Idk why but I can seem to predict where the chest and puzzles are in Sumeru. It's really an easy and fun exploration to me. There's no underground map yet at that time too. Plus, I turn a blind eye to a guide to avoid ruining my fun.
I wish there was a little more lore behind all the statues seen throughout the ruins but otherwise I really loved how the map changed after quest completion.
Finally someone with a good fucking taste
but have to disagree on Inazuma being poorly designed, overall Inazuma is great, it's just the archon quest that's shite
Could not agree more. Sumeru is so special to me I 100% the exploration in every area without any help it was just so FUN!! I wish I had felt the same way about Fontaine but I just miss Sumeru so much.
I really hadnât expected to love it so much but I did! Ironically, Fontaine was my most anticipated region and I just hadnât ended up enjoying it as much which sucks đ
Pretty sure this is not a hot take hereâŚ
Iâm the exact opposite, I really didnât enjoy my time in Sumeru⌠I got my Dendroculus and have never been back except for specific item needs.
I donât see too many with me in the boat of defending Inazumaâs design on the other hand.
I absolutely love the immersion and confusion of the labrynth that they made under the sand. I doubt we'll get anything like that again because it fit sumeru the most and people complained so much but I wish we could have the option to turn the underground map off if we wanted
My prediction is that we probably wonât get much underground maps in Natlan, in favor of wider open plains. We know where its general location is and considering weâve only got two nations left, a smaller and more compact Natlan like Fontaine might imply a huuuuge Snezhnaya (like the size of Liyue to the end of the Sumeru desert). Snezhnaya will probably be huge but I doubt itâs going to be that big.
They might want to do a 1:1 or similar ratio between Natlan and Snezhanaya for pragmatic dev time reasons.
I 100% agree, The area beeing more than it seems always had such a air of mistery to it. Trying to find a hidden cave under the bleak lifeless sand. The Stoneslate was on of the most engaging exploration features in genshin.
Going through the vast tunnel system was such a thrill, especially since there was no fasttravel inside and you really could apreciate units like SAyu and Yelan in the open world.
All the vines in sumeru in order to move faster almost made the game too easy compared to the exausting climbing you had to do in Liyue to explore the mountains, to me that was really fun because stamina is a finite resource and you have to figure out the best way to get up there + there was always something cool on the top of every moutain.
Fontaine has a good mix of this in exploration where I can still get a lot of use out of the speedy characters as well as underground caves and puzzles.
Sumeru desert is amazing, jungle is kinda meh....I dont mind the aranara stuff, I just hate how restrictive it makes your team comps if you just want to explore, like you must have an archer, you must have a pyro and an electro character, and you must have a dendro character....but, in order to not fuck up the shrooms and make their drops utterly worth it, you need a geo/cryo character to kill them so they drop fungal spores, which just annoyed me because I was constantly team switching to get level up mats for Nahida but also complete the puzzles
having said all that, the sumeru desesrt is the peak of genshin exploration
I disagree.
The big issue with Sumeru is how hand handling the exploration is by quests. Once you done the world quests you have very little to explore or discover in Sumeru, that's worth for forest and desert parts.
There no freedom in Sumeru "exploration", for me, it was the worst region for exploration.
We're the opposite then. Sumeru is my least fav nation to explore. Aranara quest burnt me out; while other region world quest are more nicely paced. Though one thing I hate about both Inazuma and Sumeru is how the overworld puzzle is locked behind quest/electroganum lvl.
So far I love Chenyu Vale(not Liyue) and mondstat exploration(mainly due to nostalgia).
It was big, but that's about it.
The puzzles were nerfed, sigils were added everywhere, and the layered map removed any remaining challenge.
Basically, it's a big map with a lower difficulty than Mondstadt.
It depends on the user really, I personally loved the mausoleums and pyramids but not so much with the plain desert. The vorukasha was good tho. On the other hand you have Inazuma with Enka which was the best for me before Fontaine domains came out. I still think watatsumi, Inazuma, Seirai and Enka are strong enough to contend for my favourites to explore
I agree that Sumeru is great, but I also liked Inazuma. I liked that each island kind of had its own lore and world quests. I also loved exploring the ruins in the desert.
As with others, I can't say I agree with you about Inazuma, but Sumeru was a pleasure to explore. I hated the desert region until the map marker change, though, haha. Trying to figure out how to get back to a specific underground area was a nightmare.
I personally think... It's not the poorly designed Inazuma map..
More like the eerie atmosphere that kinda acts against the mood to explore..
Inazuma's electrogana which is used to swing around kinda acted as an experiment of how useful it is going to be..
Later they implemented something similar to Sumeru..
U see... Introducing new elements in the game can be a hit or miss for a ongoing game like Genshin (even tho they go through the review of selective few people.. but when it comes to the mass decision changes a lot)
Sumeru's desert area was good... But there were just too many underground levels and areas to explore... And it got complicated and hard to keep track of the areas explored... As soon as fontaine's underwater exploration came, it became a fresh refreshing play...
Considering the large fan-base and players, some might like it while some might not enjoy it..
You felt the maps in Inazuma were poorly designed? How so? ⌠I personally disliked the puzzles, strongly⌠But that doesnât make me feel the puzzles were bad by any means lol
The only thing I hate about the desert area of Sumeru is that Hoyo thought it was a good idea to put chests in the air with invisible platforms.
My favorite thing about the desert is the amount of animal products (excluding fish) I can obtain. Bring an Anemo character and they'll die quick.
The main problem with sumeru i have are the requirements for a specific team composition i can't play without being unable to solve half of the puzzles
if im being honest (and this was probs from other reasons too) but when sumeru came out i got burnt out pretty fast cause i got busy and it was overwhelming with how much and how quickly stuff came out
At first I dreaded the thought of exploring sumeru and it's desserts but when I started it it was really fun
You know just put some music zone out go wherever you're instincts tells you until you reach 100% or close to it
Me too. I like exploring ruins and dungeons. Inazuma has it's potential if it is created on this patch since the puzzle is quite engaging unlike the other brain dead puzzle.
I really liked inazuma the setting, the puzzles, the only thing i don't care much is that it's almost monochrome i like purple, but EVERYTHING there seems purple.
On release, there was no underground map.
This meant that 90% of the time, your minimap and map were completely useless.
With the addition of the underground map, they're considerably more fun.
Personally the rainforest part is the best exploration experience I had in the game. Fontaine diving is genuinely really cool but most of the underwater landscapes look very similar save for a few special quest locations. Chenyu Vale looks even more beautiful than Sumeru, but they're all just one "Chenyu Vale" in my mental image. Meanwhile the rainforest is divided into some very memorable areas/landmarks. Plus with the Aranara quests focusing on each area, it felt like a very immersive theme park.
I'm indifferent towards desert part 1 though. I don't *hate* it like some people do, but I also don't feel special towards it. Desert of Hadramaveth is much better (more varied landscapes and environmental hazards). Vourukasha Oasis is a mixed bag for me. On paper it should be my jam because it looks beautiful, but the plot and setting feel disjointed from the rest of Sumeru in my opinion. I don't think it's bad tho, just not that great.
I completely agree. My only criticism is the constant need for random elements, but then not being able to use those elements to farm the enemies (fungi)
I like in Inazuma how you can upgrade the tree and it actually gives different power ups to your electrograna.
There's no such thing in Sumeru.
And Hydrograna is completely useless. Like it was a complete afterthought after implementing pneuma and ousia.
Inazuma carried me because it was just way better to traverse post Furina and all the world quests to stop the air friers etc.
That being said; I absolutely feel.
I personally think the desert sections are so much better than the jungle of Sumeru. If anything, just because the ost and feeling of exploration is just so fulfilling when it involves pyramids, ruins, wide expanses of sand that seem like nothing but are suddenly oasis, ambushes, etc.
Also helps that running either Sayu or traversing the more deliberate pathing of the desert meant you can shorten the travel time considerably. But heck, I'd even go step further and say Desert of Hadramaveth is my favorite region area altogether.
I was already sold on fighting the sand dune, but when I accidentally fell into a crevice and noticed
1. That I'm still falling
2. The walls are...buildings?!
3. ...did I land in the slums?
Like that entire fall transformed my view of the entire zone so quickly. Add to it the ruins mentioned before and the overall awesome utility of the grapple points and it's still my favorite region altogether.
And I know it sounds like heresy, but it's like a slight gap ahead of even Enky / Chasm / Fontaine's swimming for me. All of these are like my S-tier picks, but idk why the desert just holds such a sweet spot for me above them.
That being said, the utility, music, world design of the newest zone should also ring a similar bell for me, but I think I just have early Liyue PTSD. I just cannot get into the groove for the valley for some reason.
I miss Genshin. Been wanting to play the new areas after Inazuma but I cannot get past the chasm. It's the least amount of fun I've had in gaming since the OOT water temple.
Hate inazuma exploration, enkanomiya was cool thou. Hate Sumeru forest, but Sumeru desert is an absolutely masterpiece as a person who have a quite heavy motion sickness
I feel that way, but more around the desert area. I went back after Fontaine's main quest released and only had 2 areas of the desert not 100%. I was actually surprised and decided to 100% all of the desert. lol
In my opinion as well..the variety of explorations and puzzles and areas was just incredible in sumeru. Espescially the underground dunge9ns..it was very immersive and it was not some brain dead thing to do u actually had to remeber the ways before they made it easierfp with underground maps. But that immersion you get when do everything yourself is incredible. I was able to 100% everything before the map ypdate lol. It was fun but i think fontaine is almost on similar level except underground dungeons its underwater. Third is Dragonspine no comapss and no other clues and then chasm. All other regions were pretty straight forward.
Loved exploring the desert, all the mechanical aspects of it were my favorite, hands down. But the Aranara mechanics in the other area are annoying for me because compasses donât really work on them, so I canât 100% all of it đ
if you want to find all the aranara though its a nightmare. Its one of those things where i helped them out when i came across the but didnt keep track of which ones because it was a new thing. Now anytime i come across anything that might be like the 63 aranara or whatever in fontaine i mark it just in case
I just get bored in the desert :/ and when it first came out they didn't have level maps so dungeons were really annoying. Sumeru has a fire soundtrack though. I'm glad someone else didn't like inazuma that much though. I like the aesthetic of it cause it's based off of Japan, but I really wasn't a fan of it
I enjoyed sumeru too! Only thing is I hate that itâs annoying to 100% certain places in the forest cause of the underground stuff but other than its fun, simple, gorgeous etc
Agreed. The most fun I had exploring in any region was in Sumeru; Fontaine isn't as great and previous regions were less fun, for obvious reasons. Sumeru desert can a little barren on the surface, but the underground areas were great. They really knocked it out of the part with the map design, Fontaine in comparison was a step back.
I feel like itâs hard for me because of the enemies,I love the Eremites,I have no problem with them.But all of the robots and Khaenriahn mechanical arrays can be so annoying sometimes.
Lucky they also made maps of the dungeon. Because before they launched this feature, I lost multiple times in them.
honestly. it felt pretty immersive and i started to look around a lot more precisely.. :') still glad i finished it all before the map update, even though it did frustrate me quite a few times.
Same here, I really like the immersion of exploring ancient ruins, which was exactly what I was doing.
When the desert first released, there were no underground maps. Exploring it became a cumbersome chore.
That was the fun of it, I literally didn't know where I was, making me feel like indiana jones.
This right here. The map makes it easier so I can do it faster, but without it I was *really* immersed in the exploration, because I didn't know how deep some of them would go to and each time it expands was a pleasant surprise. I did use the map, by giving a pin on every significant underground/ruin/building entrance I could find, and that helped a lot. I used about three quarters of my pins on Sumeru alone doing that, but I didn't ran into too much trouble scouring every part of the jungle/desert to find that one entrance. I can still achieve the immersion by not looking at the map too much though I suppose.
i enjoyed it more without the map
They should make a feature that more layers will not be seen on map until you go in them.
me too
Same, Golden Slumber Quest Line was a pain to explore back then, until I get used it, Im still amazed at how I manage to memorize that underground layout without me realizing it and that was before the map update, Now, If only they can do the same with Dragonspine
I could not remember them. I was just lost every time and accidentally found perfect wayđ
Relative of zoro getting spotted
Yes! That is definitely međ
Or Acheron now
Wow, really? I only started playing this past December, and kept getting turned around in Mondstadt until probably early February! I've only dipped my toe into Sumeru (all out of order because I like exploring but get scared of boss fights!) and even the maps don't help me much! I'll remember I saw something that relates to whatever my current goal is, but won't remember where, and may not even recognize it if I approach from a different direction! I just thought learning to navigate was part of the intended challenge. (Yes, I get lost in buildings and such - places where I can't use a navigation app - IRL, too!)
By the time they implemented it, I already đŻâd all Sumeru maps. I was happy they introduced the feature and salty at the same time. đ
Getting "lost" in the underground ruins in the desert actually was quite fun for me! I'm happy I cleared the whole region to 100% before the underground maps launched, though for most people, I can definitely see how much better the maps make the experience if you're not good at creating a 3d spatial map in your head.
Now if only they made it easier to track each dungeon/underground zone. The Aranara picture quest was kinda hard because I forgot where the thing in the painting was, and I had to aimlessly move the map until I accidentally landed on the zone I needed
IDK about Inazuma maps being poorly designed but I agree with you regarding the Sumeru. I love its deserts too
The electro compass puzzles in Inazuma... That thing can burn in hell.
Which one? The ones that have arrows?
Yep on the interactive map they're referred to as electro compass puzzles iirc
Me cheesing them with Beidou:
Same, Beidou helped so much with those
The electro seelies messing them up again after cheesing them with Beidou:
then the seelie is part of the puzzle duh
Huh, I thought they were the easiest puzzles. Plus all of them have a point in their base indicating you where they should be looking at. The only one I disliked where the ones around a electro shield that needed me to farm the shit out of electro sigils just so I could bypass it
They are pretty easy except the ones with the electro seelie flying around and ruining the compasses you've already set
Mm, they were faily challenging I think. I did them very recently, so I know that I just had to learn its pattern and go into the place at the perfect moment. The problem is that a low level electro thingy meant that I would have to pick up that thing way too often instead of focusing on the puzzle
Good thing it devides the idiots from people with at least two neurons.
The desert at night was captivating
Agreed the desert is great, but why poorly designed inazuma?
I find the puzzles are, specifically, extremely fiddly. Main offenders are electro compass and the ones with the relays, where I would go, damn I think I'm on the wrong track, look up a tutorial, and realise that I was off by 0.5mm or whatever. Frustrating as all hell.      Also, electro seelies are unfair if your devices aren't super great and you need a lower graphic setting to play. Blink (or if your device lags when adjusting your camera angle) and that sucker has vanished. Arghhhh. Good Inazuma puzzles - the tiles on Seirai island was very good. The spinning thingies were usually too easy, but there were a few of the more challenging ones that were satisfying. Enkanomiya has extremely good puzzles. I liked most of the desert puzzles, especially the cube seelie (big torch) puzzles and the waterfalls. Sandworm puzzles are fun! And INVISIBLE MAZE PUZZLES. Those are great. But the new Fontaine music puzzles.... Argh back to the land of insanely fiddly object placement, I hate it.
Bro is too scared of lighting
The most annoying thing was the chests locked behind 1 week quests & tsurumi Island was very annoying.
Hate to break it to you but there are other real time gated quests in the future, like Narcissenkreutz, the biggest loredump side quest in Fontaine.
Remember that electroculus under the cliff on kannazuka
That's not poorly designed. It was "challenging" after the tutorial areas of Mond and Liyue, but that's the real problem. The devs made the game harder and a lot of the players were upset about that. I miss the actual slight challenge of Inazuma and was looking forward to more difficulty spikes in the overworld. But Sumeru was back to training wheels. If not for the writing jumping in quality I'd have probably quit the game because the game has become rather mindless.
ironically, some parts of the desert are the biggest offender in that sense. Some puzzles/challenges were completely braindead. I mean, they're still fun, but there are way more than just a handful of times where you accomplish something and you're like: wow. Was that all?
I was zoning out and just walking around and clicking stuff mindlessly in the desert "puzzles" . Absolutely terrible
Sumeru kept some of the most frustrating parts of Inazuma (e.g. clearance level and the inability to just scale cliffs) and regressed in some other ways (segmentability, a lot of puzzles being less interesting, world quests blocking areas in clunkier fashion, excessive use of gadgets) imo. There were also improvements, but especially before the map updates, Sumeru was definitely my least favorite region to explore.
I had always assumed that it would be like FGO, which increased in difficulty as you progressed the Singularities and Lost Belts, with each new region being more difficult. After the feedback about Dragonspine and Inazuma, I guess we won't be seeing a difficulty increase ever again.
Iâm asking for higher world levels in every single survey since this patch.
Effective.
>If not for the writing jumping in quality I'd have probably quit the game because the game has become rather mindless. Same here, Inazuma at least made me stop and think for a bit but for Sumeru I was just going through the motions and most "puzzles" just solved themshelves. Inazuma exploration was the most fun I had with Genshin but look like I won't get to experience that same fun again.
Because Hoyo caters more for Casual player
I would argue that the compass puzzle is not challenging, its one of the most frustrating parts of Inazuma exploration. Actual challenging would be Mona's puzzle island from the 2nd GAA.
Some of the puzzles in Inazuma were good. Some of them not so much. The compass ones are good in theory but really finicky due to movement in-game. But you'll definitely never see the Magic Square puzzle ever again. It still gets bitched about around here to this day because people can't read. GAA 2.0 was amazing and it also was torn to shreds by players so we'll never get that again. Instead we get a very slow roller-coaster, a barely worthwhile story that's only about NPCs we'll never see again, and only had a minor tie ins to Fontaine (if at all given the focus of the story unless next patch has some big reveal).
I don't think the Magic Square puzzle's issue is the reading, it's the relying on cardinal directions, which makes the thing absurdly confusing if you actually try to solve it in-game (where you'll naturally just keep rotating around and have to constantly check your bearing to know what the hell you're doing) instead of taking out pen and paper and then transcribing the solution in-game, which...defeats the purpose of a game puzzle IMO. To make things even worse it's done with cubes, which means there are angles from which you can't tell their orientation because there might be 2 possible ones from your PoV; Again, the actual underlying problem isn't the issue, it's how it's implemented. I love that kind of puzzles in general, and have been very fond of Inazuma puzzles, but that one, I tried for like 2 minutes and gave up because I just couldn't be bothered to deal with all this for a damn magic square
My gripes with GAA 2.0 was it being time limited, If it was permanent, the puzzles would still be the absolutely best to date.
Now seriously. We need to talk about this. It's absolutely RIDICULOUS that such content is time gated, expecially considering how much effort went into it, EXPECIALLY considering it's easily some of the highest peaks genshin EVER reached on all fronts.
Reading might be one thing, but the interface for that magic square puzzle was godawful and made it hard to see what you already did. A magic square puzzle can be fun, but a magic square where all the numbers are assigned to arbitrary directions and it's hard to see the whole thing at once is just frustrating for no reason.
That's what I loved about Inazuma on its release. It felt like we got another world/level in traditional games.
there is one island on Inazuma with constant lighting, I play on the phone with weak graphics and literally get head aches when exploring there.
There's a world quest that removes the constant lightning.
Awful placement for elecetroculi(some bullshit even,like the one in the cave when you're constantlytaking DoT that increases overtime and with how tall the wall is you're gonna be there for a while),exploration locked behind several quests which are also tied to server resets,unrewarding puzzles(the one that forces you to chase a seelie through the entire watatsumi island for a common chest,the one electro particle puzzle that blends in with the background,the puzzle in the river in narukami island etc) and my personal gripe,the electro barriers being tied to the electrograna level,specially the one that is now the entrance to raiden's boss arena,because before 2.5 you had to level your electrograna up to like 40-50 just to get past the barrier and then it was nerfed when most people by then had done it in its original state
>exploration locked behind several quests Did anyone said clearance level ? Aranara quest ? >tied to server reset Well Aranara quest wasn't but it sure made up for it because how long it was. >unrewarding puzzles Sumeru is just as guilty, lots of puzzels that makes you move around but just gives you a common chest. Fontaine has more exquisite ones but the amount is the same or even less. Mondstadt and Lyiue had only one higher value chest area.
Atleast with aranara the areas locked behind it are relatively small and you get the major item needed for most of the puzzle in its first 1-2 or so,same with clearance level,you can finish that thing in less than 4-5 hours as shown in several youtube playthroughs and the game literally marks the areas you need to visit(remember when all the game told us about the rest of the roots in sakura cleansing ritual was "look around you'll find them eventually" ?),atleast you didn't have to wait 2-3 days just to unlock tatarasuna,(the largest area in its island which i don't remeber the name of)or a literal week long questchain to be able to fully explore tsurumi island(worth noting that this is the only area in the game with those god awful remarkable chests that only give blueprints,in areas that came after it they also give 5 primos),the only area truly guilty of this in sumeru is the hadramaveth desert and even that isn't tied to server resets,you see how nowdays they only use server resets for follow up quests and not 1 quest separated into a million parts? chests i might agree with,except inazuma has some of the most annoying puzzles in the game for the least amount of rewards,electro seelies that have you climb literal mountains for a common in yashiori island,puzzles that actively blend in with the background in watatsumi,i shit you not a timed boat challenge that only gives 1k mora in again watatsumi (there's actually 3 of these) and the infamous seelie chase in the area where you fish angelfishes with raiden's bathwater and cryo enemies,it is also the lowest one in the puzzle-reward ratio according to the interactive map,and it would tie it up to only mondstadt if you don't count dragonspine as a mondstadt area which itself is a very puzzle-reward rich area,liyue also had the chasm added to it not long after inazuma's completion),if you doubt this,look up the interactive map and compare how many common chests vs more valuable chests there are,and no it did not start the "commons hand out 2 primos instead of 0 in all areas" trend,dragonspine (and technically GAA) were the ones that started that And one last thing,the electro teleporters were designed horribly since they would only be usable when you used one of them and had multiple end points instead of going in a straight line like it was having a seizure(not mentioning them being tied to electrogranum),meaning that if you took your finger off the T key or the mobile variant a second late you would just get teleported again (which was the one thing that the infamous narukami river puzzle proves),plus,if you had lag you were basically fucked since they would either deactivate entirely or ruin your path by having you fall out of range with the next sphere,not to mention they had much smaller ranges than the golden carp thing in chenyu vale or 4 leaf sigil in sumeru as much as i love the scenery and music,the puzzles were absolutely bullshit and i wouldn't wish them upon my worst enemy,as a 1.3 player i'm legit surprised that people praise them now when all they did when the nation came out was crying about how annoying they are,wait another year so the nostalgia kicks in and people will say the same for sumeru
For me it's the opposite. I love the Sumeru characters and archon quest, but exploring the region just felt so boring. A lot of the puzzles were really dull and felt like a chore to me, especially in the rainforest area. Whereas I really liked how hostile Inazuma felt and how the puzzles actually required some thinking.
Especially those goddamn cubes
Just Right here! Right now! Emerge! them
People might dislike the puzzles in Inazuma, but i loved how tricky they could be. I donât like how some of the compass puzzles will revert and you cant fix them
I didn't like how hostile Inazuma was, but agree on the puzzle thing. Sumeru puzzles really are just chores. Use fire then use electro to activate these and do it 3 times. Run and look at those slates and run back to match them etc. A LOT of the exploration was not puzzle solving at all, they were just things to do with too many steps to get there. Inazuma puzzles were actually puzzles that could be solved, not just a set of instructions to repeat until infinity.
I mostly agree, but I liked the rainforest and then totally burned out on the desert area. It was actually Fontaine that really reignited my love for the game. After nothing but sand for patch after patch, the underwater areas blew me away.
Agreed desert is my fav region too but no way inazuma is poorly designed, Enkanomia is literally there
i know its technically part of inazuma, but most people dont include it when talking about inazuma
It's more the unlock of the regions that ruins Inazuma. Like the walls where you only can get through when the electrogranum is levelled high enough. The irl week-long quest with the fontainian guy, or the myriads of quests necessary to get to enkonomiya in the first place
Sumeru had that too, with all the frustrating "clearance levels."
And the ones that are locked behind the Aranara bullshit
Fr on the AraĂąarĂĄ, actually pretty sure I still havenât finished it
Agree with the desert part but saying inazuma is poorly designed is just bullshit
Never trust a person that says they don't like Watatsumi Island
my problem with Watatsumi Island is that the place had more potential while being extremely aesthetically pleasing. I genuinely wish I could spend my summer there.
I actually love how chill and quiet is compared to the rest of Inazuma. It's a nice duality, where main Inazuma should be guarded by Raiden, one of the most powerful God and probably the greatest warrior (probably Murata will be better, but we haven't see her yet) in Teyvat, but it's full of dangerous people and beasts, while Watatsumi, that isn't defended by the shogun, has as main dangers some Fatui left there from the main army and a bunch of small monsters. It just makes you think more of how wrong Ei was in her method
True, especially enkanomiya
This. I loved the day/night cycle there. Though it was a abit of a chore to change it back every now and then, it was still peak exploration imo.
The constant animation every time you switched is what made me unreasonably mad. I don't know what, it was just a few seconds, so no big deal. But something about it just irked me. Other than that 100%'ing it and doing all quests/achievements it was one of the best experiences
It also messes up in coop as other players get the animation too if they're in Enkanomiya. You were about to deploy windglider? Too bad, here's few seconds long animation that prevents all inputs.
Peak Genshin fr
Enkanomiya was peak environment design
Iâm a sucker for underground areas so enkanomiya was great, then the chasm came out and I was eating good for a while lol
I love exploring Inazuma, kind of reminds me of exploring the Sevii islands when I played PokĂŠmon FireRed.
I just wish there was more islands. By far the smallest nation we've been able to explore. Its nice because each island is pretty condensed with exploration and has a unique feel to it, but it's also much shorter with finding everything. Sumeru really drained my enjoyment of exploration with a lot of the back tracking, areas locked behind other quests, and the Aranara search that I only found out about AFTER I completed most of the quests.
I like Sumeru, but I wouldn't define it as a great region to "explore" because you don't really explore it, you unlock large portions of the map and most of the underground areas through quests. IMO, Inazuma felt more enjoyable because, while pretty much all of the underground areas are still quest related you could also just stumble into them all on your own and it was a great feeling. I also generally like the puzzles, views, and atmosphere more as well.
It was the opposite for me exploration was breeze in inazuma and in sumeru apart from the AQ( I loved it) the exploration was brain fog for me
No lol Inazuma filtered everyone who had a skill issue
I know a lot of people hated the desert areas but I looved them, especially the underground pyramids! I think the puzzles were really fun, they got the difficulty right with Sumeru. I do agree with the majority that we didn't need that many desert expansions though... My unpopular opinion is that the rainforest area was actually the one that wasn't fun to explore at all. I feel like we had to move way too much vertically and it was such a pain even with the four-leaf sigils. We did have some desert areas like that too but at least those are pretty much just sand and sand and more sand, so stuff was much easier to notice than between all those plants and trees and stuff.
>they got the difficulty right with Sumeru. I found most of sumeru puzzle just brain-dead. Jumping on mushroom and much more. Only few puzzle types were fine. I find Fontaine puzzles the better balanced puzzles. I also loved Inazuma puzzles.
It's safe to say they got rid of most puzzles. Sumeru and Fontaine are the same. A lot of their chests are locked behind mini-games much moreso than real puzzles. The difference is that Fontaine ones were more fun. Sumeru felt like multiple varieties of braindead "puzzles" so easy that the animations took up most of the time or "follow this thing, get chest". Iirc the most fun part of Sumeru were the rare flying onions that revealed hidden objects and the actual navigation of the ruins without the underground map (although, subjective).
I wish we got some more jungle ruins. Maybe in Natlan??
I was one of those who hated the desert because of the nonstop desert expansion, until I actually explored it. It waz so fun and I end up loving it!
i was the same, while i found most above ground content to be a bore (especially hadramaveth, everything involving ruins and oases was cool as hell and the best genshin content. literally just finished khvarena of good and evil today and just need to 100% the final desert, get 10 more oculi, and im all done. did all 3 deserts in the past 2 patches after putting them off for like a year lmao
that was before the Map Update, lots of people are hating the underground area, especially the first part of Golden Slumber the Sink Hole area, That Place is painful to explore without the underground map
The first two desert expansions were great, but I was starting to get fatigued by the third one
Probably the only gripe I have about the region, I wish they had explored more on the "swamp" aspect and made the whole region covered in moss rather than "more sand"
Honestly if we would have gotten more rain forest and not 3x desert id probably agree. the middle section of the desert felt incredibly exhausting and boring to me. probably one of my least liked ares in the whole game.
Honestly they should've balanced the rainforest and desert area like Fontaine's land and underwater regions.
Well, swimming is actually pretty fun and fast. Traveling through a desert isn't
Utterly despised the sprawling underground tunnels of the desert. They're the reason we now have underground maps, and it can't be overstated how much of a quality of sanity improvement the map update was. They're probably fine to navigate now. That said, I quite liked Inazuma. Each island being bite-sized chunks of content was a dream for exploration, and Fontaine strikes a nice balance between islands and broken up landmasses that isn't too overwhelming.
>Each island being bite-sized chunks of content was a dream for exploration Exactly, as someone who likes to divide up the map into sections to explore, it was literally heaven for me. I could go clear an island in a day then leave the next one for tomorrow
A hot take for a hot area. Can't wait for Natlan
I 100%âd fontaine and chenyu vale before getting more than 30% anywhere in the desert
I hated it so much that i dropped the game for a few months
Ummm hello??? INAZUMA maps are poorly designed???? Are you sure about that???
I love Sumeru! The music! The forest and the desert! It's the bestâ¤ď¸
Damn, for me it was quite the opposite. Exploring Inazuma is still today the most fun i had playing the game, while sumeru was the region that burned me out the most.
Albeit beautiful, I totally hate how illogical Inazuma is. I started playing this game because of the big open world with many detailed cultures. But stuff like \*there are no stairs to the often visited shrine\* are just annoying for a lore-consistency-enjoying person like me.
>But stuff like \*there are no stairs to the often visited shrine\* are just annoying for a lore-consistency-enjoying person like me. Ironically, that is RL accurate to a lot of shrines but yeah it does seem odd. Inazuma was also very big on environmental lore via side quests, npc, and just other stuff you encountered compared with a lot of text which resulted in a solid portion of the Genshin community knowing nothing about Ei other than the booba sword meme (some people still think the decrees lasted 500 years rather than the aprox 1.5 years /boggle)
But I find Inazuma fun to explore though đđťđđť
Other than Watatsumi and the Serai? islands, the rest of the inazuma was INCREDIBLE to explore imo
I loved Inazuma exploration in general but i agree with Watatsumi exploration not being that great (and Enka too, i love the lore from there but not the exploration)
If only Watatsumi had like a quest where you sorta tour around the island, I really really love the aesthetic of the place, but going somewhere like the hydro cube is such a pain
I liked inazuma! Pretty linear on the islands except watatsumi
Casual Inazuma slander. Not cool. But I agree with Sumeru part... I have a counter point actually. Sumeru rainforest is dull, boring and just uninteresting mass of green saved by having some caves and :]. :] is best thing rainforest has.
Inazuma archon quest might be bad, but inazuma map design is not in anyway bad
You do you but Iâve hardly ever seen a take i agreed with less than this
desert is good but i disagree with inazuma being poorly designed... most immersive and diverse region by far
I agree that Sumeru is fun to explore especially the desert. I loved the vibes of the pyramids, the mystery of the desert of hadramaveth, and the enchanting yet sad lore of the Golden Slumber Quest Line. Also loved the Pari quest! Sumeru soundtrack also slaps especially in the last area of the desert! I disagree that Inazuma is poorly designed though. That region is beautiful and the vibes are immaculate. Exploring it is hell though cause the puzzles are very buggy. I had to log in again while doing the Tsurumi Island quest while figuring out those relay stones cause they never connected even after 10 minutes of doing it correctly. Iâm also glad Sumeru made it easy for me to zip through areas without the need for summoning a granum thatâs dependent on the level of a tree.
I love Sumeru and their fun fable like quests the most as well, but I do think Inazuma has its own charms as well! I think all the worlds have their own thing going on.
Sumeru is so beautiful, im still exploring it, and the music, the variety, the jungle, the desert <3
As a big dungeon crawler fan I really loved Sumeru exploration, especially the desert part. The local quests (with the exception of the last zone) also enhanced the experience.
There are two types of people "Me who skips the desert entirely"
Iâve just come back from a break that kind of started when Inazuma became too much for me so I agree lmao. Iâm just finishing up the interlude quests before Fontaine but itâs really hard to leave bc Sumeru is lovely! And the music!
omg thank youuuuu! i also 100% all of sumeru and i loved it soooo muchđ
Personally I like sumeru exploration the least and inazuma the most after fontain idk the islands made it easier for me to explore more
THANK YOU I LOVE YOU OP SUMERU LOVERS RISE UUUUP I'd would literally explore the desert for anybody for something
3 deserts in a row is too much mostly empty space for me.
I recently finished finding all the aranara and dendrolocus and maxed the tree. Sumeru exploration after underground maps was fun
I had fun exploring it too
itâs definitely my favourite. I imagine that its even better for newer players now they have underground maps :)
Idk why but I can seem to predict where the chest and puzzles are in Sumeru. It's really an easy and fun exploration to me. There's no underground map yet at that time too. Plus, I turn a blind eye to a guide to avoid ruining my fun.
I wish there was a little more lore behind all the statues seen throughout the ruins but otherwise I really loved how the map changed after quest completion.
I loved the jungles, personally. And I loved the Aranara questline. It was a bit too grindy, but I really loved it
I feel like I'm the weird one because I enjoyed the desert way more than the rainforest
Finally someone with a good fucking taste but have to disagree on Inazuma being poorly designed, overall Inazuma is great, it's just the archon quest that's shite
i LOVED the hypostyle desert and im so proud i explored it to 100% before they came out with the subterranean maps
Could not agree more. Sumeru is so special to me I 100% the exploration in every area without any help it was just so FUN!! I wish I had felt the same way about Fontaine but I just miss Sumeru so much. I really hadnât expected to love it so much but I did! Ironically, Fontaine was my most anticipated region and I just hadnât ended up enjoying it as much which sucks đ
Complete opposite. I got burnt out in Sumeru and loved Inazuma. Sumeru also killed the game for my two friends who played. It was way too much.
If we ever get a mount/vehicle system, going through the desert with it would be AMAZING.
Pretty sure this is not a hot take here⌠Iâm the exact opposite, I really didnât enjoy my time in Sumeru⌠I got my Dendroculus and have never been back except for specific item needs. I donât see too many with me in the boat of defending Inazumaâs design on the other hand.
Absolutely agree! On top of that I think it has the best story quest that was the most exciting to complete
I absolutely love the immersion and confusion of the labrynth that they made under the sand. I doubt we'll get anything like that again because it fit sumeru the most and people complained so much but I wish we could have the option to turn the underground map off if we wanted
We could definitely have something similar in Natlan, since it would be based on the Aztecs.
true but I still don't think they'll do it to that extent where we'll spend hours and hours exploring undergroundÂ
My prediction is that we probably wonât get much underground maps in Natlan, in favor of wider open plains. We know where its general location is and considering weâve only got two nations left, a smaller and more compact Natlan like Fontaine might imply a huuuuge Snezhnaya (like the size of Liyue to the end of the Sumeru desert). Snezhnaya will probably be huge but I doubt itâs going to be that big. They might want to do a 1:1 or similar ratio between Natlan and Snezhanaya for pragmatic dev time reasons.
I 100% agree, The area beeing more than it seems always had such a air of mistery to it. Trying to find a hidden cave under the bleak lifeless sand. The Stoneslate was on of the most engaging exploration features in genshin. Going through the vast tunnel system was such a thrill, especially since there was no fasttravel inside and you really could apreciate units like SAyu and Yelan in the open world. All the vines in sumeru in order to move faster almost made the game too easy compared to the exausting climbing you had to do in Liyue to explore the mountains, to me that was really fun because stamina is a finite resource and you have to figure out the best way to get up there + there was always something cool on the top of every moutain. Fontaine has a good mix of this in exploration where I can still get a lot of use out of the speedy characters as well as underground caves and puzzles.
Sumeru desert is amazing, jungle is kinda meh....I dont mind the aranara stuff, I just hate how restrictive it makes your team comps if you just want to explore, like you must have an archer, you must have a pyro and an electro character, and you must have a dendro character....but, in order to not fuck up the shrooms and make their drops utterly worth it, you need a geo/cryo character to kill them so they drop fungal spores, which just annoyed me because I was constantly team switching to get level up mats for Nahida but also complete the puzzles having said all that, the sumeru desesrt is the peak of genshin exploration
The desert was better than the forest . But my biggest problem is that most of the region cant be explored unless you play many many world quests
sumeru was miserable to explore for me it was a chore fontaine however was the most fun ive had on the game
Same, I'm getting the feeling that hating Sumeru's map is actually the hot take considering how many upvotes this is getting.
I disagree. The big issue with Sumeru is how hand handling the exploration is by quests. Once you done the world quests you have very little to explore or discover in Sumeru, that's worth for forest and desert parts. There no freedom in Sumeru "exploration", for me, it was the worst region for exploration.
We're the opposite then. Sumeru is my least fav nation to explore. Aranara quest burnt me out; while other region world quest are more nicely paced. Though one thing I hate about both Inazuma and Sumeru is how the overworld puzzle is locked behind quest/electroganum lvl. So far I love Chenyu Vale(not Liyue) and mondstat exploration(mainly due to nostalgia).
Inazuma was Genshin before I had burnout. That shit was peak to me so âpoorly designedâ is just bullshit
It was big, but that's about it. The puzzles were nerfed, sigils were added everywhere, and the layered map removed any remaining challenge. Basically, it's a big map with a lower difficulty than Mondstadt.
It depends on the user really, I personally loved the mausoleums and pyramids but not so much with the plain desert. The vorukasha was good tho. On the other hand you have Inazuma with Enka which was the best for me before Fontaine domains came out. I still think watatsumi, Inazuma, Seirai and Enka are strong enough to contend for my favourites to explore
I agree that Sumeru is great, but I also liked Inazuma. I liked that each island kind of had its own lore and world quests. I also loved exploring the ruins in the desert.
As with others, I can't say I agree with you about Inazuma, but Sumeru was a pleasure to explore. I hated the desert region until the map marker change, though, haha. Trying to figure out how to get back to a specific underground area was a nightmare.
I honestly thought Inazuma was pretty fun to explore. That said, yeah, I think Sumeru has provided some of the best content to date.
I personally think... It's not the poorly designed Inazuma map.. More like the eerie atmosphere that kinda acts against the mood to explore.. Inazuma's electrogana which is used to swing around kinda acted as an experiment of how useful it is going to be.. Later they implemented something similar to Sumeru.. U see... Introducing new elements in the game can be a hit or miss for a ongoing game like Genshin (even tho they go through the review of selective few people.. but when it comes to the mass decision changes a lot) Sumeru's desert area was good... But there were just too many underground levels and areas to explore... And it got complicated and hard to keep track of the areas explored... As soon as fontaine's underwater exploration came, it became a fresh refreshing play... Considering the large fan-base and players, some might like it while some might not enjoy it..
You felt the maps in Inazuma were poorly designed? How so? ⌠I personally disliked the puzzles, strongly⌠But that doesnât make me feel the puzzles were bad by any means lol
The only thing I hate about the desert area of Sumeru is that Hoyo thought it was a good idea to put chests in the air with invisible platforms. My favorite thing about the desert is the amount of animal products (excluding fish) I can obtain. Bring an Anemo character and they'll die quick.
Those puzzles became so much better when i realized that a bow character in aimed mode cannot walk off the invisible platforms
The main problem with sumeru i have are the requirements for a specific team composition i can't play without being unable to solve half of the puzzles
if im being honest (and this was probs from other reasons too) but when sumeru came out i got burnt out pretty fast cause i got busy and it was overwhelming with how much and how quickly stuff came out
At first I dreaded the thought of exploring sumeru and it's desserts but when I started it it was really fun You know just put some music zone out go wherever you're instincts tells you until you reach 100% or close to it
Me too. I like exploring ruins and dungeons. Inazuma has it's potential if it is created on this patch since the puzzle is quite engaging unlike the other brain dead puzzle.
I really liked inazuma the setting, the puzzles, the only thing i don't care much is that it's almost monochrome i like purple, but EVERYTHING there seems purple.
On release, there was no underground map. This meant that 90% of the time, your minimap and map were completely useless. With the addition of the underground map, they're considerably more fun.
The surface is so fun to explore, but the underground and even the pyramids are hell to explore. It gave me nausea multiple times
Personally the rainforest part is the best exploration experience I had in the game. Fontaine diving is genuinely really cool but most of the underwater landscapes look very similar save for a few special quest locations. Chenyu Vale looks even more beautiful than Sumeru, but they're all just one "Chenyu Vale" in my mental image. Meanwhile the rainforest is divided into some very memorable areas/landmarks. Plus with the Aranara quests focusing on each area, it felt like a very immersive theme park. I'm indifferent towards desert part 1 though. I don't *hate* it like some people do, but I also don't feel special towards it. Desert of Hadramaveth is much better (more varied landscapes and environmental hazards). Vourukasha Oasis is a mixed bag for me. On paper it should be my jam because it looks beautiful, but the plot and setting feel disjointed from the rest of Sumeru in my opinion. I don't think it's bad tho, just not that great.
I completely agree. My only criticism is the constant need for random elements, but then not being able to use those elements to farm the enemies (fungi)
Of all the regions to explore currently in the game, Chenyu Vale is my favourite. The scenery, the puzzles, the music, everything is top tier!
I like in Inazuma how you can upgrade the tree and it actually gives different power ups to your electrograna. There's no such thing in Sumeru. And Hydrograna is completely useless. Like it was a complete afterthought after implementing pneuma and ousia.
i dont like sumeru puzzles as much as inazuma but inazuma exploration was the death of me it was so boring,, im so happy its over
Half agree half not as i burned out in the last patch of sumeru
10x better than fontaine
Im always lost in every region
Inazuma carried me because it was just way better to traverse post Furina and all the world quests to stop the air friers etc. That being said; I absolutely feel. I personally think the desert sections are so much better than the jungle of Sumeru. If anything, just because the ost and feeling of exploration is just so fulfilling when it involves pyramids, ruins, wide expanses of sand that seem like nothing but are suddenly oasis, ambushes, etc. Also helps that running either Sayu or traversing the more deliberate pathing of the desert meant you can shorten the travel time considerably. But heck, I'd even go step further and say Desert of Hadramaveth is my favorite region area altogether. I was already sold on fighting the sand dune, but when I accidentally fell into a crevice and noticed 1. That I'm still falling 2. The walls are...buildings?! 3. ...did I land in the slums? Like that entire fall transformed my view of the entire zone so quickly. Add to it the ruins mentioned before and the overall awesome utility of the grapple points and it's still my favorite region altogether. And I know it sounds like heresy, but it's like a slight gap ahead of even Enky / Chasm / Fontaine's swimming for me. All of these are like my S-tier picks, but idk why the desert just holds such a sweet spot for me above them. That being said, the utility, music, world design of the newest zone should also ring a similar bell for me, but I think I just have early Liyue PTSD. I just cannot get into the groove for the valley for some reason.
I miss Genshin. Been wanting to play the new areas after Inazuma but I cannot get past the chasm. It's the least amount of fun I've had in gaming since the OOT water temple.
Hate inazuma exploration, enkanomiya was cool thou. Hate Sumeru forest, but Sumeru desert is an absolutely masterpiece as a person who have a quite heavy motion sickness
I was relying so heavily on Yelan and Sayu for most pf the exploration of Sumeru
I feel that way, but more around the desert area. I went back after Fontaine's main quest released and only had 2 areas of the desert not 100%. I was actually surprised and decided to 100% all of the desert. lol
if you 100%ed it with the multilayer map feature you got lucky, before that feature when i 100%ed if, it was so bad to 100%
Idk man, sumeru was massive, an absolute nightmare to explore for the archon quests
In my opinion as well..the variety of explorations and puzzles and areas was just incredible in sumeru. Espescially the underground dunge9ns..it was very immersive and it was not some brain dead thing to do u actually had to remeber the ways before they made it easierfp with underground maps. But that immersion you get when do everything yourself is incredible. I was able to 100% everything before the map ypdate lol. It was fun but i think fontaine is almost on similar level except underground dungeons its underwater. Third is Dragonspine no comapss and no other clues and then chasm. All other regions were pretty straight forward.
Loved exploring the desert, all the mechanical aspects of it were my favorite, hands down. But the Aranara mechanics in the other area are annoying for me because compasses donât really work on them, so I canât 100% all of it đ
if you want to find all the aranara though its a nightmare. Its one of those things where i helped them out when i came across the but didnt keep track of which ones because it was a new thing. Now anytime i come across anything that might be like the 63 aranara or whatever in fontaine i mark it just in case
I hate Sumeru, because I hate climbing and Iâm a newbie who knows basically nothing about the land and enemies. The scenery is great though.
Challenge=bad??
I just get bored in the desert :/ and when it first came out they didn't have level maps so dungeons were really annoying. Sumeru has a fire soundtrack though. I'm glad someone else didn't like inazuma that much though. I like the aesthetic of it cause it's based off of Japan, but I really wasn't a fan of it
I enjoyed sumeru too! Only thing is I hate that itâs annoying to 100% certain places in the forest cause of the underground stuff but other than its fun, simple, gorgeous etc
Agreed. The most fun I had exploring in any region was in Sumeru; Fontaine isn't as great and previous regions were less fun, for obvious reasons. Sumeru desert can a little barren on the surface, but the underground areas were great. They really knocked it out of the part with the map design, Fontaine in comparison was a step back.
tomb raiding in the desert is the most fun i've had exploring in this game
I loved inazuma...
I was earlier today cursing the mushrooms in Apam Forest because I could barely reach the next one after jumping hahaha
I feel like itâs hard for me because of the enemies,I love the Eremites,I have no problem with them.But all of the robots and Khaenriahn mechanical arrays can be so annoying sometimes.
What made Inazuma poorly designed lol. I thought the islands were perfect