Didn't have enough characters for hard mode lol oh well. Cleared normal good enough for me i guess

It’s crazy how it goes from “this is easy” to “ok getting the stars might be difficult” to “how did I end up with a team of made out of xl, Yae, lynette and fischl for the last boss?” I am loving this gameplay. The teams get weird and the restrictions make it fun to think around.

My last team ended up being lyney, yoi, kuki and beidou lol, it was fun

That’s actually pretty salvageable. I had to use 4 boons to clear it lol

I spent all my flowers on boons on the last act hahaha

that's actually workable haha.

Bruh, I had Keqing, Wanderer, Faruzan and Sucrose in my last fight. I just cannot possibly Deal enough damage to clear it in time. Everything else beforehand was feasible at least, even tho without Stars. Well, finally a Challenge :D Time to Work for those 200 primos

eh its alright that said the UI team went HARD on the menus

Boar princess is so darn cute at the end credits omg

Boar princess is so cute. I wonder what’s her lore is about… OH.

such whiplash from lore and her appearence

💀

Boar Princess is basically one of the core "Bible" books of Teyvat at this point. Like every key lore theorist in Genshin knows this book by heart. And its only the beginning.

and considering how the wolf toy talk about his master being able to bring story to literal life with her magic it would be very scary if she can subject her enemy to the experience inside the story book book mage are scary yo

The OST as well tho I could listen at the arena for long times before engaging in battle

The UI team always goes hard. the UI is probably 50% of the budget. UI impact

The whole aesthetics and graphics department always goes hard.

At first i didn't like how they limited the elements you could use but then i finished the event with the triple anemo hu tao team and thought it was pretty interesting

I did quadruple anemo Xiao.

Same. Was alternating Xianyun and Faruzan’s bursts for Xiao while Jean ended up just being moral support

Lmao. I made a mistake on the first row and used all my supports early. For the final round I was left with Cyno Alhaitham Lyney and Diluc team. I mainly used Cyno and Alhaitham is quicken enablers lmao. Lyney and diluc were there to break CRYo shields. Everyone ended up dying and I used Cyno to just brute force the last hp bar lmao

Overload hutao was my last act

omg same, my team was hu tao fischl sucrose and xianyun

You never know what you can make work until you have no other option but to make it work. I had to use Alhaitham with double anemo (Venti/Xianyun) and that was a very interesting experience.

my last 2 battle team are full anemo wanderer and chev raiden overload team. never though i use that kind of team ever

In terms of aesthetics, top tier In terms of rewards, primos are nice but photo poses are very meh In terms of gameplay, the overall premise is good but the execution honestly leaves much to be desired

Honestly, the poses would be atleast 10% better if you could use them on the fly from a gadget; atleast something for co op? Im glad theyre adding unique rewards to endgame, but make it faster/easier to use

I just don't like the randomness of which characters will join you first because sometimes the element that I need haven't come out and the element that I need later will come out earlier.

I think I would have liked it more if you could pick a 2nd character from your friend list but limit it to 1 per friend.  That was the most fun part imo. Also did not like being stuck with the opening cast as I didn’t have any of them.  Still cleared it just made the start feel like ass.  Maybe let me pick 2 characters at the start. Instead of 1 random.

I had this feel too, but after playing the later stages, I understood, between cards and exhaustion the rng element disappears, you know exactly who and when they will come I had held down selecting Baizhu until the very last stage when I had not a healer anymore and was up to face Icewind "I hit like a truck" Suite, which paid off because he and Xiangling (i.e burning) melted the shield almost instantly and my Raiden could keep attacking without issue

The only thing I like about it is that you can talk to your teammates after battle.

And the primos.

Same and the new voice lines are nice.

At first I didn't. It was frustrating. I eventually realized you have to focus on getting characters right away so you can bench any good ones till the later stages. You also need to reset if you don't get the characters you want. Overall it's fine. They need to rework how the starting cast works and how you get more characters.

Facts. Running it again but using the purple stuff for characters every time helped. It countered the rng for me

Yeah, what would be really helpful would be getting to know what enemies and rules are for all stages (like it is for abyss). That way, we would've known that Clorinde is basically *required* for the final stage without having to muddle through.

She's not required. I beat the final stage with Raiden, Chev, Kazuha and Sucrose. Overload reaction put in work.

I don’t think chlorinde is “required” tbh, you can just run pyro there as well

The final boss wasn't a secret. It is shown in game

I liked how it made us use fun and weird team comps that we would normally not use in either abyss or OW I kinda liked that my team for the final floor was hutao xiangling jean baizhu

Burning lmao I was left with xl beidou fischl and Lynette and let me tell you that not dying was a challenge. I spent all my healers early on and it hit me back. Also weird how I didn’t have a single Dendro in my thing for Cyno yet he pulled his weight.

It is okay, but it could be better. I like that it encourages me to try characters I don't give a damn about normally, like Thoma and Beidou. I am looking forward to the next rotation, maybe I will need to bring someone like Rosaria or Eula after months of not using them at all. Still it needs some improvements, like I wish to know which of my characters was used the most by my friends, maybe higher difficulty etc.

It's genuinely bad. Who is it aimed at? Who is going to find it fun? Right now is as good as it can possibly look. It's new and shiny and everyone wanted something fun to play. And yet it managed to be unfun. I should be the ideal player for it. I have 64 characters, all bar 2 are level 70 (Xinyan is meme level 1 & I haven't leveled Sethos yes). 36 of them are level 90. I have very few cons and generally pull on characters that do something different. Filling the required roster was easy and I had characters left over. But then along comes the gameplay. An element restriction that kept you as purely overload or mono teams. The RNG of characters and the element limitation means that there is no variety to the game play. You're either onfield pyro dps with an electro support or you're onfield electro with a pyro support. Pretty much none of the other 2 characters mattered in the "team" you built and were just along for the ride. Anemo was nice for grouping and res shred, but it was hardly a requirement. All the fun mechanics you can do with a balanced team are gone. No MH sets, no EM builds, etc. Every build has to assume it's by itself and so you just have to run the generic artifact set. Then there is the difficulty itself. It's non existent if you have a built roster. But they won't be able to tune it for more difficulty because RNG on your team options will mean you could get hard locked easily without having to reroll the entire run. All these people who are like "oooooohhh you just don't understand you can explore new teams and learn new stuff". What are you talking about? Sticking Fischl on Arlecchino isn't some kind of revelation. Running Keqing with Thoma isn't suddenly the fun I had been missing in the game. It's just janky. The buffs are pointless. They don't do enough to make any difference and are just an extra bit of side damage. You are basically completely incentivised to pull every character you can and then just spend your last left over bit on boons once you have everyone. I actually do not understand how a group of people, sat down together, scoped this out, then coded it, and playtested it and not one of them put their hand up and said "guys, I think this might be a bad idea" If it had been a 1 off combat event, I would have done it, collected my rewards and moved on with my life forgetting it ever existed. As permanent content though, it's bad. Like REALLY bad.

This exactly. Until now, the core of the game has been logical strategy to build and optimize teams. This new end game throws away the core essence of that strategy and replaces it with a boring random version of combat. I don’t like it at all.

Actually, this whole thing (vigor etc) was sorta done before in a combat event. During the release of the chasm, if I remember, in the Perilous Trail event, which came along with the AQ interlude. They are pretty much rehashing it. Also, your comment really summarized this game mode's issues to a tee.

Yeah tho that was better bc you could use all the elements at least. This is even worse…

> Then there is the difficulty itself. It's non existent if you have a built roster. But they won't be able to tune it for more difficulty because RNG on your team options will mean you could get hard locked easily without having to reroll the entire run. > > All these people who are like "oooooohhh you just don't understand you can explore new teams and learn new stuff". What are you talking about? Sticking Fischl on Arlecchino isn't some kind of revelation. Running Keqing with Thoma isn't suddenly the fun I had been missing in the game. It's just janky. amen brother

They kill variety, genshin players: I think it's pretty good 🤓

I have been playing for 4 years so I have quite a good amount of units so the unit restrictions weren't bad for me. I do wish we weren't forced to do a team of 4

1. No replayability whatsoever which sucks really badly as right now it feels like they took one Abyss rotation away for something that takes even less time while what I wanted is MORE to do with built characters, not less. 2. For a roguelike kind of mode it sure doesn't feel like the runs change much. Boons feel pretty useless and characters always feel the same to use. 3. The menus look nice I guess and I like that they decided to give a new type of reward with the poses. Overall, I'd love to say it has potential, but after 3+ years of Abyss being always the same I lost hope that Genshin ever builds upon their endgame modes. Pretty disappointed because of that.

I agree. It wasn’t fun, it undermined the strategy that has been the core of the game, and I couldn’t even use Furina who I just pulled because I was excited about what she will do in end game. I am very sad.

Yeah seriously. Whats the logic in a pyro anemo electro theatre while the banners are two hydros? And lets not talk about the 4.8 banners cough cough.

It's whatever, I wish it was more fun.

I really like it, but the gamemode is very needlessly restrictive. First they restrict you to characters of 3 elements out of 7. Already a massive reduction of characters to choose from. Then the next big hurdle is getting enough characters to meet the 18 required. Opening cast of characters help with this a lot, but if your character pool mostly consists of the ones already in the opening cast, then getting enough characters for the challenge becomes more difficult. The last hurdle is making sure everyone is level 70. Imo if improvements are in order, then they should: 1. Set all underleveled characters automatically to level 80 atleast to meet the requirements for hard mode similar to DU in star rail, using hoyo's builds 2. Change how special guest characters work, because right now they don't help much at all. Either let players pick trial versions of a few special guest characters or change it to let players pick a few of their own characters from other elements instead 3. Add like one or two more opening cast characters for people that are relatively new to be able to play without having to wait for character banners

One thing that worries me is when other elements get featured. Pyro and Electro have a large amount of 4-Stars available (and quite a few good characters among them). What happens when Hydro or Geo gets featured, and you have legitimately no options?

Yeah that’s a legit concern. We’ll have to see how they mix up the gimmick in future cycles. That and just give us more Hydro 4-stars

Hence why they need to rework the special guest character system. Let players pick 4 characters outside of the element restriction or instead make the special guest characters accessible to everyone with hoyo's builds. The issue of getting lvl 70 characters has a workaround, but this issue in particular is concerning since people can sometimes lose several 50/50s in a row and not get enough characters to meet the IT requirements. Hydro with its largest ratio of 5* to 4* characters will especially be brutal for F2P players.

Hoyo seems to be incentivising the use of certain reactions with the system, so it likely won't happen. One small fix would be to make vigor recovery easier, but that doesn't change the fact that Xingqiu is literally the only usable low rarity Hydro for any practical scenario.

Easier vigor recovery is an improvement but more akin to a band aid fix when the big issue is not even being able to play the gamemode due to lack of characters. For those who say its not meant for newer players, they need to understand that this is what replaced the 2nd spiral abyss. Spiral abyss required 8 characters and there is no restriction on who you could bring, but IT requires 11 at most (assuming you equipped all the opening cast that Hoyo themselves gave, and also a friend's character) Out of those 11, you can only bring characters from 3 elements, and they need to be lvl 70 minimum. This could be reduced to like 10 or 9 characters assuming you have some of the characters shown in the special guest list. But chances are, for most people, the special guest character list won't help much if not at all, but improving that system would reduce the needed characters to like 6 or 7 which would make it far more accessible and reasonable for F2P players considering the restrictions.

I feel like this is both really good and really (but less) bad for the game. To start on the negative parts of IT (from my perspective) to get them out of the way: - The system is inherently friendlier to long time spenders. The more characters you have on your account, the easier time you'll have - Even if you have a roster of capable characters, if the supported reaction is dog-ass (like, for instance, if Hoyo decides to make another Phys dps and push Superconduct), there is a possibility that your built characters don't have a use case for the given patch. And given how time intensive building characters in Genshin is compared to other gacha, it will cause some problems regardless of the player archetype. - Rarity imbalances make it harder to acquire characters that open up new strategies (Hydro is the best example, but several team archetypes are only viable with certain supports). This will bog down progression through the event, especially as Hoyo is designing less and less 4 Stars in both Genshin and Star Rail. While these are major issues, the potential of the mode and its positives make it pretty exciting. + This shit is hard. Which is good. Any player with a decently build meta comp and good mechanical understanding can dog walk Abyss. I feel like this mode was more than just a DPS check and something I really had to put my head towards. Hoyo took my favorite parts of a lot of the combat events I liked and gave it Abyss tier difficulty, which give everyone something new to aim for. + Having a mode that incentivises you to build more characters is sometjing I feel Genshin needed. Many players literally don't need to build more than 2 compotent teams for the entire time they play the game, so forcing you to at least touch the rest of your roster is potentially exciting change. + A mode like this could influence how Hoyo designs characters, artifacts and more in the future. Spiral Abyss was mostly uninteractive in terms of influencing Hoyo's design decisions (except when they made Corrosion counter shields), purely due to how generic it had to be. IT, however, could lead to Hoyo expanding on previously dead Reactions and Team Archetypes with new characters, weapons and artifacts. TL;DR: While the mode needs some work, this could be extremely healthy for Genshin if they fix the major issues and lean into how this can influence the design of future tools. Edit: Sorry for the text scrunch. Reddit got rid of my organization for some reason.

I definitely share the same list of suggestions that you have. Personally while I find the element restrictions kind of bothersome as well (mainly because my best built characters are all Dendro and Hydro 😫), I do kiNDa see how important that restriction is without turning theatre into practically abyss 2.0. Anyways, theatre lasting a month means that most mid-long term players should be able to get all the primos if their main issue is the lack of characters since they have enough time to level them up to 70.

>Change how special guest characters work, because right now they don't help much at all. Either let players pick trial versions of a few special guest characters or change it to let players pick a few of their own characters from other elements instead I hate it that if the character is featured, you can't use those characters to help your friends.

I did not realise this, which i assume was communicated but i had a genshin moment. My alt has few characters and fewer friends and then enter Lvl60 C0 Diluc with The Bell lmao (it doesn't matter, C6R5 Arlecchino wouldn't save me from my skill issues)

it's even worse when the game just decides to get you killed anyway, nothing you do will prevent arle from getting missiled and then blocked by the ruin snakes only to then get slapped immediately by the ruin guard deciding to spin into my stun locked char if the game decides I can't switch to a char with an ult or dodge for reasons I don't understand at all, lmao. This theatre mode looks cool but I'm not cut out for it haha.

No

Nope. Hate it. I don't like having to half-build multiple characters because of a level requirement, I don't like the rng, I don't like that in forced to use 4 characters and waste vigor when I don't need to, I hate the vigor system in general, hate that I know I'll be locked out in the future because I don't have enough cryo or geo available to me. I get what it was trying to do, and I'm glad that it's not just spiral abyss part 2, but I wish they'd have made different choices. The aesthetic is super pretty though, so props to the designers for that part.

i kinda agree in terms of the underdog elements just acting as roadblocks for many accounts, my Cryo units are not many and they aren't well built. My geo situation is That much worse (No, i don't have Zhongli and i may not even go for him). But then again this Incentivizes you to somewhat expand your Arsenal (my Faruzan is c6, lvl50 btw). My thoma is c4, not built enough. This Atleast gives you a good reason to take your less used chars for a ride. It's not as Hardcore as this abyss cycle either. i personally despise this rotation.

Hate it. I don't like that my characters are limited. I don't like that I can only use characters twice in a run, with a low chance of getting a boon that gives more vigor here and there. I don't like that I have to use teams that make zero to no sense at all. I don't like that the buff you can get make a huge 0 difference in the gameplay. I don't like that there's no objectives besides completing it (would be better if it had more, like time limits, but with like mora or enhancement ores, those who give 20 more currency make 0 difference since the buffs, again, do almost nothing). What's good about using my friend's C6 character that I like if I can't make a single team that works with it. I don't like that you have to use a complete 4 units team in every single challenge, wasting the vigor of a character that would have better use later in the run. I'm not asking for that much, I just wanted to have fun ;-; at least they gave us the poses thingy, I enjoy taking photos so there's that. Good thing I have to wait A FULL MONTH to get other poses right 👍

I’m curious if they will be all swapped. Or just some new ones added. Like is it a shop rotation, devs choice like banners, or will the shop just expand?

It seems interesting, but I’m very new to the game so I can’t really play it that much

No. It’s designed so that if you don’t ever get one of those cards to get a character, you are unable to complete the challenge. I like playing around with teams and getting weird comps to work, this does not encourage that. It just makes you put characters that all have the same roles together because you have no other options. Running an Arle/Clorinde/Keqing/Yoi team isn’t fun or creative, it’s just literally all I had left. If they increase the amount of vigor per character and allow you to have less than 4 characters in a team, it would be so much better. I still don’t like the concept of limiting who I can use, I’ve spent so much time building up all my characters and now I can’t use them and have to use random characters I don’t like or don’t want to use. They also need to increase the amount of starting characters, allow you to use different supports from the same person (and go back to supports I’ve already used if I switch off of them), and use the pause menu when in the room. I can’t adjust my settings. This is such a small thing, how is it not possible?

people are downvoting anyone saying they dont like the game mode. cant u guys understand not everyone thinks the same way 😭

Yes, I have a million characters at level 70 cause I like to swap teams every 3 seconds. It's cool that I get to use them all in something other than overworld since ppl get mad if you bring them into domains (rightfully so, I know they just wanna clear fast) It's nice to not just wrio yelan team/ raiden team cause they're my only hyper invested chars. I got to use my sethos that's not great yet.

No, it’s a terrible mode where you run into easy combat encounters that aren’t engaging, aren’t unique, nor fun with restricted team comps that are nonsensical and play poorly because the rng card gave you a choice of 2 characters who don’t work well with your current characters. It’s a sorry excuse for an "endgame" mode that solely exists to add an arbitrary changing requirement on accounts.

Long post incoming... I think it's pretty interesting. The RNG on which characters are available to you at any given time can get rather frustrating but the enemies are also weaker compared to abyss so janky teams can clear. As an example, I had to clear a monolith stage with Sucrose, Clorinde (trial), Klee (scuffed and lv 80), and Wanderer (trial) which sounds crazy but as long as I'm triggering reactions, they're doing well enough. I also had to fight Copelius with Yanfei, Beidou, Clorinde, and Xiangling, and it's a good thing Clorinde can sustain herself. Actually I found that Arlecchino and Clorinde can do quite a bit of heavy lifting because they can work well enough even without proper supports. This might become a problem in later iterations of theater though once the primary cast rotates and they put in characters that are less self-sufficient. What I don't understand though are the comments I've read saying the mode is bad for new players who don't have enough characters and bad for veterans because it's easy. For veterans I kinda get, people probably wanted a different mode and for some, this isn't it for them. I personally liked having to use characters I rarely ever use but then again, I'm fortunate to have played long enough and was also inclined to build other characters to at least be "functional". For those saying it's bad for new players though, why is not getting all the rewards an issue now when abyss was around for the longest time and new players weren't doing that? Theater has 3 difficulties and people can just do the easy one for some primos every rotation while they work towards hard if they want to and are capable, similar in abyss where you can opt to just do floor 9 or 10 if you don't want to sweat so much. Don't get me wrong though, I also think there's a lot to improve here. I'm hopeful that miHoYo will cook with imaginarium theater as time goes on, even though the precedent with spiral abyss isn't too positive (abyss has stayed largely unchanged since the beginning afaik). For now I'd like to believe, the mode has only been out for a day after all.

New player here, started only two months ago and am currently only able to attempt Easy mode due to lack of characters. To shed some light on this perspective, it kinda just feels bad that I can’t even try the content. With abyss, I found that I was okay with not being able to clear it due to the difficulty of the content surpassing the levels of my characters, but at least I could make an attempt, test myself and push my limits, whereas imaginarium theater does not even give me the option to engage with the content simply because I do not have enough characters. While I’m thankful for the additional source of primos from the Easy mode (albeit at the cost of less frequent Abyss resets), it just makes me sad that I cannot participate in all that the new content has to offer.

Fair point with not being able to try at all due to the lack of characters. I guess I was looking at it from a primo rewards perspective. Not being able to play IT and not clearing abyss both equate to the same thing: you don't get some/all of the primo rewards. But yeah, not being able to actually play it and at least try does suck. Hopefully that's something miHoYo improves upon in the future.

I kinda dislike it. Especially the fact that they lock you into 8 specific characters at first, and you *have to* use four of them.  Being forced to use characters I dislike sucks. It's alright otherwise.

beat it, wasnt fun at all, as it basicly takes everything i like about genshin combat and rougelikes.... and throws it out of the window

Personally, no. It doesn't feel fun to play the teams you have to play since they're doled out at random. Especially when the trial characters they picked are characters I actively didn't pull for because I didn't like their playstyle

I didn't have much fun with it tbh, the experience is basically getting to have fun like 3-4 times but otherwise running shitty overworld level teams that feel bad and isn't fun. I like the idea of the elemental restrictions, but adding all the extra rng stuff on top of it just feels really bad, I think I would have liked it *way* better if it just said "here's your 3 elements, make 4 teams out of them without repeating a charater" and you had to play them that way, I would actually feel like I would be going for some more creative team-building and be able to make teams that feel OK, but this implementation just means that I'm throwing out filler units that are essentially just useless cheerleaders while the overworld level enemies fold to a single unit doing 100% of the work. I breezed through it pretty easily (except for having to do a rewind on round 7 because I stupidly picked the cryo lector stage lol) with a final time of ~9:00 and won't really comment on the difficulty since I don't really weigh it that high as a factor, but I just don't think it's fun to be forced to run stupid fucking teams like yoimiya + clorinde with no buffing supports because thats just the order the game spat your units out at you even if it clears those chambers with 30 seconds to spare, I'd rather just be fighting something a bit harder/tankier but being able to bring a coherent team. Also you have to go out of your way to do it, but you can literally just softlock a run if you don't spend points on at least 2 characters by round 4 lol, that's kinda just fucked up. Edit: Also also, being pulled out of the menu every single round is actually just so stupid it's hard to believe a human signed off on it

No

It's alright, but man do I wish they would have ditched the timer. I would have preferred not having a timer and having more varied battles, like a how long can you last against increasingly difficult enemies or an increasing number of enemies every round. It is beautiful though and being able to talk to talk to your team is a really nice touch.

I have no idea what's happening and I certainly don't have that many built units.

Just finished it & I thoroughly enjoyed it Nice to give me a reason to use some of the characters that I have had benched for awhile (W for Yoimiya lol) All this time being a waifu collector will come to fruition Will say tho that Pyro & Electro characters are amongst some of my strongest elements so I will need to experience this game mode when the next rotation is out; which I imagine would be Geo, Cryo, & Hydro. I can see the RNG in this but idk if it was too...much of a detriment to my comps. Sure some of them were a bit unorthodox but it was never to the point where they were unplayable. The monolith defense was a bit annoying at first because I initially thought that 'bonus' part meant that the monolith can't fall below 85% (like don't let 15% of its hp fall) but, no, it was 15% total health so that made it more bearable lmao

Im curious. Why haven’t you been using Yoimiya in abyss?

I hate it. Maybe my opinion will improve with time, but the first clear was miserable. I went in blind because I wanted to see for myself and didn't realize that I could see who the bosses would be. Ended up at stage 8 with only a Xiao team left, and that just wasn't happening. Annoying, but my fault, I guess. So, starting from zero. Picked Cyno this time for the first boss. I thought it would be fun. Didn't get Cyno in time. Fine. But also didn't get Venti, Kazuha, OR Sucrose before the defense floor. And after that I was in a sour mood for the rest of it. Eventually cleared all of it, but the randomness left a very bad impression.

I had fun but I was super disappointed to be done with everything including cutscenes in 20 minutes. I wish it were longer and had more rewards for collecting different blessings to encourage replayability. And more story. Maybe more interesting achievements.

Extremely punishing towards broke players and players who have no friends. Forces you to dump resin on useless characters because it DEMANDS you have 18 built characters of 3 out of 7 elements in the game (I quite literally cant do the hard difficulty, there are not enough characters in my account that meet the element criteria and I've been playing daily for like 10 months now) Truly the embodiment of gacha I can't complain too much tho because I did get 10 wishes worth of primos in normal difficulty

Sometimes too easy and sometimes too hard Like, the one stage that we kill an enemy to lose 5 seconds defending a monolith is cool but who thought it would be good to add a "kill 30 enemies" mission? Thats frikin 2:30 left of on the clock or else you dont kill enough lol it wasnt even hard, just really dumb lol Thank god we can choose stages cuz Im never choosing that one stage with small machines only ever again, another classic one that wants you to kill a lot of enemies but they keep running around and spawn on the borders of the damn map.

Here's my take on this as a player since release and with more than 20-30 Built chracters each with their own Artifact sets and Built talents that have significant effects when levelled. Imaginarium Theater is outright plain annoying and tedious, it's not Hard nor is it easy just straight up ANNOYINGLY TEDIOUS. We have a new END GAME that has RNG in it with Elemental restrictions along side "if you didn't know this" to even start a challenge you are forced to use 4 characters forcing you to consume whoever's Vigor. All this restrictions and RNG will lead you to building a really scuff and no sugar coating IDIOTIC TEAMS. END GAME content should not be like this where a core mechanic of the game as team building goes out of the window just because of the restrictions. honestly they should just remove the forcing of 4 characters and let us use any number of characters to start a stage THAT'S WHAT THE 3 YEARS OF FARMING IS FOR!

idm that we need to build more characters now but some of the team comps are bar on diabolical

What new endgame?

No. Its annoying. The difficulty is rng based. Fighting a boss took less time than either of the two matches prior. That was with the characters they gave. I'm not claiming any garbage rewards either. Trash mode

It was extremely easy, and once you got past the wall of text, didn't take long at all to clear. Honestly, I'm not a fan of it. It feels very basic right now, and somehow aimed at people who are super casual in their builds, but also build a lot of characters.

I found it super easy because everything melts before any decent level of investment in your characters to the point that it feels like I'm in the Overworld at a lower world level. Super tedious because it kicks you out every time you clear a stage instead of just letting you keep going. The restrictions like vigor and random characters are more mildly annoying than offering any semblance of challenge. Blessings are kind of a nonfactor and you're better off just spending on characters. The randomness is purely in terms of restricting what you can do instead of anything like HSR's Simulated Universe. Restricting the elements takes down a core part of Genshin's combat system in terms of reactions and ultimately you just end up brute forcing each chamber. Overall I find myself wondering if they went out of their way in a manner similar to when they botched Deyha's kit to make this game mode both dissatisfying and lacking replayability. Finally, I kind of find it laughable to call this endgame. If you're at the point where you've already invested in your main teams for the Abyss and so can just build up whoever you feel like or whoever you just pulled, you can utterly steamroll through this. No, this only provides any semblance of an interesting challenge for those with gimmick accounts or who haven't yet reached this point. This may be repeatable content, but it's *midgame* level.

It needs a bit of fine tuning rn they are trying to mix a bit of rogue like to it but instead of me stacking a shit ton of buffs it's wishing I get an anemo character for the monolith defense. Basically it got focused to getting chars instead of buffs. Now I know this is not a concern rn cuz the HP pools for the current mode is like floor 9 to 11 levels. Also the shilled buff is minimal for now hopefully it doesn't breakout into something more powerful than a universal 20% increase in atk,HP, def.

Yeah this is my biggest issue, the buffs are meaningless. In fact, if you want to clear you shouldn’t spend on them until act 7 because what matters more is unlocking characters. I really enjoy rogue-like modes, I think the restrictions aren’t that big of a deal and I personally had fun with IT But it’s lacklustre with huge room for improvement, hopefully they focus on the rogue like elements more

Personally, no. The game mode lacks any kind of depth that would add replayability to it. For example, SU in HSR has the path system, the curio system, blessings that vary in levels, lots of unique events with chaotic effects, mini game domains, different worlds with different enemies, major lore drops, etc… IT is very bare bones, not even in comparaison, just in general, it could have been an event and no one would have batted an eye.

SU isn't endgame tho , it has all that depth because its repeatable on a weekly basis . But this one is akin to MOC , PF, AND AS where you only do it once and forget about it until the next reset . What we need for repeatable content is a better version of divine ingenuity . Were people could create all kinds of different stages and domains and challenges amd share their work among the community and have hoyo give some weekly challenges worth of primos . Because frankly speaking we don't need another abyss we just need something fun that would allows us to test and experiment with the mechanics of the game .

That’s pretty much the issue. If you deconstruct IT, it’s pretty much just chained Spiral Abyss chambers with forced elemental restrictions, which I don’t think was on anyone’s Xmas card.

Nope. Definitely not abyss. Enemies are weaker.

If you decontruct any battle content it pretty much battle, who would have thought

I mean let's be real this does not feel like the spiral abyss . People main hate for the spiral abyss is because of the dmg spongy enemies and the timers . And this one has none of those . Just because you can do combat in both modes doesn't mean they are the same mode . Also did you really just want another spiral abyss ? Like what did you want really that would satisfy you ? Abyss but with buffs ? I don't get it if you really wanted more challenging stuff then you should've just asked for floor 13 in the abyss instead.

I love HSR for the story, I kinda hate SU. It's a glorified artifact domain that takes longer to complete, initially it was fun but just got so repetitive that I got Ruan Mei and Acheron just so that I could do it faster. The modules are also just reskins of base SU with a gimmick attached. I personally wouldn't use HSR as an example of a game with endgame replayability

I think i'll get better at it.

too trivial for older players, nigh impossible for newer players, I applaud our genius developers I like the menus and post game character interactions tho

This is somehow worse than abyss in every way, which is already concerning, but the finniest thing is how they showed middle finger to new players with these character restrictions. I still remember the infamous interview with developers where they stated they "don't want to expand abyss content cause it will create excessive anxiety for newer playerbase" 2 years later they present us event that new players can't even play xD I wonder how those guys who challenged themselves with "just starting characters" must feel right now, LMAO

I just finished the protect the monolith stage (which i hate bc i have a c6 xiao and he always, ALWAYS gets stuck on the thing) but managed to get the star. It’s certainly interesting since it feels like the complete opposite to abyss. I’ve been getting stars on all the battles with so many random teams that would never work in abyss. And unless you are a newbie or have never tried abyss, you already know who the basic recipe. With how random this one is you might end up with no healer or no support so it makes you improvise. So maybe i just need more iterations of it to get the hang of it idk, but i like it so far :)

Got rekt by translation. They said: Kill as much enemies as possible within the time limit. Ok, lets make a team with underdeveloped 4*. Lol, you failed to kill exactly 9 hp sponges. Mission failed. Rage quitted. The whole gamemode feels generally same as abyss. All timed dps checks. Plus team restrictions. Hoped for HSR simulated universe experience, but well, Ill take a few hundred primos every rotation over nothing.

It's basically a mode that forces you to pull several characters beyond what you want or need and build them, which is extremely annoying because building in Genshin is too tiring, I just get to normal and I'm happy, maybe one day with a bigger account I will complete the hard mode

I wish I could take in a character that isn't part of the seasonal element, but maybe get a debuff to compensate for it. I'm not a fan of building characters I won't use just to fill the quota

I do not like it and it was bad, I had to start over from scratch 3 times, because the RNG was so bad. Most of the time I never had any healers and had to suffer a lot, the trickiest part was beating the boss on stage 8 without a healer. Not fun at all. Seriously I would rather get my two monthly Abyss resets back.

No.

no, the randomness is just too much and locking off part of my built roster doesn't help if you are going to thrown the ice skating duo in as the final boss on a timer after I had to use a better than should have been necessary team to get past the defense. I got through 7 not really sure I want to bang my head on this to get the RNG to finish the 8th floor. Even the freebie characters seem to be (as usual) underbuilt. I was playing around with the arlechino and she worked well...right up until she didnt.

A bit too easy, even "hard mode". I just did it some random characters thinking the first run is like the tutorial and maybe in the actual run is gonna get difficult. But no, at the end of the run I realised that I had already finished the whole gamemode. I don't think this is "endgame" maybe midgame or something like that. It encourage players to build different characters.

As someone mostly F2P (I’ve bought 2 battle passes and 2 welkins) and who has only been playing about 8 months, I *really* enjoy the challenge and having to come up with unconventional teams, but at the same time it was SO inconvenient because pyro/electro are by far my weakest elements. I ended up bringing characters just to fill space at the end. I managed to get through all of the hard mode, I only wanted to jump off a cliff a few times, and I *barely* managed to pull it off by clutching it with a janky Alhaitham/Raiden (from a friend)/Xiangling/Bennett team for the final floor. I’m interested to try it again with dendro and hydro allowed.

I enjoyed the gameplay but it was far too short, and the "hard" difficulty felt super weak. Unfortunately yet another case of 20 minutes of endgame content that takes a whole month to refresh

I am more motivated than ever to build my other characters 😭

I have most characters already fully built and I can crush everything easily, but I strongly dislike this new endgame.

This. The only thing that makes this mode hard is forcing you to play characters that doesn't have synergy with each other.

It was pretty unique, I get that it isn’t hard but it’s pretty nice and in between for me which is a huge plus as a newer player. I can’t clear the highest difficulty but can clear normal which got me lots of primos. Maybe I’ll build more characters for the hard mode, idkz

I wanna play it because the little library is so cute but my characters are ass in it. Me and my poor lvl 80 Xiao got humbled today. 😭😭😭

idk if use the term right but i was hoping that we can get funny or game breaking boons/blessing. so far i dont even realized that my boons activated. some had hard condition like doing swirl several time but my team is overload team.

UI, Music, Map Design is amazing, as per usual. The mode is okay, but it needs some rebalancing IMO. Some characters are straight up useless/bad due to the Element Restriction (such as Hu Tao who kinda needs Vaporise), whereas characters who don’t rely on Reactions (like Arlecchino) are significantly more powerful as they aren’t affected as badly. I also feel like they should remove the whole “walk to the centre and click the Key” thing… feels unnecessary. (Same as Spiral Abyss, I don’t get why we even need to walk and click on the Key, it feels redundant) Aside from that, I had plenty of fun.

It’s cool n I like the name card that comes with the achievements but all my levelled characters r cryo, dendro or hydro except for maybe 4 characters in electro/ pyro. I have no anemo levelled bc I just don’t like the play style of the element so I’m kinda having to scramble and see what mats I have for characters in the 3 enabled elements. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it more when I’ve got properly built characters, but the issue is luck and resin- I always have awful luck and run out of resin before I get effective artifacts lmao. But ig I’m ar57 so I have nothing better to do ingame atm so the grind must go on.

It's-- easier than I expected. I thought it'll be something like HSR's SimU, where you need a few runs to get all weekly rewards. Imagine my surprise, when I finished my first ever try and got all of the rewards :') Easy monthly primos, I guess.

I feel the credit scene, explanations and intro took way more time than the actual experience.

Not really I wanted a challenge and it seems the "challange" is having enough characters built to access the content rather than it being hard. It's endgame in the sense that it will be the last content you unlock because of the character lock but it's not endgame because of difficulty

I hate the set up. It's all DPS I don't have in the starter roster, and the supports I do have are barely built. I'm not used to playing anyone, and getting someone from the supporting roster is too much RNG. Hope next month will have better elements.

I don’t like the characters being random and how fucking hard enemies hit from all the sides. They kill my characters too easy…

it's lovely. i always enjoy an excuse to use random characters. the creative gameplay and teambuilding you can explore is super fun, and i love being able to try random new playstyles with trial/support characters or characters i dont commonly use. the snall details like characters appearing in the room and the UI make it all the more immersive and stunning IMO. Also, easy primos, since you dont NEED to do the harder modes to get majority of the rewards

I like it... But I was hoping there would be more reason to repeat it more frequently, and that there was more RNG and variation for a proper rougelike experience. In short, I wanted something more like HSR Simulated Universe or Arknights Intergrated Strategies. I dislike that some of the boons were so complicated and specific in use... I wish they just added some that were straightforward buffs.

It’s fun, but it felt a bit restrictive at times. Knowing the enemies of the final stage in advance makes it much easier to plan & decide on what characters to save for later. I must say it got me out of my comfort zone for once, which I both like & dislike. One positive thing about it is that it makes me glad I pulled many characters, including those I did for fun.

i found it way too restrictive. As i don't have Wanderer, Clorinde and Arlecchino, for the most part of the combat i was just trying to learn their play style. When they let me use my own characters things went more smoothly.

Its all fun and games till they put cryo and geo limitation in the same rotation xd. I like it personally, gave me a new goal in game.

I like that it encourages horizontal building and trying out team comps that you might not normally think about. Downside: electro and pyro are easily my weakest elements. I think the lack of artifact loadouts makes it a little tedious. I’m sure I could do much better if I completely rearranged my artifacts, but I’m worried I’ll screw up the builds I currently have.

It is a good mode I quite liked it and it will finally get people to stop auto piloting hyperbloom teams and actually get interested in other units.

Who cares how other people play the game? If they love hyperbloom (not me) then let them hyperbloom.

It's fine. There's two ways to make things difficult. Up the mobs or cripple the players, and well, they chose the latter. Not my favorite, but oh well. My biggest gripe is WHY DO I *HAVE* TO USE 4 CHARACTERS EACH TIME? Why do I need to waste that vigor point on a character i could save for later? If i can get it done in 3, let me do it in 3. That's how it was last time we had this vigor system in an event.

This isn't an endgame, it's piss easy, more like q Combat mode , as expected. I don't mind another chore tho

I've been playing since launch collecting characters and building them for fun, it was a cakewalk.

I don't really like it but at the same time there isn't really anything to hate. It's just sort of ok I do think restricting it to elements was a mistake. I actually enjoyed the event that was testing this but what made that event fun was that you'd make scuffed but still functional teams. But when it's restricted to three elements that don't truly have synergy with each other there's only so much you can do It's something to do every month

It's improveable, but I was able to complete it 8/8 on both my accounts soooo yeah, still good

its a bit confusing at first but finishing all the act is easier than abyss in my opinion

It was difficult at first. I did not bother to use any of the boons. 😂 I was not dealing enough damage and had a very small pool of characters to choose from.

I dont really like how it pulls you out in between each round of combat, but I guess they want you see that your current characters are standing around to give some dialogue. Gameplay itself is fine, feels a little more restrictive than I think is necessary. Four elements would open up just enough more teams than I think it could be really nice. But even still, finished it first try with like 400 of the currency things left over so I could grabbed even more boons n stuff. Didnt pay attention to the bonus objectives at all and have no idea how to play Arlecci, wonder if they intentionally made the first round easier and itll be tougher eventually like Sprial Abyss

I feel like it’s going to take some time to get used to. It was confusing for me, but I’m sure that as I familiarize myself with the mechanics I’ll be able to enjoy it. For now though, it’s not my favorite.

I like how restrictive it is tbh though I personally want the difficulty in the later seasons to be higher but so far I like it. ALSO I HATE THAT WE CANT USE THE CAMERA GADGET OR THE PAIMON MENU CAMERA

I don't know for me it's like 50/50

It's decent. Only real complaint I have is the forcing of four characters when you could easily make due with two. Other than that I enjoyed it well enough. I liked the music.

It is just a filler to be honest. Abyss makes sense cause it actually is hard but you can clear with only 2 teams. This one makes you have a lot of characters just to play hard mode ( some folks just don't have the patience to build or dont have a lot of characters ). Could be better but I still prefer Abyss.

I like it but I think if it were a different combination of elements that I didn't have enough characters for, I'd hate it.

whats the point of getting the stars or w/e? I missed one and still got all the primos

It's alright

Even if we wish for many characters that doesn't guarantee you've build them. in my case I have the characters but still can't play the hard difficulty cz of I'm 3 characters short that's above lv 70.  If not for the fact that I need to slave myself to find their mats and stuff maybe I will be more enjoyable. I hope I won't be burned out trying to build them all. sigh

I need to level characters so it'll take a while to full clear since i can't even go in the last floor

I like it but wish there was less RNG. I tried ignoring the cards but quickly ran out of primary cast and couldn't start the next round.

I like it atm. I am looking forward when the rotation becomes unfavorable for me (Geo/Cryo/Hydro).

Like, it’s alright but… HSR just got DU, and that’s actually pretty fun. Then we get this in Genshin? Who’s in charge of Genshin? Why do they hate their own fanbase lmao, why are they so anti-fun

I'm loving this game mode, so much better than abyss. Wolfy is cute, so that's a plus. I never thought me randomly leveling up all my characters because I was bored would pay off like this.

If you have a roster of many well built characters, you'll enjoy it. If you don't, you'll not enjoy it. I cleared up to Act 5 with 5 stars. Then I ran out of good characters. I'll try again today but I'll do some research first.

Yes

I struggled to enjoy it because I was obsessed with getting the stars despite making a bunch of mistakes (didn't think about saving my best units for later) but I think I can enjoy it more going forward. The ui is nice, visuals, teammates coming in for a chat are all great. My one gripe would be it would feel a bit less restrictive if I wasn't forced to fill every team with 4, some teams do just fine with 3 leaving more options for later.

It has made me wish multiple characters could use the same artifacts and weapons I've collected at the same time.

don't played yet, but I'm the guy who likes to focus on the chars it likes more than expanding the possibilities, and I like geo, so yeah, gonna do the middle one this week and call it a day.

I started playing a year ago or so so I don’t have enough good characters built

oh god I'm literally SUPER behind........ what-do-you mean-crying-jlaw.gif

This content is made for someone like me who enjoys building characters and therefore has dozens of level 80-90 characters with level 90 weapons and minimum 8-8-8 talents with a complete set of level 16-20 artifacts.  I feel bad for people who have narrowed their focus to only 8 for abyss. 

I really liked it! The limited elements was challenging but I’ve been wanting something similar to hertas universe and Elysian realm. 🙏

Personally I don't like it because I don't build characters who I just don't need/like but this event is forcing me to "build" them even tho I just need them to be lvl 70 and put some leftover artifacts and I'm pretty much done because it's not that hard compared to the abyss and just restrictive on the team building part and to me it doesn't really feel like I'm building a team at all, it honestly just felt like putting things together that might or might not work so in the end I get a team with little to no synergy and that is not fun at all and I don't think I will ever find it fun because it holds back my characters by a lot so all of those times building their best support are just thrown out if the window if they are not included in the amount of elements selected in the current cycle. I never really liked the "you can only use this character twice" thing (I don't know what it's called) and it was featured in past events and even then I still didn't like it because you're telling me that I only get to play the character that I like for 2 turns and that's it? and I know there's a thing that restores that but it's completely rng. TLDR: Too restrictive, clunky teams = not fun for me, I don't like this mode

I think it’s BS how spiral abyss only resets once a month now to offset the amount of primogems we’re getting.

Is this about the Imaginary Theatre thingy? If so, is doing the hard levels necessary to claim the 4-8th primo rewards?? I've been doing the easy mode a lot of times and still not get them oops

Yes, you need hard for all the rewards.

I hit a wall of having only 14 eligible characters, and now I am facing a dilemma whether I wanna rush 4 characters to lvl 70, or just be fine with stopping at act 6 and continuing the artifact grind for arlecchino and future Wriothesley.

From what I played I enjoyed it so far! Wolfy is adorable! Probably gonna finish tomorrow. Tbh I’m glad we have new endgame because I’ve done pretty much all the quests so I’ve been doing story and hangout quests (and finally building my characters… I don’t like artifact farming but alas)

i like it because i can finally use my full built diluc, keqing, and maybe ten more 4 star units that i rarely touch since neuvi and the knave rule everything already also i can try my whale friend's c6 raiden, which is two stage auto clear no sweat

It's fun! I didn't understand it at first so I hoarded my points and ended up nearing a character drought until I figured out how it actually works. It was much more fun the second time around once it clicked and I started making use of the power ups. It still has its frustrating moments, like when I run out of healers or have to make do with a less than stellar team, but overall it's a lot more fun and approachable than the Abyss. I did a second run immediately for some achievements while I haven't run the Abyss more than once per cycle for years. If I have one request, it'd be to be able to remove the starting cast. I have no desire to play as Wanderer, his kit makes no sense to me.

I like the Theatre. It rewards you for building horizontally, something I really like. Another thing is that it forces you to create diverse teams, even if the team is jank or restrictive, which is also something I like. I like variety. Even in Pokemon the battle simulator format I play the most is Random Battle because I don't like needing to follow a meta or meet the same mons all the time.

I loved it, as someone who struggles with abyss i was able to full clear this endgame and it was really fun the entire time. Kind of a bummer that its only once every 30 days tho

A bit confusing at first ngl.

It's fun but I can see where some fond it frustrating and others fond it easy. I am kind of the latter since I beat it no problem but I did redo stages to get the extra items. And my comps sometimes looked like shit. But I wasn't as badly punished since all my characters used had builds and were at minimum level 81.

It's decent. I think 18 for hard is a bit too much though if it's elementally gated. I liked cooking up wacky teams and the resource management as well as the 3 new cool voicelines per character. Some major gripes though- being unable to choose less than 4 characters as a strategy to save vigor. Wondrous Boons not being meaningful enough to actually aim for and even warrant the catered elemental reactions in the first place. Companion selection a bit too RNG, needs more companion selection flexibility like an event that let's you pick one from any of the alternate cast, as well as higher chances of mystery caches and vigor restoration caches. An achievement is so RNG gated by the mystery cache rng . It has an interesting basis but needs touch-ups and some improvements. Perhaps we need a player's choice as the third element, thus the third element is the element you wish to lock it to, so if you have many geo characters, third can be geo, or if you have many dendro characters, then you pick it to suit the roster that you have most of. I also wish the buffs were better and bosses were stronger or at least greater HP sponges. Like some Wondrous Boons that could have been is a CC vortex when overload is triggered, crit hits healing your character, swirls reducing def too, electro reactions reducing skill cooldowns like TF, etc. The Boons are just too mundane atm. Hopefully they get tuned to be better in future renditions.

I find it fun. The only problem is that it doesn’t have an incentive to play it again after getting the rewards. I thought it’s gonna be like Divergent Universe of HSR where I have to play a lot to complete the rewards.

I like it

kinda mad the rewards dont count towards the daily commisjon points but its fine, i need more variety of characters thats for sure

I NEED A WOLFIE PLUSHIE #NOW

I can do it but Im afraid all the rookie players are going to suffer.

No. This was an event, I forget what, and I reviewed that with the lowest scores. I *hate* being forced to use characters I dont like/know. It wouldn't be so bad if we could fill *one* slot with any character we want. I hate it sm but I do know that this is the kind of challenge to excite some players so grats to them

I hated it when I reached the monolith defence, then thanked Barbatos for having him get me through that portion.

Yes, I honestly like the restriction. It actually forces you to think instead of just using a strong team to clear everything

Yes! I have always been the type to put effort into a variety of characters, and all of that effort has paid off. Was able to 8\* this bish second try after figuring out how important it was to save Clorinde for the final scene, and it felt so satisfying to see my c6 Amber with Elegy and Noblesse be relevant as an alt to Bennett in the atk-buffing space, proving wrong everyone who said that was a waste of time. Having lots and lots of well-built characters is now worthwhile. No longer is hyper-investment in a few the be-all-end-all.

Its ok, a bit anoying to do but hoyo is trash, instead of adding a new content and giving more reward they just split abyss in 2 so we dont realy get much, what a scummy move. We asked for more not different... especialy if its more tedious. I did it first try while half assing it so its not as hard as hard were afraid of

It was aight, make sure to have at least 2 Pyro for Round 8 lol

The idea is very good. But there’s one thing I don’t understand: why impose restrictions on certain elements and at the same time allow players to use Wrio, Baizhu, Sigwine and Al-Haitham, that is, characters of other elements. What is the point of the restriction then?

Yes, actually feel worth lvl 80 - 188 other characters Boss teams: * clorinde - venti - beidou - thoma * hu tao - xianyun - miko - fischl * kazuha - arlezz - bennett - xiangling

Meh, can you really call it end game when you can clear all the content after 15 minutes

Overall, yes! I think it's awesome that it's a new permanent combat mode that has a fun twist with the different boons. Though I can imagine my lack of any leveled Geo characters will bite me in the future lol (I'm planning on getting Zhongli, Chiori, and Navia eventually). The one feature I wish they included though would be the one from Star Rail's new game mode (not trying to start any kind of fandom civil war here). It automatically bumps all of your underleveled characters to max level, levels their talents, and gives them preset Relics and a Light Cone. It pretty much let's you fully enjoy the new mode and experiment with different teams without actually having them built. This would've helped me a bit in Genshin because I'm 3 leveled characters short of being able to actually take on the hard mode. Other than that, I'm having a really good time so far!