Genshin Impact’s first event, Elemental Crucible, is here. The event will run from October 12th at 11 am EST until 5 pm EST on October 19th.
To partake in this event, you must be Adventure Rank 20 and have completed all quests relevant to “Prologue: Act II – For A Tomorrow Without Tears.” Once you have met this criteria, you will have to find a friend or party up with people online as the event is only playable during a co-op session.
Elemental Crucible is a wave defense-like scenario where players must defeat hordes of enemies, collect the elemental clots they drop, and load them into the elemental crucible. Once the players have filled the bar displayed at the top of the screen, they will be awarded a variety of rewards.
Alongside the rewards you get for completing the event, there is a new tab in the event section that will provide you with tasks that you must complete during the event to claim bonus rewards such as ascension materials, primogems, and EXP books.
Unfortunately, this event will require resin to yield partipation rewards. You will be able to make progress towards the event missions without resin, but will miss out on the Exp books. Despite players voicing their concerns about the game’s future and how the resin system is ruining the experience, MiHoYo has opted to ignore these concerns and continue as is. This could be a test to see just how much resin is impacting player enjoyment, but it would also have been a good time to test player retention and time online without resin gating them.
Despite my frustration with this event requiring resin, I am trying to remain hopeful that this is a test run to gauge how to run future events. I am glad that there will be a new activity to partake in, especially one that actually makes use of the forgotten co-op feature, but this cannot be the future of Genshin Impact. Players want to play more and not be forced to aimlessly roam the map with little reward. Making players choose between participating in the event or doing the tasks that you need to do outside of the event to upgrade characters and weapons is not sustainable. Not for me, at least.