After mercilessly striking down their favorite characters, the players then welcomed the second mini-game.
"We focused earlier on arranging defensive facilities."
"But arranging the warriors is also very important."
"These are all Natlan's elite warriors; reasonably assigning their positions in combat will allow them to perform even better when fighting monsters."
Rios's avatar popped up on the screen, introducing the gameplay for the second mini-game.
Below Rios's avatar, many chibi figures appeared, including Natlan NPCs and characters from the banners.
"miHoYo really went all out on this." Mu Yang said, somewhat surprised. "Drawing so many chibi figures for one event must've cost a pretty penny."
[It should be about the same, right?]
[Even without drawing chibi characters, the artists still have to draw other stuff for the mini-game; overall workload's similar.]
[That's way off—these character chibis are clearly way more detailed.]
[I can only say: more, please!]
[Dead hand, hurry up and screenshot!]
The players originally thought the second mini-game was just building on the first one by adding some content.
Like treating these chibi figures the same as defensive facilities and placing them on the wasteland.
But when they saw the map for the second mini-game, they couldn't help but widen their eyes in exclamation.
"Whoa!"
"Arknights!"
The interface that appeared before their eyes was unmistakably the battle screen often seen in their rival company's game.
Genshin's chibi figures were placed in fixed grids, and when monsters entered their attack range, they would strike.
Their combat animations were way too similar to Arknights.
[When did Genshin collab with Arknights?]
[It's not a collab... just similar gameplay.]
[If it were a real collab, that'd be great—I wanna see a 3D Amiya.]
[I also really want Genshin to collab more with other games; other gacha games have done who-knows-how-many collabs after a few years since launch, but Genshin's at 5.0 and hasn't collabed with any other games yet—Honkai: Star Rail's apparently gonna collab with Fate, and we're still sitting here with nothing.]
[Didn't it collab with Honkai Impact 3rd before?]
[Seems like it collabed with some game called Horizon too.]
[The Honkai 3rd one was them collabing one-sidedly, right? Genshin side had zero buzz.]
[The Horizon one made a new character, but no collab storyline.]
[Compared to collabs with others, it's still way behind.]
The players originally were just griping that Genshin's mini-game resembled Arknights a bit.
But as they talked, it veered into collab topics.
"I'd also love for Genshin to collab with other games." Mu Yang said with a smile. "But miHoYo seems really focused on Genshin's worldbuilding, so to avoid messing it up, they rarely collab with other games."
[So which games or animes does Mu Yang hope Genshin collabs with?]
"That'd be a lot." Mu Yang thought for a bit, then continued, "The easiest to collab with would probably be Honkai: Star Rail."
"After all, Star Rail's world is big enough to fit Genshin's in."
"And I'd also kinda wanna see Star Rail characters fighting like Genshin ones."
Star Rail was turn-based, and even if the combat animations were flashy, sometimes you just wanted to see those characters up close hacking at monsters.
[Star Rail's turn-based with stuff like Break Effect and Effect Hit Rate—turning it into Genshin style would be tough.]
[Think about it: Natlan's Chuychu is super similar to Star Rail's Lingsha in mechanics—just removed the Break DMG, but the healing's exactly the same.]
[Copying themselves?]
[Can you call it copying when it's your own stuff? That's called borrowing.]
[Wrong, not even borrowing—that's called reusing.]
[Genshin devs: Take it, you.]
[Lingsha as an Abundance character, without Break DMG she can still be used, but someone like Firefly who's all about super Breaks, or Ruan Mei boosting Break efficiency—probably couldn't be made into Genshin character kits.]
[Don't worry—if miHoYo really wants to collab these two games and put Star Rail characters into Genshin, they'll definitely tweak the mechanics.]
[Just afraid it'll end up as Star Rail collabing Genshin, not the other way around.]
[Star Rail players get to use our Genshin characters, but Genshin players can't play Star Rail's.]
[That'd be tragic.]
The second mini-game wasn't high difficulty like before, with no Hydro Dragon Sovereign-level bosses showing up—just a group of ordinary Hilichurls.
Paimon expressed confusion about this.
"Huh, why didn't they send those super tough monsters this time?" Paimon asked, puzzled.
"Because these are people fighting now."
Rios answered: "If they run into Archon-level enemies, my advice would be just one word—run."
"They don't need to face unbeatable opponents."
[Mud give road hit oil!]
[Go go go, set off!]
[Didn't expect the Pyro Archon to know the Joestar family heirloom tactic—ain't no pushover.]
[The last line's actually a meme too, or more like a homage.]
[Unbeatable opponent? I don't get it.]
[Wake up, this is Teyvat—no Ultraman here.]
[Defensive facilities: So because we're not people, we gotta face Archon-level enemies? Haki God, you bastard...]
[Someone who thought of Haki God must have an exorcist at home.]
"So it's for the warriors' safety."
"But..."
Paimon asked doubtfully: "If all the warriors run away, then who's gonna handle those powerful enemies?"
[Of course it's our super Phlogiston missiles.]
[Everything can be blown up.]
[When facing that level of beasts, of course use lifeless defensive facilities... kidding, blow up the facilities too.]
"Maybe we'll use the super Phlogiston missiles mentioned earlier." Lumine still remembered the weapon from the previous round; its power was seriously strong, to the point she was thinking of ditching her sword and switching careers to missile launcher.
"Oh yeah." Paimon reacted. "With those missiles' power, they should be able to blow up those Abyss monsters."
"Unfortunately, if Archon-level opponents really show up, even super Phlogiston missiles probably couldn't kill them."
Mavuika threw cold water: "Plus, super Phlogiston missiles are limited in number; Xilonen herself has tons of work to do, so when facing strong enemies, we can't pin all our hopes on super Phlogiston missiles."
"Then what do we do when that happens?" Paimon asked, hands spread.
"Simple." Rios said with a smile. "I'll handle them."