Version 3.4 will feature Alhaitham, Yaoyao, the Lantern Rite, and a new desert region in Sumeru.
The new desert region features a tornado, and the sandstorms can obscure vision. New areas such as the old ruins of Gurabad will debut. A Jinni will appear that can help light the way through the sandstorms. More exposition is given on the Tanit tribe and the Eternal Oasis.
Hadramaveth could refer to the Hadhramaut desert near Oman, which could fit Alhaitham's debut. In Chinese it is called the Qianhe Shadi (千壑沙地), a possible allusion to Qianlong, once again befitting of Alhaitham's debut.
There are four main activities: the Aegis of sparks racing trial, the paper puzzle, the boat challenge, and the battle challenge.
First half will feature Alatus (Xiao) and Alhaitham, the two Als, alongside Yaoyao. Second half will feature Yelan and Hu Tao. This follows the pattern from version 3.3 of putting the two male five stars on the first half and the two female five stars on the second half.
This version's characters are centered on the Qing dynasty. Yelan and Hu Tao contain allusions to Lan Yu and Hu Weiyong, who were both executed by Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming. Meanwhile, Xiao and Alhaitham contain allusions to the Aisin-Gioro clan who destroyed the Ming. So the version's characters pair the victims with their saviors.
The storyline involving Hu Tao and Xinyan rapping and sitting down for dinner appears like an attempt to resolve a certain workplace conflict between two colleagues... corporate politics. Then why not put Xinyan on Hu Tao's banner? Trying to reward corrupt people would only seem to breed more corruption. Got to catch the low-lying flies and high-flying tigers...
In this quest, the roles of Ilyas and Siraj should be switched, with Siraj putting Ilyas in jail. So if genshin is made by a private company, why do they have so much freedom to publish whatever they want? Shouldn't this industry be regulated, with every story and line they write reviewed by auditors and government authorities before being published as media? Even the financial industry of the USA, supposedly the epitome of the most capitalistic and free-market thing in the world, is actually heavily regulated by government bodies such as the SEC and even FBI.
The first strike was 2.8, with Kazuha and Persikov. The second strike was 3.2, with Nahida's quest (Moseis) and the fungi event. The third strike is now 3.4 with Siraj. In baseball, the rule is three strikes and you're out. It can be gleaned from these occurrences (and many others) that there is some deep grudge going on and that somebody is not loyal to their nation, but prehaps has ties abroad with the CIA and USA.
A simple solution is to put more direct regulation on the private sector, to enforce that they serve national interests and do not incite color revolutions for foreign imperialists like the USA. Another solution is revoking license to publish, to silence the noise. And a final solution is imprisonment and execution.
But there are other things going on as well: one is the use of story content to interfere in certain corporate relationships and pit people against each other. First such efforts are bound to fail, Second they may as well be more realistic and make hu tao or tighnari as the person who goes to jail.
The other thing is that they are playing games with China's dynastic cycles, pitting certain dynastic leaders against each other. Where are the good old days when the only enemy was zhu and the ming dynasty, and it was always zhu put in jail like when Cyno incarcerated Jhuba? Now things are too complicated: genshin wants to attack the leaders of every dynasty.
So when the Qing was founded, several different dynasties and kingdoms were conquered and unified. Perhaps what happened is that one of those dynasties based in Sichuan was chosen as an inspiration for Siraj in the Alhaitham story. But this brings the question: why single out one person when several other kingdoms like the South Ming, Taiwan, Shun dynasty, Dzungars were similarly conquered by the Qing? And the second point is that this is part of a recurring habit and pattern. As mentioned above, these kinds of attacks have been happening since 2.8, 3.2, etc.
Another character named Narendra is also involved in Alhaitham's quest. So they want to bring India along here as well?