Version 3.5 introduced Dehya and Mika. It features the Windblume event, which has a pacman event. It also contains a new Faruzan hangout and archon quest Caribert.
Name could refer to Charibert, the king of Paris in the 500s, around the time the Huns invaded Europe.
The quest starts in Port Ormos, Sumeru. The traveler has a drink with Kaeya, the Diluc main, and Dainsleif, the bough-keeper. The conversation between Kaeya and Dainsleif sounds like someone talking to himself... We learn that Kaeya Alberich descends from the founder of the Abyss Order and that Dainsleif is a pure-blooded Khaenriah person. So if Alberich founded the Abyss Order, and the traveler's sibling is their ruler, would that make the traveler's sibling the ancestor of Kaeya? An amusing thought, but not necessarily...
We follow Dain to a hut in Sumeru. There the ley lines flow out of control, and the traveler experiences their sibling's memory from 100 years ago. In the memory, their sibling meets Eide, the father of Caribert, who had turned into a hilichurl. Eide had fallen in love with a Mondstadt woman and had an illegitimate child named Caribert. Eide was from Khaenriah and explains that since the cataclysm, Khaenriah people had been cursed with immortality, forced to live aeons as their body decayed. Khaenriah differed from the seven nations as they refused to bow their heads to the gods: it was a civilization without gods, only man, as perhaps Andrew Ryan would say. Some of the Khaenriah citizens were further cursed, being turned into monsters called hilichurls. This happened to Eide's son Caribert.
In the flashback, the traveler's sibling helps Eide create some medicine from weird mushrooms to help relieve Caribert's mania. They encounter and defeat a cryo herald. Eide and the traveler's sibling go to a cave, where they encounter a mysterious voice (a 'sinner') and an inverted crystal (sinner's crystal), reminiscent of the inverted statue (see version 1.4). Hilichurls bow down to the crystal as a purple energy flows through them. Eide also bows to the sinner crystal. Soon after, Caribert wakes up and can speak again.
Eide tells his son not to take off his mask. When Eide and the traveler's sibling enter the cave again, they find the sinner's crystal disappeared. Returning to the surface, they find a broken mirror and that Caribert had escaped the hut. The track down Caribert, to find Caribert cannot handle the torment anymore, and a purple energy unleashes from his mask. Waking up, the traveler's sibling learns that Eide's true name is Clothar Alberich, founder of the Abyss. The traveler's sibling is the princess of the Abyss.
The traveler wakes up from the memory and explains it to Dain. They dig up the field where the strange mushrooms used to grow and find the skeletons of a man and woman. The man was holding a scarf (from Caribert's mother). They conclude that Clothar had passed away, somehow finding a way to escape the curse of immortality. Caribert and his mother had also passed away.
Dain fears that the mysterious voice (sinner) discovered the traveler, and Dain thinks he may know the identity of the sinner. And we are left on that cliffhanger.
We have returned to genshin's favorite hobby: naming the ancestors of various characters in game. This time, we learn that Dehya's adoptive father is Kusayla. He essentially ran a mafia, looting people, while also chasing after women. Dehya never knew her mother. Life can just be like that.
And surprise, in the end we learn that Kusayla is not Dehya's real father. Kusayla had passed away long ago in a fire. In a letter he wrote, Kusayla reveals that he adopted Dehya as a child in the desert and rose her with his fellow Emerites (Dakan Al-Ahmar).
Dehya, perhaps based on the historical Dihya or Al-Kahina, was a Berber queen who resisted the Arab expansion into the Maghreb. Al-Kahina's real father was named Tabat. And the historical Kusaila was actually Al-Kahina's predecessor (ruler of Berbers).
Who are the Berbers? They are also a Semitic/Afro-Asiatic people like the Arabs (their languages are from the same family). They are indigenous to the Maghreb of northwest Africa (in countries like Morocco, Algeria, etc.). And they are also the ones who helped the Arabs conquer and rule over Spain and turn it into Al-Andalus for 1000 years. The Berbers still exist to this day.
Compared to the story quests of Nahida, Nilou, Alhaitham, all of which contained weird political attacks, Dehya's story quest is better written. We get to beat up Tikriti and expose the crimes of the Homayani family. The quest also gave us many chances to experience and trial Dehya in combat with the rest of the team. Dehya's quest is probably the best written quest since Raiden, Itto, and Yae's quests. Ever since 2.6, the story quests have been weird and unpleasant.
In the quest, Dehya had around 40k hp, around 100 em, and was C3. This means her skill can last 18s with 2s downtime. The focus on the hp and em stats also suggests using Dehya as a pyro driver for melt or burgeon teams (using Dehya more as a support).
So is this a date with Faruzan or with tighnari and collei? There's no need to put tighnari in the event. There's also no need to make tighnari's underwhelming quest required to unlock the hangout.
In one branch of the hangout, the Towers of Hanoi puzzle introduced (as Pagoda stacks). If there are \(n\) rings, then it takes at most \(2^n - 1\) moves to solve the puzzle. This can be proved using induction or recursion. It is one of the classic puzzles of mathematics and computer science.
Faruzan is into mechanics, puzzles, math, and geometry. That's kind of hot actually... No wonder Xiao and Scaramouche mains want her so badly... on their teams :)
During the windblume festival, Cyno shows off his joke-telling skills. The way Cyno explains his puns in great detail is kind of similar to how this site explains various things in Genshin in great detail. The difference is that Cyno deals with jokes, whereas this site deals with more serious stuff. Not everything here is a laughing matter.
Cyno also travels to Mondstadt to advertise the TCG some more.
Eula also appears for the festival, but for some reason did not rerun in 3.5... even though her support Mika debuted in 3.5...
Search up the word 'entrapment'. The USA FBI and CIA do it a lot for the sake of smear campaigns and character assassination.
In the story, Cyno and other Sumeru characters visit Mondstadt. We follow Sucrose and others in their quest to find a flower beyond this world. We eventually end up on a floating island in Mondstadt with a tea table and lantern. Through the lantern we are able to communicate with Alice, Klee's mother. Alice, member of the Hexenzirkel, a group of witches, explains the history of R (Rhinedottir/Gold, creator of Albedo), N (Nicole), J. During this adventure a mysterious woman named Scarlet appears. She is revealed to be the successor of J. If Scarlet is J, could the J also stand for Johansson?
Zhenjin (真金) is the name of a Mongol noble during the Yuan dynasty. Zhenjin was one of Genghis Khan's descendants.
Event features characters such as Yoimiya (Xiaogong) and Hu Tao as Genshin recognizes that Zhu Yuanzhang murdered Hu Weiyong and Zhu Di murdered Fang Xiaoru. Putting Xiaogong and Hu Tao together symbolizes Genshin's opposition to Zhu and the Ming dynasty. This should not be surprising given Genshin is called Yuanshen in Chinese, and the Ming dynasty overthrew the Yuan.
The character put on the 4th day shows that Genshin recognizes the mistakes and crimes committed by Li Hao. It also shows that even if your va is surnamed Li, that cannot save characters like Baizhu from punishment and condemnation.
Some of the buffs are quite insane such as 60% def shred and 60% res shred on quicken. These are the types of buffs needed against the Wenut boss in the abyss (which gets increased res 55/90% compared to overworld 25/60%).