The Lantern Rite event is now available to play on all Genshin Impact servers and involves the new Theatre Mechanicus, a new tower defence style of gameplay. This article will guide you on how to get more Lantern crafting materials, how to play the new game and how to fully utilise the shop.
Xiao Lantern Crafting Materials
The Xiao Lantern requires 3 different materials, all of which can be found throughout Teyvat. For this event, you can use the MiHoYo Lab interactive map specifically made for crafting the Xiao Lantern. This map can be found here and is extremely useful as you can see where the plants, enemies and ores are. Though the website is in Mandarin, you can refer to the specific plants/ores/enemies by the images next to the text. If you would like to look for local specialties (such as the ores and plants), you can refer to my recent guide here.
The Lantern Fiber can be obtained from harvestable plants, which are essentially all plants in the game including Sweet Flowers, Mints and Pinecones that can be found close to teleport waypoints or on the way to Daily Commissions.
The Wick Material is found after defeating hilichurl-type enemies or Fatui elites, all of which can be easily found throughout the map. Do complete the quest to craft the Xiao Lantern before completing Daily Commissions, as you will then be able to obtain the Wick Materials after defeating the enemies within the quests. If you would like to farm hilichurls daily, you can visit the Cecilia Garden domain and hunt the hilichurls outside the domain, as well as break the Electro Crystals and collect the carrots for other materials.
Plaustrite shards are obtained from Crystal Ores, White Iron Chunk and Iron Chunks, Electro Crystals as well as Cor Lapis and Noctilocus Jades. These ores are commonly found outside the Spiral Abyss, on the Musk Reef island. Apart from the Cor Lapis and Noctilocous Jade locations that I listed in the specialties article (linked above), you can also find Electro Crystals at Luhua Pool. The areas with many of such ores can be obtained by speaking to both Wagner and Master Zhang, to find locations with more Crystal ores. Additionally, you can use Ningguang in your team while exploring such that the ore locations will appear on your map.
Characters for Theatre Mechanicus
I have included a tier list below of characters that you can bring for the Theatre Mechanicus, as some characters with specific elemental talents make it easier to inflict enemies with elements.
Anemo Characters such as the Anemo Traveller and Jean can knock enemies back with their skills or ultimate, and are particularly useful in the lowest difficulty of the challenge as enemies can be thrown into the large hole in the middle of the arena. Characters such as Klee, Mona, Xiangling, Fischl are all placed in S tier as well due to their elemental skills that can be placed on the arena to deal elemental damage. Venti and Sucrose can both group enemies and prevent them from escaping.
Characters that use Elemental damage through a Catalyst weapon are generally preferred as they can constantly inflict enemies with an element to do elemental reactions with the towers. However, Geo characters are more inert and they are unable to interact with the towers for now apart from Crystallise which does not do much damage.
Ensure that the characters you bring typically have short cooldowns if their normal attacks cannot deal Elemental damage (such as Bennett, Kaeya) or can do charged Elemental damage (such as Ganyu, Tartaglia, Amber). Additionally, do ensure you bring characters of different elements to make more elemental reactions. Do note that the characters you bring do not necessarily need to be levelled or have correct weapons/artifacts on them as all they need to do is inflict enemies with various elements. Personally, this is the team that I like to bring below:
Theatre Mechanicus Tips
There are several mistakes that you should avoid and tactics to use when playing Theatre Mechanicus:
- Bring a Bow character for difficulty level 2 and up to stun ruin guards by hitting their weak points, such that the towers can slowly do damage to them before they escape.
- Ruin guards can also be "Frozen" by using a Cryo/Hydro character with a Hydro/Cryo tower respectively, or both Cryo and Hydro towers, this prevents them from moving forward.
- Do not deconstruct any towers that you have set up as the reward that you gain from deconstructing are not worth it.
- Preferably, do not try the "Fickle" setup that can be chosen between waves of enemies as the setup could be a large debuff that includes not getting any points from enemies that hence makes constructing new towers between waves difficult. I would not recommend it as it feels like a gamble that is not worth the risk.
- Do not use the setups that refund higher points for deconstruction, focus on those setups that improve your current towers.
- There are 2 entrance points for enemies for Difficulty level 2, so do construct your towers at the intersection instead of just at one entrance.
- Place towers of different elements next to each other (such as Hydro, Pyro or Electro, Cryo) to allow for strong elemental reactions.
Event Shop - Xiao Market
Within the Event Shop, you should prioritise the Hero's Wit books and the various Ascension fragments first, before spending it on Mora. You might only want to purchase Mora if you are at a rather high AR and are extremely short of Mora. Don't buy the Dust of Azoth as it can be easily purchased in the Stardust Exchange and is not costly, especially if you pull on the banner often. In Stage 2, prioritise the Crown of Insight as this Talent Level Up material is only available through such events. Mystic Enhancement ores are easily craftable and you can probably craft more of such material with the collection of Crystal Ores for crafting Xiao Lanterns, so I would typically suggest saving up your Peace Talismans for other material. In Stage 3, you can purchase the namecard since it is limited for this event, but do ensure that you collect all the other Talent books (including those that your current characters might not need) since these are valuable material that typically requires resin to get.