I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT Genshin Impact’s Song of the Welkin Moon Act IX & Act X are the conclusion to tying up loose ends in Sumeru! IT IS PERFECT!!

Opening

We start this quest in Sumeru through the eyes of Collei, but this is no ordinary Sumeru. We are in a premonition of something that will happen if we do not prevent it.

I was in disbelief that they would pull this on us again, but I absolutely love these moments and although I didn’t stream this entire experience, you can see my reactions to some of my favorite moments from both Act IX & Act X.

What has been so fascinating about this opening is typically with the Traveler, a moment like this would be. WOAH THAT’S INSANE. However, since we are seeing this through the eyes of Collei, she is hurt that the people in her life that “saved” her, no longer see her in the same way as before.

Sure, there is the goofy moment with Kaveh, but when she runs into Tighnari. Awe, that was so heartbreaking. The animation team did a fantastic job adding so much weight to Collei’s movements.

The way the camera zooms in to make these feeling of Collei’s world closing in on her. The camera going out of focus illustrating Collei losing control. The way the have her clasping her chest in disbelief as her tears well up more & more. This is some of the best in-game animation work Genshin Impact has ever done.

And both Act IX & Act X, have some pretty remarkable in-game animations from carrying Nahida on our back to Kaveh’s expressive attitude towards Alhaitham.

Conflict

The conflict of these two acts is brilliant. It uses what we learned about Capitano giving his life to the Lord of the Night to not only allow the Night Kingdom to continue existing, but to ferry lost souls to the Night Kingdom.

It incorporates the ability to provide a Wi-Fi connection to the Irminsul. Similar to what we saw with the Wanderer when he was using the Irminsul to calculate the World Formula.

And of course, it utilizes every important quest in Sumeru to provide one of the most rewarding experience in Genshin Impact.

How wild is it that Dottore allowed himself to die so that he can be sent directly to the Ley Lines. That is a 5 STAR VILLIAN. Truly remarkable!

It’s funny because throughout my experience playing these acts. I never would have thought that death would have been a viable way to access the Ley Lines while still remaining in control, but here we are.

The story does a great job at using the Sumeru City & Rainforest evacuations as a way to increase the stakes of the chaos while also having Regrator’s purpose very misleading.

I didn’t have enough time to process the Ley Lines opening in Act IX because the Traveler immediately was like “THAT’S COOL, LET’S GO TALK TO APEP”. Which I think is so a good way to imply when Regrator deposited Dottore’s soul without having us sit with this for too long.

Which meant that Regrator can now mess with us for the entire quest until he arrives in Sumeru City. It is such a perfect way to mislead us as to what may be going on.

Guiding Notes

Before I talk about the incredible way this conflict concludes, I wanted to highlight a some characters & awesome moments!

First, the Guiding Notes. I’ve seen a similar feature implemented in Final Fantasy XVI and I’m so grateful that Genshin is also implementing this. It is such a nice feature to just be able to get some quick notes on characters & ideas.

I last played Sumeru in 2023, I don’t have a good grasp on all the lore. So having these friendly reminders of characters & concepts was so appreciative.

Funny enough, the Guiding Notes even had a detailed portrait of Hermanubis despite us never seen this version of him before.

Apep

We also never got this much Apep love. For all you, Apep fans out there, congrats. I was so thrilled to have Apep play such a pivotal role in keeping Nahida alive.

Now this is where I can see people getting rather upset because through this entire set of acts. The game references & introduces characters from story & world quests. I do not know what the experience is like if you haven’t met many of the characters being introduced.

For me, the feeling I felt was grateful. It was such a rewarding experience to have these characters that seemingly had their own separate unique stories in Sumeru come together to stop Dottore.

For Apep, I didn’t remember how sassy she was because every moment with her was so funny.

I love how she thinks that Neuvillette is gonna join her for her revenge against humankind. It is kinda perfect.

She did provide us with some new lore about the Irminsul tree being planted by the dragons & the Ley Lines flowed with light realm power, but it was appropriated by the Heavenly Principles to store souls, memories, everything we know what it does today.

Jeht

Apep isn’t the only non-archon quest character appearing in this story.

I want to express how happy I am to see Jeht. Jeht is one of my favorites in all of Genshin. I vibed with the Golden Slumber quest series, which I have a playthrough on my channel.

Hearing her story & her relationship with her dad as we explore all these fascinating ancient ruins. It definitely left an impression on me. So to see her play such large role in an archon quest felt so rewarding and I love the way they animated her walk cycle!!

Also the casting choice is EXCELLENT! This is the first time Jeht has been voiced & Andi Rene Christenson has done such an incredible job giving life to Jeht. Andi nails the emotional closure Jeht has with her father. Jeht being able to see her father freed from the Golden Slumber to finally rest in the Ley Lines is so beautiful. I cannot believe that we are getting closure for Jeht’s story after 3 whole years.

Liloupar, Aranara, Sorush, Rana

And Genshin continues to close more stories in Sumeru because Liloupar arrives in the archon quest, 3 years after their appearance in the Dirge of Bilqis quest series. Though honestly, I don’t remember much of this quest besides Babel & Azariq being hot & how cool of a location the Eternal Oasis is. So apologies to Liloupar because they had quite a beautiful death at the end of Act X.

Also randomly do the Aranara & Sorush appear as well. Although, I jokingly make fun of the length of the Aranara quest series. It was wonderful seeing them again & I could not help, but smile through their efforts to aid the Traveler. It was wonderful having them assist during the fights by providing healing, which is so tremendously wonderful. They also became our intelligence network as they were helping spy on the Fatui! It was ashamed they were not voiced or even have a fake language for them to communicate.

Sorush appears. This is a character that I wish I had more appreciation for. I deeply disliked the world quest they were apart of because when I experienced that quest, I was not enjoying my time playing Genshin. However, I did enjoy their role in this quest even if it was a small role they played.

Lastly, shout out to Rana! I cannot believe that Rana randomly shows up with Rahman during our attempt to reclaim Sumeru City. Strangely enough, she gets the least amount of screen time & she doesn’t use her vision at all.

Regrator

Someone else who doesn’t use a vision or maybe even a delusion is Regrator aka Rooster aka the character in the Snezhnaya preview teaser aka Tsarista.

I don’t know what’s wrong me, for some reason, I thought Regrator & the character in the Snezhnaya preview looked the same…they absolutely do not.

I also thought Pantalone’s codename was Rooster because I thought Pulcinella’s codename was the Mayor. And in my mind, there was no way two codenames would start with an “R”.

However, despite all of my embarrassing mistakes, what an incredible introduction to such a slimy character. His only allegiance is to the art of the deal & boy howdy does it show so well.

The way they kept him a mystery throughout the archon quest was frustrating, but in a good way. It wasn’t just done for the sake of a surprise, but he didn’t want his true identity to conflict with business! He also mislead us by calling himself a subordinate of Dottore, which was true at one point. He even has some sort of an ability to create illusions of himself based on his interaction with Cyno.

I love the drips of backstory we learned. The fact that Regrator was apart of Dottore’s experiments. Not only does it appear to have some of his organs replaced like his lungs, but Regrator is in constant need of Dottore’s elixir of Immortality.

I’m curious how this will play into Regrator’s evitable death as Dottore said the Regrator’s stock of elixirs will only last for a few more years, which will certainly extend past our journey into Snezhnaya.

Also one thing I noticed with Regrator’s outfit is that it has some abyss-coloration in addition to a typical electro-type color scheme. So I’m curious if this is apart of Dottore’s experimentation or has he made a deal with someone else??

We were also told in Act 8, that Rooster & Regrator are against each other in secret & with Rooster sending out the PR letter at the end of the Act X. I’m curious if we’ll be working alongside Rooster while we’re in Snezhnaya.

Collei

Collei is another character who got full closure! We learn through this entire set of acts that the reason see has had this premonitions of things to come is because the god remains Dottore injected into Collei were that of the Goddess of Flowers.

And these premonitions that Collei has experienced were because of how compatible she was to the Goddess of Flowers that these remains wanted to warn Collei.

And throughout this quest, we are seeing Collei grow & even utilize the power of the Goddess of Flowers to calm the Jinn.

But what makes this so perfect, is that this isn’t what Collei wants. She doesn’t want to be the next Goddness of Flowers. She just wants to be normal.

I don’t know if I remember a story I’ve watched or read that involved a character essentially rejecting powers no matter how good-aligned those powers are. However, I understand, Collei has been tormented her entire life practically. This is the first time where she can finally be at peace without worrying about is she gonna get sick again, will she have another premonition, etc.

Dottore

Last character I want to talk about is Dottore. What an incredible end to such a sinister character. The mind he has to allow himself to die in order to be deposited into the Ley Lines is truly mad, but in such an awesome way. I have always enjoyed Dottore as a character because he represents a character that is truly keeping me on my toes. I cannot predict what he’ll do next.

I love when we got his backstory, but presented in such a comical way, which was just giving a presentation to Regrator. It serves Zandik right for the awfulness he has done & created that his segments refused to assist him when he was dying.

I think Dottore is certainly an incredible villain that I was deeply miss. I’m looking forward to who the next villain will be in Genshin.

Resolution

I also want to talk more about how awesome Act X resolves this conflict! First, the story leads us to believe that we need to save the Irminsul tree. This allows the intensity to continue getting worst & worst for our team.

We had to rush Nahida to Apep in hopes to get Nahida back on her feet as she tried to aid the Irminsul tree in process.

We also needed the help of Nefer who was able to free Heryshaf, Sobek, and Thoth & allow us to perform some “adjustments” to the Aaru.

This series of moments were incredible. Not only do these three pillars look awesome! I love all of their designs! It is so cool that Genshin is getting more comfortable designing humanoid animals because pour one out for Mountain Shaper & Moon Carver for getting absolutely disgraced. I still feel so bad they they have such bland npc designs.

Sorry, got a bit sidetrack, let’s go back to the Aaru. We need help completing the Aaru to transfer all the memories & information from the Irminsul tree. First, what an awesome idea for this quest! Instead of repairing the tree, let’s offload the information to another source.

It was great seeing Alhaitham & Kaveh again as they will be the ones performing the upgrades to the Aaru. There was this goofy moment when Kaveh had to delete some old information from the Aaru & they came across some info about the yellow sand. It was a dumb joke about peeing in the sand, but I loved it.

I also loved learning that the Aaru is actually based on technology from Celestia. The Goddess of Flowers at one point visited Celestia and provided the needed information on how their technology works for the initial construction of the Aaru.

It was also great seeing how all the different Sumeru characters had a purpose in resolving this conflict. I love that we had this perfect moment between Wanderer & Paimon, where they both got to relate to each other in the sense of feeling useless.

I cannot forget about the Pyro Gnosis being used by Nahida to burn down the Irminsul tree, which is just such an insane twist. I was expecting us to give the Tsarita the gnosis because increasingly does it seem like Tsarita might be cooking giving the increasing knowledge we learn about how corrupt the Heavenly Principles is.

But to expend the power of the gnosis during the Irminsul tree, now I don’t full believe the gnosis is gone. This is an extremely important tool for the Tsarita’s plan. Also despite his death, Dottore has considered this experiment a success, which might mean they Regrator has retrieve the gnosis or potentially using the Pyro Gnosis within the Irminsul tree allowed Dottore to fully understand how it works & he was able to somehow utilize that information to the benefit of the Tsarita.

Either way, this has been a truly remarkable series of quests. This is probably one of the most rewarding archon quests in Genshin just because of how they brough everyone from Sumeru together to put one find bow on Sumeru.

Thank you all for taking the time to reading me write about how much I love Song of the Welkin Moon Act IX & Act X. You should also check out my highlights of my reactions to the quest. Let me know what you all enjoyed most about these two Acts, bye!