This post is a April 2026 transcription of this video. The text has been edited for readability while preserving my original sentiment.

Happy Lantern Rite!

I have just completed my celebration of Genshin Impact’s Lantern Rite 2026 event and I wanted to provide my thoughts on the event as a whole. Now, I do not have a long history with Lantern Rite like many of you have so I will not try and use this as a way to compare to the previous Lantern Rite. Instead, I just wanted to talk about how much fun I had enjoying participating in this event and learning the story behind Zibai.

Minigames

There were three minigames that you can play through this Lantern Rite. An action game, a side-scroller, and your standard Genshin combat challenges.

I really enjoyed the action game. It was very slow at the start, but once you are upgrading and beginning to move faster and attack more enemies I just had a blast returning to the game and collecting my primogems.

The side-scrolling game was incredible at first but each stage is based on a different character’s movements and although characters like Varesa and Mualani were a lot of fun every other character just broke the pacing of a very smooth side-scrolling running game because they all had some sort of ability that immediately stopped the player’s movement. once they hit the ground. which ruined the momentum of this style of game.

Last was the standard Genshin combat challenge. I enjoyed this if only for the sound the gold makes when you start to pop off. But I don’t know why I can’t understand the lunar reactions. It was way to difficult to even get a good run going. I just gave up after trying to get past 12,000 point challenge.

ACt 1

When it comes to the main story, a similar feeling is felt. A strong Act 1 and Act 2 but a weak Act 3 and epilogue. But I’ll do my best to explain why. I enjoyed this year’s Lantern Night. Hoyoverse did a great job at curating this lore around the White Horse Adeptus Zibai while adding some more depth to characters like Zhongli and the history of Teyvat.

I appreciate the intrigue of the hole in the moon in Act 1. Wish that we got to see that in game, but I can understand the technical difficulties for having that outside of a cutscene. Also really enjoyed the art exhibition, but I wish they went a bit further by showing us more pieces of history and lore. Even if it’s stuff we already know, I want to have this exhibition feel like it’s historical, with truly incredible pieces of history.

However, what ties Act 1 all together was us meeting Ziju, Zibai’s first deadly self. This one represents her true self. And seeing her in this state of being helpful, but at the same time feeling helpless for herself, knowing that she will be slowly fading away, made me so curious and drive the importance of us wanting to help her out. and speaking of importance, this quest is so heavily reliant on the Traveler bringing back the Frostm Moon, which only happens after Act 8. So are people just restricted from playing the Lantern Rite quest? Luckily, the story is a permanent quest, so people can enjoy this at their own pace, which is a great change. Thank you, HoYoverse.

Act 2

Act 2 is where the story really shined for me, because the real ones appear. Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper. Whenever you see these two, you are in for a hilarious time. This time, these two dummies are talking about how well they plant mint. But also how much they want to plant mint at Cloud Retainer’s homes. Leading to an incredibly hilarious moment where the Mountain Shaper is taken over by Zizhi, the second self of Zibai. Full of her memories and wisdom, she takes over Mountain Shaper to fulfill his goals of planting mint in Cloud Retainer’s home.

Leading to an even more hilarious moment where Moon Carver tries to play it cool by telling the Cloud Retainer that Mountain Shaper poses no real threat. So we should just let him be. It is just, it’s such a wonderful moment. I love these two characters showing up in these quests, even if they have NPC-ass looking faces. Also, the Gaming possession was very funny as well. All of this culminating into a really cool moment where Zizhi talks to us about Zibai and Lang-Gan via an incredibly well animated video, which you can check out in the video embedded at the top of the post.

It’s a powerful moment of Zibai sacrificing herself to stop a celestial nail from wiping out Lang-Gan and her people. However, what I didn’t make the connection to and huge thank you to the comments of my videos, celestial nail did still kill out everyone because the Chasm is Lang-Gan It just makes this even more of a tragic story. However, in a wild turn of events and one that we still do not have answers for, Istaroth, the ruler of time, prevented Zibai’s soul from dying out. So I’m really curious, why did she do this? On one hand, Zibai is an angel, so I guess that kind of makes sense, but there’s got to be more to this.

Act 3

Lastly, Act 3 and the epilogue were a bit weak. Unlike Zhizhu and Zizhi, the Ziqiao is just so mean. But like, not in a fun way. Then Zhongli is like, hey, why not take her on a tour of Liyue. This isn’t the first time we’ve toured Liyue, nor is it the first time we had to show someone around a location like, oh, look how everything has changed. And to do it now with someone so unlikable. At the very least, we learned that Chef Mao knows what cosplay is. And eventually, towards the end, Ziqiao becomes less of a jerk and we get a wonderful ending of Zibai coming back to the mortal realm. Such a beautifully well animated video.

And we also learned that the Moonchase Festival was created by Zhongli to bring back Zibai. Absolutely so heartwarming. It’s so sweet. Zhongli has this heart of Mora. It is so beautiful. And the only thing I have to say about the epilogue is the chariot ride was fun. We were also teased, though, a future Shenhe quest with Zibai noticing that Shenhe no longer needs the red restraints for her. So I’m like, oh, my God, we’re actually going to get a moment where she’s going to remove the restraints.

Anyways, thank you all for enjoying this post! Appreciate you taking your time to read this! Happy Lantern Rite 2026!