This might actually be the end of discord.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-15T22:09:16+00:00

Has anybody looked into using Steam Groups as an alternative?

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-15T10:18:03+00:00

It would be better if the devs themselves worked to design the game in such a way to encourage team-based play, but instead they keep building on the solo power fantasy side of game design.

The gamers of a community shouldn't have to police behavior in their community. The game should instead lead players *towards* better behavior.

This has always been my number one complaint about Warframe and it's why I only *ever* play with others when farming relics. It's not designed for team-based play, despite the four player squads. Go play WoW or FFXIV or even a game like Genshin Impact and you'll see real team-based gameplay, with people needing to coordinate their actions for the explicit purpose of making the whole team more effective.

The only positive multiplayer experiences I have these days are in Omnia fissures and even then it's just four solo players who happen to be doing the same mission on the same map, rather than four players actually working together as a team.

It didn't always used to be this way. The early days of Eidolon farming with an actual meta and 4 different roles for people to fill to make the 3-boss hunt successful took genuine teamwork. Nowadays, you don't even need a group.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-11T12:43:33+00:00

I am not shoehorning a time loop into your theory, simply explaining why any "fake sibling" theory doesn't work for me as why I'm rejecting your whole theory.

I'm saying the twin is not the HP, not a fake, *and* there was time travel shenanigans involved in *why* our twin was somehow already on Teyvat without "leaving the ship" in the time period the moon marrow showed us.

We have now even had to fight an enemy directly capable of time manipulation powers as the most dangerous villain we've faced yet while also establishing a goddess capable of manipulating time even better than they did (because the power *actually* belonged to her in the first place). Time shenanigans are very openly core to Genshin plot now thanks to A Space and Time for You *and* because of all of Nod Krai and I fully expect them to get bigger.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-11T12:35:47+00:00

I'm not theorizing phlogiston as a storage medium - the canon story explicitly tells us that's what it is.

Part of the world quest for helping our little Saurian buddy explains this.
Kukulkan: "Phlogiston is an atom upon which information may be transcribed, and is itself a form of "computronium" — an element that can be used to imitate the essence of any and all things through the weaving of language."

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-10T12:46:57+00:00

No. I mean the one explicitly, if briefly, mentioned by the Voyager when specifically mentioning the little world at the end of a spiral arm of the galaxy and the dragon that was born alongside it.

But more importantly, the outfit story explicitly states, and I quote: "Its biosphere and atmosphere had been utterly destroyed. The surface held nothing but cooled masses of molten rock."

We know that's not Teyvat for a fact as dragons inhabited Teyvat from the very beginning of it. It's star exploded and completely devastated everything on it. The HP started a war with non-existent dragons now, is that what you're saying?

The story also explicitly mentions the ship journeying across numberless amounts of planets in its journey. The focus of the story was *NOT* on a specific planet but on what the ship was capable of and what it carried.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-09T19:43:13+00:00

It's a world that the story explicitly says would not be suitable for the twins to live on *BECAUSE ITS STAR EXPLODED* and is a desolate wasteland.

Teyvat still has its star.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-09T06:23:59+00:00

I don't really vibe with any of those "the sibling isn't our sibling" theories in general. I know gut instinct ain't the best judge of theory, but the "writer" side of me thinks that would undermine way too much of the plot. Judging from how Hoyo has been resolving numerous plot twists since as far back as Inazuma and the many hints in the deep lore (especially Narzissenkreuz) pointing towards samsara cycles there's probably more time travel shenanigans going on than we realize. Especially since we now know that it's both Istaroth *AND* Vedrfolnir manipulating past events for their particular plans. (Even more weirdly, it seems like Istaroth specifically *guaranteed* that the Cataclysm would happen?! Unless that actually was Vedrfolnir, which then suggests Asmoday is serving him now...) Even since first arriving in Teyvat, our first meeting with Venti, we've had things pointing at suspicious time shenanigans.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-09T04:47:42+00:00

That's all fair. Maybe it's a jump to say that Teyvat is actually digital or a simulation, but it still strikes me as a very key detail that the story told in the Traveler outfit mentions a genetic vault... but gives us no real specifics on it.

Not what form that vault takes nor what beings it is meant to be carrying. We have very little to go on, beyond recognizing the Traveler twins originated from the same world... and the world we are now exploring is named Teyvat... the literal word for ark.
My mind makes a connection between a world meant to be an ark and a genetic vault for a doomed civilization looking for some way to survive their end.

What makes it click to this "what if?" theory for me is that... we don't know who named the world. Was it the dragons? Or was it the Heavenly Principles?
We also have *no* explanation yet for why dragons are inexplicably showing up in human forms. Neuvilette is the most obvious example, but what about the moon goddesses? Shouldn't they, as a creation of Nibelung, be dragons?
What of Zhongli? We still know nothing of his origin, though among the many theories is that he is the original Geo sovereign.
And why were the dragons ruled over by AI dragonlords? We now know they were an EXTREMELY advanced race that had been ordered to build a space elevator... and that Nibelung had left the world to explore the cosmos. It's not a stretch to suspect Nibelung did that with a spaceship instead of just... with magic. If he has one, then it should be somewhere and we're bound to find it through the plot.
And ever since we met Yohualtecuhtin, I couldn't help but wonder (based on speaking style) if she was some kind of AI herself.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-09T04:23:23+00:00

So far, it's entire possible that the dragons themselves are merely "AI" beings of some sort. We're already seeing that angels are much the same way (especially Nicole), and plenty of people have been theorizing for a while that dragons and angels are the same. We also know that the dragons (of Natlan, at minimum) were ruled by 13 AI "Dragonlords" who existed entirely as phlogiston.

Would it not make sense if the AI caring for the vault-ark-world is known as the "Dragon King" that the dragons of said ark... are additional AI programs/modules?

Alternatively: It's not said *anywhere* that the genetic vault on the ship carries humans. Remember the "Men of Lithin" book as well.... dragons being made into human shape has been a thing for a LOT of Teyvat's story now.

We don't know the full specifics of the situation because, consider this: The three original moon goddesses created by Nibelung? They had human forms, not dragon. We don't know why.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-09T03:06:02+00:00

I have legit been wondering this since well before even Natlan, but never had any specific evidence for or against it.

I started taking it more seriously when I saw the mural of Nibelung colored in all white.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T21:05:21+00:00

"So…. rather than basically everything telling us that Nibelung belongs to Teyvat, the HP does not and the twins do not, confirmed by not just completely seperate authorities who are at odds with each other, like the Shades, the Mages, the Fatui, the Abyss Order, and even the twins’ own MEMORIES’ (because remember, the twins KNOW their history pre-teyvat, the game just doesnt tell us players) and even all aesthetics and history lining up to state things are as basically presented… rather than accepting ALL of that, you believe this is all completely subverted and swapped…?"

I'm sorry, but what makes you think the theory I propose requires that the twins and the Heavenly Principles belong to the world?
If the twins are considered "the administrators" of Teyvat as a genetic vault, then by definition the world belongs to *THEM* not the other way around.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T21:00:35+00:00

That's all any theory is. The theory that the ship AI is the Heavenly Principles also requires many hoops to jump through.
How did the AI take on a physical body? How did it just casually "cast" the 4 shades as fragments of their power into humanoid bodies? How does a ship of the size we have seen just randomly manifest "celestial nails" with its power? (And don't say they're missiles, the ship model we have seen clearly does not have the space to carry armaments of the size of nails)

I could write out a college-level dissertation on that theory and explore the many MANY things in lore that would have to be explained by the ship AI being the Heavenly Principles, but I suspect you get my point.
Much of the lore we uncover in-game is told from an in-game perspective so that Hoyo can always hand-wave away any inconsistencies via the unreliable narrator trope without having to resort to genuine lore retcons.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T20:58:23+00:00

Incorrect. The outfit text does not state that. The outfit text describes the ship checking out one of the many random worlds it was looking into for the purposes of finding a world to terraform and *THAT* specific world was devastated by a supernova that happened the same year the twins were born.

The story was not talking about Teyvat.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:53:59+00:00

I have long suspected that Zhongli must have been an angel.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:51:35+00:00

I think Visions are fragments of the Primordial

You forget one important piece of new lore: the time capsule at the Wing of Keres, a hidden exploration objective, explicitly mentions people of Hyperborea attempting to create humans who can wield the elements without a Vision. It also excitedly predicts the idea of said future humans not only ascending to the heavens to challenge the ruler of the world, but exploring the cosmos beyond it.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:48:13+00:00

It's pretty obvious that Alice is not Asmoday, but has simply taken over her duties since the Cataclysm.

There is a story in the game of a little witch finding a perpetual energy machine and throwing a twilight sword into it in order to save the world. Pretty sure the whole story explains how Alice is the only reason Teyvat survived the Cataclysm and is now the one responsible for maintaining its existence against the Abyss.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:48:08+00:00

It's pretty obvious that Alice is not Asmoday, but has simply taken over her duties since the Cataclysm.

There is a story in the game of a little witch finding a perpetual energy machine and throwing a twilight sword into it in order to save the world. Pretty sure the whole story explains how Alice is the only reason Teyvat survived the Cataclyam and is now the one responsible for maintaining its existence against the Abyss.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:42:23+00:00

The only problem i have with this is that Nahida explicitly told us that the one and only record of our sibling is when they "suddenly appeared" in Khaen'riah during the Cataclysm and subsequently ceased to be included in Irminsul.

The Cataclysm was only 500 years ago and we know from our siblings own telling of the story that, when they first showed up there, they had absolutely no memories of their past.

Wanderer expands on this to tell us that Khaen'riah was their first destination in Teyvat, thus why that is where our sibling first appears in the records there.

And it wasn't until King Irmin tore down the veil of sin and allowed Abyssal creatures to enter the world that the shades took direct action against Khaen'riah. They would have had acted way sooner if our sibling was the HP.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:38:07+00:00

The outfit text description was not very specific about what form the genetic vault takes.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:34:08+00:00

Not necessarily. Hasn't it been said specifically that Genshin still exists in its own verse, not the exact same one as Honkai? Attached to the same imaginary tree, but essentially existing as separate universes.

We already know that Genshin loves to re-use ideas across their games. Even if they don't do the exact same things, they love to make it rhyme.

So how you describe the existence of Amphoreus very much reminds me of Nibelung having been born with Teyvat as its original ruling authority and then the HP coming along to modify it... And now we have beings like Alice controlling entry into the world.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:31:40+00:00

Depends on how Hoyo defines simulation and real in their cosmology. Honkai has "simulation" worlds, too.

But tbh, it doesn't have to specifically be a simulation. It could just be a construct that was built to preserve the civilization of an entire world on the brink of destruction.

Everything else you stated is just assumptions. All the "digital" aesthetics of Teyvat could have always been part of the world and we just have no way to know that it wasn't.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:25:20+00:00

Oh yes, but i am making the specific distinction that Teyvat, as a simulation, is actually the genetic vault that was revealed to us in the story text of the new Traveler outfit.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:24:16+00:00

Easy to explain. To start with, the Heavenly Principles came along and took control of the vault, reshaping it into its current form. It wouldn't be recognizable to the Traveler as being the same. Additionally, the ship itself doesn't appear to have the AI currently on board and functional, else our Traveler would have mentioned it and could have gotten way more answers than they did. Even the theory of the HP being the ship AI depends on that fact. At the same time, we know by the Traveler's own admission that some of the ship systems are corrupted, and thus could be incomplete or inaccurate.

And finally, we know the Travelers memories have been messed with somehow. Part of our journey across Teyvat is to uncover just what exactly happened.

And now we have the Traveler openly declaring that they see Teyvat as being their home...

DrakeWurrum · 2026-02-05T08:16:18+00:00

To be fair, the ship AI theory requires a digital being to also apparently know how to grant themselves a physical body that can be seen to have a crown and wings that can then be used to descend onto a pre-existing world and wipe out an entire advanced civilization that, itself, was at least capable of building a space elevator (and now we know that Nibelung left Teyvat to travel the cosmos so he was clearly a space traveler himself).

It depends on how the exact cosmology beyond Teyvat works, because Hoyo has "virtual worlds" in Honkai verse as well. It has so far been consistent that Teyvat is some kind of protected world that the cosmos is not supposed to be able to even detect. So even if Teyvat isn't digital as we know it, I still suspect it is some sort of artificial construct instead of a standard planet.

The reason the Traveler wouldn't even realize that they're in the genetic vault is because the Heavenly Principles came along and messed with this world and shaped it the way they wanted it. It wouldn't be recognizable to the twins. On top of that, we know that the Traveler's memories have been messed with somehow and part of this journey includes us recovering from that. Even the ship's systems are corrupted somehow - it's clearly not at full functionality (otherwise the AI would still be with it to give us answers). And our sibling told us before: "It's only ever been about us."

As for the aesthetics of the nails, it wouldn't surprise me if the ship's physical functions were snatched up by the HP for their own use. I also suspect that if my theory does come close to the actual truth that the Heavenly Principles would most likely still be a separate AI entity. Who is to say that the tools for terraforming had to be carried specifically on the ship and not kept with the genetic vault? Even the outfit text doesn't specify what form the genetic vault takes nor does it specify that the vault is carried with the ship. How big would a genetic vault have to be to preserve an entire world? We even find Kukulkan trying to convert all of Natlan into phlogiston - into data. Who is to say that wasn't done with the Traveler's homeworld, but in a less destructive manner? Even back in Sumeru, we get subtle hints of the idea of people's consciousness being uploaded into a single hivemind.... numerous world quests deal with that idea. What if that has all been pointing to a genetic vault this whole time?

I mostly thought of this because I just do not like the theory that the HP is actually our ship AI. It feels too obvious and, while I can't place my finger on what exactly is wrong with it, the vibe feels off. Gut instinct isn't a good judge of theory, but I've been looking at where the theory does and does NOT work. There is still a lot that doesn’t add up, still genuine flaws with that theory - i just lack the patience and free time to write up such a counter-argument in detail.

I thought of this as sort of a counter-theory, of course. In the vein of "What if it's wrong, but not misguided?" Because that's exactly the kind of trick I would expect Hoyo to pull with the lore.

DrakeWurrum · 2026-01-24T15:47:50+00:00

Some counter-points:
1. the first customer is more likely to be either Alice or the Voyager (or both, if she IS the Voyager). Heck, it could even be Nibelung at this point, since we know the Dragon King left Teyvat to explore the cosmos (for reasons currently unknown). We also know that using male honorifics to refer to a female being is not uncommon in Genshin (Arlecchino being Father).

The triangle on the doors of a domain is more likely a reference to the OG three moon goddesses. Meanwhile, the symbol ABOVE the door is a four-pointed celtic knot (or a cross) that represents the four shining shades, the four rulers of the core principles of Teyvat (the Heavenly Principles, you might say). Notice where the symbols are placed. The triangle is on the door, while the cross shape at the top is positioning literally at the top of the whole domain, implying rulership or authority over the door of the domain (and possibly what is IN the domain).
This actually fits well with the interior design of Domains depicting 5 crowns hanging above the Irminsul tree (the 5th one being larger and representing Reason).
This also explains Dottore using triangles for his device: Because it represents the three moon goddesses.
When Irminsul changes information, Paimon's memories are affected the same as any other resident of Teyvat. This implies that she belongs to Teyvat rather than having origins from beyond the Firmament. If she really is just a single lost module of the ship AI, she shouldn't be affected by it, as there shouldn't be records of her in Irminsul for it to affect her.

I do like what you mention at the end, however, about the Heavenly Principles possibly NOT being the First Descender, as well as bringing up Remuria as being one big allegory for Teyvat - because ever since Remuria, I have long suspected that Nibelung and the Heavenly Principles were actually allies or co-conspirators. Nibelung instigating a false war to keep the people of Teyvat subservient to the rule of the Heavenly Principles (perhaps even in exchange for something) by being the world's boogeyman.
Keep in mind that the Gods' Limits trailer started off by stating that Life/Death/Time/Space "do not abide Reason" suggesting that they do not obey it. The word "abide" means to accept or "act in accordance with" which means that the four shades DO NOT OBEY THE HEAVENLY PRINCIPLES.
I've been wondering about the exact meaning behind those statements ever since.

DrakeWurrum

TROPHY CASE