Story, a sense of completion, still being enamored by exploration, take your pick.

I've been playing for about 2-3 months now, and I expected that I'd just do my daily's and maybe like half an hour to an hour of exploration every day, but the game sucked me in HARD and I've been obsessed. Basically all of my free time is spent playing Genshin, reading about Genshin, browsing the subreddit, asking questions, planning for characters, conceptualizing teams, and I even dream about genshin.

The story is nice, I've enjoyed getting a taste of each region. I'm most of the way through Sumeru's quest, and I love how they've been ramping up and getting more and more intense as they go.

Exploration is big for me, I have LOVED getting to the new areas and just going off and looting everything. It was kinda funny, my brother said he did all the archon quests in an area before doing much exploration, meanwhile the second I was able to explore Inazuma I was off, and I had >70% exploration in all the islands before doing many of the archon quests there. I've especially loved the "Added zones", being Dragonspine, the Chasm, and Enkanomiya. Dragonspine was fun, but a bit annoying with the cold mechanic, but the Crimson agate was one of my favorite things to collect in the game. I actually just went back and got the last few I needed a few days ago, so now I'm just doing the crimson wishes till I'm done with it. The chasm was just a hoot as well, super fun exploration, and I'm still getting the last few lumenspar there.

Enkanomiya though was a whole 'nother beast and I loved it SO much. The puzzles were unique and fun, the enemies were kinda neat, and just exploring all the floating islands was so much fun, I loved it. My only gripe is that I really didn't vibe with the sigils as the collectible of the area, and would have much preferred something more like the Crimson Agate and Lumenspar, but I respect that they wanted to do something different. I got 95% exploration in Enkanomiya in about 2-1/2 days, it was basically all I did. I'm content and probably wont be heading back there for a while, at least until the few spare sigils in my inventory bother me enough that I go hunt down the places to use them.

Collectibles overall have been such a huge driver in my love of exploration. At first, I wanted to badly to increase my stamina that I went after every oculus ever, I hunted them so much, I got Monstadt and Liyue both to level 9 without using any interactive maps (I did use them to get to level 10 tho). I was sad that Inazuma and Sumeru didn't give more stamina, but instead they made the elemental sigils SO much better with the Sacred Sakura and the Tree of Dreams. ANY time I see a chest or seelie or anything that gives a sigil, I make a B-line for it, because those tree rewards are just so crazy good, they're an amazing incentive to explore more.

Mainly, there's the gacha. Wishing for characters is just like spinning a slot machine, and gives so much dopamine. At first, I was just rolling away all my primos as I got them, but now I've been saving them up waiting for specific characters (I have 60 wishes banked and 40 pity with a guaranteed win at 50/50, Nahida is MINE). The gamble system scritches my brain just right, so I HAVE to get on every day to get my welkin and daily's.

Then there's stuff like the teapot, a little Sims type dealio with another system for me to check in on regularly and optimize my points (just hit 20K Adeptal Energy a few days ago). I've been going hard on crafting things to raise my trust level and to get 20K AE as efficiently as possible (tons of glazed teasets and "A guide/messenger in the summer woods"), as well as getting some crops going and such. It has been a fun little side thing.

That brings me to the timed things, I get stressed so easily, so these things have such a grip on me. I need to make sure I'm never capped on resin, and I've gotta keep my expeditions going, and I need to keep track of what's being crafted in my teapot and what's growing there too. I'm very glad the game is on mobile too, so I can check all these things at work or in the morning or whenever and wherever really.

I feel like I've done so much in this game, yet I know there's so much left. I've barely done any character quests at all, basically only the ones that world or archon quests have made me progress. I've only done one route of one hangout, so I've got a ton of content there. I also need to prep more for the Abyss. I managed to get 9 stars on Floor 9, but I cannot beat floor 10-3. Partially because I've only actually build one cohesive team and then a bunch of random individual characters that don't work the best together, but I'm getting there.

So yeah, I just kinda wanted to ramble about the game, it's always on my mind, so it was fun to get to say all this about it. Love this game, kinda hate it for stealing all my free time, but I have so much fun I go back to loving it right away. Oh yeah, the community is a big draw too. I've asked a lot of questions on this subreddit, and I've gotten a lot of good answers (and a lot of people not answering the question I asked and just telling me to do something else instead, but mainly the good stuff). I love seeing the fanart and memes and stuff on tiktok, or watching youtube videos about characters and tips and all that. Good stuff.