Genshin Impact Quests can ban you from new content

Genshin Impact Players have accidentally locked themselves out of the latest major story update and they are not happy. “Getting quest blocked while doing an Archon quest is the new cockblock.” tweeted a player. one even stopped their gaming session after being c0ckblocked. Honestly they are right.

I’ve experienced this myself and it’s maddening. Here’s what’s going on: Players are eager to dive into the game’s latest story quests, just added this week, in which they attempt to save the nation of Sumeru from evil government officials intent on creating an artificial god. The story is told in a limited omniscient way that conveys the sense that the plan could fail at every turn. The writers masterfully use the gap between what the player knows and what the characters know. It’s all very tense and with high stakes. Until the game tells you that you can’t continue playing.

Here’s the problem: after completing a specific quest and story cliffhanger, some players receive an info box that pops up telling them they cannot proceed until they complete a specific side character quest (or multiple). Players who have not accepted or have already completed these specific quests can safely continue, but many people leave these quests, which were first added a few months ago, in their quest logs for some time. Corresponding Reddit, it takes about an hour to complete these side quest lines. So if you’ve slacked on those character stories, you’ll need to complete them before you’re even allowed to touch the plot that HoYoverse has been aggressively marketing to you for the past few weeks. There are currently three characters whose quests conflict with the main story: Cyno, Tighnari, and Nilou.

Here’s why: Story critical characters can’t be in two places at once. So in order for them to be where they are needed for the new quest, the old quest must first be deleted. Like, I think it’s alright? Overall, three hours is not a lot of time Genshin Impact. But I find it irritating that one second I’d be plotting to overthrow the government and the next I’d have to help Nilou clear out some boxes of random stuff. Or try to lure a robotic crab. Please just let me finish the quest I’m really looking forward to. Or let me remove them from the list until I’m ready to help these characters with random tasks.

I wish the developers would have just allowed us to choose which quest we were going through, that’s how a lot of open world games work. As of today, if you “accepted” a conflicting quest, you’re screwed. And many players are locked out because character quest “unlocks” are timed.

Players don’t just get these character quests by default. In order to “unlock” them, players must complete a certain number of daily quests to earn story keys. And players can only accumulate a maximum of eight keys. So most players have an incentive to unlock all character stories as they become available. kotaku reached out to HoYoverse to ask if these quest conflicts will be patched in a future update, but received no response at the time of publication.

So if you haven’t completed the main quest scenario yet, then do Not Unlock the character quests.