Climb the sheer, sloping, mountainous cliffs of a long-abandoned mine, jog by way of the darkish, torch-lit rocky tunnel, and also you’ll emerge right into a lush inexperienced jungle in Genshin Impact’s new Sumeru area. Within your first steps of getting into the area, the sport will level out a small four-leaf icon hanging within the sky. The sport prompts a picture exhibiting a tutorial, and when you press the proper buttons, your anime-style character will remodel right into a glowing gold ball and zip towards the icon by way of a gold vine. After listening to my character grunt and pant from climbing and operating, utilizing this Four-Leaf Sigil makes me really feel gentle for the primary time.

The Four-Leaf Sigil, named for its clover-like form, is a brand new function of the three.0 Sumeru replace within the open-world exploration sport. When you work together with it, it permits you to soar by way of the air and pace alongside a diverse and twisting jungle path. As you fly, you’ll be able to chain collectively strikes from Sigil to Sigil, and expertise an virtually Spider-Man like rhythm as transferring from level to level transforms from a time-sucking job to a mesmerizing delight. I received so into speedily following a curving river that I forgot to unlock a waypoint I had deliberate to cease by alongside the best way.

Image: Hoyoverse by way of Polygon

The addition comes as a part of a brand new patch that launched on Tuesday. The 3.0 Sumeru replace has introduced loads of new options to the sport — a lush new area to discover, new characters, and a brand new story. And whereas all of the flashy additions are actually welcome, thrives just like the addition of those Sigils appears like a real instance of simply how far the sport has come.

Genshin Impact is a live-service, open-world sport. The means this has labored traditionally is that as time goes on, we simply get increasingly areas. The sport fairly actually will get larger, and what we get to play at this time appears like a always rising sprawl of areas to discover. As the sport has expanded from its already bold begin, we’ve seen the builders not simply develop the scale of the sport however persistently refine mechanics from area to area.

Previous areas, just like the stormy island chain of Inazuma, has the same function. It works equally to the Four-Leaf Sigil in that it permits you to journey quick and soar into the sky, besides it was extra annoying since you needed to accumulate one other separate merchandise, known as an Electrogranum, earlier than having the ability to fly. (Also, the merchandise would disappear after 15 seconds.) The Four-Leaf Sigil doesn’t use a tiny time-restricted merchandise that requires folks to emphasize over managing the countdown. You can simply fly.

I adore it a lot that I’ve even began fantasizing about different spots in outdated areas that might profit from it. Of course, I wouldn’t anticipate builders to backtrack and add them to earlier areas. However, it appears like a transparent signal that even now, Hoyoverse remains to be dedicated to enhancing primary facets concerning the sport, together with the way to get round.