Talents Part 2

On this episode of unimportant Genshin Impact YouTube rants courtesy of yours truly, today I'd like to tackle Talent Books of the "Gold" variety. I should probably add a disclaimer that due to self-imposed reasons, I've decided to limit the length of my posts until the end of the current lecture I'm currently attending, which should be more than enough time to get my point across. Hopefully. Don't make me go into the details, it'll be hard to explain without going off on another tangent that'll screw up this post's flow even more than it already has.

In preparation for the upcoming paragraphs, I've plagiarized the in-game descriptions for the Gold Talent Books from the Genshin Wiki to give us an idea of what these Gold Books are all about. Just so I feel less guilty about the shameless copy-pasting, allow me to paraphrase their descriptions to give us a more succinct summary of these strange scrolls (I know I called them "books" earlier, but the alliteration was too good to pass up. Just let me have this). Ahem.

Gold. The blood of Liyue that pumps through its veins, the muscle that makes it move, the skeleton that keeps it standing strong. Gold represents conversion, trade, exchange. Diligence and hard work is converted into gold, gold into opulence. Gold is Liyue's riches, the Mora that feeds its markets, but Liyue's true treasures are the hearts of its people, which shine as bright as the gold in their coffers. In layman's terms: gold make Liyue go round. Without gold, economy crash and burn like first Jade Chamber. Work hard, get paid, get rich. But at end of day, real treasure was inside us all along. So those're the Cliffnotes, let's dive right into the overanalyzing.

I own five of the six characters that use Gold Books to level their Talents (although including Geo Traveler feels like cheating because they use all three types of regional Book to level their Talents for some needlessly convoluted reason. Maybe it's to represent their diverse nature as a Traveler? We'll put a pin on it for now): Beidou, Xingqiu, Xinyan, Yanfei and the Traveler. Only person I'm missing is the CEO of Geo himself, Papa Z (otherwise known to normal, sane people as "Zhongli"), who I don't intend to get anytime soon for waifu, ego and gameplay reasons (i.e. not because he's bad. Quite the opposite; I fear that pulling a Zhongli will make me forget how to dodge, which overpowers my need for an overpowered Shielder and overall busted Support unit to this day). Mostly ego. And my Intertwined Fate count, I guess. Being an F2P turns you into a penny-pincher that'd make Scrooge McDuck blush.

So let's charge right into this: why do these characters require Gold books? What teachings do these arcane texts bestow upon a gaggle of Elementalists consisting of a peppy privateer, a raucous rockstar, a level-headed lawyer and a gallant geek of the Guhua gang?

Well, allow me to begin with Beidou, the captain of the Crux. Contrary to popular belief (seriously, even in-universe she's hailed by the children in Liyue as a pirate, although they most likely call her that because they're unaware of the unsavory implications of calling someone a "pirate"), she is, as many sources put it, "a pirate in all but name, and has the ships, the eye-patch, and the accent to prove it". I suppose "privateer" would be a more appropriate word to describe her job (which is basically a fancy way of saying she's a government-employed pirate who's given permission to plunder enemy ships. So yeah, basically a pirate, but LEGAL!), although in her defense, she doesn't actively seek out conflict and only resorts to using force when absolutely necessary. Which... actually... seamlessly translates into her gameplay, namely her Elemental Skill, which can only achieve its full potential if she's under attack while using it... Damn, HoyoVerse, mad props for that dope bit of gameplay/lore integration, hats off.

So with all this in mind, it's only natural that Beidou would benefit from the Gold school of Talents: the Crux is a rather large gear in the machine that is Liyue's economy, protecting the nation from external threats and taking the occasional odd job to keep things humming along. Their hard work is rewarded with cash, cash that is used to maintain the wealth of the Fleet, and the prosperity of Liyue along with it. Huh. Really quite poetic when you think about it, and it ticks all the boxes in the Talent descriptions of Gold Books. Who knew tireless research and obsessively reading in-game fluff could give us so much insight and newfound appreciation for this wallet-leeching gacha title?

Anyhoo, that's Beidou done, and with it, my lecture has also come to an early close. Awfully generous. Got the rest of the week to myself, but alas, that would mean that the continuation of this needlessly complicated blog series dedicated to overanalyzing Talent Books shall come to a brief hiatus, at least until the next school week rolls around, which... isn't long, so that's pretty neat. In any case, next week we shall move on to Xingqiu. The Guhua Geek, the Bookworm, the ridiculously overtuned four-star  Support unit that applies Hydro faster than I apply bad grades to my report card. So yeah, look forward to that, I suppose. Peace out.