Hello, travelers. Welcome back.

Can you believe Genesis Arena has been out for a whole year now!? Crazy, right?
Since then, we've had 4 different major updates, adding 2 elements and 15 additional characters to an already bulky roster. Along the way, there have been numerous adjustments to the game systems and skill cards, trying to fine tune the game experience into something that feels solid no matter what style of team you bring.

There will be more updates in the future, but similar to this last cycle all future updates will be much farther out. For the most part, I consider this game a finished project, and everything from here is just icing on the cake. Thank you all for following me for an entire year, and maybe I'll see you in the year to come.

So, what are we packing into our one-year patch?

Well, nothing too crazy. We have an entire extra team to play with -- 1 Elite and 3 Supports -- as well as some small balance changes (might've gone overboard on the last patch). I will say that some of these new characters are definitely more experimental than many previous contenders, including a character whose mechanic involves warping the English language; I definitely wouldn't call this update boring:

Annual Party Animals adds the following new characters to the roster:

• Ganyu - A seemingly simple character with the ability to charge a "Frostflake Arrow" for the cost of 2 actions. Her talents will enable Frostflake Arrows to expand far beyond their initial constraints and help her scale into a rather powerful threat, which is great since she has 3 available talents instead of 2.
  
• Gorou - A fiercely loyal subordinate. While fairly weak and uninteresting on his own, Gorou becomes a nearly unstoppable force when grouped up tight with other allies. The magic number is 3; as long as Gorou has at least 2 other allies in his space (characters and/or tokens), he will put in the work of multiple characters.
  
• Beidou - Teyvat's fearsome pirate makes her debut. Beidou's skills are all weaker than average, but she can uniquely play all of her skills as reactions, which in turn power them up with Retribution. Beidou goes where she pleases, constantly carrying the threat of retaliation.
  
• Yanfei - The law is complicated and thorough, but Yanfei understands that it needs to work for the people. Her skills are fairly unique in that your opponent can cancel large swaths of the attached text, but doing so leaves their characters with Scarlet Seals, which can be equally dangerous. While your opponent gets to choose, Yanfei doesn't make either implementation an easy choice.

Albedo

• Abiogenesis: Solar Isotoma's bonus reworked and simplified to enable Transient Blossoms to score gems like a character.

Diluc

• Talents: Relentless added reminder text to make it clear that playing a Diluc skill still triggers the talent.

Diona

• Wine Industry Slayer no longer scores Genesis Gems. Instead, you may perform an immediate Ascend action.

Hu Tao

• Talent: Garden of Eternal Rest now clarifies that your Sanctum Guardian goes to your bench after it's defeated.

Kaeya

• Dance of Frost wording updated.

Qiqi

• Divine Suppression wording updated.
  
• Glimpse of Arcanum now heals the targeted character for 1 if she's learned any talents.

Raiden Shogun

• Enlightened One attack power scaling reduced to 0/1/2 at 0/2/8 instead of 0/1/2/3 at 0/2/5/8. Translation: It takes Raiden 3 additional energy to reach 2 Attack Power, and she cannot reach 3 Attack Power anymore.
  
• Musou Shinsetsu is no longer forced.
  
• Musou Shinsetsu now erases The Enlightened One and permanently sets Raiden's attack power to 2.
  
• Talents: Pledge of Propriety reworked to now attack the chosen character for daring to gain energy.

I way overshot on Raiden Shogun; turns out having a character that can reach 3 Attack Power naturally is very scary and difficult to deal with, and while it does require a lot of energy to get to that magical 3 attack, she still has 2 attack for a lot of that time which is still super scary. It also didn't feel great that you were forced to use a burst that ended up setting your attack lower afterwards. All the changes to Raiden's passive and burst were made to help pitch the idea of rising dominance of power, but without the unnecessary setbacks.

Sayu

• Art updated on several cards.
  
• Yoohoo Arts: Fuuin Dash no longer generates energy during its main effect (the Swirl still does).
  
• Someone more capable wording updated.

Venti

• Text color for "Verse" clauses changed to be easier to read.

Zhongli

• Dominus Lapidus wording updated.
  
• Talents: Chrysos, Bounty of the Dominator has been rewritten for better clarity.

Traveler (Aether/Lumine)

• (Geo) Invincible Stonewall wording updated.
  
• (Geo) Wake of Earth wording updated.

There's still no hard timetable on future updates, but I still we'll still have some here and there. An idea I want to experiment with is "micro-updates" that add maybe 1-2 characters instead of a whole team. It would help content get in the game a little sooner in some cases, and might work better with Mihoyo's tendency to only make 5 star characters for some reason.

While I'm not sure when the next update will be, it will almost assuredly contain another Hydro character...