HoYoverse confirms Nod-Krai as next Genshin Impact region, will launch with Version 6.0

HoYoverse has revealed that Genshin Impact will head to Nod-Krai next, not to the arctic tundras of Snezhnaya. Starting with Genshin Impact 6.0, which will follow up on Version 5.8, the Traveler is going to be drawn into this autonomous region that will be radically different from the nations we have visited so far.

Nod-Krai will accompany players for about a year as the “Song of the Welkin Moon” plays out. Lore about the moon – or, rather, three moons – of Teyvat has been strewn throughout all the regions we’ve visited so far and it’ll finally come together in this new area.

The Genshin Impact developers felt like there are many loose ends, many stories still to tell in Teyvat before the main story comes to a climax — and so Nod-Krai will be a stage for these to play out. It will also allow the developers to experiment with a few things, such as having many of the game’s important characters be present on the map to interact with.

Genshin Impact’s combat designer likened Nod-Krai to something like Gotham City in DC’s world or Crossbell State in the Falcom’s Trails series: It’s a region in which many different factions can naturally intermingle and interact with each other.

Unlike the other regions of Teyvat, which are all inspired by cultures and areas from our world, Nod-Krai is going to be its own thing. It’s not a nation. The people there are very much shaped by the factions that are present there and by the unique dangers and circumstances of Teyvat. Some landscapes will remind people of real places, with cliffs and fjords being reminiscent of regions like Iceland and Norway. The developers named World of Warcraft’s Howling Fjords and The Witcher 3’s Skellige Isles as examples of Nod-Krai’s terrain.

Players will meet the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius, Varka, who is in Nod-Krai for an investigation, but also encounter the Fatui Harbingers, who’ve been sent to the area on a crucial mission by the Tsaritsa, the Cryo Archon. There will also be homegrown factions with a stake in Nod-Krai’s future, though, like the Frostmoon Scions — a quasi-religious order protecting the secrets of the moon. 

Then there are the Voynich Guild, the Lightkeepers, and – perhaps most intriguing of all – the Wild Hunt, which will be familiar to The Witcher fans or those who know their folklore.

Nod-Krai was apparently the first region to have been corroded by the Abyss following the fall of Khaenri’ah, so the Abyssal forces there, which are called Wild Hunt, are ancient and powerful. They are opposed by the Lightkeepers, a military order akin to Game of Thrones’ Night’s Watch.

Apparently, the Genshin Impact team spoke to iconic developers like FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki when visiting Japan at the end of last year, debating how to tackle the challenges of a changing playerbase and having to evolve a game approaching five years on the market. These discussions provided another impetus for the team to be bold and experiment with changes that players will see taking shape in Nod-Krai and the next couple of versions preceding it.