From roommates to teammates
When University of Pennsylvania students, Spieler and Yudrew, roomed together – they never thought that they would compete in a tournament for Genshin Impact.
The game drew each of them in for different reasons.
For Spieler, they started playing the game in November 2020, but did not start seriously playing until a month later. For the past two years, they have not stopped doing the daily tasks or keeping up with events within the game.
They were drawn in by the aesthetic and to play with friends. Spieler explained: “I started getting engrossed in the world building. Genshin has really consistent and amazing art direction and music, which I appreciate a lot!”
Yudrew started playing the game in December 2020, only a couple months after the game initially released.
Optimization and theorycrafting in the Genshin Impact University Carnival
The duo learned about the Genshin Impact University Carnival from another University of Pennsylvania student on Twitter and decided to enter. The team recruited KB707, a member of the Penn Climate Ventures club, which Yudrew started.
KB707 has been playing the game since May or June 2021, when Eula came out. They had been taking a break since the summer, but the Genshin Impact tournament and Spieler retriggered their desire to play the game.
On learning about the tournament, yudrew said, “[I] never thought Genshin was a competition game since it’s both PvE and somewhat pay-to-win.”
He went on to say, “What makes Genshin great for free-to-play players is that the general skill floor for completing content is pretty low, though, so I really appreciate this speedrun competition where we can really lean into the optimizing and theory crafting side of the Genshin community.”
The newfound trio decided to enter the tournament and quickly learned that they were interested in the competitive side of the game.
Spieler said, “Initially we were doing the tournament because we thought it would be cool to take part, but we soon realized we could be competitive as well, so we started practicing really hard around a day before our qualifier.”
The optimization and theory crafting side of Genshin Impact, as KB707 mentioned, is key to the Genshin Impact University Carnival tournament format.
Genshin Impact University Carnival USA East Qualis: Rutgers University smashes speedrun
Rutgers University finished 1st by a huge margin in the Genshin Impact University Carnival USA East Qualifiers. Four teams in total from the East Coast now head to the LAN finals!
Many teams shared that a large part of their practice is finding the right team compositions for the two parts of the tournament (domains and sprinting) and optimizing based off of speed or artifacts.
The University of Pennsylvania team’s practice landed them a 23:20.22 score, which placed them in 6th overall. This score was over four minutes faster than the other team from the University of Pennsylvania.
With the live LAN finals coming up this weekend, the University of Pennsylvania team is already off to work preparing for the new format.
How to watch the University of Pennsylvania’s run in the Genshin Impact University Carnival
The University of Pennsylvania will be competing in the live finals on Saturday, October 29th starting at 1pm PT. The event will be streamed live on the eFuse Twitch channel.
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