The region itself of Sumeru is probably the most extensive that Genshin has ever gone, released over the period of two patches where we get the east, forested side of Sumeru first in patch 3.0 before the western, desert side of Sumeru is released. It's probably hands-down my favourite region to explore in terms of world-building. Oh yeah, we also got a whole new element in Dendro (a.k.a. plant powers), which is a whole new cog into things.
That's just a microcosm of what the reion brings in terms of lore, and... and I'm not about to spoil everything. I'm sure if I actually sat down and started talking about the Sumeru lore, about the God of Knowledge and the Akasha System and the Eremite/Akademiya conflict and the dreams and the Withering and the samsara and the Scarlet King and everything else we got in 3.0 alone, we'd be here all day.
So instead, we'll be talking about monsters! Note that this article was mostly written prior to 3.1's release (despite the publication date), so the information might be slightly out of date!
Stretchy Pyro Fungus / Stretchy Anemo Fungus
So the 'fungus' enemy type has made its debut as the Floating Hydro Fungus all the way back in the Chasm, which felt like forever ago. And the Chasm basically hinted that Sumeru is going to have a whole lot of mushrooms, and... it certainly does! Basically taking over the roles of Hilichurls as the most common enemies in Sumeru, we've got mushrooms everywhere, including a particularly wonderfully psychedelic area of gigantic mushrooms the size of the largest trees in our world.
Interestingly enough, where the hydro fungus is a floating fat mushroom-sprite thing, we've got a unique model for every other element (except dendro for some reason, i.e. the element of this region?) although obviously for gameplay purposes there are a couple of behavioural movement skeletons that are shared across the fungal variations.
There are three of these 'stretchy' fungus types, and they kind of look like the types of mushroom you'd cook, yeah? Like enoki or something? Except with a gloriously exaggerated giant cap. And... I'm embarrassed to say that my fungal knowledge is nowhere up to par with the rest of the biological world, but I do really appreciate the mean, spiky nature of the Pyro Fungus, and how the Anemo Fungus looks a bit more docile with that wide-brimmed cap. I'm pretty sure these are a reference to actual edible fungi that look like tiny umbrellas, but I don't actually know what they're called.
As usual, the archive entries for these creatures add a little bit more flavour to their already very fun in-game expressive movements. the Pyro Fungus is actually quite gentle unless you invade its territory, while the Anemo Fungus uses its umbrella-shaped fungus to fly in the air.
Stretchy Geo Fungus
Grounded Hydroshroom
The third and final 'stretchy' fungus is the Geo-themed one, and... I am almost positively sure this one is based on the edible mushrooms like the matsutake or something. Look at the top of this guy! It actually looks like a roasted mushroom cap, which I find to be kinda hilarious. Of cousre, it's not actually a fried mushroom but rather a rock-themed one, with its outer layer being adaptation of Geo energy that has condensated into denser structure.
A lot of the in-game material and quests do establish about how utterly adaptable the fungi are, with how easily they have essentially mutated into elemental creatures. Real-life fungi aren't that adaptable, but they're one of life's most notorious creatures. You have to be, when you hang out in decay and death. And while it would've been so easy to characterize these mushrooms as just avatars of death (and, of course, Sumeru has its own 'Withering' or 'Marana' as death-inflicted auras), more knowledgeable people actually note how these fungi are actually driven insane and would've otherwise been part of the natural life cycle or something. Pretty neat!
Whirling Electro Fungus / Whirling Cryo Fungus
We've got these two guys as the 'whirling' body types, where they just... spin around like a top and try to knock you down. I am actually surprised they didn't go with this body type for the anemo or wind-themed mushroom! It'd be a little tornado! I like these guys a bit less than the stretchy fungi, but I do appreciate them for making the silhouettes for the whirling fungi so distinct with how stout they are and how fat their stalks are.
The Electro Fungus is always the more interesting one to me, since it looks a bit more natural. Or as natural as an electrically-charged sentient toadstool can be, anyway. Spinning around and generating electricity does have some thematic sense, though, and I do like the little note about how those innovative scientists at the Akademiya are trying to adapt this creature into basically living, sentient batteries. The Cryo Fungus... I mean, it sure has ice spikes and that well-textured ice dome, but I really don't have a whole ton to say about this one. I do like the archive entry for the Cryo Fungus, though -- 'putting ice on fungi does not make them taste better'. Yeah, iced mushrooms taste terrible, I'd imagine.
The elite versions of the fungi are these guys, the -shrooms. Which the archive constantly remind us are 'mimetic life forms' made out of spores, which show their heightened adaptability. I love them. Visually, they look like weird armless/wingless chickens or theropodal dinosaurs or something, but when you look closer, you see that its main body is made up of those flowing 'ear' mushrooms. Even the legs look like they're chunky fungal masses that's just trying to mimic how birds look, but since they're mad up of fungus they just smoosh together as weird flowing-mushroom pillars. And, of course, the 'hat' of these fungal creatures trail off and give the charming image of a witch's hat. All we have that's not fungal-based are those glowing, beady eyeballs. Very neat!
The archive actually gives us some detail about this creature, too. Which it insists merely looks like a bird, but is still a fungus. It's an 'aggregation of countless tiny spores', instead of a single entity, so it's some sort of colonial organism like a slime mold or a Portuguese Man'o'War or something? Which, I suppose, isn't too far off with some fungal colonies in real life. In the game and the archive, these superior 'shrooms' are noted to have heightened intelligence and commands the lesser fungi. Is it because they have more spores or something? Very cool.
Winged Dendroshroom / Winged Cryoshroom
We also have the winged shrooms who not only look like birds, but also fly like birds, with the aid of those very... fleshy-looking wings. Unlike the Grounded Shroom, they don't actually have the bird legs and just have wings, so I think the form of mimesis for these creatures is just mimicking the only features that are necessary for their function. I love how these guys are also noted to have the same position of command as the Hydroshrooms, and their ability to fly is an extension of how fungal stalks are essentially huge spore-spreading organs. And these winged mushroom birds are just... there to take flight and rain down spores to distant lands, ensuring that the fungi will continue to proliferate everywhere. Even the Cryoshrooms' "ice flowers" are also a form of spores.
I do actually like the idea that the Dendro fungal representative doesn't have a 'lesser' version, actually, and there's only the more powerful Winged Dendroshroom and the boss we'll see in a bit below. Maybe the fungi that are attuned to the dendro element are just so 'pure' since it's the fungi's natural element, so they're stronger or something?
I also find it interesting that the only other creatures described as 'mimetic', other than the robotic Ruin Sentinels, are the Whopperflowers. I know, plants and fungi are not the same kingdom, but it's neat that these normally non-locomotive living things have learned to adapt to crawl around and that there's a common phenomenon to them.
Ruin Drake: Earthguard & Skywatch
As we learn more and more about these ruin creatures, I think each region just keeps adding more and more variants to these machines used by the ancient civilization of Khaen'riah. From the Ruin Graders in Dragonspine to the four Ruin Sentinels in Inazuma to the Ruin Serpent in the Chasm, we've gotten new ruin-creatures in almost every new area added... and Sumeru even has a literal mountain-sized Ruin Golem that literally becomes a small video game dungeon for one side-quest.
But we do have some new ruin monsters called the ruin drakes, which are noted to mimic the appearance of the Vishaps. Just like the Ruin Sentinels, it seems like these Khaen'riah war-machines are just going around mimicking living creatures. While it does kind of reduce the weirdness factor of the original Ruin Hunter, I do really like how we start learning that it's not just the fungi that are going around mimicking living creatures. There are two variants of the Ruin Drake -- the 'Earthguard' one, and the 'Skywatch' one. They're basically the same thing, except instead of two giant gear-shoulder-guards that the Earthguard has, the Skywatch variant flies around with those wing-engines that are just a bit detached from its main body.
A very cool design overall. Just like the Wingshrooms, these Ruin Drakes move around with only a menacing wyvern-like main body, two legs, a tail ending in a gear and the shoulder-implements. The gimmick is that those canisters on the Ruin Drakes' neck will absorb an element you attack it with, and then cause the Ruin Drake to gain resistance against it. What seems to be a rather typical video game enemy ability gets a bit more deliciously sinister when the archive notes that this ability isn't exactly "absorbing" like the Vishaps, but "counteract" elements, which hints at what the Khaen'rian civilization might be actually trying to do.
I literally just skipped over the entire Treasure Hoarder enemies during my first sojourn through the enemies in Genshin Impact because humanoid enemies just aren't all that interesting... and the Treasure Hoarders are just bandits. So are the ronin from Inazuma, though they at least had cooler models. The Eremites, on the other hand... they're introduced as the desert people of Sumeru, which raises all sorts of stereotyping and red flags. Except that they actually kind of anticipated this and made it clear through the main story that the Eremites are divided into many different mercenary groups, and the forces policing the main cities in Sumeru are all 'good' Eremites, and one of the main characters in Sumeru, Dehya, is a prominent Eremite. So the ones that we're fighting and beating up are just the renegades from a fringe extremist group that are going around trying to revive their dead god-king. Neat-o. They could've been just typefaced as a singular entity, but by adding this, the Sumeru development team made the Eremites feel less like they're just generic goons.
The five 'basic' Eremites are these five, and... look how different they all are! We finally get a non-elite female enemy in the Axe Vanguard, which is nice. The Crossbowman and the Halberdier aren't anything too special other than the fancier weapons they carry, but the Linebreaker and their katar weapons are very cool-looking. And the Sword-Dancer could've been boring if not for that eyepatch. Oh, right, when the Eremites 'die', they toss some kind of smoke bomb (sand bomb?) out and their body dissolves into sand as they escape, all Naruto style, and that's like the coolest shit ever!
Certainly far more effort are put into these guys than the Treasure Hoarders, for sure!
The three elite Eremites all use a certain element, and... they all look pretty damn cool, too. The Desert Clearwater is another pretty cool-looking girl, and the fact that her eyes are constantly covered makes her look just a bit more ominous. She uses the same katar weapons as the Linebreaker, except hers are a lot more intricate. The Clearwater's lore is that they are completely bloodthirsty lunatics that some people suspect are afflicted by wandering spirits from the desert. While the archive is ambiguous on whether it is true, her weapons definitely have something fancy, granting her Hydro powers.
The Sunfrost is probably my favourite looking Eremite, with his two khopesh swords, and that almost mummy-like look that his head bandages give the impression of. As his name would indicate, he wields the element of Cryo, also channeled through spirits trapped within his weapons. The Daythunder is probably the most boring one, though he has some fancy hairdo and a pretty cool giant axe-thing. His element, of course, is Electro. And interestingly, it's noted that the Daythunders actually have the job of keeping the lore of the desert and its ruins.
These guys don't actually channel the elements through the power of the Visions like the playable characters, but actually have spirits trapped within their weapons. There's a bit of a dark sense to it when the archive notes how once activated, the weapon demands the death of either the opponent it's pointed at... or the Eremite wielding it. Spooky!
Dendro Specter
Bosses:
Probably the only real low-effort elemental recolour. I mean, we already have Dendro Slimes, I guess Dendro Specters are kind of obligatory for these guys? Other than a brief hint that Dendro Specters were misconstrued by a researcher as Aranara, I don't really think there's too much interesting that separates them from their Specter brethren. The Dendro floaties don't even particularly look particularly 'fruit-like', which was what the previous Specter descriptions had insisted on. At least now I know that the Japanese names for these guys are "Furaimu", from "fly" and "slime". Ha!
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Jadeplume Terrorshroom
Two new bosses this time around, though this guy is probably the most interesting one. The 'boss' of the fungus monsters is the Jadeplume Terrorshroom, who is a evolved version of the Groundshrooms and Wingshrooms. He's basically transformed into a gigantic fungal peacock-bird creature, but... but all the details from the lesser Wing/Groundshrooms are still persevered. I do really like the shape of those legs, which doesn't look bird-like at all and really does look like a smooshed-up pile of fungal growth. Pretty cool detailings all around, with the plant fungal decorations all looking very verdant. I do really like that the flowing 'ear-fungus' growths do give the Terrorshroom the impression of tucked bird wings. Which, of course, considering the Terrorshroom's size, makes it basically a giant fungus dinosaur.
I didn't quite realize what looked so different from the Terrorshroom compared to its lesser brethren, until I realized that unlike the Wingshrooms and Groundshrooms -- which only had beady eyes -- the Terrorshroom actuall has developed a hardened beak out of carapace... something that the archive notes to be an odd choice of mimicry, and is actually the loot item you get from defeating it. The Terrorshroom is noted to have reached the intelligence of animals, and might have even surpassed it, with the item description noting that it's "pacing the finish line of evolution". A bold claim to make, giant mushroom chicken!
Electro Regisvine
The Regisvines were some of Genshin's earliest bosses, alongside the Hypostases, which... I kind of get the rationale behind them. They can be mostly stationary, making the boss-fight programming a bit simpler. Sure, they do give the Electro Regisvine a couple extra attacks, like moving the electricity surge up and down, and having orbs that try to converge together, but... but the Electro Regisvine is basically just the same old thing as the Cryo and Pyro Regisvines we've had for a while. At least there's some neatness with how wild those petals look, and I adore the archive description about how the Akademiya scholars have apparently been debating using the Regisvine as a power source for the city... and the plan ended up being opposed after the 'sacrifice of 10 shroomboars to drive home the dangers of electricity'. Oy!
Mostly, I'm just kind of disappointed that we didn't get a Dendro Regisvine, which would just be... a regular flower with no elements.
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Aranara:
Aranara
The subject of a long quest chain which took me the better part of a week to do, the entire Aranara questline would've deserved a patch on its own if we were doing things based on the Inazuma schedule. Instead, they're just another part of the 3.0 Sumeru release, and they're pretty glorious. On the surface, they kind of resemble the Koroks from Zelda, being tiny little plant fairies with simplified faces -- these are drawn like childlike drawings instead of leaves stuck to their faces -- but I feel like the Aranara have enough developed into their lore that made them spooky and weird despite being cute little innocent fairies.
There's a lot that goes to the backstory of the ancient Aranara race and their unique stance on memory and time, which would take a whole article to talk about. But I absolutely love that they managed to tie in the Aranara to the world of the dreaming which fits a lot with the themes running concurrently in the main Archon Quest. There is also something wonderfully fairy-like about them being only visible to human children, who are unable to remember or perceive the Aranara as they grow up.
There are a couple of basic Aranara models, but the game actually has a whole ton of accessories and unique colours or hair petals given to a lot of the more plot-relevant Aranara. There are a bunch of very spoiler-heavy and story-heavy stuff about their true nature, and it's a bit obscured by the fact that the Aranara all talk with their own vocabulary and jargon. While slightly frustrating to read through in one go, I feel like Genshin's first real foray at making a non-human culture work very well.
Marana's Avatar [bonus boss]
A bonus boss faced exactly once in the game in a non-repeatable fight at the end of the extremely long (but pretty fun to read) Aranara questline is the Avatar of Marana, which is basically the avatar of the Withering, or the destruction that comes from the Abyss or the memory of death or something. It's spooky stuff that destroys everything the Aranara hold dear both in the real and the dream realm, and it manifests in... a floating black-purple orb eyeball that has some pretty cool shadow tendril attacks.
It's actually surprising that they even bothered to give a whole set of animation to this single quest-exclusive enemy, considering that the previous quest-exclusive enemies have basically been the scenery (the Sakura tree tumour from Inazuma), repainted enemies (the 'ghost samurai') or formless stand-in blobs (the ghost of the Yaksha in the Chasm) but this one's pretty cool, even if it doesn't do much.
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Wildlife:
But we're not done yet, no sir! I don't tend to talk about the wildlife in this game. We've got birds and foxes and dogs and cats and frogs and lizards and around a half-dozen different fish models, but there really isn't too much point of me going 'hmm, yes, this sure is an animal from the real world'. Until now, because Sumeru's given us a couple of very interesting new wildlife!
It's also worth noting that with the exception with the secret Snowboar boss, these wildlife are the ones that are hostile and don't die with a single strike (like the boars of the past), and you can actually fight them in the overworld. The difference why they aren't classified as monsters is just because they don't drop character-upgrade materials and just drop meat or mushrooms, but... enemies are enemies!
Shroomboar
A glorious variation of the regular boar found in the rest of Teyvat is the Shroomboar. A boar infested with mushrooms! There's a glorious old-school Pokemon vibe to this boar, whose fur has been overgrown with a mossy feel to it. It's even got some colour accents as eyebrows! But, of course, the most important part is the giant mushroom that the archive identifies as 'parasitic', which brings up an association for me with the pokemon Parasect. Except that the Shroomboar apparently makes usage of these mushrooms and fungal growths as natural camouflage, so it's not entirely parasitic.
Shaggy Sumpter Beast
Oh I love these guys. They are giant... bull-rhino-dinosaurs? They look adorable, looking like they could've potentially existed at some point in the prehistoric past, but doesn't really correspond to any specific real-world animal exactly. 'Sumpter' is a term meaning pack animal, and I think the Sumpter Beasts are meant to replace the traditional and stereotypical idea of pack camels carrying large amounts of luggage. We get to see a lot of Sumpter Beasts hanging out in villages or in the wild....
...but more notably, Sumpter Beasts act as actual hostile enemies in camps of Treasure Hoarders, Hilichurls, Eremites and even the goddamn Fatui. They carry decorations based on which faction 'owns' the beast, and will drop a bunch of loot as you kill them! That's a little bit of detail that realistically isn't something they needed to program in, but they did.
Rishboland Tiger
Like the Sumpter Beast, this Rishboland Tiger looks a lot more fantastical, although it's more obviously based on a feline creature. More of a lithe animal like a cheetah or a panther than the bulky tiger, and it's got a feather-like tail and some growths on its wings that resemble butterfly wings or some shit, but the Rishboland Tigers do patrol certain parts of the jungle and are pretty territorial. Apparently those growths on its head helps it to measure distance? Somehow? They're neat.
Spinocrocodile
And our final hostile wildlife is the Spinocrocodile, which is cool as all hell. It's a crocodile with some TMNT-levels of stylization on its jaws, a beautiful gradient going from dark gray to light gray, and a bunch of badass blood-red markings on the blade-like spinosaur spine on its back. The Spinocrocodiles patrol the rivers of Sumeru, just... hanging out like logs and even opening their mouth to allow birds to clean their teeth. A wonderful idle animation.
Things like the tigers or crocodiles could've very easily been removed without losing too much from the game, but... but I really appreciated that they added them, especially in a region where the balance of wildlife is so passionately emphasized.
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Anyway... this has gone on for a bit. It's my first reviewing monsters segment in quite a while, and I think I'm a bit rusty. See you guys soon for my talk on 3.1's monsters, which would feature Sumeru's desert side!
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