I'm not sure if this counts as the 'new' big zone for Sumeru in the way that Dragonspine, the Chasm or Enkanomiya did for the previous three regions, but... well, the way the Sumeru region releases are done, it's interesting that they're just releasing patches and patches of the desert one by one -- it reminds me of the Inazuma islands! But I just... am not the most interested about the desert lore. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's just burnout, or maybe it's just me not really liking the desert aesthetic compared to other biomes, or maybe it's just Pokemon and Persona cutting into my Genshin time.
Or maybe because I am really, really sick of fighting those triangle ruin machines. It's bizarre, the game has like almost a dozen different ruin robots in their repertoire right now, stop just putting the triangles in every single part of these ruins!
Whatever the case, though, we get the Desert of Hadramaveth (otherwise known as site of the former ancient city of Gurabad) for 3.4, which includes a smattering of brand-new monsters. This article was supposed to come out a bit earlier in February, but then patch 3.5 came and I ended up delaying this to wait for the couple of extra monsters introduced there.
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Wildlife:
Flying Serpent
The Sumeru patches continue with the tradition of the wildlife being actual opponents, and I am all for it. They spent all the time making animations and modelling these animals, they can also use them as enemies! The Flying Serpent takes more on the Couatl of Dungeons & Dragons fame, itself based on representations of the Aztec God Quetzacoatl (the 'Feathered Serpent'). Genshin Impact's Flying Serpent is pretty reasonably well-drawn, with the 'wings' being splayed apart similar to a cobra's hood, which I feel makes the Flying Serpent look a lot more distinctive than just slapping a pair of bird wings on a snake. I do also like the fan-like growths on its tail.
The in-game description note that the Flying Serpents don't actually fly, but just hover with a combination of bird-like hollow bones and a sprinkling of Anemo (wind) energy within their bodies. That's interesting, and I guess explains why they're not as nimble in flying around as the actual flying enemies like the vultures.
Monsters:
Consecrated Flying Serpent
However, these are definitely able to fly. A brand-new enemy group called the 'consecrated beast', the Consecrated Flyinhg Serpent is a Flying Serpent that have devoured things from... well, fallen gods. The Consecrated Flying Serpent is a much more threatening flying snake, with a lot of bony protrusions that run down the front half of its body, and I do like that the bony spines and whatnot really do give the impression the same set of cobra hood/wings anatomy that the regular Flying Serpent has.
All the lore bits for the Consecrated Beasts note that they are unable to digest these remnants of gods, and that is the cause of the mutation as these pieces fuse onto the beasts and create these bony shells around them and actually giving them elemental powers. There are also a lot of notes how this is similar to the island in Inazuma where the body of the dead god Orobaxi lies, and in fact some of these consecrated beasts have been added to that area in Inazuma. That's neat!
I reasonably like the look of the Consecrated Flying Serpent, too, even if I don't think they do a good enough job at spotlighting them -- I feel like I barely see these Consecrated Beasts, and when I do it's the damn scorpion!
Consecrated Scorpion
Speaking of 'that damn scorpion', I do like this look probably the best out of the three Consecrated Beasts. I just have a weakness to arthropods, but the Conescrated Scorpion's bony growths just look so mental. It reminds me of a Hollow Mask from Bleach, and specifically the shape of the Consecrated Scorpion's triangular-looking head with those two rows of holes kind of reminds me of a sacrum bone specifically. Very cool looking claws, too, and the purple shades look pretty neat! I do like the description of this one, noting how the Consecrated Scorpion basically skipped a bunch of evolutionary stages by 'cheating' and consuming the bodies of dead gods before their competition.
Very cool-looking enemy, and it kind of fixes one of the problems I had with some of the cooler enemy wildlife in Sumeru -- since they are classified as 'wildlife' and don't drop much beyond meat, they're kind of reduced to cool, nice-looking but otherwise just parts of the environment you can ignore. All three Consecrated Beasts are upgraded versions of just hostile animals instead of beings that the game technically consider 'enemies', so there's a nice bit of story nod on how these really did used to be just a bunch of regular scorpions who ended up transforming into lightning-shooting bone bug monsters.
Consecrated Red Vulture
The last of our Consecrated Beasts is the Red Vulture, which is a mutated version of the vultures that populate the desert. Pretty cool bird monster, I guess, though not one that I have too much to say about. Pretty neat giant bat/pterodactyl bony claws, and those wings are obviously pretty nonsensical anime wings with segmented wing-parts meant to resemble feathers, but this is a mutated skull-bird. Can't really bitch about biological accuracy, can I? I also love that this bird doesn't have eyes anymore, the skeletal growth have basically taken over its entire upper head.
I also didn't quite realize until reading the Consecrated Red Vulture description that at least two of these are 'scavenger' animals (who knows how flying snake biology is?) which makes sense that they would feed on the fallen carcasses of fallen dead gods. Now I'm not sure which dead god they ate in the desert, since I don't think any of the quests I've completed said anything about a specific dead god (and the Goddess of Flowers seem to have her tomb pretty secluded from literally the rest of the world) but it really is nice to see a certain aspect of a pervious area -- the immortal whispers of the dead god of Yashiori Island -- be fleshed out.
Eremite Floral Ring Dancer
I really do want to ignore the humanoid enemies, but man, the new Eremites always look progressively cooler and cooler! The fact that they actually summon minions like the giant crocodile dude and the hawk archer lady from the previous patch is probably a huge reason why these are so memorable to me. Honestly, I would go as far to say that the four elite Eremites look far, far cooler than some of the playable characters!
The Floral Ring Dancer represents the Dendro element. It's a bit hard to tell in this picture because of how busy it is, but you initially just encounter this green-haired lady with a giant hula-hoop around her chest, basically a super-gigantic version of a chakram, which she infuses with Dendro energy and uses it to do some pretty cool animations. Love her idle animation, too, where she sits on the floating chakram like it's a swing.
Like the Galehunter and the Stone Enhancer before her, if you beat her down to around half health, she summons her minion, the Spirit of Omen: Dendro Spirit-Serpent. Where the previous two Spirits of Omen have been based on the vulture and spinocrocodile respectively, this one is based on the Flying Serpent... but a much more mechanized version! The body of the Spirit Serpent looks like it's made up entirely of 'hard light', its tail is like a mechanical scythe, and its head looks completely robotic, with triangles and whatnot... and the Dendro Spirit-Serpent has her master's hula-hoop ring surrouding its neck as its 'cobra hood', so to speak. Very creative, very cool!
Eremite Scorching Loremaster
Oh, hey, Matriarch Babel! I do really love that with more recent patches, basically since the Chasm, most of the newer human enemies have a prominent NPC in the longer world quests (sometimes with modified hair or clothing colours) that highlight their design a bit. The Scorching Loremaster also has the bonus of... not being all that common in the overworld! She's most certainly a very attractive design. The pink hair, the hoodie, and that clothing all do make for a pretty memorable design. I do like that she also uses what could conceivably be a 'Catalyst' type weapon, just like many of the playable characters.
She wields the element of fire, and I do really like that the Scorching Loremaster's part in Eremite society is to basically pass down the legends of the past via word-of-mouth, something that is a common role in many real-life tribes. Interestingly, unlike the other 'summoners', the Loremaster doesn't have the common copy-pasted line in their description about how they have an ominous spirit sealed into their weapon that will force them into a victory-or-death state. Do they have a better control over their Spirits of Omen, then?
The Loremaster summons the Spirit of Omen: Pyro Scorpion, which... is very interesting! It's made out of the same aesthetic as the other Spirits of Omen, but I really do like that the Scorpion's legs and pincers are basically just random chunks of mechanical construct parts (not too dissimilar from the Primal Constructs) that hover around the main triangular body without being properly attached. Very cool texture of the bizarrely organic-looking tail that extends from the monocular and triangular body to the tip of the stinger tail.
Honestly, hell, put the Spirits of Omen in other parts of the desert! It's so bizarre that between the Consecrated Beasts, the Spirits of Omen and even older Ruin enemies that the desert areas just seem to be Eremites and Primal Constructs almost all the time.
Abyss Herald: Frost Fall
In 3.5, we get a brand-new Abyss Herald, the fourth greater minion of the Abyss Order and the first new one since we got the Pyro Lector in Enkanomiya. Since all the Lectors and Heralds all have this idea of being a super-zealous religious order, the Frost Fall Abyss Herald is noted to be 'envoys who must correct any twisted strains and remove any dissonance' from the gospel that are spread by the other Abyss people. This particular one is the focus of the Archon Quest 'Caribert', which is an excellent story... but it didn't even click into my mind that this a new kind of Abyss Herald until he started swinging ice instead of water.
The Abyss Herald model is sure cool-looking, and this one has a lot of different-looking details on his body compared to his three 'brothers'. There's a bunch of shared animation with the original 'Wicked Torrents' Hydro version, which is also the one with two giant blades. Not a whole ton to say here that I haven't said with the other Abyss Heralds, at least not without breaking down literally every piece of armour detailing on this guy.
Black Serpent Knight: Rockbreaker Ax
The Black Serpent Knights, meanwhile, debuted a bit more recently in the Chasm. Relatively recently, anyway. And the Rockbreaker Ax is completely different-looking from the other Black Serpent Knights. We've covered the history of these Black Serpent Knights and how they have a neat backstory to the ancient fallen kingdom of Khaen'riah, and the Rockbreaker Ax sure does have two gigantic cool-looking axes that it dual wields. According to the flavour text, it's a sword art called 'Truthseeker' -- and something that can be adapted into other weaponry, which the Rockbreaker Ax dudes basically had to do because of limited weapon availability during the Cataclysm. Not really a whole ton to say here, he sure is a cool knight dude.
(This guy is supposed to debut in 3.5, but we haven't seen him quite yet.)
New Bosses:
Setekh Wenut
With any self-respecting desert area in an RPG, you have to have giant worms that tunnel through the sand like a fish swims to water. Dune demands that any fantasy franchise that has a desert area needs to have a giant worm! It's really interesting, though, how they handle the Setekh Wenut. By the way, Wenut, or Unut, is an Egyptian snake goddess... and it's just kind of unfortunate that in English it sounds and reads like like 'we nut'.
Anyway, Wenut is a gigantic subterranean snake-worm thing with a totally insane-looking front end. So this is presumably the living thing that the Ruin Drake we met some time ago is based on, because this guy has a literal organic drill in lieu of a face, and a mass of giant wind turbines running down the front end. Very interesting-looking and far more unique than if this guy had the same giant maw that most giant desert worms have, and you actually do get constantly harried by a Wenut as you travel through the Desert of Hadramaveth, and you can trick the invincible overworld Wenut to break certain rock formations for you.
Also, I do find it interesting that they decided to make the Wenut an Anemo monster, because it alternates between diving down in the sand to floating in the air and coiling around like an eel through water as it fights you. I guess it's to represent that the Wenut has power over sandstorms as well as the 'sand sea' of the desert. I love that the tail of the Wenut sometimes pops out of the ground in the boss fight and splits open almost like a flower, and the loot they drop are even called 'Pseudo-Stamens'.
Anyway, the Wenut is obviously a blind monster, using sound and vibrations to look for prey. There are nice nods to how the Wenut has a lot of legends associated with how the current Setekh Wenuts are just the remnants of a race of intelligent giant serpents that had to adapt as the paradise-like grasslands are eroded into sandy deserts. I do like that depending on the legend, the Wenut's plant-like qualities are noted to either be a dry scientifically-explained adaptation to fool prey, or as a remnant of when they lived in the gardens of the Goddess of Flowers. There are also in-universe misconceptions about how some people view the Wenut as the fully-grown forms of the Quicksand Eels just because of the similarities in habitat and body shape. Pretty neat giant worm boss. Not my favourite one, but an interesting one nonetheless!
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