Hide and seek has returned to Genshin Impact with the Windtrace event. This traditional Mondstadt game from the time of tyrannical nobles pits Rebels against Hunters in a contest of smarts and sneakiness. It’s one of the best Genshin Impact 2.4 events and one of the few where we actually get to play alongside other humans as part of a matchmade activity. It’s perfect if you want to take a break from exploring Enkanomiya, or show off Shenhe and Yun Jin’s hiding skills.
The game is simple: Rebels have to hide and the Hunter has to find and catch them. But with a variety of abilities to use and lots of different maps to play on, there is no sure path to victory. In this Genshin Impact Windtrace guide, we’ve got tips for both Rebels and Hunters, as well as details about how the event works, and how to earn the maximum number of Windtrace coins to get those rewards.
How does the Genshin Impact Windtrace event work?
The Windtrace event is pretty straightforward. Just head to the event screen, activate the quest marker, and you'll be directed to speak with Gygax in the north part of Mondstadt city. Once there, you can jump right into matchmaking with three other players. One of you will be selected as the Hunter and the other three as Rebels. Before each match, you can change your character in the top left and find out what objects the Rebel's disguise ability will turn them into — super useful if you’re playing as the Hunter.
Rebels
In order to win a game of Windtrace, the Rebels have to avoid being captured by the Hunter until the time limit runs out. Since the Hunter has increased speed and stamina, the only way to do this is by staying hidden. Luckily, Rebels have a whole range of skills that replace a character's regular ones:
- Transparency: Turns you invisible for a brief period. This can be swapped for Lay Bait before each game, which places a copy of you in the world.
- Disguise: Transforms you into one of three objects that vary from map to map
- Starstep: Buffs your speed for thirty seconds so you can evade the Hunter. The burst level abilities are only activated when you claim the Emblem that appears on the map during a match.
Tips for hiding
Your chances of success vary from map to map since some are better for hiding than others. Your best bet for victory is usually one of the following:
- Size counts: If you're on a map where some of the Disguise objects are small, you can transform and tuck yourself away in spaces that are extremely hard to discover.
- Rooftops: Hiding on rooftops is good since they are sloped, meaning you can adjust your position to stay concealed. You can also escape by jumping to another rooftop if the Hunter climbs up.
- Climb: It's easy to forget, but when climbing you don't consume stamina if you aren't moving. This means you can climb into some great hiding spots, like the inside of a roof, and just hang there like a sneaky spider.
- Save your abilities: Transparency is a lot more useful than Lay Bait, but you should save it until you really need it, such as when a Hunter spots you.
- Unequip your Seelie: Your Seelie makes a noise that Hunters can hear, so if you have one equipped, don't forget to unequip it beforehand.
- Small characters are slow: Sayu, Qiqi, Klee, and Diona can hide in small spaces, but don’t forget that they run slower and it’s harder for them to climb.
Hunters
In terms of the two roles, I think the Hunter is more difficult to play. Some of the maps are pretty big, so it's easy for Rebels to tuck themselves away in crevices and climb onto rooftops. The Hunter has increased speed and stamina, as well as a variety of abilities they can utilize:
- Mysterious Hunch: Briefly shows you the direction of a Rebel. This can be swapped for Sensor Aura, which scouts a fixed AoE around you and highlights if there is a Rebel in that space.
- Capture: Creates an AoE capture net around the Hunter that snares nearby Rebels. You have to catch all Rebels with this to win, but this ability does have a long cooldown when you've used all of its charges.
- Insight: Marks the location of all Rebels with blue beams of light and dispels their disguises. This can be replaced with Imprisoning Curse, which randomly traps one Rebel for a limited time, or Hunter's Intuition, which does the same as Insight, but for a single Rebel with a longer duration.
Tips for hunting
There's no safe bet for winning as the Hunter since it can be pretty tough, but here are a few tips that helped us out:
- Head for the roof: Often, Rebels are hiding on the rooftops since they are harder to reach and easier to escape from.
- Don't spam your capture: The capture ability has multiple charges but a long cooldown, so don't spam it too much while running around.
- Look for out-of-place objects: You can usually tell a disguised Rebel hiding in plain sight since the object will probably look a little out of place.
- Set a trap: If you've spotted what you think is a disguised Rebel don't sprint to them. Pretend you haven't seen them approach, and then capture them. This should stop them from running away immediately.
How to get Windtrace coins
All you need to do to earn Windtrace coins is take part in randomized games, complete challenges. and try to win. Like most Genshin Impact events, Windtrace is staggered, meaning the coin limit you can earn is incrementally increased as it goes on. If you just want the Primogem rewards, you only need 2,700 coins but if you want all of the rewards, you'll have to keep playing until the end of the event.
The Genshin Impact Windtrack event runs until January 26, 2022.
