Meet the University of Washington, the 4th place team of friends who teamed up to compete in the Genshin Impact University Carnival.
When Carly and Imu, roommates at the University of Washington, learned about the Genshin Impact University Carnival, they instantly knew they had to compete in it. The pair recruited Janda, a friend they knew from a club at the University of Washington, and they started to practice.
Due to knowing each other already, the team did not have the hurdle of developing team chemistry while practicing for the tournament.
“Having that friendly rapport definitely made planning and practicing more fun,” Carly explained. “We didn't feel too pressured or exhausted when testing our strategies since we all approached it with a pretty laid back attitude of ‘this is the best we can do, so we'll just do it and see how it works out!’"
Practice, practice, practice
Preparation for the Genshin Impact University Carnival qualifiers took the form of trial-and-error team selections as well as friendly competition.
“It was a lot of running around and exploring in game to look for shortcuts and the fastest passages. Once we’d found various pathways, we would race each other to the finish line or time individual attempts with different routes or characters,”
The goal: Shave off as much time as possible.
“We tried to map out all of our paths beforehand, then ran them over and over to make sure we had them memorized and knew any little quirks of the path,” she said. “That way, once we got the accounts we’d be playing on, we could focus our attention on the team compositions for the domain challenges, which was a similar process of trial-and-error and comparing times.”
For the sprint portion, the University of Washington team opted to use triple Yelan, which was a different strategy than they had originally planned.
Originally, the trio had been practicing with a team of Kazuha, Xiao, and Venti – a grouping that would get them all three stamina buffs (climbing, sprinting and gliding). However, at the last minute, they decided on triple Yelan.
“We used a team of all Yelan, which was actually a pretty last-minute decision for us!” carly said. “As we were practicing on the competition accounts and trying to shave seconds off our times, we realized that Yelan's sprinting ability would allow us to have virtually zero down time due to stamina constraints, and with a bit of timing and practice, this change was still worth it even though we lost some upward mobility and stamina buffs.”
Yelan was a popular choice amongst many of the teams competing in the Genshin Impact University Carnival qualifiers, so you may expect to see a lot of her in the finals as well.
This choice proved to be successful for the University of Washington team, earning themselves 4th place in the qualifiers with a finish of 22:16.02.
Carly credited their finish to the last-minute, triple Yelan decision: “As far as we could tell, it was our sprint performance that helped our time the most, since our team compositions seemed fairly similar to other teams.”
In addition to the triple Yelan decision, Carly credited adrenaline: “While we hoped to make it to the finals, we thought our best chance was to scrape by as 7th or 8th, so getting 4th overall was a huge surprise! It was also faster than any of our practice runs, so we think the adrenaline helped.”
Live LAN finals in their city
With the Genshin Impact University Carnival LAN finals only a couple of days away, preparation for the University of Washington team has already begun.
The trio intends to focus on improving team compositions, character building, and fighting tactics.
Carly identified the University of Central Florida as the team to beat: “Rutgers and Nevada had some really amazing plays that we’re not too sure we could beat!” she said. “Looking at the qualifier standings, it was a very close finish between us and Central Florida, so in our minds, they’re the team to beat in order to secure a 3rd place spot!”
The University of Central Florida team beat the Washington trio by only six seconds.
The casters watched both the UCF and the University of Washington teams race side-by-side.
All of the teams received the format for the final live LAN event on Tuesday night, so preparation has officially begun.
The University of Washington team has started researching and tentatively planning for team compositions and open-world pathways – looking to see where they can shave off extra time.
How to watch the University of Washington’s Run in the Genshin Impact University Carnival
New England College 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.