Like Christmas, Genshin Impact‘s major version changeovers happen but once a year; and, like Christmas, we’ve come to expect a certain number of gifts handed out by benevolent Father HoYoverse to distract us from the eye-watering display of capitalistic excess involved. Ahem. And so, the arrival of Genshin Impact 4.0 is being celebrated with appropriate generosity, with the introduction of a new permanently-free character: Lynette, the first 4-star unit from the newly-arrived nation of Fontaine.
Lynette joins the 4-star freebie ranks in Genshin Impact already populated by Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Noelle, Barbara, Xiangling, and Collei. But she’s the first 4-star Anemo character to be guaranteed to every player, and here’s the exciting part: this means that you can now make use of all seven elements in Genshin Impact without resorting to random chance in the gacha, or zooming around the map to switch out the Traveler’s elemental alignment.
In fact, as an Anemo Sword user, Lynette can be viewed as a replacement for the prologue Traveler, who began the game with that weapon/element combo as default. But given that with this latest update the Traveler now has the ability to switch between every element barring Pyro and Cryo, it’s likely that you’ve found a better use for them than their somewhat underpowered original Anemo incarnation, meaning that Lynette may well be useful to plug a gap that’s crept into your roster. And of course, having all elements represented by an easily-obtainable free character is a particular boon for F2P players who prefer not to rely on favourable gacha pulls.