Genshin Impact 7.0 gave players a gun and made sure to carefully tell them that they should only use it in specially designated gun zones, so obviously players have done their very best to take the gun everywhere.
The Snezhnaya region at the heart of update 7.0 introduces Shadow Realm areas and challenge zones that turn Genshin into a third-person shooter. In the Shadow Realm, the Traveler is given a spiffy new outfit and a suite of firearms, including full-auto rifles, a grenade launcher, and throwable grenades.
Chinese players quickly found a way to bring these guns out of the Shadow Realm and into the world of Teyvar, including previous regions and combat challenges. Like the cast of Persona 5, they've brought their guns to a fight with god.
YouTube user Ikoan covers one method to smuggle the Traveler's guns out of the Shadow Realm, and I've seen different exploits work for users like Ayayaya. The rub is: find a way out of bounds near a specific waypoint in Snezhnaya, clip and glide your way over to a Shadow Realm-enabled area, and then load up on ammo so you can actually use the gun out in the world.
Joined by their two best friends, Smith and Wesson, Genshin Impact players have been using their new weapons to hunt local wildlife, harass demigods, and generally menace all of Teyvat. The only problem is that, in the open world, these stolen guns deal the same damage that they do normally. The Shadow Realm is balanced around the Traveler's new weapons. All of Genshin Impact, however, is not.
Dealing 60 damage a shot is fine when enemies have, say, 500 health, and the Traveler's health pool of 3,000 is plenty when taking 1,000 damage would be considered a big hit. But when normal Genshin bosses can have several million health and hit you for upwards of 10,000 damage, suddenly guns don't look all that strong. Maybe those wizards in the old woods were right and magic really is better than technology.
