Genshin Impact‘s developer HoYoverse revealed the addition of a Fast Equip Artifact feature on Jan. 17, which will come alongside upcoming Patch 4.4—but it’s not what players were hoping for.
According to the official FAQ, the Fast Equip Artifact feature will allow players to equip Artifacts faster to their characters without losing time looking for the ones with the best stats due to filters that will select them automatically. It’s supposed to help players optimize their characters without much effort.
Artifacts feature randomly-generated stats, which means you have to farm a lot of them to get the bonuses you want for your character. You’ll usually end up with hundreds of artifacts in your inventory, and it can take a long time to select the one you want.
That’s where the Fast Equip feature will come in handy. Using the Quick Loadout option, you can equip Artifacts automatically suggested “based on data from recently active players.” Only Artifacts not equipped on other characters can be used.
You can also customize the loadout: Artifacts will appear according to the prefix and stats you’ve selected, and you’ll be able to adjust them. But it won’t allow you to create several sets on one character—which is precisely what I’ve been craving for years. And I’m not alone in that struggle.
Many Genshin players have been begging for HoYoverse to bring a quality-of-life feature that would allow them to create build presets for characters, similarly for teams. Depending on the team where your character plays, you have to equip different Artifacts to adjust your strategy. As Genshin gets more updates, combat and strategies become more complex, and that feature is more needed than ever.
It takes a lot of time just to change one build, let alone a whole team’s. When I see streamers spending over 10 minutes building up their teams for Spiral Abyss farming, it makes my head spin. This annoying step could be spared with a simple preset feature you see in most MMOs, and Genshin‘s new Fast Equip feature looks like a huge missed opportunity.
The version revealed in the FAQ isn’t definitive, though. More information on the upcoming feature will be revealed alongside the rest of Patch 4.4’s content in the next Special Program Announcement, which is planned for Jan. 19 at 5am CT.
