Genshin Impact players cheese tower defense event by yeeting enemies into space

Genshin Impact
(Image credit: miHoYo)

Genshin Impact's new tower defense event, Theater Mechanicus, hasn't even been out for a full day, but players have already discovered an utterly game-breaking cheese for it. 

Theater Mechanicus is a grid-based tower defense mode that challenges players to build and combine towers to stall and defeat enemies as they march toward a fixed exit. The kicker is that players are unable to damage the baddies with their attacks or skills, so they have to rely on towers. At least, that's what they're supposed to do. But even if you can't damage enemies with skills, you can still affect them, as this clip from Reddit user YT-MhepzPlayz shows:

99.9% Big Brain Move from r/Genshin_Impact

As you can see, Jean's elemental skill can still scoop up enemies and hurl them into the abyss without needing to damage them. And really, who needs damage when you can send your enemies to the shadow realm with a flick of your wrist? 

Jean isn't the only character that breaks Theater Mechanicus, either. Players have found comparable success using the main character's geo skill, which summons a rock that can hold enemies in place while your towers rip them apart. Other characters have yielded less consistent but still extremely cheesy workarounds, including Sucrose, Venti, Zhongli, and the anemo main character. 

Given that you can't damage the enemies in Theater Mechanicus, I'm assuming it wasn't designed with these abilities in mind, so I wouldn't be surprised if MiHoYo releases a hotfix that disables attacks, skills, and bursts for the mode entirely. I mean, why would the studio go to the trouble of making a surprisingly in-depth tower defense mode if it knew players could make like Fall Guys and just yeet their troubles away? But maybe this is actually working as intended and you're just supposed to send enemies flying to control their pathing. 

Speaking of cheesy strategies: a recently discovered Ganyu bug turns her into a game-breaking full-auto rocket launcher.

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Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.