Genshin Impact is filled with clumsy weirdos. I don’t expect most of the cast to be world-class chefs, but there’s one character whose culinary incompetence surpasses them all.
Baal can’t cook. Not a toast, not a fried egg, nada.
Cooking is an important skill for surviving high level encounters in Genshin Impact. Dishes have the ability to heal and grant stat buffs, so it’s an activity that I regularly participate in. Some characters even have a special cooking ability that increases food output, and every recruitable character has a personal specialty dish. Even children like Klee and Sayu, who are also recruitable characters like Baal, can cook.
So imagine how shocked I was when I realized that the god of the Inazuma region couldn’t prepare a meal at all. I don’t mean that her cooking attempts fail more frequently. I mean that it’s impossible to select Baal as a cook when I stand near a fire.
This wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I wasn’t regularly using Razor to whip up delicious hash browns. I can’t believe the reigning leader of an entire country has fewer life skills than a child who was literally raised by wolves.
I was willing to believe that the developers simply limited her skills while she was still a new character, since her Serenitea dialogue seems to be locked behind main quest completion. Except that Baal’s disinclination to cooking is part of her lore. She has a voice line that affirms her culinary skills are a permanent weakness.
It’s not a weakness that has any significant gameplay ramifications, since cooking takes about five seconds, and there aren’t any limits on how many dishes you can make in a day. It’s just funny that the main antagonist of the Inazuma region has such a specific weakness. I’ve already seen the memes about how Sara Kujou is the wife who has to ensure that the Electro Archon doesn’t starve. Except it doesn’t really feel like a joke when Baal’s emblem is stamped on Sara’s specialty dessert.
The in-game jokes don’t stop there. Usually, a limited character’s weapon is pretty serious business. I’ve seen ability names on those weapons like “Golden Majesty” and “Sky-Piercing Fang.” Baal’s weapon? The ability’s name is “Timeless Dream: Eternal Stove.”
Despite all that Genshin Impact does to build Baal up as a fearsome enemy for the Inazuma region, it won’t let her catch a break on the cooking jokes. Apparently, neither will the fandom.