Genshin Impact Luna VII: The Hexenzirkel Changes Everything

Finally, the Hexenzirkel in Genshin Impact Luna VII is more than tea party gossip and cryptic artifact descriptions.

Officially subtitled “Truth Amongst the Pages of Purana”, version 6.6 dropped May 20, 2026, and delivered the one thing the lore community had been theorizing about for years: a playable Hexenzirkel witch.

This is not a teaser. Not a voiceover appearance. An actual, roster-slot character with a full kit, story quest, and faction mechanic linked directly to the coven Alice created.

Luna VII restructures how we think about team building in Genshin, introduces a faction resonance system that rewrites what “support” means, and drops so much Hexenzirkel lore into quests and world content that the theorycrafting community has barely stopped to breathe since launch.

If you have been saving Primogems since Natlan or skipping reruns to build a war chest for this moment, this is the breakdown you need.

What is the Hexenzirkel in Genshin Impact?

Before Luna VII, the Hexenzirkel existed in a strange space: named constantly, seen rarely. The word itself is German for “Witches’ Circle” or “Coven of Witches,” and it describes a group of seven extraordinarily powerful mages founded by Alice, Klee’s mother.

They hold formal tea parties on a secret island above the Falcon Coast. They have explored Irminsul. They created pocket dimensions (Simulanka, the Imaginarium Theater, Miliastra Wonderland). Two of them shaped the Cataclysm. One of them is Mona’s teacher.

What separates the Hexenzirkel from most Genshin factions is that they operate without a fixed moral alignment.

Alice recruits based on what she finds “interesting,” which is a terrifying standard when you consider that Rhinedottir, one of the Five Sinners of Khaenri’ah, holds a seat at the table.

They are not, not even villains. They are extremely powerful women who pursue personal goals and occasionally reshape history as a side effect.

The seven founding members each carry a single-letter codename: Alice (“A”), Barbeloth (“B”), I. Ivanovna N. (“J”), Andersdotter (“M”), Nicole (“N”), Octavia (“O”), and Rhinedottir (“R”). Two are confirmed dead. One merged with an entity called Naberius, the Ruler of Life.

Barbeloth taught Mona everything she knows about hydromancy and astrology. Andersdotter helped write Simulanka into existence and rewrote Durin’s fate as a story. These are not side characters.

Hexenzirkel Characters and Launch Date Leaks in Genshin Impact Luna VII

Version 6.6 launched on May 20, 2026, and runs through late June.

Version 6.6 Banner Schedule

Phase	Character	Rarity / Element / Weapon	Role in Meta
Phase I (May 20, 2026)	Nicole Reeyn	5-star Pyro Catalyst	Off-field Support / Shielder / Sub-DPS
Phase I (May 20, 2026)	Prune	4-star Anemo Catalyst	Swirl Enabler / Faction Buffer
Phase II (June 9, 2026)	Lohen	5-star Cryo Polearm	On-field Hypercarry / Stacking DPS

If you missed it, you missed the story setup for why she joins the Little Hexenzirkel. The event content is finished, but the Archon Quest and story quests for Nicole and Lohen remain available through the version window.

See Also: Kinich and Raiden Shogun Rerun in Genshin Impact Version 5.6!

Nicole Reeyn (5-Star Pyro Catalyst), The Memory-Witch Goes Live

Nicole is the reason Luna VII matters to the lore community. She is “N” in the coven’s codename system, designated the Memory-Witch, and her existence in the game predates this patch by several versions.

Players who paid attention during Inversion of Genesis, Masquerade of the Guilty, and certain Windblume content already heard her voice without ever seeing her. She communicates telepathically. She cannot speak aloud.

She is one of the last surviving members of an ancient angelic race created by the Heavenly Principles to guide humanity, which immediately raises the question: if the Heavenly Principles created her to guide us, why have they gone completely silent as Irminsul develops structural anomalies?

Nicole’s World Quest chain, “Beyond Silver and Fine Gold,” explores the Witch’s Lodge and Witch’s Garden areas and pushes directly on this question.

The dialogues there revealed fuel for the most talked-about post-launch theory: that Celestia now works on an automated security script, rather than active divine governance.

No matter if that is intentional storytelling or foreshadowing for a later confrontation with the Heavenly Principles, it changes how players read everything she says.

She becomes a Hexerei character after completing her “Witch’s Homework” quest, “The Role of a Guide…?”

Nicole’s Kit Breakdown

Nicole is an off-field support and shielder who performs coordinated attacks through her Elemental Burst.

Her kit is built around one core concept: she stays off-field, her Arcane Projection follows your active character, and it deals elemental damage based on whoever is currently on the field.

Her Elemental Skill, “Revelation: Uncreated Light,” fires AoE Pyro damage, applies a party-wide ATK buff (Grace of Kenosis, which snapshots her ATK at cast time), and creates a Blazing Light shield with strong Pyro absorption.

The shield absorption scales off her ATK rather than HP, so ATK investment does double duty here. The Skill also generates 5 particles, which keeps energy flowing.

Her Elemental Burst, “Revelation: Ladder of Divine Ascent,” costs 60 energy, fires AoE Pyro damage, and enters Silent Contemplation for 20 seconds.

During this window, whenever your active character deals elemental damage, the Arcane Projection triggers a coordinated hit.

The Projection scales off the active character’s ATK (not Nicole’s), deals their element type, and counts as their damage rather than hers. This matters for reaction calculations and for whether procs trigger their personal buffs.

The number that changes everything for Hexerei teams: when Secret Rite is active, Nicole’s Arcane Projections gain a +300% bonus based on her own ATK on top of the base scaling.

That effectively turns her from a nice off-field coordinated attacker into a damage source that scales with two characters simultaneously.

Her passive “Nepsis” deserves mention because it adds exploration value: outside of combat, her Charged Attack summons a Pyro Seelie that guides you toward nearby treasure, on a 5-second cooldown. It is not meta-relevant, but for players who like completing chests on new maps, it is a genuine quality-of-life addition.

For builds, the community consensus leans toward ATK Sands, Pyro DMG Goblet, and Crit or ATK Circlet.

Her signature weapon, Angelos’ Heptades, provides shield and energy generation bonuses that align with her dual role as buffer and shielder. If you are skipping the signature, strong alternatives exist in the ATK or ER catalyst pool.

Nicole’s Role in the Hexenzirkel Story

The Archon Quest Acts IX and X drag the Traveler back to Sumeru under heavy thematic framing around “emptiness,” fate, and the dissolution of established truths. Nicole’s presence is not background support.

Her prophetess knowledge of Teyvat’s history and her direct connection to Irminsul makes her the interpretive lens through which the Sumeru crisis is read this patch.

She knows things that the Akasha, the Sages, and the Traveler do not. And because she communicates through your mind rather than through spoken dialogue, her delivery in quests feels genuinely different from any character the game has introduced before.

See Also: Clorinde Genshin Impact Finally Introduced in New Banner Update

Lohen (5-Star Cryo Polearm)

Lohen is Vice Captain of the Knights of Favonius’ Fifth Company, the Ranged Company, and he has been an NPC in Varka-adjacent quests for long enough that returning players will recognize his name immediately.

His actual personality is the central joke and central tension of his character design: he looks like exactly the kind of composed, ornate, blue-armored knight you would expect to be formal and reserved.

Then he opens his mouth and all he wants to talk about is finding someone strong enough to actually challenge him.

His Story Quest, “Lepus Miles Chapter: Act I – A Knight’s Legacy,” leans into this contrast. He becomes Hexerei through his own “Witch’s Homework” quest, “Of Various Foes,” which fits his arc: joining the coven is, for Lohen, essentially finding a new category of opponents to obsess over.

Lohen’s Kit and Stacking Mechanics

Lohen is an on-field Cryo damage dealer with a resource system built around two separate stacks: Joy and Will to Win. Joy builds from his own hits during Masterstroke state (his Elemental Skill converts Normal, Charged, and Plunging attacks to Cryo).

At max Joy, he fires off a powerful multi-hit nuke called “Etched Into Bone and Soul,” and this can trigger up to three times per Masterstroke window.

Will to Win is the collaborative part. It builds from nearby party members dealing damage. This is the mechanic that makes Hexerei team composition genuinely interesting around him: every time your off-field characters hit, his Will to Win climbs.

His Elemental Burst, “Manifest Judgment,” consumes all current Will to Win and deals multi-hit Cryo damage that scales with how much Will was stored. If your team has been hitting consistently, the Burst hits disproportionately hard relative to his base numbers.

His C1 constellation triples the max Will to Win cap and accelerates how fast team damage builds it. His C6 removes Will consumption on nukes and replaces it with Joy generation, which fundamentally alters his playstyle into something closer to a DPS loop than a burst window character.

Between C0 and C6, he plays quite differently, which is something to factor into how deep you plan to invest.

Under Secret Rite with two or more Hexerei characters, his Normal and Charged attacks gain an additional damage bonus when Will to Win is high on key hits.

For Melt or Freeze teams that already generate lots of team damage, Lohen’s stacking builds faster than in a standard mono-Cryo setup.

Prune (4-Star Anemo Catalyst), The World’s Most Determined Witch Hunter

Prune is the patch’s 4-star pick and possibly the most entertaining character introduction in a while.

She traveled from Nod-Krai to Mondstadt with a very specific goal: find Alice, who she believes kidnapped her imaginary friend Descartes. She plastered anti-Alice posters around the city. She confronted Klee. She is wrong about everything but absolutely committed to her mission.

The “witch hunter” framing pays off in her kit, which uses a giant hammer called the Banehunter Oathhammer and a bell called the Witchlure Bell.

Her Elemental Skill, “Ring-A-Ding-Ding! Hexhunter Chime,” strikes the bell and triggers element conversion on Swirl for multi-element hammer kicks. Her Burst, “The Bell Tolls! The Hunt Is On!,” costs 70 energy, lasts 12 seconds, and summons a following bell that attacks off-field every 2 seconds with additional hammer procs on reactions.

Her party damage buff, Tolling Rally, scales off her own ATK and caps at 50%, which makes her a real support investment rather than just an Anemo filler character. Under Secret Rite, her ATK buffs on reactions grow stronger, with Swirl getting the biggest boost.

The community has broadly rated Prune as strong 4-star value, especially for players building Hexerei teams on a budget. Her C1 generates energy on hits, which helps the 70-cost Burst stay online.

Her C6 shares ATK buffs with the full party on reactions and extends duration, which makes her ceiling as a support rise sharply at high constellation.

She joins the Little Hexenzirkel during the Phantasmal Pals event after her misunderstanding with Alice resolves.

Her imaginary friend Descartes, now officially part of the Little Hexenzirkel alongside Dodoco, Yuegui, Tuantuan, and Gena, turns her from an antagonistic wanderer into something the community has adopted almost immediately.

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Hexerei: Secret Rite, The New Team Synergy System

Every character who becomes Hexerei does so through their “Witch’s Homework” quest, which is a per-character unlockable.

Nicole, Lohen, and Prune all have individual Homework quests tied to their stories. Once completed, they carry the Hexerei designation permanently.

Beyond these three, existing characters with ties to Mondstadt and the coven have been officially recognized as Hexerei characters: Mona, Klee, Albedo, Venti, Fischl, Sucrose, and Razor all qualify. This opens up much more flexible team building than a strict “new characters only” system would allow.

The trigger for Secret Rite is two or more Hexerei characters in the same party. Once active:

Nicole’s Arcane Projections get a +300% ATK bonus on top of the base active character scaling. Lohen gains a significant Normal and Charged DMG boost on key hits when Will to Win is high. Prune’s ATK buffs on reactions grow stronger, with Swirl seeing the biggest amplification.

The new Celestial Gift artifact set also upgrades under Secret Rite, adding dual-element DMG bonuses to what would otherwise be a single-element buff. This creates a genuine incentive to farm and build around these characters as a group rather than slotting them into existing team archetypes.

The system is designed to reward long-term roster investment. Players who have Mona built from Liyue or kept Fischl from early game can slot into Hexerei comps without starting from zero. The three new characters provide the framework, but they do not require each other specifically.

Archon Quest Acts IX and X: Sumeru’s Crisis and Hexenzirkel’s Shadow

Acts IX (“As All Falls to Emptiness”) and X (“Of Myriad Paths, Flux, and Dissolution”) return the Traveler to Sumeru under circumstances that feel deliberately designed to revisit every unresolved thread from the original Sumeru arc. Collei, Kaveh, Alhaitham, and Tinari all appear.

Ancient sites connected to Deshret are under pressure. Aggressive Jinn are causing sandstorms and desert disruptions at a scale that suggests something external rather than natural.

The thematic core of Act X is the “Pages of Purana,” ancient wisdom texts that touch on fate, dissolution, and the nature of recorded truth. This connects to Nicole’s role as a memory-witch and prophetess: she does not just know history, she has access to the version of it stored in places like Irminsul that most characters cannot reach.

What the Irminsul-adjacent anomalies mean for the broader Celestia arc is still unfolding in community theory spaces, but the Act X dialogues have generated more sustained discussion than any Archon Quest segment since the Fontaine finale.

Reported playtime for the full quest chain runs upward of seven hours for thorough players. Reward structure includes Primogems and ascension materials, but the content justification is the story itself.

The Seven Founding Witches: A Full Hexenzirkel Lore Breakdown in Genshin Impact

Alice (“A”) founded the Hexenzirkel and remains its organizing force. She maintains Teyvat’s borders, travels beyond Teyvat to regions the Traveler has not reached, and raised Klee while apparently being one of the most powerful entities in the game’s fiction.

Her recruitment standard, “interesting,” has produced a coven that covers astrology, fate manipulation, interstellar travel, alchemy, political power, and the Cataclysm itself.

Barbeloth (“B”) is an astrologist and hydromancer. She is Mona’s teacher. She mapped fate routes inside Simulanka. Her connections to water and the stars make her likely important to future Hydro or celestial-adjacent lore arcs. She is alive and active.

I. Ivanovna N. (“J”) is deceased. She held significant political influence in Snezhnaya, which means her legacy almost certainly connects to whatever Snezhnaya’s arc involves when the game eventually moves there. Having a dead Hexenzirkel member with Snezhnayan power ties during a period when the Fatui are a primary antagonist faction is not a coincidence the writers will leave unaddressed.

Andersdotter (“M”) is deceased. She was a writer who helped construct Simulanka and rewrote fates, including Durin’s. If you want to understand why Durin’s story has the shape it does, Andersdotter is the reason. Her death has not been narratively explored in full yet.

Nicole (“N”) is now playable. Everything above applies.

Octavia (“O”) created Miliastra Wonderland and travels between star systems. The “Wander-Witch” designation suggests an explorer in the same mode as Alice, but operating in interstellar rather than inter-regional space. She has not appeared in Teyvat recently, which has generated theories about where she currently is and what she is watching from out there.

Rhinedottir (“R”), also called Gold, is one of the Five Sinners of Khaenri’ah. She was the Sage-Witch, a Khemia alchemist, and she merged with Naberius, the Ruler of Life, during or after the Cataclysm. Every piece of her story connects to the deepest Genshin lore: Khaenri’ah’s fall, the Cataclysm’s causes, the creation of life through alchemy, and the question of what it means to be a “Sinner” in a world where the Heavenly Principles decide who gets punished.

Phantasmal Pals Event and the Little Hexenzirkel

The Phantasmal Pals event (May 22 through June 8) exists in deliberate tonal contrast to the Archon Quest. Where Acts IX and X deal with fate, emptiness, and ancient crises, Phantasmal Pals is about Klee’s friend group and imaginary companions.

Klee leads the Little Hexenzirkel, a kids’ version of the coven complete with imaginary friends: Dodoco for Klee, Yuegui for Yaoyao, Tuantuan for Qiqi, Gena for Sayu. Prune joins with Descartes, her imaginary friend and the whole reason she came to Mondstadt in the first place.

The event minigames covered bomb delivery with Dodoco, obstacle course escapes (Gena’s Great Escape), radish collection walks (A Little Walk Home), and performance battles in the Fantasy Realm.

Rewards included talent and weapon materials, story unlocks, and an exclusive Claymore weapon skin called the “Super Awesome Magic Key.”

Community reception was universally positive in a way that is actually unusual for Genshin events.

Multiple community voices described it as one of the most emotionally satisfying event experiences the game has delivered, specifically because of the contrast with the main quest’s heavier content.

Prune’s arc from antagonistic witch-hunter to group member, and the moment where her misunderstanding with Alice resolves, landed with players in a way that wholesome content does not always manage.

Should You Pull? Pull Value and Primogem Strategy

Nicole is the most lore-significant unit in years. If you care about the Hexenzirkel story and plan to engage with future content involving the coven (which is clearly where the game is heading), she is the anchor of that team system.

Her kit is strong off-field support with real shield value, and under Secret Rite her coordinated attacks become a meaningful damage contributor rather than background noise. She is also the character who unlocks the most interesting version of everyone else in the Hexerei group.

Lohen is a more personal decision. His stacking DPS is fun and has a collaborative feel that on-field carries rarely achieve, but his ceiling depends on team composition more than most carries.

If you already have strong Cryo units and want an on-field DPS who benefits from everything hitting at once, he fits. If you primarily play quickswap or are tight on Primogems, he is skippable without losing access to Nicole’s core functionality.

Prune as a 4-star is the clearest value proposition of the patch. She is a real support with a damage buff ceiling that competes with dedicated buffer 5-stars at higher constellation, and her role in Hexerei teams fills a slot that would otherwise need a second 5-star. If she appears on your banner pulls while going for Nicole, building her is time well spent.

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Hexenzirkel in Genshin Impact Luna VII has taken years of background worldbuilding and made it into a playable faction with actual mechanics and story weight.

Nicole’s arrival means every future coven member is a realistic addition, rather than a long-shot theory, and the Hexerei: Secret Rite integration with existing characters like Mona and Fischl means the system rewards the full Mondstadt roster, not just Luna VII pulls.

More from the Hexenzirkel is on the way. Nicole’s position in the middle of both the Irminsul and Celestia threads ensures it.

Best thing to do right now is to prepare your primogem stash before the next coven member drops. Keep your Welkin Moon running, and for quick, easy Genesis Crystal top-ups, look no further than Lapakgaming. There’s a reason why veteran savers start months before others.