How to Get to Underground Waterway in Genshin Impact

The Underground Waterway is the flooded cave system inside The Chasm: Underground Mines, in Liyue. You get there on foot from the southern Teleport Waypoint in The Chasm: Main Mining Area, once Chasm Spelunkers has let you past the camp and into the deeper tunnels. Those tunnels are already open before the map ever prints the name.

This page covers the quest gate, the first walk, the shortcut back through the Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel, the Lumenstone Adjuvant levels that clear sealed walls, and the fishing spot and world quests in the cave. If a rim on the surface has already shoved you backward, start again from the mine mouth at The Chasm’s Maw.

What the Underground Waterway Is

This cave is one of seven subareas on the underground map, with the Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel, The Chasm: Main Mining Area, The Serpent’s Cave, Stony Halls, The Glowing Narrows, and the Nameless Ruins. Zhiqiong, the mine cartographer with the delvers, is the person who first marked the water on a sheet for the Traveler.

“As I was exploring by myself, I discovered this waterway. The waters here are clean and cool, perfect for taking a break and wash all the ill-fortune accumulated on the way off.”

Zhiqiong, mine cartographer, Viewpoint: Underground Waterway

The area entry also lists what you use while you are down there.

WHAT YOU USE IN THE CAVE

• Monuments: Geo and Hydro Elemental Monuments sit in the tunnels for the light-up puzzles.
• Seelie and fire: Luminous Seelie and Ruin Braziers both put energy back into the Lumenstone Adjuvant.
• Rock: Rock piles and Spoutrock formations hide the same breaks used elsewhere in the mines.

Elite enemies here are a Cryo Abyss Mage, a Black Serpent Knight: Windcutter, and two Shadowy Husks, the Standard Bearer and the Line Breaker. Common groups are Hilichurls, stone-shield Hilichurl Guards, Cryo Hilichurl Shooters, Floating Hydro Fungi, Geo Slimes, and Hydro Slimes. The special slot on that list is the Hydro Mimic Boar.

On the walk, the cave plays tracks from the album Millelith’s Watch, including Frail Peace and Blind Search. A fight in the same tunnels switches the music to Tremor of Menace. Recognizing the water is the easy half, and the quest gate is what stops a first trip.

Quests That Open the Chasm Mines

The Version 2.6 update notes place the underground mines behind Adventure Rank 28, the Archon Quest A New Star Approaches, and the World Quest Surreptitious Seven-Star Seal Sundering.

Talk to Lan near Katheryne at the Liyue Adventurers’ Guild and take The Chasm Charters. That quest leads into Surreptitious Seven-Star Seal Sundering, where Zhiqiong has you destroy five Bedrock Keys and take the Lumenstone from the miners’ warehouse. When the last key breaks, the seal on The Chasm’s Maw comes down.

Chasm Spelunkers is the next part of The Chasm Delvers. Ride the crane elevator at The Chasm’s Maw, or jump the hole. The top-left Teleport Waypoint in the Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel unlocks as soon as you land, and Jinwu’s camp is where that Lumenstone becomes the Lumenstone Adjuvant you carry.

Walk toward the Main Mining Area before the search for Uncle He is done and the game turns you around. Paimon puts it plainly: “Paimon would love to explore further in, but we should probably finish Jinwu’s commission first.” That commission is three clues about where Uncle He went. With those clues found, you can walk the Underground Waterway and The Serpent’s Cave even before you report back to Jinwu.

Your feet and the map are on different clocks. Each step changes a different thing.

An empty label after the clues means that sheet has not been drawn yet. Head for the southern Main Mining waypoint anyway. The Heavenly Stone’s Debris, which follows Chasm Spelunkers, is the quest that fills the name in, at the moment the cannonball is finished. Perils in the Dark and Wherefore Did the Spiritstone Descend come after that and are not required for the walk.

The First Walk From the Main Mining Waypoint

Use this path the first time, once the Main Mining Area is open to you. If your own map is still blank, the official Teyvat interactive map keeps the underground mines on their own layer, apart from the Liyue surface.

1. Teleport to the southern Teleport Waypoint in The Chasm: Main Mining Area.
2. Enter the cave beside it and follow the water on the floor, past the Fatui camp.
3. Keep the right-hand wall as the path climbs, and skip the first wide chamber.
4. Spiral upward into the second chamber, where the fishing water sits.
5. Take the rise on the right, past the Seelie court, when you want the plants that open the shortcut.
6. Unlock the Teleport Waypoint in the waterway before you leave.

The Fatui along that water can hand you the world quest A Company Vanishing Into the Deep. Take it if you want, then keep walking. You are in the Underground Waterway at the second chamber. The pin you unlock there is the one later errands should start from.

The far side, including the southwest bell from Perils in the Dark, stays along the slope. Hug the hillside and glide only the gap. The first ledge drops you back onto the floor of the chamber you just left.

The Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel Shortcut

The Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel has had a waypoint since you first dropped through the Maw, and that pin still does not reach this cave on a first visit. The link is a pair of exploding plants on the rise past the Seelie court. Players often call them Geo statues. They are the plants that grow through the Chasm and burst when you walk up to them.

They have to burst while you are standing on the waterway side. That blast opens a tunnel through to the Ad-Hoc Main Tunnel. Afterward, the Ad-Hoc waypoint is a real door, and you can skip the Main Mining spiral on later trips.

IF THE PLANTS WILL NOT OPEN

• Wrong side: The hole stays shut if you hunt it from the Ad-Hoc tunnel before the plants have burst inside the waterway.
• Right side: Come up from the southern Main Mining waypoint, pass the Seelie court, and walk into the plants.

Once the tunnel exists, later trips can start at the Ad-Hoc waypoint and come straight through. The spiral is the first key, and you only need it once.

When a Wall Needs the Lumenstone Adjuvant

The main chambers do not check your gadget level. A side wall does. Blooming Light, the active use of the Lumenstone Adjuvant, breaks Level 1 Oozing Concretions once the gadget is level 2.

Taller, sharper concretions are Level 2, and Blooming Light only breaks those at level 6. If a wall in front of the waterway waypoint will not break, raise the Adjuvant to that level and fire Blooming Light again. The long walk from the southern Main Mining waypoint does not go through that wall, so you can still reach the cave while the side room waits.

Jinwu at the exploration camp handles every upgrade. Each level costs eight Lumenspar, and levels 2, 6, and 8 each add one Lumenstone Ore. Levels 2 and 6 are the breaks for these walls. Level 8 widens Blooming Light and is not part of getting in.

Fishing, Quests, and Chests in the Waterway

Once both doors work, the errands in this cave are a fishing point, a handbook in a tree, a bell, and a small monument puzzle. Each one starts from the waypoint you just unlocked.

The Fishing Spot in the Second Chamber

The fishing point is the quiet water in the second chamber, the one you reach by spiraling up instead of dropping into the first room. The point never puts more than 4 fish on screen at once.

The pool behind that limit holds 5 to 7 fish, and the night list brings in Betta while Akai Maou and Brown Shirakodai drop out. Ornamental versions of those fish also appear. Travelers use this water when they still need catches for the Inazuma Fishing Association toward the polearm The Catch.

The Missing Miner in the Hollow Tree

On the east side of the waterway, a hollow tree holds a Work Handbook on a table. Go in through the open end or through the hole in the trunk. Reading the book starts The Missing Miner, and Uncle He shows up behind you.

1. Talk to Uncle He after you read the book.
2. Collect four Starshrooms just outside the tree for his mushroom meat.
3. Defeat the Floating Fungi that appear once the mushrooms are picked.
4. Bring him back to camp to finish the quest.

One walkthrough places the quest unlock after The Chasm Delvers chain is finished. If the book is on the table and will not start anything, finish that chain and read it again.

The Southwest Bell and the Geo Monuments

Perils in the Dark sends you to a bell southwest of the Underground Waterway. Follow the Luminous Seelie to its court before you touch the device, then spend 3 Energy from the Adjuvant on the mechanism. A level 0 Adjuvant stores 1 Energy and cannot pay that cost, while level 1 raises the cap to 3, enough for one full charge.

Four Geo monuments stand near the waterway Teleport Waypoint, and they are lit as a set. The same fishing pool can also cough up a Strange Object for Hydrological Investigation in The Chasm. Show it to Khedive at the camp and choose the line about the strange object.

IF THE STRANGE OBJECT DOES NOT BITE

• Wait: Come back in three days, when the fish in this pool have respawned, and check your quest-item bag in case you already hooked it.
• Then: Follow the marker to the waterfall north of the waterway and hit the glowing spot with Hydro, which calls a Hydro Geovishap.

Quest markers for the two bells in Perils in the Dark also run their own path. You do not need a separate upside-down waypoint elsewhere in the mines to ring them.

Mistakes That Block the Underground Waterway

These are the dead ends that send people back to the surface or leave them in front of a wall that will not move.

DEAD ENDS ON THE WAY IN

• The surface rim: Climbing the cliffs above the Chasm toward a hole in the rock runs into a barrier, and a slip there drops you down the outside face.
• The early tunnel: The Ad-Hoc shortcut does not exist until the exploding plants have burst from inside the waterway.
• The blank map: Waiting for the name to appear leaves you idle in caves you can already enter after the Uncle He clues.
• The thick wall: A wall that will not break in front of the waypoint needs Adjuvant level 6, and the southern Main Mining walk does not.
• The early mine: Entering the Main Mining Area before the three clues turns you around and sends you back to Jinwu’s commission.

The surface barrier is the one that faces open air. The entrance you can use is The Chasm’s Maw after the seal quest, then the southern mining waypoint after the clues.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Can You Pick in the Underground Waterway?

Starshrooms, Cor Lapis, and Noctilucous Jade are the local specialties tied to this cave. Picking a Starshroom also returns energy to the Lumenstone Adjuvant, so the mushrooms outside the hollow tree help the gadget and Uncle He’s request at the same time.

Does Requiem of the Echoing Depths Still Need The Chasm Delvers?

Before Version 4.3, part of The Chasm Delvers had to be finished before the Archon Quest In the Depths, an Unexpected Reunion could continue. A Teleport Waypoint in that Archon Quest was changed to unlock on its own, so the world quest chain is no longer the gate for Requiem of the Echoing Depths. The waterway itself still depends on the mine unlock.

How Do You Refill the Lumenstone Adjuvant?

Stand next to an active Teleport Waypoint, a Ruin Brazier, or a Luminous Seelie. You can also break glowing ore, catch Lucklight Flies, defeat Bluethunder Weasels, or pick Starshrooms. Any of those fills the gauge above your health bar while the gadget is equipped in the mines.

Are the Hydro Mimic Boars Hostile?

Zhiqiong’s viewpoint calls the elemental creatures here gentle and slow, with no quarrel with the rest of the world. The area list still files the Hydro Mimic Boar as a special enemy, so walk through the herd and fight only if a battle starts.

Why Is the Underground Waterway Missing From the Liyue Map?

The Underground Waterway sits on The Chasm: Underground Mines map, which is separate from the Liyue surface. Open the mines map before you decide the cave is absent. Its name is drawn when the cannonball is assembled in The Heavenly Stone’s Debris, later than the hour you can already walk the tunnels.

Unlock the Teleport Waypoint in the second chamber on that first walk. After it is lit, the fish, the hollow tree, and the southwest bell all start from the water, and the Ad-Hoc tunnel is there for the day you would rather not spiral.