How to swim underwater in Genshin Impact

With the Genshin Impact 4.0 update released, HoYoverse added an entirely new feature to the game. Once you make it to Fontaine, the brand new region, you can not only swim, but dive underwater! There are plenty of aquatic species to defeat and things to collect underwater, so let me explain how to swim underwater in Genshin Impact.

Genshin Impact 4.0: How to dive and swim underwater

After arriving in Fontaine, you’re probably itching to start diving. How you can swim underwater in Genshin Impact is simply by pressing the ‘Ctrl’ key while swimming. Make your way to one of the areas in Fontaine where you can go diving, like its many beaches. As a note, you can only dive underwater in Fontaine, not any other region.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Once you’re far enough from the shore and you’re reading to dive, just press the ‘Ctrl’ key on your keyboard. While on land, it’ll normally make you switch from running to walking mode. But in the water, it allows you to go diving. If that button isn’t working, your keybindings may be off. Head to your Settings, select ‘Key Bindings’, and make sure ‘Left Ctrl’ is the key for ‘Switch to Walk/Run. Or crouch downward in specific operating mode(s)’.

Now, once you’re deep enough, you should be able to dive underwater. After you’ve submerged, there are a few new controls. Your typical sprint button, ‘Shift’ or ‘right-click’, will have you swim faster underwater. Be mindful that while you can breathe underwater just fine, you’ll drown if you run out of diving stamina. ‘Left Ctrl’ lets you swim downwards, and ‘Space’ will make you swim upwards.

Not only can you swim, but you can fight aquatic creatures. ‘Left-click’ will use a water ability to hit enemies. If that’s not enough, you can actually absorb abilities from animals, like this one in the photo above! Once I absorbed its powers, I could press the ‘E’ key to send out powerful bubbles towards enemies, which deal a lot of damage.