If you've been living under a rock, you may have somehow missed Genshin Impact's amazing new user-generated content (UGC) gameplay module, Miliastra Wonderland. This platform first launched back in October 2025 and has since attracted over 30k stage creators, with the stages receiving a total of more than 150 million play sessions.
One such creator is IWinToLose, a renowned Genshin Impact YouTuber, Hilichurls murderer, and wonderful interviewee. I had the chance to sit down with him recently to discuss what attracted him to Miliastra Wonderland, some handy beginner tips, and his inspiration.
Pocket Tactics: What first drew you to Miliastra Wonderland?
IWinToLose: What really drew me to it was the endless possibilities and basically, how it allows you to play Genshin Impact the way that you want to. For so long, Genshin Impact's endgame mode was mainly Abyss, but now with Miliastra Wonderland, whether you're a more casual player who just wants to do goofy things and blow up chickens or whatever, or you want to really push your accounts to the limit and have a challenge… because you've spent a little too much money in the game, so now everything's too easy, right? That's one thing that really drew me to Miliastra Wonderland: it enables players to play the game in a way they want, rather than just how Hoyoverse wants you to.
Is game development something that you've taken to since the release of Miliastra Wonderland, or have you dabbled in it before?
Yeah, I've dabbled in game development a bit before. Now I mainly make YouTube content, but I was a developer prior, well, not game development, specifically, but for various platforms. I made trivia games, things like that. Then, back in my childhood, I made custom maps for StarCraft. Like the X-Men games or Special Forces in Starcraft, so you know, I've always enjoyed these types of user-created custom games and things like that.
Recently, during the pandemic, actually, I was dabbling in Godot, which is one of the game engines. Then, for some reason, I made a Genshin Impact video, and it blew up while I was working on Godot, and I never finished that game. So Alas.
You mentioned making the maps in StarCraft and using Godot. How does Miliastra Wonderland compare to those other platforms you've worked with?
It's certainly different. You know, Starcraft, obviously, is such an old game and platform, and Wonderland is a lot more like a kind of visual design, right? You code via the node graphs and things like that. Once you really get the basic grasp of it all, it does become pretty intuitive. But at the very beginning, it can feel a little overwhelming, but fortunately, there are a lot of resources and stuff to really help you through the beginning.
Overall, I think Miliastra Wonderland as a platform is actually really good and really impressive. I've worked with dev tools and have been part of a lot of corporate meetings where I talk about, "Oh, what do these dev tools need?" And "what are all the problems that are facing our dev tools?" I can only imagine what the developers over there have to deal with, because the tool itself is actually really well built, and it looks nice too, because a lot of dev tools don't look nice.
You vaguely touched on it there. But would you say that Miliastra Wonderland's development tools are beginner-friendly, and is it a good platform for aspiring developers?
Yeah, it is. It is beginner-friendly. I mean, game development in general, I would say it's not something that most people pick up immediately and understand, but at the same time, Hoyoverse has provided a lot of pretty good tutorials for this. I actually went through the main tutorial that they have on a YouTube playlist. It goes from step one to whatever to make your first Miliastra map. I went through that step-by-step, and it actually worked out really well.
Once you do that, I recommend taking the online quiz for the Miliastra creator portal, because once you do that, assuming you pass it, you actually unlock a lot of crucial features in the Miliastra sandbox itself. For example, one of the big ones is just adding text to your stage. You actually have to pass that quiz to be able to add text to your stage. So make sure to do that because otherwise a lot of the features aren't even going to be accessible to you, and you'll be wondering, "Wait, why isn't this working?" Well, it's because you didn't go past the quiz!
Have you developed any new skills or learned anything about game and stage development through Miliastra Wonderland?
Miliastra Wonderland was my first foray into any sort of 3D game tinkering. StarCraft is very isometric, basically 2D, and then you have Godot, the game that I made with that engine was a 2D game, then trivia is obviously, I don't know, 1D or something. I don't know how many dimensions that is.
Miliastra is a 3D environment, and it was pretty interesting for me to, for the first time, really interact with a 3D environment. Also, in terms of the logic and stuff like that, I learned a little bit of the life cycles, but I find that to be more specific to Miliastra Wonderland or specific to Genshin. So it's not a skill I would describe as transferable. But I also learned a lot about how Genshin Impact itself probably works, because it's obviously using the same engine and platform.
Where did the inspiration come from for the Miliastra Wonderland stages you've created?
For the stages that I created, my first attempt was to just try to somehow figure out: what can I do in Miliastra Wonderland that affects the main game itself? Because the two are pretty siloed from each other, right? Some of the stuff you do in the main game goes to Miliastra, such as your characters, but originally, they were completely separate. I tried to find some type of interaction between the two, and I did!
The kill counters of enemies that you kill in Miliastra Wonderland count towards your kill counters in the main game. So my goal was to just kill one million Hilichurls, so that way, in my game, it would show I've killed one million Hilichurls.
Have you killed one million Hilichurls?
Yes, yes! I've done that. I punched one million of them to death over the course of four hours. There's a spawn limit; the game doesn't want you to spawn a million Hilichurls and just one-punch them all. So that was my motivation, I had a simple goal, which was to try to tie the two together because my audience cares a lot about the base game, and I want to get them a little bit interested in Miliastra, so that's kind of the way that I tried to bridge that gap there.
Do you have any upcoming Miliastra Wonderland stages in the works?
At the moment, I do not. But there are a lot of great stages that I would love to see made personally. If I had the time, I would make more of them. But at the moment, I don't.
What is the hardest thing about creating Miliastra Wonderland stages?
Once I got past the initial roadblock of just where everything is, like, "Oh, how do I even connect a node graph to make something?" Once I figured that out, it was the vector math, like 3D math. Being the first time that I've dealt with 3D spaces, back when I was learning linear algebra in college, that was my dedicated nap time. So clearly now, you know, the turns have tabled, unfortunately, I don't really know vector math very well.
For example, I tried to make a giant laser cannon that you could fire, have it rotate with you, and do all these cool things with the angle and positioning, but I couldn't figure it out. So I'm like, you know what, I'll just make a giant explosion. [he laughs] That's just a big circle.
If you could add one aspect from Miliastra Wonderland to the main game, what would it be?
In many of the maps in Miliastra, you're able to improve your artifacts in the map itself, and be like, "Hey, I'm just gonna add a bunch of crit rate to this artifact." I want us to be able to add the max stats to our artifacts in the main game.
Wishful thinking!
It would save us a few at 10k resin… On a more serious or, a slightly more realistic note, is the ability to just put some of the very auxiliary cosmetics onto more characters than just the mannequin. Maybe you could put Mavuika in little cat ears or something, I don't know, it could be anything. I understand full costumes don't make sense, but, you know, maybe some accessories would be fun, right?
What advice would you give someone who's just starting out making stages?
I kind of already went through it a little bit. But, basically, in my opinion… [pauses to come up with some good advice]
Do the quiz?
Yes, yes! Do the tutorial, and also if you get stuck, check the YouTube comments because there's almost always someone else who got stuck in the exact same spot that you can ask. A few things that I got stuck on were that they changed the names of the node graphs from when they recorded the video to when Miliastra Wonderland was released. So someone in the comments is bound to say, "Oh, the node graphs are actually called this now."
So, follow the main tutorial series on how to create your first stage, then take the quiz, and then after that, just try to do small things that you find fun or funny, right? The perfect example from one of my fellow creators is blowing up chickens, right? For me, it was to make a Hiligrill that would just roast Hilichurl. That was just my simple first step goal, and I did it, and it was very satisfying. Just watching Hilichurls getting grilled…
What is your favorite Miliastra Wonderland stage that you didn't create?
I've got two of these. The first is Fable Codex Abyss Purge, because it's like a roguelike with save data, and you kind of have to persist and build up your powers a bit. Then also, DPS Test Dummy ++, specifically the one named DPS Test Dummy ++, personally, I find that to be the one that I use the most.
Is there something that sets that one apart?
I think it's the two pluses, they're very eyecatching…
What if a third plus comes out? You're going to have to move over.
I'm scared to see what they add to that one!
I'd like to thank IWinToLose for speaking with us and offering some insight into his creative process and Miliastra Wonderland. Stay tuned next week as we also got to speak with Buttermochi about the UGC platform as well.