If you’ve spent even a few hours wandering the sunlit plains of Mondstadt or the rolling hills of Liyue, you’ve probably wondered are there horses in Genshin Impact. It’s a common question for new and veteran players alike, especially since most open-world RPGs let you hop on a steed to cut down travel time between quest points. I’ve spent over 400 hours exploring every corner of Teyvat, so I’ve dug into every official detail, lore hint, and player theory to answer this question fully, plus share all the better movement options you can use instead.
Are There Horses in Genshin Impact? The Official Answer
Let’s get the short answer out of the way first: no, there are no ridable horses available for players to use in Genshin Impact as of the latest version updates. HoYoverse has never added a horse mount mechanic to the game, even after years of player requests for faster overground travel options. That doesn’t mean horses don’t exist in Teyvat’s lore at all, though. You’ll spot small references to them in NPC dialogue, item descriptions, and even background scenery in certain regions. For example, the Knight of Favonius are mentioned to have used horses in early historical records of Mondstadt, before the widespread use of waypoints and gliders became standard for travel across the region. You will never find a wild or tamed horse you can interact with or ride anywhere in the open world, no matter how much you hunt through grasslands or stables around cities.
Why HoYoverse Chose Not to Add Horses to Genshin Impact
Many players who come to Genshin from other open-world RPGs immediately start searching for answers to are there horses in Genshin Impact when they first step foot in Mondstadt’s wide open fields. A lot of players assume the lack of horses is an oversight, but it’s actually a deliberate design choice from the dev team, based on multiple official statements and design documents shared in past developer livestreams. First, the game’s core movement system is built around gliding, climbing, and teleport waypoints, which are designed to encourage players to explore every nook of the map instead of rushing past content on a fast mount. If you could gallop across the plains at 2x running speed, you’d miss hidden chests, secret quests, and small world details the team spends months building. Second, horse mounts would create technical challenges for the game’s cross-platform performance, especially on mobile devices that already struggle with high render loads in open, crowded areas. Rendering a moving horse, plus the character riding it, across varied terrain would require extra processing power that would drop frame rates for lower-end device users. The dev team has repeatedly stated they have no plans to add ridable horses in future updates, so you don’t have to hold out hope for that feature dropping anytime soon.
Best Alternative Movement Options to Use Instead of Horses
A lot of players who ask are there horses in Genshin Impact don’t realize how many better movement options are already available to them for free. Just because you can’t ride a horse doesn’t mean you’re stuck sprinting everywhere on foot. There are tons of faster, more fun movement options available to all players, most of which you can unlock within your first few weeks of playing the game. I use these every day to cut down travel time for daily commissions, event quests, and farming runs, and they’re far more versatile than a standard horse would be:
- Teleport Waypoints and Statues of The Seven: These are the fastest travel option in the game, and you can unlock them simply by walking up and interacting with them as you explore. You can teleport to any unlocked waypoint from anywhere in Teyvat for free, with no cooldown.
- Waverider: For travel across large bodies of water in Inazuma, Sumeru, and Fontaine, the Waverider is a summonable boat that moves far faster than swimming, and can even be upgraded to go faster or shoot at floating enemy camps.
- Character movement abilities: Many characters have passive or active abilities that boost travel speed, like Wanderer’s hovering ability, Yelan’s swift dash, or Sayu’s rolling skill that lets you zoom across flat terrain without spending stamina.
- Gliders: You unlock the standard glider within the first hour of gameplay, and you can use it to glide down from high points to cover huge distances without spending any stamina, plus collect floating Geoculus, Anemoculus, and other collectibles along the way.
I’d argue all of these options are better than a horse would be, because they work across every type of terrain, from steep mountain cliffs to deep oceans, where a horse would be completely useless. You can also mix and match them: for example, teleport to a waypoint near a mountain peak, glide down to your farming spot, then use Yelan’s dash to cover the last short stretch of flat ground in seconds. You can even unlock special glider skins from events and reputation rewards to customize your travel style.
Lore References to Horses in Teyvat You Might Have Missed
Even though you can’t ride horses, there are plenty of small nods to them scattered across Teyvat’s lore and world design for players who love digging into small details. The most obvious one is in Mondstadt, where the Knights of Favonius have a stable near the front gates of the city, even though no horses are ever kept there now. NPC dialogue reveals that horses were widely used before the Archon War, when travel between regions was far more dangerous and waypoints hadn’t been established yet. Another reference is in the food item “Horse Mackerel” which is a common fish you can catch across multiple regions, named for its resemblance to a horse’s markings. You’ll also find mentions of horses in old stories told by elder NPCs in Liyue, who talk about merchants using horse-drawn caravans to carry goods between Liyue Harbor and Mondstadt before the main road was made safe for travelers. These small lore hints make Teyvat feel more like a real, lived-in world, even if the horses themselves don’t appear as interactable objects. If you pay close attention to quest dialogue, you’ll spot even more tiny references to horses and other animals that don’t appear in the open world.
At the end of the day, if you were asking are there horses in Genshin Impact you can ride, the answer is a clear no, but that’s not a bad thing. The game’s existing movement system is designed to make exploration feel rewarding, not tedious, and the wide range of travel options you can unlock mean you never have to spend too long walking from one quest to the next. If you’re a new player still getting used to getting around Teyvat, spend your first few days unlocking as many teleport waypoints as you can, and experiment with different character movement abilities to find the combination that works best for your playstyle. You won’t miss having a horse once you get the hang of all the faster, more flexible travel tools the game already offers.