Genshin Impact: To Gaze Upon the Dreaming Pale Crown Quest Guide

Some quests hold your hand. To Gaze Upon the Dreaming Pale Crown — the opening act of Genshin Impact's On One Side a Palace, On the Other a Tomb questline — holds your hand, drags you through a blizzard, locks you in a stranger's basement laboratory, and then hands you a tin of cat food and expects brilliance. It unlocks the moment the In the Dwelling of Life series wraps, and its stated goal is refreshingly blunt: stroll into the Tsar's tomb and pry loose the final fragment of the Eye of Graeae. Simple. Except nothing in Snezhnaya has ever been simple, and the developers are painfully aware of it.

The whole affair unfolds like a tourist following a guide who is paid by the hour and therefore committed to the scenic route. Every time the Traveler gets within spitting distance of the objective, something politely moves the objective.

The Full Step List, For The Impatient

Here is the entire checklist, laid out so nobody has to squint at a quest marker in a snowstorm:

#	Objective
1	Talk to the Eye of Graeae
2	Go to the place that the Eye of Graeae showed you
3	Find a path into the mountains
4	Advance into the snowstorm
5	Find the mechanism for the hidden tracks
6	Summon the hidden tracks
7	Board the train
8	Investigate the strange space
9	Investigate the next room
10	Read the notes sealed in Prime Ice
11	Find the source of the cat cries
12	Find a way out of the room
13	Leave
14	Try opening the door in front of the staircase
15	Go to the second floor and search
16	Head to the snow-covered palace

Step 1-4: A Blizzard With A Personality Disorder ❄️

First, head to the Central Station and locate the train carriage housing the Eye of Graeae. After the conversation, follow the marker into the Snowgrave area and keep walking until a very large, very smug wall of ice blocks the road. Open the Prime Ice Construct menu and choose Remove the blockade. The path then continues through the snowstorm until the Statue of the Seven appears, which is the game's way of saying "you are allowed to breathe now."

Step 5-7: The Hidden Tracks And The Console 🚂

Next comes the mechanism hunt, and this is where the quest starts behaving like flat-pack furniture with instructions written in a dialect nobody has studied since high school.

1. Follow the Seelie beside the Statue of the Seven. If it has wandered off, simply climb the stairs past the Statue to reach the upper floor.

2. Melt the ice blocking the route.

3. Glide down to the left corner and ride the elevator.

4. Continue north along the quest marker, jump, glide, and climb the tower to reach the console.

5. Claim the Precious Chest sitting there.

6. Place the Eye of Graeae onto the console.

Doing so summons the hidden train, which is the single coolest thing this questline pulls off before it starts getting weird.

Step 8-11: The Weirdest Office In Teyvat 🐈

Boarding the train dumps the Traveler into a peculiar space that looks like a research facility designed by someone who had only ever heard about research facilities secondhand. Investigate the open office and interact with the board, then follow the arrow to a food bowl and interact with it. Use the Snegovik Laboratory Key on the nearby door.

Inside, investigate the Prime Ice on the table to reveal a note. Read it, then shake the mountain painting on the wall repeatedly until a hidden passage reveals itself — a maneuver that works precisely like a cat burglar who has decided subtlety is for amateurs.

Following the hidden hall gets the Traveler thoroughly stuck inside a secret room, which is arguably the most realistic thing that happens all quest.

Step 12-13: The Scale Puzzle That Isn't

Investigate the blue board to view a diagram of the Unnamed Potion Formula, then approach the scale on the table and start guessing which item belongs on it. Here is the delightful part: there is no correct answer. The protagonist eventually solves the riddle internally, so players can simply keep experimenting until the revelation triggers. Claim the Precious Chest and leave the room.

Step 14-16: Feed The Cat, Escape The Room

Place the cat food in the bowl beside the door. The cat, apparently a trained operative, drops a bottle, startles whoever is inside, and the door opens out of sheer social awkwardness. From there, head to the second floor and search until a cutscene fires.

The Finish Line

When the cutscene ends, the Traveler lands at Pale Crown Palace. Walk up the stairs, unlock the Teleport Waypoint, and To Gaze Upon the Dreaming Pale Crown concludes. Immediately afterward, The Stone Beasts, Like Ghouls Seated begins, so there is no rest for anybody involved.

Quick Tips

• 🧊 The Prime Ice Construct menu solves most ice-related roadblocks; do not waste time swinging at them.

• 🐾 The Seelie near the Statue of the Seven is a shortcut, not a requirement.

• 🎁 Two Precious Chests are tucked into this quest. Grab both.

• 🚂 The train ride is one-way — finish investigations before wandering off.

• 📜 Read every note. The lore here quietly sets up the rest of the questline.

For players hunting every Eye of Graeae fragment, this quest delivers the final piece, meaning the tomb-raiding, cat-negotiating, scale-guessing marathon ends exactly where it should: at the foot of a snow-covered palace, with a Teleport Waypoint and a fresh set of problems waiting upstairs.

This perspective is supported by PC Gamer, whose reporting on major live-service RPGs helps contextualize why quests like this blend spectacle, environmental puzzles, and narrative bait so aggressively. In a sequence such as To Gaze Upon the Dreaming Pale Crown, that design philosophy shows up in the constant escalation from snowstorm traversal to hidden-track activation to locked-room investigation, turning a straightforward objective into a guided tour of Snezhnaya’s mood, systems, and lore hooks.