Version 7.1 quietly added a new weekly track that ends in a free four-star Wind Glider, and the community reaction has been a slow, confused shrug. Players finish the first Secret Tsarist Assignment, see a reward list ending in a glider, go looking for the rest of the chain, and find nothing. Then they wait. Some of them wait seven days from the moment they finished. Some wait until Monday. Some conclude the system is bugged.
None of it is bugged. Two separate things are happening at once, and they are very easy to merge into one wrong sentence.
This page applies to Version 7.1 "A Rekviem for the Underworld", checked on 29 September 2026 against HoYoverse's own in-game Version 7.1 Update Details announcement and the live quest data. Where the sources disagree with each other — and on one important point they do — that is printed below rather than smoothed over.
Quick answer: Secret Tsarist Assignments are the Tsaritsa's weekly reputation track, run from Chayka at Zapolyarny Palace in Snezhnaya. There are 18 assignments across three Parts, and you can only take one per weekly reset (Monday, 04:00 server time). Each one pays 3 Hero's Wit, 3 Guides and 3 Sanctifying Unction. The free glider, Wings of Starry Winterfrost, sits at the end of Part II — and Part II is not in Version 7.1. HoYoverse states outright that Wind Gliders arrive "in future versions." Only Part I, six assignments, is live now.
What is the Secret Tsarist Assignment in Genshin Impact?
It is one of two weekly tracks under a Snezhnayan umbrella system called the Special Recruitment Project. The project itself arrived with Version 7.0; what 7.1 added is this second track. The first one, Cycle Training, has been live since 7.0. They are separate, they run in parallel, and doing one does not block the other — which matters, because a lot of players are running only one of them without realising the second exists.
HoYoverse's Version 7.1 Update Details describes the new track in exactly one paragraph, quoted here verbatim:
"Each week, you can visit the Confidential Secretary Chayka at Zapolyarny Palace to accept new Secret Tsarist Assignments. Complete a certain number of these assignments to obtain Furnishings, Furnishing Blueprints, and other rewards. Additional rewards, including Wind Gliders, will be added in future versions."
That final sentence is the single most important line in this article, and it is the one that keeps getting left out of the summaries. Read it again. The gliders are future versions, not this one.
Structurally, the track is the Tsaritsa's reputation system. You act as Consultant to Anastasya, Chayka assigns the work, and progress is viewed by talking to her inside Zapolyarny Palace in the Everfrozen Earth area of Snezhnaya.
How do you unlock Secret Tsarist Assignments?
There are two gates, and the second one is the reason half the players asking about this system cannot see it yet.
Gate one — the Archon Quest. HoYoverse lists a single unlock criterion: complete Archon Quest Chapter VII: Act III, "White Night, Like a Dream Upon Waking." In practice the live quest data is more specific than that: the trigger is "One Move Left to Make," which is part 3 of that Act. Finish the Act and you have cleared it either way. If you are not there yet, the route runs through the Version 7.1 story — our 7.1 Archon Quest walkthrough covers the unlock chain and the deadlines attached to it.
Gate two — the World Quest nobody mentions. Clearing the Archon Quest does not put the system on your map. It puts a letter in your inventory. You then have to complete the World Quest "A Letter From Zapolyarny Palace" — read the invitation from Vesna, travel to Zapolyarny Palace, and meet Chayka. That quest is assignment number one. Completing it is what opens the track.
This is why the system appears "missing" for so many players: they finished the Archon Quest, checked the map for a new icon, saw nothing, and stopped. The icon comes after the letter.
Getting there is faster than it sounds if your map is filled in. Zapolyarny Palace sits inside Snezhnograd, and the region's Teleport Waypoints include one close enough to walk from — note that 7.1 added another one, at Fellfrost Peak.
Is it one per week, or seven days from when you finish?
This is the genuine conflict, and it changes how you plan your week.
Three sources say three slightly different things:
- HoYoverse's announcement says only "Each week." It gives no reset model at all.
- The community wiki's system page says you must "wait for seven daily resets" to access the next assignment — that is a rolling timer, starting when you finish.
- The same wiki's data for the second assignment, "The Tsaritsa's New Portrait," gives its requirement as "Wait 1 Weekly Reset after completing A Letter From Zapolyarny Palace." That is a fixed gate, not a rolling one.
A fourth data point settles it. The other track under the same system, Cycle Training, uses the identical structured requirement: "Wait 1 Weekly Reset after completing Looming Shadows: Part V" is what gates its final quest. Both tracks of the Special Recruitment Project are weekly-reset gated in the quest data. Only one summary paragraph says otherwise.
So the third reading is the one to trust. It is the more specific, per-quest datum rather than summary prose, it agrees with HoYoverse's "each week," and it matches what players are reporting in practice. In Genshin, the weekly reset is every Monday at 04:00 server time — the same reset that clears your Weekly Boss discounts.
The practical difference is not academic:
- Under a rolling seven-day timer, finishing on a Sunday means your next assignment arrives the following Sunday. Timing is irrelevant; only the gap matters.
- Under a weekly reset, finishing at 23:00 on Sunday means your next assignment unlocks five hours later, at Monday 04:00. Finishing at 05:00 on Monday means you wait almost seven full days.
Either way, the rate settles at one per week. What the weekly-reset model adds is a penalty you cannot recover from: assignments do not stack. If you skip a week entirely, that week is gone. The entire 18-assignment chain slides back seven days, and there is no catch-up mechanism. Set a reminder, or treat it as a Monday chore alongside your weekly bosses.
Genshin has been leaning hard on time-gating all patch, though not always with the same clock. Two other Version 7.1 quests stall you on daily waits rather than weekly ones — see Swords and Secrets and Upstream Variations, the latter of which makes you wait until the next day three separate times. Same feeling of a bug, different timer.
Every Secret Tsarist Assignment reward
There are 18 assignments in three Parts of six. Every assignment pays a flat base reward, and the sixth assignment of each Part adds a milestone on top.
The per-assignment base, identical every week:
- Hero's Wit ×3
- A Guide to Charity, Fortitude or Glory ×3, rotating by assignment
- Sanctifying Unction ×3
The three milestones:
| Milestone | Assignment | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Part I complete | 6 | Blueprint: Pure Intention, A Gift in Celebration |
| Part II complete | 12 | Wings of Starry Winterfrost, Recipe: Royal Grilled Fish |
| Part III complete | 18 | Exaiphanes Blade (Weapon Appearance), Snezhnaya: Frostfall |
Two of those entries are routinely described wrongly elsewhere, so both are worth pinning down.
Sanctifying Unction is not filler. It is a three-star Artifact Enhancement Material worth 2,500 Artifact EXP each, normally bought from the Realm Depot for 90 Realm Currency and gated behind Trust Rank 8. Three per week across all 18 assignments is 54 of them — 135,000 Artifact EXP that costs you no Resin whatsoever. If you are deep in the current artifact economy, that stacks well with artifact reshaping.
Exaiphanes Blade at the end of Part III is a Weapon Appearance — a skin. It is not the five-star sword of the same name, which released on 12 August 2026 and comes from the quest "Great Deeds on the Tundra." If a guide tells you this track hands out a free five-star weapon, it has conflated the two.
A Gift in Celebration is a four-star Snezhnayan-style Serenitea Pot furnishing: a large Prime Ice sculpture from Snezhnograd, described in-game as a landmark crafted for Anastasya Feodorovna's coronation. Limited to one copy.
When does the Wings of Starry Winterfrost glider unlock?
Not in Version 7.1. This is the part worth being blunt about.
The glider's own data is tagged as upcoming, with a change-history note marking it visible in 7.1 but only obtainable in 7.2 or later. That lines up exactly with HoYoverse's own sentence about Wind Gliders arriving in future versions. It is a four-star Progression Wind Glider described as "a stylized wind glider gifted to you as a mark of Snezhnaya's acknowledgment and recognition" — and it is behind assignment 12.
Here is what the arithmetic gives you. Assignment 1 became available with the Version 7.1 update on 23 September 2026. Every assignment after that unlocks on the following Monday reset:
| Assignment | Unlocks | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23 September 2026 | Live now |
| 2 | 28 September 2026 | Live now |
| 3 | 5 October 2026 | Projected |
| 4 | 12 October 2026 | Projected |
| 5 | 19 October 2026 | Projected |
| 6 | 26 October 2026 | Projected — Part I milestone |
Which produces the first genuinely useful conclusion, on the arithmetic rather than on any announcement: if the cadence holds, Part I finishes around 26 October 2026, roughly a week before Version 7.1 ends. The Version 7.1 announcement window closes on 4 November 2026, so if you start now and never miss a Monday, you will clear the furnishing milestone with time to spare and then have nothing to do on this track until 7.2 arrives. Our 7.2 release date breakdown covers that window.
Assume Part II opens with 7.2 on 4 November and runs at the same cadence, and assignment 12 — the glider — lands around 7 December 2026. Part III, at the same rate, would finish around 18 January 2027 — and the data for both of its milestone rewards is currently annotated as 7.3 or later, which is consistent with that window rather than an earlier one.
Treat everything past assignment 2 as arithmetic, not an announced schedule. The weekly-reset rule is verified; the release cadence of Parts II and III is not. What is certain is the shape of it: this is a three-month commitment, not a weekend one, and anyone telling you to grind out a free glider this patch is selling you something that does not exist yet.
What about Cycle Training, the other half of the system?
Run it too. It is the same umbrella system, the same weekly rhythm, and the same reward shape — and it is entirely separate progress.
Cycle Training is handled by Yarovaya at Druzhna HQ, and it sends you into Shadow Realms to clear them out. It unlocks from the World Quest "A Special Selection," which itself requires Archon Quest Chapter VII Act II, "Wraith's Nocturne" — an earlier gate than the Tsarist track, so if you can see one you can probably see both.
Its six quests are Looming Shadows: Part I through Part VI, paying the same Hero's Wit, Guide and Sanctifying Unction package each week. Finishing Part VI adds Snezhnaya: Fleeting Glimpses and a Borderland Billet Trove on top.
The in-game description of Yarovaya's role includes a line that reads like a designer's hint about how the two tracks connect: aiding her clearing operations "could yield handsome rewards from the Vila herself... Perhaps it might even earn you the favor of the supreme figure seated upon the throne of the Zapolyarny Palace."
Running both is two weekly stops for six Hero's Wit, six Guides and six Sanctifying Unction. That is the actual optimisation here, and it takes about ten minutes a week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I find the Secret Tsarist Assignment NPC? Chayka, the Confidential Secretary to the Tsaritsa, is inside Zapolyarny Palace in the Everfrozen Earth area of Snezhnaya. The palace is the Cryo Archon's residence in Snezhnograd. The system icon only appears after you complete the World Quest "A Letter From Zapolyarny Palace."
Why can't I accept a new assignment? Because you already did one this week. The gate is the Monday 04:00 server-time weekly reset, not a rolling seven-day countdown from when you finished. If you completed an assignment on Sunday night, the next one is available a few hours later at Monday's reset.
Do missed weeks stack up? No. There is no catch-up. A week you skip is a week permanently removed from the schedule, and the whole 18-assignment chain shifts back seven days.
How many Secret Tsarist Assignments are there in total? Eighteen, split into three Parts of six. Part II is confirmed not to be in Version 7.1, and the assignments beyond the second have not been named yet, so treat Part I finishing inside this version as the expected case rather than an announced one.
Can I get the Wings of Starry Winterfrost glider in Version 7.1? No. It is the Part II milestone at assignment 12, and Part II is not in this version. HoYoverse's Version 7.1 notes state that Wind Gliders will be added in future versions, and the glider's own data marks it obtainable from 7.2 onward.
Is the Exaiphanes Blade reward an actual weapon? No, it is a Weapon Appearance, which is a cosmetic skin. The five-star sword called Exaiphanes Blade is a separate item from a different quest and released on 12 August 2026.
Is Cycle Training the same thing as Secret Tsarist Assignments? No. Both sit under the Special Recruitment Project, but they are separate weekly tracks with separate NPCs, separate locations and separate reward ladders. Do both.
Are the assignment rewards worth the time? The headline items are cosmetic, but the base reward is not. Across all 18 assignments you collect 54 Sanctifying Unction, which is 135,000 Artifact EXP for zero Resin, plus 54 Hero's Wit and 54 Guides. That is a meaningful amount of free progression for about five minutes a week.
The bottom line
Finish Chapter VII Act III, read the letter, meet Chayka, and then put a recurring Monday reminder in your phone. Do the Tsarist assignment and the Cycle Training quest in the same trip. On the weekly-reset maths, Part I should close out around 26 October with a furnishing and a blueprint.
And stop looking for the glider this patch. It is real, it is free, and it is behind a Part that HoYoverse has not shipped yet.
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