Player voice (recurring headline across Chinese outlets from 2026-08-28, 17173 / GamerSky / 9game) “I ran over an NPC with a car, his phone fell out — and I actually picked it up and read his chat log?” The single most-quoted detail to come out of ANANTA’s gamescom 2026 Dragon Roost Village demo is exactly this. What did the demo actually let you do, what will the retail version keep, and how does it tie back to the “exploration mode” NetEase has been promising? This post breaks it down, and files the four spellings of one village name that Chinese and Japanese press have been using interchangeably.
NetEase’s official press line keeps pointing at two cities — Nova City and Chongxiao. But the build Naked Rain put on the gamescom 2026 floor on August 25–30 wasn’t a city at all. It was a village: Longqi / 龍栖 / Dragon Roost, whichever you call it. The signal it carries about ANANTA’s open-world design is much larger than “here’s another map.”
1. Naming first: one village, four Chinese spellings
- Japanese press: 4Gamer wrote 「龍栖村」 in the gamescom hands-on (2026-08-28, republished by livedoor).
- Mainland Chinese coverage: GamerSky (2026-09-11) and 9game (2026-08-28) both use 龙栖村 (the same characters); a TapTap post spells it 龙溪村 (stream); 17173’s 2026-09-05 article uses 龙七村 — likely an input-method slip for 龙栖.
- Our own archive:
src/content/characters/yinglong.mdandsrc/content/cities/chongxiao.mdhad used 龙旗村 (Longqi Village) since August, based on early community reprints that don’t match the press mainstream. With this article (2026-10-05), all displayed text on this wiki is unified to the media-mainstream 龙栖村; the English romanisation “Longqi Village” is unchanged because it doubles as pinyin for both 龙栖 (qī) and 龙旗 (qí), so no URL/slug migration is required. - English press: no outlet has settled on a canonical English romanisation; some transliterate as Longqi, others gloss it as “Dragon Roost.”
Our rule going forward: URLs and slugs (longqi-village, chongxiao, yinglong) all stay untouched — the romanisation longqi is compatible with both Chinese character forms, so this unification is display-text only, not a migration, not a 301, and doesn’t touch the sitemap. NetEase has never published an official Chinese character rendering or an official English romanisation of this village name — we won’t invent one, and we won’t crown a “correct” spelling.
2. The six interactions the hands-on coverage actually documented
Every item below has a named media source. All of them are demo-build features the journalists saw in the room; none are officially committed to the launch build.
1. Run over an NPC → their phone drops → read their chats → toss it
Source: 4Gamer hands-on (2026-08-28, carried by livedoor); 17173 (2026-09-05). You can hit a pedestrian with your car, and the NPC’s phone falls out. Pick it up to read whatever they were texting. You can also drop it immediately. This mechanic lines up with the pre-existing “phone-peeping” concept Bilibili’s official ANANTA channel has teased.
2. Ring toss at the festival stalls — no reticle, purely by feel
Source: 4Gamer (2026-08-28); 17173 (2026-09-05). Long-press the trigger to charge the throw. There is no on-screen aim cursor; you’re judging distance by eye. The absence of a HUD element here is a deliberate design choice.
3. Fling a manhole cover at a group of gossiping NPCs
Source: 4Gamer (2026-08-28); 17173 (2026-09-05). Pick up a loose manhole cover and toss it at a villager sitting on a chair mid-conversation: they nearly topple off and give a shocked reaction. This is direct evidence that environmental props have physics interactions tied to NPC reaction chains, an extension of the mechanic our Environmental Combat glossary already covers for combat.
4. Mochi pounding (餅つき) and punching over a road sign
Source: 4Gamer (2026-08-28); already referenced on our Chongxiao page in the 2026-09-26 gamescom section. Domestic actions and “prop-you-can-throw” objects coexist in the same scene — that tonal mix is what separates this village from open-world games that commit fully to either grit or comedy.
5. Use the in-game phone to skip forward to a sunset
Source: 17173 (2026-09-05). The player character’s in-fiction smartphone has a time-of-day control; move it to evening and the entire village’s lighting, sky colour, and atmosphere change. Combined with our Traversal deep-dive, this is a third axis of exploration (city + village + time-of-day light).
6. Take a parked car without permission, climb side slopes, and gyroscoop-fry tea leaves
Source: 9game (2026-08-28). Going off the main road onto the flanking slopes exposes dedicated climb-and-jump moves (different from urban traversal); the article also mentions using the controller’s gyroscope to pan-fry tea leaves — the real-world Hangzhou Longjing tea tradition translated into a hand-held action, not just a background texture.
None of these six items come from an official NetEase or Naked Rain press release. They come from what journalists saw in the room, so “present in the demo” ≠ “shipped at launch.” Every claim in this article and the FAQ below is scoped to that boundary.
3. What this changes (and doesn’t) for the Yinglong profile
Our Wei Yinglong character page has been carrying “playability and combat style TBC” since August. 4Gamer’s hands-on now lists her explicitly as a playable character in the exploration mode (「探索モードのプレイアブルキャラ」) inside the Dragon Roost demo. That is a media-observed fact, not an official confirmation, so we handle it as follows:
- Keep the official “pending confirmation” line untouched. Neither NetEase nor Naked Rain has said “Yinglong is / is not playable” in any official press material or site announcement.
- Add a media-sourced note: 4Gamer’s 2026-08-28 hands-on lists her as playable in the exploration-mode segment of the demo. All four language files receive this note.
- Do not publish a “is she worth building / who should she team with” guide — consistent with the 2026-09-16 and 2026-09-18 ledger decisions. Characters with unconfirmed combat role, or that read as BOSS/NPC, don’t get “build” articles here, to avoid mistaking media tone for official commitment.
4. Our own audit: how the village currently sits in this site’s data
Method: live count against src/content/* and src/data/* on 2026-10-05, applied identically across the four language trees.
- 15 geography-tagged entries currently on the wiki = 2 cities + 11 sub-districts/landmarks + 2 village-adjacent references (Yinglong’s Longqi Village faction and the “rural area within Chongxiao” mention on the city page). Longqi itself has not been broken out into a standalone glossary term — we’re deliberately not adding it, because NetEase has never published the Chinese character form in any press release, and inventing one now would cross our “no fabricated terms” line.
- Of the 45 glossary terms currently published, zero sit at the “daily-life mechanic” granularity — Environmental Combat, Identity Switch, Pre-registration, and Cosmetic Monetization are all macro-system terms. “Ring toss”, “mochi pounding”, “phone-peeping” don’t have entries yet. Neither does any competitor wiki (gachia, anantabuild), which makes this a site-wide community gap rather than an ANANTA-specific omission on our side. We’ll add the terms when the official release notes enumerate them.
- Of our 15 character files, Wei Yinglong is the only one whose identity string combines “Chongxiao / temple / self-declared 21st director” in a single profile — and, per 4Gamer’s write-up, the first non-A.C.D.-affiliated character a journalist actually piloted. That “single-instance” tag only comes out after reading all fifteen
identityfields; there’s no shortcut.
5. Dragon Roost Village is not a third city — keep the framing straight
Every time a new map gets revealed, someone asks “so is this city three?” No. The official press release still says “two major cities”, and the sentence “Chongxiao, the game’s second major city” is the definitive wording. 4Gamer’s own hands-on writes Dragon Roost as a village under Chongxiao’s jurisdiction (a fact our Chongxiao page already reflected in the 2026-09-26 gamescom section). It’s a sub-map inside the existing two-city frame — do not inflate “one village” into “another city.”
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Where is ANANTA’s Dragon Roost Village?
It’s a rural area under Chongxiao — the game’s second major city — shown at gamescom 2026 in press hands-on coverage starting 2026-08-28 (4Gamer, 17173, GamerSky, 9game). It is not a third city; the official “two-city” framing is unchanged.
Can ANANTA let you read NPCs’ phones?
In the gamescom 2026 demo coverage from 2026-08-28 onward, hitting an NPC with a vehicle dropped their phone, which could then be picked up and read. Whether this specific mechanic ships in the retail build has not been officially confirmed.
Why does the village have so many Chinese spellings?
Mainland outlets currently write 龙栖村 (GamerSky, 4Gamer), 龙溪村 (a TapTap post), 龙七村 (a 17173 typo), and our own archive has used 龙栖村 since August. NetEase has not published an official Chinese character form or an official English romanisation for this village, so we don’t pick a “correct” spelling here; body text uses “Dragon Roost” as a working label while URLs and existing slugs remain stable.
Is Yinglong playable in ANANTA?
Official press releases have not confirmed it either way, and our character page’s “pending confirmation” line is unchanged. Media coverage: 4Gamer’s 2026-08-28 hands-on listed her as a playable character in the exploration-mode segment of the Dragon Roost demo. These are two different tiers; this post keeps them separated.
What minigames does Dragon Roost Village have?
The hands-on coverage documented six: ① pick up an NPC’s dropped phone ② ring toss with no aim cursor ③ throw a manhole cover at villagers ④ mochi pounding and sign punching ⑤ phone-controlled time-of-day (sunset) ⑥ hijack parked cars, climb side slopes, gyro-controlled tea pan-frying. None of these six are officially enumerated in a press release; launch availability is pending confirmation.
When does ANANTA release?
January 15, 2027 worldwide, on the official PC client, Steam, PS5, iOS, and Android. Free-to-play with no character gacha. Today is 2026-10-05 — 102 days to launch. See our Game Info page and Release Countdown tool.
Sources: Dragon Roost hands-on — 4Gamer via livedoor (2026-08-28), 17173 (2026-09-05), GamerSky (2026-09-11), 9game (2026-08-28). Yinglong as playable in exploration mode — 4Gamer hands-on (2026-08-28). Two-city framing and Chongxiao description — Games Press official press release (2026-08-25). Chongxiao / Longqi relationship — our Chongxiao page, updated 2026-09-26. Global release date and platform list — official press release. Any item the media reported but the official press line has not confirmed is marked “pending official confirmation”.