13 tips you need to know before starting Honkai: Star Rail

Imagine a world-hopping space voyage with wacky young adult high jinks, and you get HoYoverse’s Honkai: Star Rail. This sci-fi fantasy adventure caters to RPG fans that love a good story, exploration, and team-based tactics. 

The game has layers of complex systems, from its character and ability leveling, different equippable items, and a lively world full of details and entertaining missions. It’s a lot to take in, but we’re here to help with some expert tips for new players to succeed in Honkai: Star Rail.
 

The free characters have lots to offer

You get five characters for free before the end of the prologue, and you get at least two others in the early stages of the game. These free-to-play characters are enough to build a serviceable team that fills many of your needs:

• Trailblazer
• March 7th
• Dan Heng
• Asta
• Serval 
• Natasha
• Qingque

Just try to resist the rush to "pull" (I'll explain the term below) for characters unless you feel that they’re especially important. You’ll have plenty of chances to pull for the characters you want, so there’s no need to spend cash for them right away.
 

Gacha system and terms explained

Gacha systems offer you valuable items that are randomly selected from a predetermined pool. Gacha systems can be used for characters, weapons, equipment, and other items that can drastically affect your gameplay. You “roll” or “pull” for items from banners, which means spending in-game currency to acquire a random gacha item. A banner is generally an event where items and characters are added to the game. 

In Honkai: Star Rail, the gacha mainly applies to characters or Light Cones, which are the game's weapon equivalent. You get characters and Light Cones from banners, which you can only pull on if you have Star Rail or Special Star Rail Passes. Star Rail Passes are only for standard banners, which never change and will always be available to pull on at any point. Special Star Rail Passes are for limited-time characters and Light Cones, which are more difficult to get. You can earn these Passes in various ways as you play.

Consider it like having a ticket you can exchange. One Star Rail Pass equals one random character or Light Cone from the respective banner. You can view the different characters and Light Cones you can get from each in the details section advertised on the banner.
 

How to build a diverse team

Honkai: Star Rail works with teams of four. Ideally, you should build a team with characters that complement each other with different elements and Paths. You want to cover as many bases as possible while keeping your teammates alive. 

Each Star Rail character has two labels: an element and a Path. Elements are similar to type matchups in Pokemon and other games, and you need to consider them to gain an advantage. Star Rail has seven elements: Physical, Ice, Wind, Fire, Lightning, Quantum, and Imaginary. 

Paths are more like the character’s role—like an attacker, a defender, or a healer. I've explained the six main Paths below. (The seventh, Nihility, focuses on debuffs and shouldn't be your focus when starting out).
 

• The Destruction—all-rounder characters that focus on damage with some other gimmick, like multi-target attacks, self-healing, and other perks.
• The Preservation—defensive characters that excel in shielding, reducing damage, and taunting enemies to move attention away from weaker teammates.
• The Hunt—characters that specialize in single-target attacks, typically known as the strongest attackers because they focus their energy on one target.
• The Erudition—characters that specialize in multi-target attacks, aka attacks that can hit multiple enemies at once. 
• The Harmony—support characters that raise teammates’ stats, regenerate energy for attacks, and provide other useful buffs.
• The Abundance—support characters that restore health, remove debuffs, and offer healing abilities. 

Free characters cover most elements and Paths, so there won’t be a need to scramble to collect all of them from gacha banners. Your first four free characters are a good example:
 

• Trailblazer (Physical/Destruction)
• March 7th (Ice/Preservation)
• Dan Heng (Wind/Hunt)
• Asta (Fire/Harmony)

Invest in a few characters at a time

Start with four characters for a core team. When you hit the later stage of the game where you need two teams of four characters for the Forgotten Hall challenge, you can invest in four more.

Honkai: Star Rail gives you plenty of resources to get started. You won’t run out of resources right away, but you will eventually if you’re not careful. The level caps are low enough that you won’t need to farm until you get to a higher Trailblaze Level, which represents your overall experience. It’s separate from your characters’ individual levels.

Once you get to those higher levels, it’ll be more difficult to level up multiple characters at a time. You might need to spend two days worth of Trailblaze Power, the consumable resource you need to claim rewards from challenges, in order to get all the materials to raise one character to the next level cap.
 

You don’t need the strongest characters

Most items have one-to-five stars to indicate their value, but characters only come in four- or five-star rarities. Five-star characters are advertised as the strongest characters in the game, and many of them are understandably stronger than four-star characters. The bigger the number, the better. However, you don’t need five-star characters to complete the most difficult content, so long as you properly level up and build a solid team. 

HoYoverse regularly comes out with new characters, but you’d be hard-pressed to collect every one of them. 
 

Three of the rarest weapons are free

Honkai: Star Rail offers plenty of opportunities to earn free Light Cones, the weapon-like cards that act as your characters’ main gear. However, the ones you get for free from the Simulated Universe challenge are the best to invest in. 

There are also “free” five-star Light Cones that you can eventually acquire from saving up the gems that you get from pulling on banners, but those take ages to save. Meanwhile, you can get at least one of the five-star Light Cones from Herta’s Shop in a week or two. 

The Herta Bonds that you need to buy the Light Cones come from the different stages of the Simulated Universe and Weekly Rewards. So long as you keep playing the Simulated Universe and getting stronger, you’ll eventually get all three of the five-star Light Cones.
 

Don’t level up your gear too early

Relics—accessory sets that offer ability bonuses and stat boosts—can be the difference between victory and defeat in later stages of the game. 

Don’t bother investing in Relics until you get to the three-star examples. Honkai: Star Rail has a reasonable difficulty curve that won’t force you to invest in the Relics until the tail end of the first story arc.

Even then, only invest in the three-star ones when there isn’t a four-star one available. It’s not worth agonizing over three-star Relics just to eventually scrap them for stronger four or five-star ones. Ideally, you want to invest in the five-star Relics right away. However, those aren't available until you reach a higher Trailblaze Level. 
 

You will never have perfect Relics

Relics are Honkai: Star Rail’s version of gear, which you can equip to your characters in sets of six. 

Each Relic has a main stat and four sub-stats, all of which are randomly generated. You can determine the main stat the moment you get the Relic from a challenge like Echoes of War or Caverns of Corrosion, but sub-stats take more investment to figure out. For four-star Relics and lower, you need to partially level up to see all the sub-stats and gauge whether or not the Relic is worth your time. After all, what’s the point of investing in a Relic with low crit rate when you can give another one a chance?

You can farm for Relics for days without receiving one for the main stat that you need. It’s better to accept the second-best one and level it up after a few days of trying. 
 

Use auto-battle for easy tasks

Honkai: Star Rail has an auto-battle option that alleviates accessibility issues while offering a way to multi-task for regular players. It also comes in handy for using up your Trailblaze Power. You need Trailblaze Power to farm for Character Ascension and Trace Materials, XP books, and other items used for strengthening your characters. 

Calyxes, Caverns, and other challenges in the Interstellar Guide are typically lower-stakes than something like a boss fight, so leaving a solid team in the hands of an AI shouldn’t be an issue. 
 

Test characters before committing to them

Each character event banner lets you test four characters you may not have tried before, including the limited-time ones. Each of these characters come with rewards you get for testing them in the trial run, so you should do all of them. However, other than just trying the characters out to imagine how they would work in your party, they also come equipped with six Relics and a Light Cone. These aren’t necessarily the best Relics and Light Cone you can use for the same character; they’re an example of what could work in your own builds and team compositions. 
 

Limited-time events give you exclusive rewards

You don’t need to play every limited-time event, but they are a good way to earn more resources outside of normal means. They also typically come with interesting story snippets that give you more insight into the world and its characters. 

If you’re conflicted, check the rewards you can get from the event. Starhunt Game, one of the earliest events, offered a free Light Cone for anyone who completed the event’s Story Mode. Meanwhile, the Belobog event offered a free Self-Modeling Resin, a valuable consumable that lets you craft a relic with a main stat of your choice. HoYoverse have confirmed that you could get a four-star character for free in an upcoming update. 
 

Sparkling objects can lead you to quests

The overworld includes golden sparkles that indicate an interactable object. For example, all the trash cans in the city of Belobog have these sparkles until you interact with them at least once. Interacting with these objects sometimes activates a quest or accomplishment that will net you extra rewards. 
 

Talk to Pom-Pom every day

Pom-Pom, the Astral Express conductor, seems to have a new dilemma every day. He often has a dialogue option with an exclamation point on it when you visit him in the Astral Express Parlor Car. These mini-quests are typically small tasks like talking to a shipping partner, advising on how to better the Astral Express, and other such chores. You can get an accomplishment or some pocket change out of each of these exchanges for little-to-no effort.

Honkai: Star Rail is out on the Epic Games Store now.