Honkai: Star Rail is a Hoyoverse turn-based RPG, available on both mobile and PC. Mashing Genshin Impact’s gacha mechanics with aspects of Honkai Impact 3rd, the game will be familiar to many new players. Still, it can be difficult to get used to, so in this Honkai: Star Rail Beginner’s Guide we’ll be introducing the game’s basic concepts, making getting to grips with this game simple.
Table of Contents
Trailblazer Profile
This is your main player profile in Honkai: Star Rail, displaying vital game mechanics. Along with the total number of characters and achievements you have, it also displays your UID for people to befriend you. It also displays your Trailblaze Level (your main account level) and Equilibrium Level (the world level, making enemies more challenging and rewarding).
Additionally, you can nominate a Support Character here, which will help other players and give you rewards whenever they’re used. This is a really important part of the menu to familiarise yourself with, even if it seems hidden away at first!
Assignments
Every day, you can send several of your characters on a certain number of Assignments, depending on your Trailblazer Level. They can spend time (4, 8, 12, or 20 hours) retrieving Character, EXP and Synthesis Materials for you to collect.
If a recommended character path is dispatched, there will be an extra reward, so be thoughtful about who you assign! Each character can only be assigned to one material at a time, so be strategic with your allocations.
Travel Log
This is a list of the current events taking place in the game, including some consistent elements. For instance, it contains the Simulated Universe, rogue-like worlds you can explore for great rewards.
Along with this, it also has the Aptitude Showcase, an opportunity to earn rewards by trialing various characters. This is the best place to find events and keep up to date, so make sure you check it out often!
Simulated Universe
A dungeon-crawling game mode, this grants several rewards: a new character, powerful Light Cones, Stellar Jades, and Star Rail Passes. This aspect is incredibly important to pay attention to and will help you to elevate the power of your characters.
In the Simulated Universe, you will obtain Blessings from different Paths and Curios that empower your run. Along with this, you will go through Random Events and interact with the Aeons who drive the game’s plot. It provides the game’s most rewarding challenge, and I would definitely give it a shot if you haven’t already.
Forgotten Hall
Similar to the Simulated Universe, this is a series of challenging battles with objectives, like abiding by a round limit. Completing these objectives rewards you with Insignia, giving you 200 Stellar Jade and 20,000 Credits for every 3 you receive. These are very rewarding and a chance to use varied characters. This is because each has Recommended Types to weakness break the bosses.
Omni-Synthesizer
This menu allows you to use Materials you’ve earned from several sources to create useful items. This includes consumables to empower yourself before important battles, materials to level up characters and their traces, and relics.
If you’re short on material, see if you can synthesize it from a lower-rarity variant before hunting for it elsewhere! It’s a great aid in developing your characters, and one a lot of people forget about.
Messages
Through texts, you can be contacted by characters, both casually about things that interest them and to further missions. In both situations, you’ll receive rewards for responding to/finishing these conversations, so I’d definitely recommend paying attention to them!
Nameless Honor
The game’s battle pass, with daily, weekly, and per-update missions to earn The Nameless EXP, increasing your Nameless Honour level. This grants great rewards, but you can also pay for Nameless Glory or Nameless Medal to earn more additional rewards. This isn’t necessary to enjoy the game and progress, however!
Warp
Acting as the game’s gacha system, Warp allows you to obtain new characters. There is a Stellar Warp, a regular mode that uses Star Rail Passes, a Light Cone Event Warp weighted towards the new event-based Light Cone, and a Character Event Warp, weighted towards the newest spotlighted character.
The latter two Warps use Star Rail Special Passes, which are a lot rarer. Purchasing these is the best use, in my opinion, of Stellar Jades, so make sure to save them for events if you want to keep obtaining the newest characters!
Interastral Guide
The Interastral Guide is a menu containing several ways for the player to earn rewards and advance their characters. These are split into 3 sections and are covered next in this Honkai: Star Rail Beginner’s Guide.
Operation Briefing
With 9 parts, this section contains several advancement milestones for players, most of which will be achieved naturally. This includes things like enhancing characters to specific levels, enhancing relics, and powering through the Forgotten Hall and Simulated Universe. These reward you with Trailblaze Levels, and I’d really encourage going through them!
Daily Training
Every day you can complete Activities such as Daily Missions, inflicting Weakness Break 5 times, and defeating a certain amount of enemies. Completing each of these is worth either 100 or 200 Activity points and is a great way to quickly earn Credits, Trailblaze EXP, and Stellar Jades. But, as long as you play the game daily, you’ll naturally get all of these!
Survival Index
This is an index of the different game modes you can play and the rewards you can receive from them, updated as you unlock more. This includes:
- The Simulated Universe
- The Forgotten Hall
- Golden and Crimson Calyxes (for EXP Materials/Credits and Trace Upgrade Materials respectively)
- Stagnant Shadows (bosses that drop Character Ascension Materials)
- Caverns of Corrosion (for Relics)
- Echo of War (replays of previously fought bosses that drop Advanced Trace Materials and Light Cones)
Character Basics
Setting up a solid team of characters is a pretty big aspect of Honkai: Star Rail. Next in this Honkai: Star Rail Beginner’s Guide we outline some of the key things you should consider selecting which characters to build up further.
- Combat Types – These are a character’s element, with each having special abilities such as inflicting Freeze, Burn, and Entanglement. They also inflict Weakness Break on any enemies weak to their type.
- Paths – These are a character’s Class and represent the role they play in battle. For instance, Preservation characters focus on defensive abilities, Destruction characters focus on damage and survivability, and Abundance characters focus on healing.
- Light Cones – These are memories that can be assigned to characters that match their Path. Each has powerful abilities tied to it and they can be obtained through Wishes, the Simulated Universe, and from certain boss fights.
- Traces – These are skill trees, unique to each character, that improve their abilities and stats. They are very useful and can make a character far more capable and useful in battle than they would be otherwise.
- Relics – These are items that can be equipped to a character’s Relic slots that improve certain stats and convey powerful effects when a character has a matching set. Each has different random stats so the exact same Relic type can improve a character in entirely different ways.
- Eidolons – When you get a duplicate of a character, through Wish or other means, you can upgrade their Eidolon through Eidolon Resonance. This grants a powerful upgrade to that character which can vastly change how you use them.
Battles
Battles in Honkai: Star Rail are turn-based, with characters able to choose between three abilities. They can use their Base Attack, generating 1 Skill Point (max 5), their Skill, using 1 Skill Point, or their Ultimate, which uses up Energy charged by other attacks. These Ultimates can be queued up at any time outside of the turn-based order.
Go get ’em!
Hopefully, this guide will help you get to grips with the basics of Honkai: Star Rail, allowing you to instead focus on mastery and improving your characters rather than having to focus on learning the basic mechanics. For more detailed information on Honkai: Star Rail, or articles on other similar games such as Genshin Impact and Dislyte, make sure to check out our other guides!
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