Honkai: Star Rail, the newest game from HoYoverse, is now available for gamers to download and enjoy for free. While those who played the company's other games may be familiar with some of the game's mechanics, some are unfamiliar with them, probably due to Star Rail being their first HoYoverse game.
Here are some tips beginners that rookies and veterans of HoYoverse games alike would appreciate when picking up Star Rail for the first time:
Explore For Resources
Much like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Rail has an open-world element that rewards you with treasure chests and resources for exploring the game's world.
These resources will come in handy when you need to level up, upgrade, and kit up your characters for the next enemy encounter. At this point in the game, getting a three-star light cone (Star Rail's equivalent to Genshin Impact's weapons) is as good as a four-star or five-star one in the meantime.
Choose A Team Specialization
Star Rail, much like HoYoverse's other games or turn-based strategy games, heavily focuses on team composition and synergy.
You can group up to four characters to form a team based on how you want to approach your enemies, though you won't get a guide on how to form your teams like in Genshin Impact and its elemental resonance to get unique bonuses.
For instance, you'll want to have as many characters with single-target ultimates or attacks when fighting a single-unit boss or enemy, while you want to give and take as much damage as you can with a stall team that could fortify and heal itself when fighting multiple hard-hitting enemies/targets like the Doomsday beast at the game's tutorial phase.
Since the game shows what combat type (or element, if you will) a certain enemy is weak against, you'll want to form a team that maximizes poential damage output before going into battle. Interestingly, you can change your team setup anytime, even before enganging an enemy, thanks to how the game's open-world mechanic works.
Know Your Enemy
Sun Tzu's advice on waging war rings true in any strategy game.
Since the game displays what combat types enemies are weak with before you engage them, forming a team around these weaknesses allows you to maximize the damage you can inflict.
While attacking first is always a great move, using some of your characters' techniques to lead into battle will also give you an undeniable advantage - March 7th's technique, Freezing Beauty, freezes enemies in place after entering into battle, giving you more time to deal more damage as the fight rages on.
Understand Character Traces
Character traces are Star Rail's equivalent of Genshin Impact's skills. A quick look at a character's traces will reveal that their basic attack, skill, ultimate, technique, and talent are immediately available for leveling up, but you would need to ascend your character first before you can do so.
Unlike in Genshin Impact, though, Star Rail has more passive skills that behave like artifacts; they augment characters' skills further. For every character ascension you do, more passive skills will become available to you to obtain and level up.
Use Your Stellar Jades For Star Rail Special Pass
Honkai: Star Rail is a gacha game, much like HoYoverse's other games, meaning that you'll get your usual standard and limited-time banners for you to roll on if you so wish. Doing so would cost you Stellar Jades - the game's equivalent of Genshin Impact's primogems and Honkai Impact's crystals.
While earning Stellar Jades is easy during the opening sections of the game, they will become scarcer and harder to obtain without spending real-life money for them. As such, you have to choose how to spend your primogems wisely to maximize the benefits you can get from them.
One good piece of advice is to exchange these Stellar banners exclusively for Star Rail Special Passes so you can obtain limited-time characters and character-specific light cones much easier.
