Honkai Star Rail Beginner Guide 2025: Best Starter Characters, Relic Farming & Simulated Universe Tips

I downloaded Honkai Star Rail on launch day. April 26, 2023. Expected a casual gacha distraction. 200 hours later I'm 36-starring Memory of Chaos and screaming at relic RNG. This isn't a sterile wiki page. It's what I wish someone told me when I was Trailblaze Level 20 and dying to the same elite three times in a row because I refused to level my healer.

When you first board the Astral Express, HoYoverse throws a dozen systems at you. Characters, Light Cones, relics, Traces, planar ornaments, Eidolons. It's overwhelming. And honestly the first 30 hours you can pretty much ignore most of it. The story on Jarilo-VI and the Xianzhou Luofu will carry you through without optimal anything. Where things get real is Trailblaze Level 40+, when enemies start outscaling your slapped-together team and your Natasha is somehow healing for less than the enemy hits for each turn.

Let's talk about who to actually invest in early on. I pulled Seele in my first week and she basically carried me to endgame. Her kit is absurd for clearing content: every time she kills an enemy her Resurgence passive triggers and she gets another turn immediately. In fights with adds, she chains kills like dominoes. Pair her with Bronya and Seele sometimes acts four times before the enemy moves. But if you didn't get Seele, or just started playing, Dan Heng is the free 4-star you want. His slow debuff makes boss fights way more manageable. At E2+ he hits deceptively hard too. I know a guy who cleared up to Memory of Chaos floor 8 with Dan Heng as his only DPS.

Bronya is the one support character I'd argue is basically mandatory for pushing endgame. She gives any ally a 100% action advance plus a fat damage buff with her skill. Speed-tune her to be one or two points slower than your main DPS and you'll double their output with almost no extra investment. Tingyun is the budget alternative. Her Benediction buff lasts three turns and she feeds 50 energy to whoever you ult on. For a free-to-play team, Dan Heng plus Asta (speed buff) plus Natasha (free healer) plus March 7th (shields and freeze) will get you through Simulated Universe World 6 at level 50. I did it. Wasn't pretty. But it worked.

Bailu is the best pure healer in the standard banner pool. She's got a once-per-battle revive and her ult heals the whole team. If you have her, build her. If you don't, Natasha is perfectly fine for all story content and most endgame stuff too. Just give her HP relics and level her skill trace and she'll keep you alive fine. Luocha is the premium limited healer but he reruns infrequently so you might not see him for months. I mean, I still don't have him and I've been playing since launch.

Now here's a mistake I made that cost me literal weeks of Trailblaze Power. Farming relics before Trailblaze Level 40. Don't. Before 40, the Cavern of Corrosion only drops purple relics and you'll replace them all with golds later anyway. Use whatever the game throws at you. Musketeer of Wild Wheat works on literally every DPS until endgame. Once you hit 40, start farming the Simulated Universe worlds for planar sets. World 3 drops Fleet of the Ageless (for healers and supports) and Space Sealing Station (24% ATK at 120 speed, which any DPS can hit). World 4 has Inert Salsotto with its crit rate and ult damage bonuses. That's the one Seele wants.

For relic main stats: always speed boots on everyone. No exceptions. More turns equals more damage, more healing, more everything. Body piece on DPS characters wants crit rate or crit damage. Aim for roughly a 1:2 ratio and try to get your main DPS to 60% crit rate minimum. Energy regeneration rope on supports so they can ult more often. Planar sphere matching your character's element. That's it. That's the priority. Everything else is min-maxing.

The self-modeling resin you get from events? That item that lets you pick a relic's main stat? Save them for speed boots or energy ropes. Those two pieces have the worst drop rates in the game by a mile. I burned two resins on crit rate bodies early on. Still regret it. Every time I farm speed boots for a new character I think about those wasted resins.

Simulated Universe is where the game gets genuinely fun. It's HSR's roguelike dungeon mode. Randomized blessings, curios, domain encounters, and a boss at the end. The Hunt path is your best friend early on. Pick blessings that boost crit rate, speed, and action advance. The three-star blessing that advances your entire team's action after a kill is effectively a Seele passive for everyone on the team. I cleared World 3 and 4 with Hunt before I had any clue what I was doing in terms of team building.

When you hit World 5 with Kafka, everything changes. Her domination ability takes control of one of your characters. Makes them attack your own team with their full kit. If she grabs your healer, the run is over. Bring Abundance path blessings. Specifically the one that cleanses debuffs when you heal. Or use Luocha, whose field auto-removes debuffs every couple of turns. Kafka taught me why cleanse matters. The hard way. Multiple times.

For curios, Medical Device is almost always worth taking even if the HP cost looks steep. Heals a chunk of HP at the start of every battle. Cosmic Fragments give you more currency, which means more blessings from merchants. Avoid anything that permanently reduces your max HP in exchange for a stat boost. The minus-50%-HP curio looks tempting with that crit rate bonus but you'll get one-shot by a random elite and feel like an idiot. Ask me how I know.

One thing about the gacha system that's worth knowing upfront: only spend Stellar Jade on limited character banners. The standard banner gives random 5-stars and you'll eventually get those free from the tickets the game hands out. Hard pity is 90 pulls, soft pity starts around 75. Save 180 pulls if you absolutely must have a specific character. It takes about six to eight weeks of F2P saving to accumulate that. The Herta Store in Simulated Universe sells a 5-star Light Cone every month for 600 currency. Cruising in the Stellar Sea is the hunt one and it's genuinely great on Seele and Dan Heng both.

If your relics have bad substats and you're below Trailblaze Level 50, stop farming. Correct main stats on gold pieces beat perfect substats on purples every single time. Min-maxing substats is for when you've exhausted literally everything else to do with your resin. I spent three weeks farming a crit damage body for Seele with double crit substats and all my other characters were level 50 with half-built traces. Not worth it at all.

Honkai Star Rail launched on PC, iOS, and Android in April 2023 with a PS5 release following in October. Cross-save works across all four platforms. Grind your dailies on your phone during lunch, do Simulated Universe runs on PC in the evening. The auto-battle with 2x speed makes farming genuinely painless. Something Genshin Impact players will appreciate after years of manually doing the same domain runs.

The story takes you across four planets so far. Frozen Belobog on Jarilo-VI with its classic RPG intro vibes. The silkpunk starship Xianzhou Luofu where things get weird and tragic. The dream-woven casino world Penacony. And the latest Greek-inspired area Amphoreus. Each planet adds new characters, relic sets, Simulated Universe expansions, and so on. The narrative matters here more than in Genshin, I think. Characters die. Schemes unravel. The Trailblazer's mysterious Stellaron implant keeps causing problems in interesting ways that connect back to the larger Honkai universe.

I guess the real takeaway is this: build two DPS characters, one healer, one support, and one tank as your core five. Spread resources across them rather than hyper-investing in one unit. The game punishes you for having a single carry when bosses lock your element or dominate your DPS. Having a bench of leveled characters makes Memory of Chaos, Simulated Universe, and whatever new mode HoYoverse drops next way less frustrating. And you'll sleep better knowing a single bad pull didn't brick your account.