Honkai: Star Rail terms and mechanics, explained

Honkai: Starrail is a mobile gacha game through and through and uses a lot of the same mechanics you’ll see in other games of the same genre.

While the game has plenty of similar UI elements and general mechanics to Hoyoverse’s other games, Honkai impact 3rd And Genshin effectit’s actually much easier to understand if you just know what all these mumbo-jumbo terms mean.

Below we list all the terms and mechanics, explaining them so that the modern gacha player can get started.

Account Information

• Groundbreaking level: Your account level. As you level up, you can claim rewards from Pom Pom and increase your balance level.
• Balance level: The difficulty of your game. You need to increase this to further power up your characters.
• Groundbreaking power: Your stamina. You can only complete certain gameplay elements if you spend this. It has a max of 180. It takes six minutes to get one Trailblaze Power back and 18 hours to refill all 180.

Characters and equipment

• Paths: Character types, classifying them into defensive, healing, AoE, etc. roles. There are seven classifications and each uses different light cones.
• Light Cones: Weapons. These are the main pieces of equipment your characters use. You can pull for them in the gacha or you can breed some less rare specimens from different battles.
• Tracks: Character skill levels. Increase the damage of your characters by using simple materials to upgrade them.
• Relics: Bottom equipment, similar to Genshin effect artifacts. They set up bonuses and threw random substats.
• Eidolon: When you draw duplicates of the same characters, you can upgrade their stats and abilities by increasing their eidolon.

• Talent: A passive ability that can boost the character, make them perform follow-up attacks, etc.
• Skill: A skill that requires skill points to use.
• Ultimate: A powerful ability that requires a full ultimate gauge to use.
• Technology: An ability used outside of combat to supplement an incoming battle.

Daily and weekly newspapers

• Nameless honor: The battle pass. You can level it up to level 50 for free by completing daily and weekly tasks, but you can expand the rewards by paying money.
• Daily workout: A set of five tasks you can complete to earn ‘activity’. For every 100 activity you earn, you get a handful of Stellar Jade.

Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon

• Assignments: Send characters to deliver you various materials. The longer you send them away, the more materials they bring back. The characters you send away can still be used in battle.
• Synthesize: Craft medicinal foods and combine small materials into larger materials using this simple crafting system.
• Simulated universe: A roguelite combat mode where you travel to different ‘worlds’ and take different paths to fight enemies and earn buffs that are only active in this mode. It’s very similar Honkai impact 3rd‘s Elysium Realm, albeit on a simpler scale. There are rewards that reset every week.
• Forgotten room: A combat mode where you must take down enemies within a number of turns to earn rewards. It is similar to Genshin effect‘s spiral abyss.

Gacha and currency

• Stellar Jade: The main premium currency earned by opening chests, completing missions, etc.
• Special Star Rail pass: The currency you use to roll on the event’s gacha banner. These cost 160 Stellar Jade each.
• Star Rail pass: The currency you use to roll on the default gacha banner. These cost 160 Stellar Jade each.
• Immortal starlight: Currency you get when you get four stars or higher through gacha. You can spend this on more passes, four-star characters, or five-star light cones.
• Immortal Embers: Currency you get for getting three stars through gacha. You can spend this on more passes and upgrade materials.
• Oneiric shards: Premium currency that you can only buy with real money. You can convert this into Stellar Jade at a 1:1 rate or use it to purchase special bundles.
• Credits: The common currency used to upgrade characters, purchase items from NPC shops, etc.

Agricultural materials and equipment

• Chalice (Golden): Farming stages for character and Light Cone EXP materials, as well as Credits. Costs 10 Trailblaze Power to run.

Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon

• Chalice (Crimson): Farming stages for Trace and Light Cone ascension material. Costs 10 Trailblaze Power to run.
• Stagnant Shadow: Small scale boss enemies that drop character ascension material. Costs 30 Trailblaze Power to run.
• Cave of Corrosion: Farming stages for relics. Costs 40 Trailblaze Power to run.
• Echo of War: Larger, weekly bosses dropping 4-star weapons and trace materials. Costs 30 Trailblaze Power to run and you can only do it three times a week.