Honkai: Star RailMarch 7th • EvernightBest build, teams and other guides

[Overview]

Evernight is an exceptional Remembrance DPS character, scaling her damage off of HP. She follows a similar playstyle to Castorice, summoning a memosprite to have it nuke the field and make a dramatic exit. Evernight has a plethora of team buffs and self buffs for memosprite-based damage dealers, making her a fantastic DPS to use in a dual DPS setup with existing and future Remembrance characters, and an extraordinarily competitive solo DPS to boot, all while being SP positive. The price for this power is that Evernight is highly challenging to play compared to existing characters.

[Intro]

The edgier March 7th, Evernight, has at last graced us with her presence, hopefully to answer a few lingering questions we have. If I had a nickel for every time a Remembrance DPS sent their memosprite to gloriously explode, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

Evernight is designed in a similar vein to Anaxa; meant to supplement an existing DPS character while still being viable on their own two feet. Evernight's 'intended' partner (at least right now) is Castorice, and she makes that team incredibly powerful, not that it needed the help. The question then is 'Does Evernight follow in Anaxa's footsteps fully?', and the answer to that is a bit complicated, but essentially 'Yes'. I'll get to it later.

Evernight is so damn strong, but she is really quite challenging to play to her fullest. You really need to know what she's about so that you can adjust and adapt as combat goes on; Evernight's performance floor is already very high so you don't need to worry about her losing a lot of strength if you mess up, but her performance ceiling is... honestly rather frightening.

[Abilities]

This is going to be a long section. As is often the case with Remembrance characters, their memosprite abilities also require mention, but unlike other Remembrance characters, Evernight's got so many Proper Terms™ that it makes it hard to follow along. I'll do my best to break things down into a logical format.

Evernight's memosprite is called Evey. Evey is forever immune to Crowd Control and has an increased chance of being targeted by enemies. Evey has 160 SPD by default, and its Max HP is equal to 50% of Evernight's Max HP. While Evernight is on the field, the DMG dealt by both Evernight and Evey is increased by 50%.

Evernight has a stacking mechanic called Memoria, which gets used to empower Evernight's attacks. This comes up pretty much everywhere, so it's worth a mention all on its own. Important to note that Evey does NOT need to be summoned in order for Evernight to be able to gain Memoria (this has potential ramifications for optimisation).

For her Talent, Evernight automatically summons Evey upon entering combat. Every time that Evernight or Evey lose HP, they both gain 60% increased CRIT DMG for 2 turns. The HP loss will also grant 2 Memoria. These effects can only trigger once per target per attack. When Evernight gets to at least 16 stacks of Memoria, she will immediately dispel all Crowd Control effects, and then becomes immune to further Crowd Control. At the same time, Evey will immediately take action.

Ordinarily, Evey will act automatically on its turn, shooting a water jet dealing 50% of Evey's Max HP to the last enemy Evernight damaged. This is increased by 10% of Evey's Max HP for every 4 Memoria. After this attack, Evernight gets 1 Memoria. However, when at least 16 Memoria has been gained, Evey's attack will be empowered, becoming Dream, Dissolving, as Dew. We're gonna call this Explosion from now on, because it's shorter and more accurate to the damage it can deal.

This explosive attack hits all enemies on the field, but selects a primary target that takes extra damage. For every point of Memoria, this attack will deal 12% Evey Max HP to the primary target, and 6% Evey Max HP to the remaining enemies. This attack deals a staggering 30 Toughness to its main target, and 20 Toughness to the rest. This attack will consume all stacks of Memoria, and all of Evey's HP, and Evey will then disappear.

When Evey disappears from the field, Evernight's SPD increases by 10%. If the disappearance was due to Evey Exploding, for each point of Memoria used in this attack, Evernight's SPD is additionally increased by 1%, counting up to 40 points of Memoria, for a total potential boost of 50%. This SPD boost cannot stack, and is removed at the start of Evernight's next turn.

Evernight's Skill will consume 10% of her current HP to summon Evey to the field. At the same time, she will increase the CRIT DMG of all ally memosprites by an amount equal to 24% of Evernight's CRIT DMG for 2 turns. This ticks down at the start of Evernight's turns. If Evey is already summoned, it restores 50% Max HP to it. Using her Skill will also grant 2 stacks of Memoria. This Skill does not consume SP.

Evernight's Ultimate costs a rather large 240 Energy. Using it will summon Evey if it's not present, and then deal Ice DMG equal to 200% of Evey's Max HP to all enemies on the field. This will also put Evernight into the Darkest Riddle state.

During Darkest Riddle, all enemies are afflicted with a 30% Vulnerability, the DMG dealt by Evernight and Evey is increased by 60%, and both Evernight and Evey become immune to Crowd Control effects. Using the Ultimate grants 2 charges of Darkest Riddle, with 1 charge being consumed when Evey uses its Explosion. When there are no charges left at the start of Evernight's turn, she will exit the Darkest Riddle state. Most importantly, during Darkest Riddle, the Skill will restore an additional 12 Memoria, for a total of 14 per Skill use. This is how you turbo-charge your Memoria gain, and what leads to highly impressive damage.

This is mostly it, and it's a lot, I know, but hopefully it makes some amount of sense.

Evernight stacks up Memoria to empower Evey once at least 16 stacks are reached. Evey uses its empowered Explosion to deal heavy damage to all enemies and disappears from the field. Evernight's Ultimate lets her deal vastly increased damage and lets her stack a huge amount of Memoria easily, leading to even stronger Explosions from Evey. Use the massive SPD boost from Evey's explosive departure to start the cycle anew.

The amount of damage that starts coming out from Evey is honestly staggering, and quite consistently accessed too. Memoria can be stacked through a huge number of ways, including just taking damage or consuming HP, so it goes up pretty quickly.

Memoria itself doesn't appear to have a cap (or at least not one's that is reachable), and can get to some hilarious values. Seeing these red jellyfish accost the battlefield and violently detonate for damage in the millions is as amusing as it is jaw-dropping. The numbers in the kit by themselves don't seem like much, but I assure you, the base kit descriptions do a poor job of selling just how powerful this synergistic kit is.

[Bonus Traces]

These add to Evernight's already quite impressive kit, making her even more self-synergistic and less reliant on outside influences to achieve her gameplan.

Her A2 will increase Evernight's and Evey's CRIT Rate by 35%, permanently. When using abilities, consumes 5% of the respective unit's current HP to increase both units' CRIT DMG by 15% for 2 turns. When Evey uses its Memoria-empowered Explosion, 1 Skill Point will be recovered for allies.

This is incredible. This creates even more opportunities to generate Memoria for Evernight, since every single ability that either she or Evey uses will grant an extra 2 Memoria from the HP drain from her Talent. The extra 35% CRIT Rate makes it even easier to focus on CRIT DMG and HP stacking, and can much more easily guarantee a 100% CRIT Rate in combat. The cherry on top is that now when Evey violently departs the field, this absurdly powerful attack now also restores a Skill Point, meaning that Evernight is achieving this damage while being completely SP positive, a first of its kind.

Evernight's A4 addresses the extremely high Energy cost of her Ultimate. At the start of combat, Evernight regenerates 70 Energy and gains 1 Memoria. When Evernight, or any ally memosprite uses an ability, Evernight regenerates 5 Energy and gains 1 Memoria.

Aside from the stellar kickstart to fights, this also helps to provide a steady influx of Energy from just doing what you'd already be doing. Evernight herself provides enough benefits for more consistent Ultimates, so that's already very strong, but pairing her with fellow Remembrance characters, some of whom are already likely to be in the party, just means even more Energy and Memoria.

Lastly, Evernight's A6 will grant benefits based on the number of Remembrance characters in the team. When there are 1/2/3/4 or more Remembrance characters, and while Evernight's Skill effects persist, additionally increase all memosprites' CRIT DMG by 5%/15%/50%/65%. Four Remembrance characters is a bit steep at the moment because a couple of them are quite heavily contested supports (ignore the vaguely Elysia-shaped object in the distance, we're not there yet), but three Remembrance characters is very doable, which is where the biggest increase lies. 50% increased CRIT DMG for memosprites just for building the team you were probably going to be building anyway is extremely potent, especially since it'll also be applying the benefits to the memosprites of the other allies.

As far as Bonus Traces go, these are exceptionally good, with not one dud on the list. Even the Minor Traces are all fantastic with CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG, and HP%. Remarkable, really.

[Eidolons]

Oh boy.

Evernight's E1 will make it so that ally memosprites deal increased damage based on the number of enemies on the field: 4 or more/3/2/1 enemy targets will increase memosprite damage to 120%/125%/130%/150% of the original damage, respectively. This is a final damage multiplier so it's incredibly powerful, and its conditions are literally always met in some capacity. This is an absurd E1, not just for herself but for any other Remembrance characters on the team. The only question is what are you going to do with all that overkill damage.

And of course, the E2. This increases Evernight's and Evey's CRIT DMG by 40%, and makes it so that every time Evernight gains stacks of Memoria, she will gain an additional 2 stacks. Plus, when using her Ultimate, she will gain an additional 2 charges of Darkest Riddle.

Already, boosting all Memoria sources by a flat +2 is stupid, because there are a lot of ways of gaining small values of Memoria, and it can skyrocket the number of Memoria you have when it's time for Evy to Explode, resulting in Very Funny Numbers™. On top of that, getting 4 total charges of Darkest Riddle pretty much means that if things are going really well, you'll have very low downtime between Ultimate empowerments, able to be in Darkest Riddle pretty much permanently.

This honestly may be one of the most ridiculous E2s in the entire game, and that's really saying something. Completely and unequivocally unnecessary, but very, very amusing.

[The Rest]

Well, there's not much else to say really. Despite the absolute wall of text that each and every single ability in Evernight's kit has, the kit itself is not too too difficult to understand in practice; bit of fiddling around in game and you should be able to intuit most of what's going on.

Because the kit is like this, and as mentioned earlier, the performance floor is already very high; there's not really many ways for you to completely screw yourself over unless you're literally only ever using her Basic ATK and never using Ultimate. But seeking to get the maximum output from Evernight is where the true challenge lies, and this is particularly difficult, because a fair bit of it isn't really directly up to you.

Evey gets advanced whenever Evernight reaches or passes 16 Memoria, and this can end up happening during enemy actions, since losing HP will grant Memoria. Ally memosprites' actions may push you just over the Memoria threshold and now you're also out of alignment, perhaps even just before Evernight's turn. You may even deliberately opt not to resummon Evey on your turn to try and get more Memoria stacked, or to delay the burst to a better moment, or even to prolong the Darkest Riddle state on Evernight. There are very many possibilities.

As such, there are quite a few ways that you can miss out on 'optimal damage' because of these idiosyncrasies. Even just the constantly fluctuating SPD boost that Evernight gets after Evey Explodes is far too unpredictable to consistently play around.

This is why I alluded to intuition. It really is up to the player to circumvent or play around these unique circumstances as and when they come up, and this is maybe not so difficult once you're comfortable with the character, but can most assuredly be a source of frustration until you are. Even still, getting even some of the way into the challenging spectrum sees Evernight returning damage numbers that are frankly disgusting, and with little effort too. She is much like a good knife: if you keep the edge honed and sharpened, it will never fail you when you need it most.

Pseudo-profound statements aside, let's talk teams. Or rather, Team, parentheses, singular. Yeah, as a HP based Remembrance character, it's entirely unsurprising that the number one teammate is Hyacine. I know, I know, please everyone act surprised. Hyacine's prowess at buffing Max HP and healing effortlessly pair very well with Evernight's kit, especially since it's so easy to set up. This is of course without even mentioning Little Ica, the memosprite who most certainly can and will destroy the foes in front of you. With Evernight gaining benefits from having other Remembrance characters, as well as the benefits she can share with other memosprites, it's a match made in heaven, and it's undoubtedly the best option (especially if you have Hyacine's Light Cone).

The Remembrance Trailblazer also does not get any rest days and is the next on the list of immaculate supports for Evernight. As a HP based Remembrance... Hey wait a second...

Nobody should be surprised, please do not act surprised, everyone and their mums knows what the Remembrance Trailblazer does and why it's good — only it's even better for Evernight because of her absolutely absurd Max Energy, meaning she gets the full whopping 50% True DMG bonus from the Mem's Support buff, and boy does she take it all the way to the bank, not to mention the insane battery effect that Evernight has for Mem's Ult gauge due to the constant Energy gains.

Even more amusing is that you can use Mem's Support to advance Evernight ahead of Evey during the Darkest Riddle state, letting you get an extra 14 Memoria Skill use off before Evey Explodes. This lets you stack Memoria up higher, and also get more Memoria total than you would otherwise be able to, since Darkest Riddle charges are only consumed by Evey Exploding.

And there you go, with just those two, you've also fulfilled the criteria for Evernight's A6 to reach its big breakpoint, granting every memosprite a further 50% CRIT DMG, making Little Ica hit harder, and Mem buff even more.

To address the Netherwing in the room, you may have noticed that this seems an awful lot like the Castorice team, in which case I must applaud your keen skills of discernment. Yes, indeed, the Hyacine + Remembrance Trailblazer combo is notoriously potent on a number of teams, but it's been especially powerful for Castorice, and now for Evernight as well. With the direction that Evernight's kit has, it is very easy to come to the conclusion that 'Evernight was designed to be paired with Castorice'.

While a somewhat shallow analysis, it's not entirely wrong. Castorice benefits immensely from what Evernight can offer her, boasting not only extreme personal damage output, but the ability to buff the other memosprite that enjoys blowing itself to smithereens, and take it to even more absurd heights.

The two of them together on one team is absolutely frightening, and they play off of each other magnificently, especially since now there's potentially 4 memosprites in total, meaning Castorice has 8 targets she can siphon HP from to charge her Ultimate, so not only is Netherwing much stronger, but can come back so quickly that the dust from their previous dramatic exit hasn't settled yet.

Using Evernight in this team lets you free up either the Remembrance Trailblazer, or Tribbie to be used in other teams. Given that these are two of the absolute most contested supports in the game right now by a colossal margin, this is already absolutely invaluable, because it's on top of all the other benefits.

Now we boomerang back to the question posed at the start: 'is she like Anaxa in the other way too'. The 'other way' of course referencing the fact that Anaxa is oftentimes stronger than the DPS he was designed to supplement.

Evernight is so strong on her own, that if you take Castorice's current best team, and put Evernight in place of Castorice, you would be achieving very similar performance. If you then are capable of overcoming the challenges that Evernight throws your way in combat, you can possibly even exceed that performance, getting close to what you'll see by having both Castorice and Evernight together. This is to say, that if you have Castorice already, Evernight is a great upgrade to the team, but that Evernight most assuredly does not need Castorice to be at her best, and the vertical investment options presented with Evernight genuinely left me speechless the first time I looked at them.

Evernight is... truly something else.

Of course, this is quite literally the only team you've got right now, at least as far as optimal setups go, as there are no substitutes that come close to what Hyacine, Tribbie, and the Remembrance Trailblazer can offer you. Perhaps this will change with Cyrene, but at least for now, your options outside of that are more limited. Naturally, there are similar units that can get most of the way there if you're in a pinch. The other two thirds of the Quantum Supersupports, Cipher and Silver Wolf, are also always going to be good, for all the myriad reasons those two are good everywhere else. It just works™.

Ruan Mei is in much the same boat, but can be a potentially useful substitute, especially in places like Apocalyptic Shadow, where Toughness Damage is king, and Evernight already does more than a bit of that by default, so buffing it further, plus the All-Type RES PEN, makes for a good show as well.

Other stranger things can work too, especially since Evernight is actually SP positive (which I'm still reeling over by the way), but try not to go too crazy, since Evernight still wants a minimum number of Remembrance characters on the team to make as much of her A6 as possible. If a character hasn't been mentioned up until now, that's probably for a reason (though turbo free-to-plays can still use Gallagher because he's the GOAT, and that's a fact).

Lastly, she is a limited Remembrance character, and that means that her signature Light Cone is quite significantly ahead of alternatives. This is just how it is, there are very few variations that exist, and pretty much all of them are considerably inferior to Evernight's signature.

Having said that, due to Evernight's current strength, as well as the extremely high likelihood that she will continue to be useful for the HP Remembrance archetype moving forward, it would not be a short-sighted thing to seek to acquire said Light Cone.

[Wrap up]

So there you have it. If you've made it this far, you know how impressed I am by Evernight, and all the good reasons for it, too. Her overall options may be a fair bit more limited than other DPS characters, but her kit is so good that it doesn't matter, and if in future there are more characters that work with her, she'll be able to make it shine no matter what. I must stress again, so that it's abundantly clear, Evernight can be tricky to pilot. Do not let this discourage you, and do not use it to insinuate her lack of strength. She is well deserving of the praise and accolades.

And after all, she is Best Girl, let's not forget. What, you think that edgy exterior and artisanal brolly suddenly change who she is? No, no, no. That's March 7th, and all it takes is one look in the mirror.

'Despite everything, it's still you.'