Honkai: Star Rail early progression tips

This guide assumes you already known some basic information about Honkai: Star Rail - the stats, character classes, elements, skill points, relics etc. If none of these terms sound familiar, check our Introduction to the game guide that explains everything:

Introduction to the game

It takes roughly 30-60 minutes to finish the tutorial and the game actually shows you the basic systems pretty well, but once you unlock Warping and do you first pulls, the game opens up and you're finally able to do what you want.

Still, before you start roaming around the Herta Station, trying to find all the chests and lore items, we suggest to focus on continuing the Main Story quests. Why? Because despite the fact that you've finished the tutorial, there's still a lot of other systems that are locked behind the main story - including Daily Missions, Leveling Rewards, Trailblaze Power (stamina) etc.

Missions

When you open your Mission log you will be welcomed by a variety of missions types to do:

• Traiblaze Missions - gold color. Those are the missions that will push the story forward and if there's one available to do, you want to tackle it first,
• As you can see on the image above, the main story can get gated by your Trailblaze Level - that's the moment where you will start doing the other missions to get experience and level up,
• Companion Missions - purple color. Those are missions that explore the backgrounds of some of the characters that joined your team. They are more story-heavy and while not as long as the Traiblaze missions, they still take some time to do,
• Adventure Missions - blue color. Those are your typical side-missions that don't take much time, but still give you experience and some freebies,
• Daily Missions - green color. Daily mission isn't visible on the above image, but they are even faster than the Adventure ones and you get random ones daily.

Next steps

Now that you know about the mission types, let's go back to doing the Main Story!

The next Traiblazer Mission will introduce Herta and the Simulated Universe. Simulated Universe is a roguelike game mode where the player will select a team of four Characters to venture inside a simulated world to collect a random set of buffs that they can use to enhance their team to fight the enemies inside.

You can learn about the mode in a dedicated guide:

Simulated Universe

So head to Herta's office and do the trial run of SU. That's the moment where you will unlock Herta, who is an AoE specialist and will help you a lot in Pure Fiction - sadly, she's not that good in the story, so don't invest into her yet. Also, while you can do another Simulated Universe run right away, leave it for now and go to the Main Story.

Not long after you will leave the Herta Station and visit the Astral Express. There, you will unlock two new systems: Operation Briefing and Trailblaze Level rewards.

Operation Briefing is basically a set of missions that give you various rewards - there are 9 pages in total, each with their own missions and main rewards for completing them. Here's how it looks like:

At the same time you will also unlock Traiblaze Level rewards. From now on, every time you will level up, you can go back to Pom-Pom to get some freebies!

Next, some story stuff will happen and you will end up on a new planet - freezing your b... feet off. Thankfully soon after you will encounter your first Calyx and unlock your Traiblaze Power - which is basically the stamina in Honkai: Star Rail.

There are various types of Calyx (Calyxes?), but initially you will be only able to farm the Bud of Memories one which gives Character EXP Materials. Since your Trailblaze Power will be stuck at 240/240, do a few runs in the Calyx, so it starts regenerating again and use the materials you've obtained to level up your main team.

Now you've unlocked the majority of systems so you can go back to the Herta Station and start doing side-missions there or just continue the Main Story on Jarilo-VI. Have fun!

Below you will find a list of tips and tricks that will make your early game progression smoother:

General

• Focus on the Main Story first and only start roaming around when you're forced to level up to unlock the next Main Story mission,
• Level up your characters to current level cap. The stats you gain make a huge difference, but also the damage formula itself is affected by the difference in levels between you and the enemy. So if you attack an enemy with a higher level than you, you will simply do less damage to him.
• Equip Light Cones with matching Path to the character or else you won't get its passive bonus (only the basic stats bonus),
• And of course, level up the Light Cone too to the currently available level cap,
• At the same time - don't spread yourself to thin. The resources you have initially are pretty limited, and you will need to farm the EXP Calyx a lot more to get the books,
• This also applies to upgrading Traces of your characters. Only do that for characters you know you will use for a longer time,
• You can check our Team Building guide to find the best early-game characters that are a safe investment:

Team building

• Don't let your Traiblaze Power (stamina) overcap. 240 TP is the maximum amount you can store and regenerate over 24h,
• If you let your stamina overcap, it won't be wasted, but instead you will regenerate it slower,
• Trailblaze Power is generated at a rate of 1 per 6 minutes,
• Wait with your 3 weekly Echo of War runs until the last day before reset,
• You should be able to reach TL 40 in the first 2 weeks (not the first week like we initially thought) which means you will be able to do higher difficulty EoW - and this will translate to better rewards!
• There's a set of weekly rewards you can obtain in Simulated Universe, so make sure to do enough runs to unlock them all,
• Don't forget about the Region Shops. There's a lot of important materials and other things available there - even Eidolons for the Main Character,
• You obtain the currency to buy things in the Region Shop by doing missions in the zone where the shop is located.
• There's one Region Shop on each planet - including the Herta Station.
• Always send out your characters on Assignments to gain free materials,
• And don't worry - if you send a character on an Assignments, you can still use it in combat,
• Do your Battle Pass Daily and Weekly missions - the free path rewards available there are actually decent,
• Explore the world. Exploration in this game is pretty rewarding as each map has tons of Treasures, special enemies, puzzles and quests hidden - for completing them you will not only get experience, but also Stellar Jades, Relics and various Materials,
• If you're stuck on a hard fight, you can always borrow a character from a Friend - so keep your friend list full!
• To increase your Equilibrium Level, you need to complete the Trial of the Equilibrium missions,
• At Traiblazer levels 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 65, you will unlock a mission and after finishing it, the world level will upgrade and you will be able to level up your characters past the current cap,
• At the same time, don't rush the Equilibrium upgrade Missions! If you don't have enough EXP and Ascension materials saved to instantly upgrade your characters, you might struggle in the new world tier as monsters will become harder to kill.

Combat

• Build a team with skill point spenders and generators. Spenders are your damage dealers and generators are usually supports who don't need to use their Skill every turn. If you will build a team with 4 damage dealers, they will compete for the Skill Points and their damage output will be terrible,
• Always try to match your damage dealers to the weakness of the enemy - especially on bosses. The fight will last ages if you're not able to break the Toughness Bar,
• Become a turtle. Running a more defensive team is not only safer, but actually works better in the early game. Some of the bosses have nasty mechanics and without a healer/shielder combo in your team, they will slowly whittle your team's HP down before you kill them,
• While in the story you can build a more offensive team, for Simulated Universe if you won't go Turtle, you will suffer and only waste your time.
• Don't hoard your Technique Points. The items to restore them are around every corner, so always try to use a Technique to trigger the battle,
• When using a Technique and make sure to match the element of the character the enemy weakness!
• Techniques stack, but not all of them. If a Technique gives a buff, you can safely use it one after another and then use the last Technique Point on an offensive one to trigger the fight,
• This works wonders before harder fights in Forgotten Hall and Simulated World.

Relics

• Don't upgrade every Relict piece you find. The materials needed to do that are pretty limited and once you use it up, you will need to farm Relics to feed into Relics to upgrade them. Which leads to the next point...
• Don't waste your stamina on farming Relics in the early game! Check the Stamina usage section below for more details about that.

Warps

• Don't use Stellar Jades to pull on the General Warp. Only use the Basic Passes you gain from rewards and missions on that banner and save your Stellar Jades for the rate-up banners (or stamina refreshes).

During the first week or two, you will want to focus your Stamina on three things:

• Golden Calyx: Bud of Memories and Golden Calyx: Bud of Aether to get Character and Light Cone EXP Materials,
• Crimson Calyx to get materials needed to level up your Traces (so your skills and passives),
• Stagnant Shadow to get materials needed to ascend your characters (you need to do it every 10 levels starting from level 20, so you will need a lot of materials).

Only farm the Golden Calyx when you need the EXP Materials. If your main team and their Cones are already at the current level cap, ignore the Calyx till you increase it again. Which means your main focus will be Traces and Ascension materials.

Don't waste your stamina on farming Relics in the early game!

Initially in the Cavern of Corrosion you will be only able to farm 3★ Relics with a chance to get 4★ Relics. Only once you reach Difficulty 3 of the Caverns you will have a chance to drop 5★ Relics which goes up to 100% drop on Difficulty 4 - and you will need a few weeks of playing to reach that point.

Using some stamina in the Simulated Universe early isn't that bad as even 2★ Relics and 3★ Relics can give you a big boost - Simulated Universe is the source of the Planetary Relic Sets that just have 2-piece bonuses. Still, once you finish the sets you wanted (or when you get the Main Stat you need), wait till you reach higher World levels in the Simulated Universe so you can get higher Relic rarities.

So here's a summary for stamina usage:

• Below TL 40 focus on farming Ascension/Traces materials and Character/Cone EXP,
• Once you reach TL 40, start farming CoC and SU as you've just unlocked Gold rarity.

To learn more about early game gearing and, check out our other guide:

Early gearing

Check the video below if you want to learn more about stamina usage:

Is the next Main Story mission a few levels away and you have no idea how to raise your Traiblaze Level? Below you will find the sources of EXP available to you in Honkai: Star Rail!

• Do the Daily Training - you can receive 1000 EXP a day for doing all the missions,
• Complete the Adventure and Companion missions - those are actually a great source of additional experience (100-400 EXP per mission) and on top of it, you will also get some nice rewards for doing them,
• Spend Traiblaze Power - whatever you spend your TP (stamina) on, you will get a set amount of experience,
• Do Operation Briefing - you will also get EXP for doing missions available there,
• Explore the Open World - treasures, monsters, random encounters will give you additional experience.
• While the treasures you can only open once, the monsters respawn daily. Which means that after finishing all the other stuff for the day and using up your stamina, you can just roam around the maps and kill the monsters that respawn daily - they will not only give you experience but also Ascension materials!