Highlights
- Honkai: Star Rail is gaining popularity with over 547,143 new users in the past month, adding to millions of active players.
- The game is player-friendly with free premium in-game currency, promo codes, and easy access to best units for F2P and new players.
- Harmony Trailblazer is now a central unit in the game's meta, making it accessible for F2P players to build powerful teams and defeat bosses.
While players may be riding on the hype train for Wuthering Waves, some fans also seem to be boarding Honkai: Star Rail’s Astral Express. According to game statistics site Activeplayer.io, the game gained over 547,143 users in the past month alone, adding to the millions of active players that log in for their dailies, pulls, and story missions. The game is consistently raking in new players, and it’s no surprise as there are many reasons to pick up Honkai: Star Rail leading into its Version 2.4 release.
Gacha games have always had a niche market, but they exploded in popularity when Genshin Impact came out in 2020. Its developer, MiHoYo, banked on its success and released its latest title Honkai: Star Rail a little over two years later. It features the same anime art style and epic overarching storyline as its predecessors Genshin and Honkai Impact 3rd, but with turn-based gameplay. It’s well-received by fans, gaining over 100 million downloads since launch, according to MiHoYo.
Rumor: Honkai Star Rail May Release Skins For Three Characters
A Honkai: Star Rail leak reveals that three character skins may be coming, and more skins already in development at HoYoverse.
Honkai: Star Rail is in its Best State Yet for F2P and New Players
Gacha players often need to spend in-game currency, and sometimes real money, to get the best characters. Honkai: Star Rail is no exception to this notion, but it does make getting and building its best units significantly easier for free-to-play and new players to acquire.
Honkai: Star Rail has an Abundance of In-Game Rewards
One of the best qualities of this game is that it gives Stellar Jades, its premium in-game currency, for free by just playing the game.
- Main Quest:Honkai: Star Rail's main storyline has hundreds of quests that rewards players with Stellar Jades for their 5-star banner pulls.
- Dailies and Endgame Content: Seasoned free-to-play enjoyers can consistently get their Stellar Jades from Daily Training and grinding endgame modes like Simulated Universe, Pure Fiction, and Memory of Chaos. Honkai: Star Rail also gives out Star Rail Special Passes for limited character and Light Cone banners for every major patch, which are distributed as login rewards across seven days.
- Promo Codes: Those who subscribe to the game’s newsletter and social media accounts can also get promo codes which they can redeem to get extra currency.
One of the Best Units Honkai: Star Rail is Free
During the first few patches, Honkai Star: Rail’s player character, the Trailblazer, was seen as one of the weakest units in the game. Players readily accepted this unfortunate fact, as protagonist characters are often used as mere springboards to learn a game’s mechanics in most gacha titles. However, the HSR seems to have other plans for its main character. The Trailblazer recently got its Imaginary Harmony form, which is now considered essential for the Honkai: Star Rail’s break-focused meta.
Honkai: Star Rail 's central combat mechanic is called Weakness Breaking and it works by using the right elemental attack to whittle down an enemy’s toughness bar. When players completely deplete the opponent’s toughness, the enemy receives massive damage and gets into a Weakness Break state, which inflicts damage over time and delays their turn.
New characters like Firefly, Boothill, and Gallagher, as well as the current rerun banner Ruan Mei, focus on shredding toughness bars. Harmony Trailblazer complements these units perfectly because they’re currently the only unit that can apply the Super Break buff, which lets characters deal additional damage (based on break effect and character level) when attacking broken enemies. This has led to various clips of players using Firefly, Harmony Trailblazer, Gallagher, and Ruan Mei to obliterate bosses in a single cycle across YouTube and Reddit.
What’s great about this composition is that it’s accessible to F2P players compared to other high-level builds. Harmony Trailblazer is free and players can get Gallagher through the Origami Bird clash’s limited character selector reward. The plethora of rewards these past few patches makes it easier to pull Firefly or Ruan Mei without spending a dime. Honkai: Star Rail is in its best state yet in terms of rewards and metagame, so those looking for a new RPG or gacha game to sink their time into should give it a try.
