Honkai Star Rail 3.0 is about to go online, and a new planet, a new adventure is waiting for you. Players will experience a lot of activities, new gameplay, and various benefits in version 3.0!

Players will be able to get 20 free Special Star Rail Passes and March 7th costumes for free in this version! There are also various materials, Relics, weapons, and a lot of Honkai Star Rail 3.0 Stellar Jade! At the same time, several 5-star characters have returned and 2 new 5-star character login banners. Players don’t miss your favorite characters!

Version 3.0 players will come to the planet Amphoreus and start their Trailblaze quest. Trailblaze will be divided into two parts, and the entire quest will cover version 3.0 to version 3.7. This is the biggest story chapter of Honkai Star Rail 3.0 so far.

Dates:

Honkai Star Rail 3.0 will be released worldwide on January 15, 2025. Due to time differences, the exact launch time varies by region:

• US East Coast: Tuesday, January 14, 10pm ET
• US West Coast: Tuesday, January 14, 7pm PT
• Central US: Tuesday, January 14, 9pm CT
• UK: Wednesday, January 15, 3am GMT
• Europe: Wednesday, January 15, 4am CET
• Japan: Wednesday, January 15, 12pm JST
• Australia: Wednesday, January 15, 2pm AEST

Banner Characters

Honkai Star Rail 3.0 will feature two new characters: The Herta and Aglaea. The entire Honkai Star Rail 3.0 will be divided into two phases, and will bring six returning five-star characters to players.

Five-star characters in the first phase:

• The Herta: Erudition path. Uses ice attribute attacks.
• Feixiao: Hunt path, Uses wind attribute attacks.
• Lingsha,: Abundance path. Uses fire attribute attacks.
• Jade: Erudition path. Uses Quantum attacker.

Phase 1 4-star characters

• Asta: Fire attribute, Harmony path.
• Moze: Lightning attribute, Hunt path.
• Natasha: Physical attribute, Abundance path.

Phase 2 5-star characters:

• Aglaea: Lightning attribute, from Remembrance path.
• Boothill: Physical attribute, from Hunt path.
• Robin: Physical attribute, from Harmony path.
• Silver Wolf: Quantum attribute, from Nihility path.

Phase 2 4-star characters:

• Hanya: Physical attribute. Harmony path.
• Sushang: Physical attribute. Hunt path.
• Tingyun: Lightning attribute. Harmony path.

Honkai Star Rail The first phase of 3.0 is expected to start from January 15th to February 5th, and the second phase is expected to start on February 5th. Honkai Star Rail 3.0 has a total of 6 new five-star characters, two of which are debuting and the other four are returning. If you like characters among them, be sure to prepare enough Honkai Star Rail Oneiric Shard.

Events

The major update of Honkai Star Rail 3.0 brings many new events and new tasks, including:

• Free outfit for March 7th and new avatar.
• Mem’s Gift: 10 Special Star Rail Passes and one Variable Dice.
• Gift Of Odyssey check-in: 10 Special Star Rail Passes.
• Cosmis Lucky Prize: From January 27th to February 2nd, you can choose to get 100 Stellar Jade every day or you can choose to gamble. It is up to 500,000 Stellar Jade.
• Amphoreus: New Trailblaze quest
• New regions open: Okhema, Castrum Kremnos, Janusopolis, Vortex of Genesis.
• Planar Fissure event: Double Planar Ornaments drops from January 27 to February 3.
• Garden of Plenty event: Double Golden and Crimson Calyx drops from February 14 to February 21.
• Trailblaze Power Cap increased to 300.
• Levelling Guide: Calculate quick upgrade materials and recommended Relics.

Limited-Time Events:

• Illia Travelogue: Event time is January 15 to February 24. Rewards include Stellar Jade, points, and character and Relic upgrade materials. You need to be at least Trailblaze level 21 to participate. You need to explore Amphoreus region.
• Hypogeum Enigma: The event will run from January 22 to February 24. You need to be at least Trailblaze Rank 21 to participate, and rewards include a free 4-star character selector. The content is a puzzle and platform mini-game event in Amphoreus.
• Enscrolled Crepusculum: The event will run from February 3 to February 24. Rewards include Tracks of Destiny, Stellar Jade, Relic, and character and weapon upgrade materials. You need to be at least Trailblaze Rank 21 to participate. You need to participate in a combat event in Amphoreus.

During your participation in Honkai Star Rail 3.0, you can get a lot of Stellar Jade, which can help you get the character you want. However, relying solely on Stellar Jade given by the game may only help you get one of them, because the probability of Honkai Star Rail extracting a character is really low, unless you are very lucky. If you want to gain something in version 3.0, you may need Honkai Star Rail Top Up to get more 5-star characters.

The above is most of the content of Honkai Star Rail 3.0 version update. You still need to experience and obtain the specific rewards of yourself. The more you experience in this version, the more you will get. I hope the above information can help you plan your own game plan.

Here we go, let’s talk about the new characters brought in Honkai Star Rail 2.4 update, Yunli, Sparkle, Huohuo and Jiaoqiu, and who you should pick! All of these characters have a lot of skills, and we’ll discuss everything you need to know about them in detail in this guide to help you decide which character might be the best choice for you to pick.

Yunli Overview

Let’s start with Yunli, as she will be our first new limited character in the 2.4 update. Yunli will be a Physical Destruction character, who focuses on launching frequent counterattack follow-up attacks on enemies and dealing tremendous damage with counterattacks after entering her ultimate.

Recapping Yunli’s kit, her basic attack will deal a small amount of damage to a single enemy, while her skills will deal physical damage to enemies and adjacent enemies, while also restoring 30% of her attack damage + 200 health at level 10. This is a great way to keep Yunli sustainable, since she’ll be getting attacked a lot and will want to get hit as often as possible.

As for Yunli’s counterattack, let’s look at her talent. Yunli’s counterattack deals damage to the enemy and its adjacent ones. And what’s really great is that when she’s hit by an enemy, she’ll recover an additional 15 energy, which helps her use her ultimate more often.

As for Yunli’s ultimate, she’ll cost 120 energy, but she can actually have up to 240 energy. This allows her to use two ultimates in a row after one trigger, or allows you to effectively schedule when to use her ultimate without worrying too much about overflowing on energy.

And Yunli’s ultimate will put her into a Perry state, which will taunt all enemies until the end of the enemy’s turn or the end of the ally’s turn. Once Perry state ends, Yunli will unleash a large amount of damage. In addition, her ultimate will increase her critical damage to this counterattack by 100%.

Yunli can actually unleash two attacks from her ultimate. The first is Intuit: Cull, which occurs when Yunli is attacked by an enemy target. She will launch a counterattack on the enemy and around her and deal 6 extra damage.

When Yunli is not hit, or assuming you use Ultimate during an ally’s turn and the enemy does not hit Yunli, she will instead release Intuit: Slash. This is similar to Cull, however, you will lose the extra damage output since you will not deal an extra 6 damage.

Yunli’s Demon Quell will allow her to ignore all Crowd Control Debuffs in Perry state of her Ultimate and reduce the damage she takes by 20%. This makes her immune to Crowd Control in Perry state and has extra survivability by reducing the damage she will take.

All in all, she is definitely a very strong physical damage dealer and very valuable to those who lack strong physical DPS. Additionally, since Yunli’s Ultimate counter attack is so powerful, it feels good to use in multiple game modes.

Jiaoqiu Overview

As for the second character in Honkai Star Rail 2.4, we have Jiaoqiu.

Jiaoqiu is a Fire Nihility character that focuses on debuffing enemies with Ashen Roast. Jiaoqiu’s skill will hit one enemy and an adjacent enemy with a chance to inflict Ashen Roast, which increases the damage dealt to enemies by allies.

It seems likely that Ashen Roast stacks will be capped at 5 stacks, as the developer livestream showed the maximum number of stacks.

As for Jiaoqiu’s ultimate, he will be able to set the number of Ashen Roast stacks for all enemies to the highest number present on the battlefield. His ultimate will create a field that increases the ultimate damage taken by enemies, and every time an enemy’s turn starts, they have a chance to take damage from Ashen Roast.

Jiaoqiu will be a great addition to Acheron’s team, as he can help Acheron get ultimate stacks faster, which is valuable for those who main Acheron.

Beyond that, I do feel like you could use a character like Pela or Guinaifen as your regular debuffer, who are 4-star options, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Sparkle & Huohuo Overview

As for our replay characters, we have Sparkle and Huohuo. Both are pretty good choices, depending on what your Honkai Star Rail Account is lacking.

Huohuo

Among them, Huohuo excels at purifying allies, providing good healing, as well as providing energy and attack through her ultimate, which can be very useful for your team to use their ultimate more often, especially when you pair Huohuo with Tingyun.

Huohuo is great for characters and teams that highly value the extra attack damage or energy from their ultimate, such as Damage over Time (DoT) teams. Argenti benefits from energy, as does Yunli, as her high energy cap allows her to recover a lot of energy from Huohuo’s ultimate.

If you’re short on premium sustain options, Huohuo is an excellent choice. But keep in mind that we’re also getting Lingsha in the 2.5 update, and she’s a new Abundance Character, so if you’re on the fence about Huohuo, that’ll be something to consider.

Sparkle

As for our second replay, that would be Quantum Harmony character, Sparkle. Sparkle is excellent at making Hypercarry-oriented characters more powerful, as you can easily use Attack Boots on your main DPS, and Sparkle will have them push forward, as she will be the fast character on the team.

Sparkle can provide huge critical damage to her skills and can also allow allies to push forward. Critical damage makes character creation easier, as now you can focus more on getting high critical hits, benefiting from the huge critical damage Sparkle can provide to team characters. What’s more, the buff will last until the start of the ally’s next turn, meaning that subsequent characters can still receive the critical damage buff from Sparkle Kit.

Sparkle can also provide more skill points to the team with her ultimate skill. She can increase the damage dealt by team characters to enemies and enhance the attack power of Quantum character on the team.

Sparkle is a very good support character that can provide great utility to the crit-based DPS characters in your account. I will say, though, that if you already have other high-level sustains like Robin or Ruan Mei and are lacking a damage dealer, then your need for Sparkle isn’t as high as it should be since you have great alternatives to use.

As for which option is best, honestly, it depends a lot on what your account has or lacks. If you don’t have a good physical DPS, I highly recommend Yunli because she feels really good to play and is very powerful. In my opinion, she’s one of the stronger DPS options you could consider, especially if you use her ultimate correctly.

Overall, I think there's a pretty good variety of characters you can choose from, and ultimately it depends on what your account might be lacking. I’d love to hear which character you guys are going to pick, or if you’re planning on skipping Honkai Star Rail 2.4!

Personally, I’m looking forward to Yunli the most because she’s super fun to play and is super powerful once you use her ultimate! See you in-game!