You do some 10 pulls on the beginner banner and expand your roster. Everything’s great as you progress through the story and level up your characters until you realize: “Wait, I’m broke…”

You don’t wanna be that person again. The one who decides their favorite character is literally every single character in the game and spreads their resources thinner than a strand of floss. Not that I’m judging you or anything because I have also fallen into that trap.

I’ve gotten the chance to play around with pretty much all the 4-Star characters in Honkai: Star Rail and today I’m going to help you not fall into that trap of building too many characters at once. After reading this guide, you will learn four different 4-Star characters to invest in and the reason why they’re so good, if you don’t know where to start.

Asta

Everyone should build Asta because her design is so pretty. Even if I disregard how much I like Asta’s character and visual design, she actually fares extremely well in combat for a wide variety of content.

This is because the three main things she provides to the table are a team-wide attack boost, a surprisingly strong weakness break capability, and a team-wide speed buff. Her attack buff comes from her talent, which at talent level one grants 7% extra attack to the team for each unique enemy she hits on her turn. By talent level 10, this buff doubles into 14%, which is a pretty sizable bonus considering that all characters benefit from it no matter their element and it stacks up to five times.

Asta’s skill hits the selected target with the first hit and then attacks three more times at random, meaning that she can get four out of the five max stacks for her attack buff given RNG hits a different enemy each time.

Additionally, Asta has multiple Eidolons that help maintain stacks, whether that be through boosting hit rate or reducing the stacks that she loses every turn. Eidolons one and two are fantastic early eidolons for F2P and low spenders, which increase the hit count of her skill by one and prevent Asta from losing any attack buff stacks for the next turn after casting her ultimate. Her final Eidolon flat out reduces the stacks. She loses each turn from three to two, which is an extremely welcomed quality of life that is unconditional.

Even if you’re against a single boss enemy where Asta can’t get more than one or two stacks of her talent, she makes up for it by providing a surprising amount of weakness break capability.

Her skill has the highest break value in the game against a single enemy, because all hits will target that one enemy, meaning you can chop off huge chunks of toughness against boss enemies weak to fire.

Last but not least, Asta’s ultimate is eye-catching. Not just in the sense that the animation is smooth, but also in the sense that a team-wide speed buff is fantastic support for turn-based RPGs. At ultimate level one, the speed buff is a flat increase of 36, while at ultimate level 10, that flat bonus jumps to 50 speed.

Asta (Build)

Since Asta’s ultimate is so simple, moving right into Light Cones, there’s only one 5-star Harmony Light Cone in the game, so if you have But the Battle Isn’t Over and aren’t using it on Bronya, feel free to use it on Asta.

Otherwise, the “4-Star Light Cone Dance! Dance! Dance!” synergies extremely well with Asta’s ultimate for further speed control, or Tingyun’s 4-Star Light Cone Carve the Moon, Weave the Clouds is also great for general team buffing capabilities.

As a beginner, the 3-Star Light Cone Chorus is fantastic to provide a further 8% attack buff to the team outside of Asta’s talent. Since the game just released and we really have no idea what specific builds we need for the endgame, Relics are a lot more difficult to pinpoint compared to Light Cones, so I don’t want to speak on anything past general suggestions today.

As a starting point, Asta is a fantastic break DPS with her skill, so building the 4-set Thief of Shooting Meteor is great for early and mid game DPS.

Just keep in mind that the break effect stat from your build only buffs the extra damage when you deplete the toughness bar of an enemy, so don’t get discouraged if your damage looks small before then because the break effect stats that you’re building will make up for all the missing damage once that toughness bar hits zero.

Pela

Next up, we have Pela who is the polar opposite of Asta because she’s a support that provides debuffs to the enemy, and she’s ice instead of fire.

The one thing that makes Pela one of the strongest supports in the game is her ultimate that provides 30% defense reduction at ultimate level one, and 40% defense reduction once that ultimate reaches level 10. Like Asta’s attack buff, defense reduction is a universal buff that all characters can utilize, making Pela a good investment no matter who else you decide you’re going to use.

Other things that Pela can do include removing a buff from the enemy with her skill, and refunding energy to herself whenever she inflicts a debuff on the enemy.

Pela (Build)

Pela is in an awkward spot when it comes to Light Cones since there’s nothing really tailored to her use.

Generally, effect hit rate is a good stat to focus since it increases the consistency she has for debuffing against tougher boss enemies with higher effect resistance.

Therefore, Pela prefers the 4-Star Light Cones Resolution Shines as Pearls of Sweat and Eyes of the Prey. Resolution Shines as Pearls of Sweat doesn’t offer effect hit rate but instead offers an additional defense reduction to go along with her ultimate, while Eyes of the Prey offers an extra 20% effect hit rate.

Beginners can use the 3-Star Light Cone Void, which also gives 20% effect hit rate, but unfortunately it only lasts for three turns as opposed to Eyes of the Prey, which lasts the entire battle.

Sushang

Sushang is probably just as hyped up as Tingyun, but because I’m Sushang’s number one fan in Honkai Impact, you already know I had to highlight her in Star Rail as well.

The reason why Sushang is extremely hyped up as a physical DPS even though characters like the Trailblazer and Clara exist is because she can delete massive-sized toughness bars by herself if played correctly.

There’s a lot to soak in when you read Sushang’s kit, so let’s try to touch upon the most important parts of her kit in the easiest way possible.

First, Sushang’s skill hits twice and then has a 33% chance to activate a third hit, where this chance increases to 100% if the enemy is weakness broken beforehand. This by itself sounds pretty normal, but when we combine it with her ultimate, Sushang single-handedly becomes one of the best weakness breakers in the game.

Not only does Sushang’s ultimate deal a huge amount of physical damage, but she also grants herself an attack buff and advances her turn order by 100%, which in most cases is flat out an extra turn. After she gets this extra turn, using her skill again will give two additional chances to trigger the third hit on her skill, which just leads to some ridiculous burst damage when you combo your skill into your ultimate and then into another skill.

And in case you didn’t know, not all elements are treated equally when it comes to weakness break. Sushang, being a physical unit, compliments her kit because physical weakness break actually deals with the highest break damage when compared to other elements.

Other elements that are close to physical when it comes to extra damage dealt when shields are broken are wind, lightning, and fire, because all these elements also have no special effects other than applying DoT. Ice, Quantum, and Imaginary deal less weakness break damage in exchange for special effects like Imprisonment and Freeze.

Sushang (Build)

Knowing that Sushang is such a monster at triggering weakness break, your goal with her is to build as much break effect as possible in Light Cones and Relics.

For The Hunt path, no Light Cone offers break effect so you can choose any 5-Star Light Cone for fantastic base stats, or choose Sushang’s 4-Star Light Cone Swordplay for a passive synergistic with her single-target gameplay.

Beginners can use the 3-Star Light Cone Darting Arrow for a basic boost to attack when Sushang defeats an enemy, before obtaining a 4-Star or 5-Star Light Cone.

As for Relics, it is highly recommended to run the 4-set Thief of Shooting Meteor for a free 32% increase to break damage and extra energy to spam Sushang’s combo with her skill and ultimate.

Serval

Last but not least, we have Serval. She’s the least recommended out of the four characters I’ve discussed today, but don’t take that as a sign that she’s bad.

The only reason why I say that is because players who plan on pulling Jing Yuan don’t need to build Serval who fills a similar role. Serval is an extremely potent AoE lightning DPS and you can get her for free with the pre-registration rewards. Her whole idea is to apply lightning DoT to enemies with her skill, and then extend the duration of those effects with her ultimate.

Once you’ve invested her skill and ultimate to get lightning DoT onto enemies, you can then save your skill points and use Serval’s basic attack because her talent creates a follow-up attack to deal lightning damage to any enemy affected by lightning DoT, effectively giving her AoE damage on her basic attack as well.

Naturally, Serval is great for farming and clearing out waves of enemies with AoE damage, but surprisingly, she’s also decent against bosses too because of how much residual damage she can deal by constantly applying and extending the lightning DoT.

Serval (Build)

Like Sushang’s builds, unfortunately, there are also no Erudition Light Cones that provide break effect. But it’s not as detrimental for Serval who isn’t as reliant on break damage with damage over time and AoE damage.

If you’re looking for pure stats, Himeko’s Light Cone Night on the Milky Way is great for raw stats. Luckily for F2P and low spenders, Serval’s best 4-Star Light Cone is her own Light Cone Make the World Clamor, which can be obtained for free through the warp web event leading up to the game’s release. If you haven’t gotten this Light Cone from the pre-registration web event, once you get it from the gacha, definitely equip it on Serval because the energy regeneration and ultimate damage can definitely carry you a long way.

Beginners can use the 3-Star Light Cone Passkey to regenerate energy every time they use their skill and cycle through ultimates faster.

For Relics, you have two options. The first is a break build identical to Sushang, where you build the 4-set Thief of Shooting Meteor. The other build focuses more on her own lightning damage and DoT with the 4-set Band of Sizzling Thunder once you’ve reached high enough trailblazer level to farm 5-Star pieces.

All in all, what I recommend here are all 4-Star characters. If you want to experience all the 5-Star characters or weapons, then getting Honkai: Star Rail Accounts will be a good choice!