Honkai Star Rail (星穹铁道), abbreviated HSR or SR, is a new Honkai game that released in 2023, developed by the same creators of Genshin. Honkai (崩坏) refers to a cataclysm type event (cf. cataclysm in Genshin). There is a lot of overlap between Star Rail and previous Honkai games. But there is also overlap between Honkai and Genshin.
Like Genshin, Star Rail has a gacha system with limited event characters. Unlike Genshin, Star Rail has a turn-based combat system (like many Final Fantasy and Pokemon games).
Aeons are the equivalent of Archons and are the leaders of the different paths.
| Quantum | Lightning | Physical | Imaginary | Ice | Wind | Fire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Goal of these character pages, besides doing some calculations, is to discuss what the analogs of these characters would look like in Genshin.
We can totally have non-human characters. After all, Red the dog wolf is playable in FF7. It is just that most characters in Genshin and HSR look humanoid, even if they are elves, foxes, dragons, Vidyadhara, or some other species.
Bosses
Star Rail invited 2019 Nobel Physics Prize winner Didier Queloz to talk about astronomy in Galactic Rhapsody. Not bad. Not bad. Details on topics discussed are in HSR universe.
The expedition system of HSR is more developed than Genshin's. In HSR, you can farm for not just money or weapon enhancement materials, but also enemy drops needed for leveling characters and talents. Moreover, rather than just having specific characters with specific passives that boost expedition rewards, different expeditions can yield more rewards if the characters are from certain paths.
Perhaps more types of items could be added to Genshin's expedition system, including enemy drops. Also the expedition system is easily accessible from the menu, rather than having to teleport to the nearest Katheryne.
Other quality of life feature: can salvage relics for relic level up dust. In Genshin, can only destroy artifacts to get mora, not the unction.
The holographic maps in HSR seem similar in style to the maps in FF7 Midgar map.
Characters can be equipped with weapons (light cones of different paths), artifacts (relics), and can level up their talents (via a trace tree).
Eidolons are like constellations. There are 6 of them for a character. Eidolon is a term used in final fantasy referring to summoned monsters (ff9). In Greek literature, eidolons refer to phantoms, specters, ghosts, spirits, or images of things.
Characters have elements and can deal elemental damage.
Trailblazer power is like resin. Warps are like wishes. The fragmentum are like ley lines.
At the start of battle, the team shares 3 skill points (can be 4 with certain relics). Basic attacks increase the number of skill points (up to 5). Using skills will consume skill points. (Compare other games like final fantasy that use TP or MP for skill casting.)
Energy is charged when using basic attacks, skills, or being attacked by enemies. When energy is full, ultimates can be used. While outside of battle, techniques can be used for buffs before entering battle.
As a turn-based game, Star Rail offers automatic combat, where the player can just sit back, look at the screen, and do nothing while the game picks moves for the characters. There is even a fast-forward button. This streamlines the process of clearing domains, calyxes, stagnant shadows, etc.
If we can automate combat in HSR, then can we do the same in Genshin? If we can teach cars to drive by themselves using AI, perhaps we can create an AI to make Genshin characters complete abyss automatically. It can be hard-coded rules, reinforcement learning, or some other deep learning method. The AI takes into account the 3d surroundings, enemy movements, and controls the character movement, NA, skills, and bursts.
The turn order is determined by speed and action value.
The system involving elements and enemy weaknesses is a bit different from Genshin's combat system. Enemies have elemental weakness, but there is currently not much about elemental reactions or resonance. And some elements like water/hydro are missing or have been replaced by other elements lke quantum, imaginary, etc. Enemies will start with a toughness bar in addition to hp. Toughness is like the armor on Fatui Skirmishers. Using the appropriate element can deplete toughness to 0, applying a weakness break to the enemy. In this state, the enemy can suffer from different elemental effects and will be in a disabled state where they will not be able to attack.
Currently, there is not much difference between different elements, unlike in Genshin, where each element almost takes on a life of their own. Even when it comes to break effects such as fire dot, ice dot, entanglement, etc. Genshin appears to have much more variation.
Light cones (LC) provide stat buffs to characters. And if the light cone matches the path of the character, they can provide additional passive abilities. They function like weapons in star rail. Technically, a character can use any light cone (even if the path does not match). But to activate the light cone passive, the path needs to match.
In Genshin, the 'weapons' are classified by weapon-type, whereas in HSR they are classified by path (and are called lightcones). As can be seen in HSR, characters can wield all kinds of different weapons, including guns (Bronya).
Leveling lightcones increases atk, hp, and def stats, whereas in Genshin, leveling lightcones usually only increases base atk and one other substat.
One thing HSR does is split a character's damage into multiple parts. This helps avoid the crit fishing problem where one big nuke can miss a crit. By splitting damage into multiple parts, it becomes more likely to achieve the actual expected value of damage. There will not be damage per screenshot, but the dps is more consistent. Besides, HSR records total damage done anyways.
For example, JY's LL does up to 10 instances of blast damage, many characters' basic attacks are split into multiple parts. In Genshin, Ayaka's Q is split into 20 parts, Scaramouche and Wrio's Q into 5, and Noctis' CA into 8.
In this game, the distinction between single target and aoe is more explicitly stated. For example, Erudition is specifically for aoe dps characters like Himeko or Jing Yuan. And the Hunt is specifically for single target dps characters like Seele, Yanqing, or hu tao.
There are different types of aoe: there is blast (hits one enemy and adjacent targets), bounce, and aoe (hits everyone). Of these, only aoe (hitting everyone) has a different scaling law. Blast and bounce still technically have the same scaling as single target (sublinear). It is just the constant in the scaling law that may be higher for bounce and blast.
Enemies will probabilistically attack characters based on their taunt values (aggro). The higher the taunt value the more likely the target will be attacked. Based on experimentation, the taunt value of a character is fixed depending on their path. So all characters in one path have the same taunt value.
Intuitively, preservation and destruction possess the highest survivability among paths, so they are the ones who get attacked more often.
Some abilities in the game can taunt and modify aggro value, such as the preservation trailblazer's skill and certain enemy abilities.
Hypothesis: A simple model for calculating the probability a character is attacked is: $$p_i = T_i / \sum_j T_j$$ where \(T_i \) is the taunt value of character i, the denominator is the sum of taunt values over the team, and \(p_i \) is the probability that character i is attacked.
However, it is currently not known if HSR uses the above formula for actually calculating the probability. It is possible another system or formula is used. TBD after further experimentation.
Qiqi is unique in that she can reduce enemy atk. There are few abilities that do this in the game. However, HSR has several abilities (nihility class) that can debuff the enemy and remove their atk, dmg bonus buffs. Silver Wolf's basic attacks shred enemy def, atk, spd. Luocha's burst removes buffs from all enemies.
A simple idea for a support unit (nihility) in Genshin is someone who can reduce atk of enemies using E or Q at c0. This is similar to a kind of dmg reduction or def buff to the character.
There are also enemies that can buff their allies' attack. If Genshin had such enemies that boost enemy attack within an aoe, it could add an extra dimension to combat. It could also make debuffers more important.
Every so often, elemental nodes appear in the abyss, granting buffs to certain enemies. These buffs could be removed by applying a suitable elemental gauge. In the past there used to be debuffs that would reduce character energy (electro) or extend their cd (hydro). These could be removed via certain abilities that apply an element to the character itself (thereby cleansing them). These include Xinyan E, Kirara E, etc. There was also once a corrosion debuff, one of the best things introduced into the game.
These debuffs are some of the most interesting spiral abyss effects and made the game richer. One can introduce more kinds of debuffs such as atk reduction, def reduction, res shred, speed reduction. HSR has so many debuffs that can be applied to characters. Even Kafka can manipulate and make characters attack each other.
Introducing more debuffs into Genshin can lead to more ideas for character roles, creating a demand for characters that can remove debuffs.
Note the thunder lawachurl in floor 10 of the version 3 abyss has a kind of status effect (indicated by a red symbol).
The Memory of Chaos (MOC, Forgotten Hall) appears to be the equivalent of the Spiral Abyss. But Star Rail also has another form of end-game content: the Simulated Universe (SU). Having something like Simulated Universe that resets weekly and gives primogems in Genshin would be a fantastic idea.
The game opens with the Stellaron hunters Kafka and Silver Wolf entering the Hertha space station while it is being attacked by the antimatter legion. They place a stellaron into the trailblazer's body. The trailblazer wakes up to find Dan Heng and March 7th. They join Himeko to defeat the Doomsday Beast. The trailblazer encounters the aeon of destruction (Nanook). They meet Herta who introduces them to the simulated universe (an end game dungeon that resets weekly).
They then meet Pom-Pom and travel on the Astral Express to their first planet: Jarilo-VI, a world covered in ice since the Eternal Freeze that struck it 700 years ago. Their mission is to locate and destroy the stellaron on the planet. (Note there is an alternate ending where the trailblazer does not join the Astral Express but stays to be experimented on by Herta).
Stellarons are tumors of worlds, harbingers of destruction, cancers of civilization. They cause chaos to whatever planet they go to, creating ecological and environmental damage, as well as crytallizations of fragmentum, which spawn corrupted enemies.
In Jarilo-VI, the trailblazer meets Cocolia (ruler of Belebog) and her daughter Bronya. Cocolia sends guards to arrest the trailblazer, March, and Dan. They are rescued by Sampo, who takes them to the underworld. There they meet Seele, Natasha, Oleg and learn more about the stellaron from Svarog. Bronya then confronts her mother Cocolia on the truth about the stellaron. The trailblazer heads back to the overworld to find the stellaron.
With Serval's help, they pass through the silvermane soldier frontline and head into the winter storm. There they catch up with Cocolia, who is trying to indoctrinate Bronya. They battle Cocolia and a giant guardian robot. The trailblazer encounters the aeon of preservation (Qlipoth). It is revealed that Cocolia was possessed by the stellaron this whole time. They defeat Cocolia, and she dies. The stellaron is cleared from the world, but the fragmentum is deep-rooted into the ecosystem. It will take time for Jarilo to recover fully.
After clearing Jarilo-VI, the trailblazer travels to the Xianzhou Luofu to help clear the stellaron there. They learn about the stellaron from Kafka. At the Luofu they are greeted by Tingyun, who takes them to visit Jing Yuan. They also learn that a stellaron hunter named Blade has been captured (but has escaped). With Fu Xuan's help they capture Kafka.
They defeat a member of the Sanctus Medicus. They meet Qingque and travel to the divination commission and solve some interesting puzzles (such as the mutare magnus, abacus circuitry). Fu Xuan uses the Matrix of Prescience to interrogate the captured Kafka and learn why she came to the Luofu.
They learn that the stellaron was brought by someone else and that Kafka and Blade were here to help the trailblazer. It was a combination of internal and external forces: the Sanctus Medicus wanting to overthrow the Luofu and the Antimatter Legion led by Nanook wanting to destroy the Luofu as well. Kafka and Blade wanted to bring the Astral Express to the Luofu to help them as Elio needed the power of the Aeon Lan. Kafka also warns the trailblazer that in the future they would have to battle Nanook.
We learn that there are two warring paths in the Xianzhou: the Abundance and the Hunt. The Sanctus Medicus follows Yaoshi, the Aeon of Abundance, and pursue immortality, which has resulted in denizens succumbing to mara. The Xianzhou Cloud Knights follow Lan, the Aeon of the Hunt, to exterminate the negative effects caused by immortality.
Aeons can die. For example, Luocha explains that the Aeon of Propagation (Tayzzyronth) was slain by other Aeons. Long, the Aeon of Permanence, is the ancestor of the Vidyadhara, a race that can turn into dragons (including Bailu, Dan Heng). Long disappeared into the stars time ago.
Idrila the Beauty, Ena the Order are also Aeons who have disappeared, leaving behind masterless paths. Kafka explains there are three known ways an Aeon can perish:
"One: Paths with overlapping concepts will eventually collide, and the broader Path will engulf the narrower one. That's how Ena the Order was assimilated by Xipe the Harmony. Two: In a war between Aeons, the stronger side will annihilate the weaker one — that's how Tayzzyronth the Propagation fell. Under the guidance of The Hunt, the Xianzhou Alliance travels the universe exterminating "abominations" cultivated by the Abundance...
"The predecessors of the Alliance were the Elixir Seekers. They searched for Yaoshi and longed for the blessing of immortality. When they eventually found the Aeon, they received a blessing that did indeed prevent death — the Ambrosial Arbor. But immortality turned out to be a curse for the Xianzhou. That's when The Hunt appeared — firing an arrow and felling the Ambrosial Arbor. Ever since, the Alliance has followed The Hunt in pursuit of Yaoshi, erasing the curse of immortality from the universe along the way.
"After the disappearance of Long the Permanence, Tayzzyronth divided the Aeon's Path. In the process, Tayzzyronth became a new Aeon known as the Propagation. My understanding is that Tayzzyronth, or "Imperator Insectorum" to some, didn't last long... When the Swarm Disaster began to take hold, Tayzzyronth was attacked and killed by multiple Aeons."
Before explaining the third way an Aeon can perish, Kafka escapes with Blade.
They see the Ambrosial Arbor, which gets revived. They defeat a 'deer friend' (the Ebon deer).
There is another sidequest where we learn that Dan Shu is the head of the Sanctus Medicus. We defeat her minions, and Qingzu sends the Cloud Knights to arrest her.
They then travel to the alchemy commission, where they defeat Dan Shu. We then meet the Lord Ravager Phantylia, a member of the antimatter legion and emanator of Nanook, the Aeon of destruction. The Vidyadhara sea had been used for eons to seal the ambrosial arbor.
Meanwhile, Sushang and Luocha go on a sidequest with Dan Heng. Luocha is returning a coffin for a deceased friend. Dan Heng journeys to the Luofu to meet Blade and Kafka. Blade stabs Dan Heng, revealing his true form, the Imbibitor Lunae, a member of the Vidyadhara race and a descendant of the Aeon Long. (Bailu is also a Vidyadhara and descendant of Long.) Lunae then joins Jing Yuan and the trailblazer to defeat Phantylia.
Phantylia uses the abundance power of the arbor to turn herself into the form of a large lady. During the battle, she destroys a planet with Starfall. Near the end of the battle, Phantylia tries to kill the whole team and turn Jing Yuan into one of her toy boys to serve her and the Destruction. But Jing Yuan and Lunae coordinate together to throw a spear to penetrate her, destroying her body and defeating her.
Find the person or team responsible for designing Phantylia and investigate their internet browsing history and reading habits, especially if they read a lot of novels like Sunüjing (素女经). Then give them a Nobel Prize in erotica.
仙人 is translsted as adepti in Genshin, whereas in Star Rail it is translated as 'Celestials'.
Although the Honkai games came first (and influenced Genshin), Genshin is a larger game with a sprawling interconnected world map and more dynamic combat system. Genshin is akin to a magnum opus. Its reach and community are much larger and broader globally. And now Genshin is returning the favor by influencing the Honkai series through Star Rail, whether through character design, combat design, progression system, etc. It is not like much will be lost if one plays Genshin before the Honkai games. If anything, with Honkai's lore largely established and Genshin's lore still developing, Honkai can provide hints at certain elements of Genshin's story.
Still, it is recommended to play Genshin first. It is just a bigger game with a larger scope.
In Star Rail, the character cannot jump or glide. It is basically a '2d game'. Genshin offers a '3d experience'.
Also Genshin is a better designed game. Currently HSR is a bit 'raw' and not children friendly. Genshin is more children friendly.