Honkai Star Rail follows the footsteps of its predecessors, Honkai Impact 3rd and Genshin Impact, with its rich story, anime-inspired graphics, and RPG-style gameplay. However, what gets players to spend time, effort, and money is the game’s gacha system. This involves spending premium in-game currency in exchange for random tiered items. In Honkai Star Rail, these come in the form of characters and light cones, which augment characters’ stats and skills. Naturally, the higher the tier, the rarer it is. To combat frustration among unlucky players, the game integrated a pity system that makes it easier to get rare loot.
The pity system exists in many games with gacha mechanics, like most HoYoverse titles. It’s a simple system that involves the player getting a guaranteed high-tier item after pulling for it a set number of times without success. For Honkai Star Rail, the reward is usually a four-star or five-star character. Players can choose who they want to get for some events, too. While this system does a good job of keeping players engaged, it still has a few frustrating issues.
What’s Great About Honkai Star Rail’s Pity System
The pity system is a boon for F2P players of Honkai Star Rail, as it gives them a guaranteed way of getting the best characters and items in the game as long as they put in the work. Its “Regular Warp” gacha, which players can permanently access, has top-tier characters like Bronya and Himeko. They can pull any of these characters in their five-star versions randomly every 90 pulls. Its additional reward lets the player pick a five-star character from a curated roster. Players can access this after 300 pulls, and it contains strong characters like Welt and Bailu.
Another great feature of this game’s pity system is that it gives out guaranteed four-star drops, too. A player can receive a four-star light cone or character every 10 pulls on a regular or event warp. Four-star characters are only slightly weaker than their five-star counterparts, so players can still use them to take on tough enemies. They just need to invest more resources into making their Honkai Star Rail F2P team stronger through relics and light cones.
What Honkai Star Rail’s Pity System Can Improve On
The additional reward for the Regular Warp is already difficult to attain, as players need to pull 300 times just to get it. As such, it can be frustrating for F2P players that the reward can only be claimed once. They’re more than willing to farm stellar jades for 300 more pulls just to get another one of their dream characters. HoYoverse could tweak this to be permanent, but with fewer characters to choose from, or make it a monthly pull with a rotating roster of heroes.
Even with the pity system, dedicated players will still have to buy pulls with real money to keep up with events. People on a free-to-play run will have to rely on luck to get the featured character or light cone before the event ends, even if the hero does have an increased drop rate among five-stars. The game could improve this by giving players more opportunities for event warp tickets in-game.
Almost every popular gacha game has a pity system, and Honkai Star Rail’s is pretty generous. It gives out both four and five-star rewards and even gives players a chance to select their character as an additional reward. However, it still favors gacha game whales over regular players who spend less or none at all on the game. This practice is common for gacha games, but Honkai Star Rail should still consider improving on these flaws to give its hardworking players the high-tier loot they deserve.
Honkai Star Rail is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5.