What do a character’s Path and Element mean in Honkai: Star Rail?
Who do you play as in Honkai: Star Rail?As a gacha game,Honkai: Star Railwill feature a large roster of playable characters for you to collect. Early previews suggest that engaging with those gacha mechanics will be a bit less optional than in HoYoverse’s previous titleGenshin Impact, which is honestly not great news for F2P fans. However, even if you limit yourself to judiciously plugging in your free currencies, you’ll roll a new character pretty frequently.
On this page we’ll go over the key details of every playable character confirmed forHonkai: Star Rail’s release, as well as explaining what some of those attributes mean in more depth. We’ll keep this page updated with more information as we learn more from the game’s final beta and upon its full launch.
Honkai: Star Rail characters list
Below are the 28 characters expected to be available in Honkai: Star Rail at launch, along with details of their key attributes:
Your nominal player character in Honkai: Star Rail is theTrailblazer, whose name and gender can be selected by the player, and whose path and element are adaptive and will change over the course of the game. The Trailblazer is given the special-case 5-star rarity HoYoverse affords to its main player characters.
You’ll also be given access to three more characters over the course of the story’s opening, allowing you to field a full team of four regardless of whether or not you’re engaging with the gacha. In at least some of the closed betas, the Trailblazer’s team was rounded out withDan Heng,March 7th, andNatasha. This seems like a plausible starting party for the full release, but remains unconfirmed and subject to change.
Additionally, a new player pulling on the gacha’s limited Beginner’s Banner will be guaranteedAsta. This informal fifth starting character isn’t technically free, but can be guaranteed with free currencies and is likely important for plugging skill gaps in the entirely-F2P party composition.
In Honkai: Star Rail, one of the key attributes possessed by any playable character is their path. The seven paths in the game can be regarded as somewhat akin to character classes. A character’s path determines the role they are best suited to play in combat, as well as the skills and attack types they can utilise.
Of the seven paths in Honkai: Star Rail, three are DPS types and four are support types:
Characters in Honkai: Star Rail possess affinity with one of seven elements, a concept that will be very familiar to long-time HoYoverse fans. However, HSR’s elements are a little different: while four are admittedly familiar variants on the classical elements, the other three are more unusual. In addition toFire,Ice,Lightning, andWind, the heroes of HSR might find themselves wieldingPhysical,Imaginary, orQuantumelements.
Each element, when used in combat, applies a unique set of effects to afflicted enemies:
If you’re itching for more Star Rail details, take a look at ourHonkai: Star Rail release dateguide to find out when you can join in the fun for yourself. Or, if you want you want to compare and contrast Star Rail’s cast with that of another HoYoverse gacha game, you might like ourGenshin Impact character tier list.
