How the Warp System Works in Honkai: Star Rail

Much like HoYoverse’s last big hit, Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail is a gacha game at its core. Free-to-play games need ways to make money to fund further development, and what better way than to tempt people than to dangle high-level characters and items behind a paywall. In Honkai: Star Rail, it’s called the Warp system.

The Warp System in Honkai: Star Rail Explained

The Warp system has its pros and cons. On one hand, it’s a fun mechanic, and it’s very exciting to watch the train sequence and the conductor reveal what color rarity you’ve pulled based on the star rating. On the other hand, it’s an RNG system with a couple of safety nets thrown in to stop it being too outrageous — and what you gain from the Warps can be game-defining.

The majority of drops are items called Light Cones that can be equipped to characters who match the type of the Light Cone. These Light Cones can be powered up in several ways, and you can find the details of that process here. What matters is that they can provide significant power spikes to your characters, especially the higher star rating Light Cones, which offer pretty insane passives and stats.

The other main reward from the Warp system in Honkai: Star Rail is permanent characters that you add to your roster. They each have unique personalities, movesets, and ultimate abilities, meaning it’s always exciting to obtain a new character. Similarly to how it works with Light Cones, you can get duplicates and use those to add new passive abilities that make your characters much more effective. Again, the higher starred characters are significantly more powerful and have the coolest movesets and ultimate abilities, making them highly desirable.

The only problem with the 5-star Light Cones and characters is their very low drop rate. The chance to obtain them starts at around 0.6% with a boost towards getting an event character if you do happen to hit the low chance. If luck isn’t on your side, you get a guaranteed 4-star pull every 10 Warps and a guaranteed 5-star pull every 90 Warps, plus a bonus 5-star pull in the current event when you hit a total of 300 Warps. 

The game provides some free Warp tickets, so you can open at least a couple of Warps each day as you’re playing through and claiming login rewards. This means you’ll slowly be able to build towards those guaranteed 5-star drops with rewards you earn. It gives you the option to either work your way through it for free or splash a bit of cash to get extra Warps and speed up the process, whichever your wallet will allow.

That’s all there is to the Warp system in Honkai: Star Rail. I hope you have some excellent luck with your Warp tickets and get those sweet, sweet 5-star rewards!