Light Cones in Honkai Star Rail Explained

HoYoverse is best known for Genshin Impact, but no one should miss out on another brilliant free-to-play game featuring turn-based strategic combat, RPG elements, and a cool sci-fi setting. Honkai: Star Rail takes full advantage of everything players loved about Genshin Impact and has applied it to a new genre in a great new setting. You have a compelling roster of unique new characters to play with and tons of enemies to strategically crush. If you’ve just started playing, you may be unsure about how some of the RPG mechanics in Honkai: Star Rail work, like the Light Cones that you can equip to power up your characters’ stats, so they will be explained in full here, including how to unlock and equip them, how to increase their level, and how to use Superimpose / Superimposition Effect.

Explaining Light Cones in Honkai: Star Rail: How to Equip, Increase Level, and Use Superimpose

Every character that you add to your roster in Honkai: Star Rail, including your main character, can have one of these Light Cone items equipped. There are many different Light Cones that provide a variety of powerful passive effects as well as general stat bonuses to characters. The higher the star value out of 5, the greater the rarity of the Light Cone and also the greater the stat bonuses and passive abilities they will provide characters when equipped.

Light Cones are also limited by their typing, only equippable by characters with the corresponding typing to the Light Cone. For example, the Collapsing Sky Light Cone provides a Light Cone ability that can only be utilized by characters who are typed with the Destruction Path. When equipped it will give the character a boost of 20% to their basic attack and skill damage, which is quite significant.

The Light Cones can also be improved. Collecting specific materials in Honkai: Star Rail can allow you to increase the level of the equipped Light Cone if you use them alongside some credit, to greatly improve the stat bonuses granted from having the Light Cone equipped. This does not, however, improve the Light Cone passive skill.

In addition to leveling up the Light Cones to increase their stats, you can also use a different set of items specific to the Light Cone you have equipped to use another mechanic called Superimpose. This is the way that you can spend the required materials to increase the Light Cones’ passive effect, called the Superimposition Effect.

For example, I have 3 of the required materials to Superimpose on my Collapsing Sky Light Cone, which would let me improve the Superimposition effect 3 more stages to a bonus of 35% increased basic attack and skill damage, up from the base 20%. Leveling up both parts of the Light Cone is when you’ll really start to see some power spikes in your characters.

One of the main ways to gain Light Cones to use is through the game’s baked-in gacha system, which is where the revenue comes from for this free-to-play game. The Warp system is where you buy tickets, and a stylish loot cutscene plays out with your rewards shown at the end. Most of the time you’ll be receiving Light Cones as rewards for using your Warp tickets, with the occasional permanent character being unlocked if you’re lucky or open at least 10. Some of these tickets you’ll earn for free, gained from events and login rewards, so there are some freebies there. But you’ll likely have to open your wallet if you want to chase some of the really rare Light Cones and characters.

That’s everything explained about Light Cones in Honkai: Star Rail — unlock them, equip them, level them up, and Superimpose them, and you’ll be rocking a superpowered character in no time!