Honkai Star Rail borrows many systems from Genshin Impact, and one of the most controversial gameplay aspects present in both games is the Relic / Artifact system. In Honkai Star Rail, Relics are your “gear,” giving you important stats such as HP, attack, defense, and crit stats. The only problem? Farming for these Relics takes time and resources, and obtaining optimal stats is difficult. This issue has never been more apparent, thanks to a drop rate event that tripled the amount of Relics players received. And predictably, despite the event, most players got junk.
Players Are Asking For a New Relics System in Honkai Star Rail
One of the controversial features adapted from Genshin Impact is variable drop rates for certain statistics. To put it simply, a desired stat like “Energy Recharge Rate” for supports has a much lower chance of dropping compared to an undesired stat such as “Break Effect” or “DEF.” For the sake of simplicity, most DPS characters are chasing for Crit Rate and Crit DMG stats, with some Attack and Speed on the side. Relics can have four lines of upgradable stats programmed to drop randomly at variable rates. Additionally, which stat is upgraded is random as well.
This means you can have a desirable Relic piece of “Attack, Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and Break Effect” and have most of your upgrades roll into Break Effect. Thanks to variable drop rates, this is actually a fairly common occurrence. Getting four optimal lines on a Relic is already difficult. Upgrading the Relic into the stats you need is even more difficult. Despite a triple drop rate event for Planar Ornaments (essentially secondary Relics), most players are reporting mediocre at best results, prompting a call for an improved system.
In a Reddit post with over 3,000 upvotes, user u/Swift311 reported they “only received 4-5 relics that are somewhat good, and only 2 of them turned out to be good after leveling.” In a snarky response, user u/Egoborg_Asri stated, “4-5 somewhat good and 2 good? That’s impressive.” (I can report personally that this is impressive, as I received approximately zero usable Relics.)
Some suggestions to improve the system included a new “Self-Modeling Resin” for substats, allowing you to create a Relic-piece of your own. A version of this already exists in the game, but only allows you to customize the main stat, which could still leave you with poor substats. Other players are simply looking for higher drop rates for desired stats.
Unfortunately, as Genshin Impact has a similar system, this is unlikely to change. Spending Stellar Jades to refill your energy to farm for better gear is a common way players can force good Relics, and this is likely intentional by design. Regardless, farming for Relics is a pain, and Honkai Star Rail would be a more enjoyable game if HoYoverse were able to switch up the system just a little bit to be more player-friendly.
