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Honkai: Star Rail Pity System Explained

Know your pities before pulling.

honkai star rail Image Source: HoYoverse

Like any modern gacha game, Honkai: Star Rail has a pity system that allows players to save up a certain amount of premium currency to guarantee that they’d be able to pull a 5-star character from whatever banner they’re pulling from. Wrapping your head around the system can be tricky, however, and that’s where we come in. Here’s how the pity system works in Honkai: Star Rail.

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How to Hit Pity in Honkai: Star Rail

To keep things simple, you’re guaranteed to get a 5-star character in 90 pulls on the regular and limited event banners in Honkai: Star Rail. While pulling on the Light Cone banner, you’re guaranteed to get a 5-star Light Cone in 80 pulls.

That being said, if you do get lucky and hit a 5-star summon before the pity pull, the pity timer will reset. This means that if you happen to get a 5-star character on your 10th pull, you’ll need to hit another 90 pulls to reach the pity pull.

honkai: star rail seele banner
Image Source: HoYoverse via Twinfinite

In addition to that, similar to how the limited banners work in Genshin Impact, whenever you pull a 5-star summon on a limited event banner in Honkai: Star Rail, that summon has a 50% chance of being the featured limited character. If you don’t get the featured character on your first 5-star pull, your second 5-star pull is guaranteed to be them.

Does HSR Have a Soft Pity?

So far, we’ve only talked about the hard pity system in Honkai: Star Rail. Genshin Impact players will be familiar with the soft pity system, where your chances of pulling a 5-star increase dramatically the more you pull on a banner. The soft pity works so that by the time you hit your 75th pull on a character banner or your 65th pull on a Light Cone banner, each subsequent pull has an increased 6% chance of being a 5-star.

The soft pity system has not been officially confirmed to be in Honkai: Star Rail, but considering all the similarities between the two games, this certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Add on the fact that the pity is set at 90 and 80 respectively, and it’s highly likely that soft pity will start kicking in once you’re 15 pulls away from hard pity.

Honkai: Star Rail Gacha Rates

Finally, let’s go over the actual drop rates for 5-star summons in Honkai: Star Rail. The rates are pretty abysmal, but as always, with careful planning and discipline in saving up Stellar Jade and Rail Passes, you should be able to get the characters you want as they come along. Just keep your expectations in check, and don’t expect to nab every single limited character that releases.

Limited Event Warp Banner Rates

  • 0.6% chance of pulling a 5-star character
  • 5.1% chance of pulling a 4-star character or Light Cone

Regular Warp Banner Rates

  • 0.6% chance of pulling a 5-star character or Light Cone
  • 5.1% chance of pulling a 4-star character or Light Cone

Light Cone Banner Rates

  • 0.8% chance of pulling a 5-star Light Cone
  • 6.6% chance of pulling a 4-star Light Cone

And that’s all you need to know about how Honkai: Star Rail’s pity system works. Be sure to search for Twinfinite for more tips and information on the game.

About the author

Zhiqing Wan

Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She's been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she's not singing the praises of Amazon's Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.

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