Honkai Star Rail is the latest game from Genshin Impact developers miHoYo. Genshin is one of the most popular free-to-play games to come out, but does Honkai Star Rail follow in its footsteps? This guide will explain whether Honkai Star Rail is free to play!
Honkai Star Rail: Is it free to play?
In short, yes, Honkai Star Rail is a free-to-play game. You can download it and play for free.
However, there’s a catch. Honkai Star Rail is a gacha game, which means you can pay money to “roll” for new characters to unlock and use on your team.
You don’t need to do this if you just want to play the game though. All of the game’s missions are available to be played for free with the normal characters. You can even get free rolls and unlock some of those rare characters occasionally without having to pay a thing.
Honkai Star Rail: How expensive are new characters?
If you want some of the rarer characters, known as 5-star characters, you’ll have to roll for them on banners. These banners allow you to use currency to roll as many times as you want to try and get new characters.
However, this is very pricey if you want every new character that comes out. You can buy Oneiric Shards and convert them into Star Rail Passes to pay for rolls, but you’ll soon find that the average 5-star will take a lot of cash to unlock.
Oneiric Shards can be purchased in various amounts, but these will barely get you any rolls unless you pay a lot. 300 Shards costs £4.99, which doesn’t even get you 2 rolls. 5-star characters have a 0.6% chance of showing up in a roll, and 1 roll costs 160 Shards.
Due to these prices and low pull rates, it’s a good idea to stick with your free characters unless you get enough free Star Rail Passes. You can get them by playing, and miHoYo does regular events which give out free rewards to use for rolls. Therefore, it’s very possible to play Honkai Star Rail for free.
For more Honkai Star Rail guides, keep reading The Games Cabin.