Even during a particularly rough week, Hoyoverse continues to pump out content, with the Version 2.4 livestream for Honkai: Star Rail coming out earlier today. The upcoming update will see players leave Penacony, the world of the latest story chapters, behind and return to the Xianzhou Luofu for a tournament arc with sinister threats below the surface. This upcoming “Trailblaze Continuance,” will cover the next two patches in Star Rail: 2.4 and 2.5.
The main attraction of any new patch is, as always, the characters. Version 2.4 will introduce two new five star characters, as usual, and a new four star Character that everyone can acquire for free, with full eidolons.
First is Yunli, a five star physical type character following the path of destruction. She utilizes counter attacks to deal massive amounts of damage, similar to Clara, a standard banner five star. However, Yunli utilizes her ultimate in a unique way, entering a special state and taunting all enemies in the hopes of being hit within the next action, causing Yunli to parry the attack and deal a massive counter. Yunli seems like a relatively hands-on character in the cast of Star Rail, asking players to know when to save her ult versus when to use it. She also can hold up to two charges of her ult for back to back parrying. Yunli will be coming out in the first half of the patch alongside five star wind healer Huo Huo’s rerun banner.
Next is Jiaoqiu, a five star fire type character following the path of nihility. He excels in stacking debuffs on the enemy and keeping them there. His ultimate is able to make it so all enemies on the field gain the maximum number of stacks very quickly, and it lasts for three turns, meaning permanent uptime is very possible. Many people theorize that Jiaoqiu is tailor made to be an Acheron specific support, providing a multitude of debuffs so that Acheron can cast her ultimate as many times as possible. Whether Jiaoqiu has space in any other comps will have to be tested in either the content creator server, or in game when his character launches. Sparkle, the five star quantum harmony character will also rerun alongside him.
The new four star is a new version of March 7th. March 7th’s new form, an imaginary type hunt character, will be obtained during the course of the story, and her eidolons are all unlockable in the event. March 7th’s skills has her buff a teammate, similar to Jade, increasing their speed. Everytime March or the teammate she casts her skill on attacks, March gains 1 charge. Upon reaching 7 charges, she immediately takes action and launches an enhanced basic attack. The path of the character March skills has effects on her attacks: hunt, erudition, and destruction boost the damage; abundance, preservation, harmony, and nihility increase the toughness reduction of March’s attacks.
Besides the new characters and a smattering of smaller events, the biggest announcement on stream was a small mention of a Honkai: Star Rail and Fate/Stay Night collab coming in 2025, so something to look forward to next year.
Overall, version 2.4 seems to be a nice, relatively calm patch coming out in the next few weeks. However, the continuing scandals that Hoyoverse has perpetrated recently might put a damper on the game’s continued success. With the continued, and justified, calls to boycott Hoyoverse over their colorism and racism in the Natlan designs from Genshin Impact, there has been another scandal concerning the voice actor hired to voice upcoming character Moze, who will be making an appearance in the 2.4 story before being released in 2.5. Hopefully Hoyoverse will heed the demands of its community and begin to do better by them going forward.