Honkai Star Rail community is currently buzzing with excitement, with HoYoverse dropping massive news one after the other in recent weeks. After the Penacony trailer, we had three new official character showcases in their latest Drip Marketing campaign. The three characters — Sparkle, Black Swan, and Misha — are now expected to feature in the Honkai Star Rail 2.0 banners. On top of that, we have new events, missions, and some fantastic QoL updates coming with the 2.0 version. So, let’s take a closer look at the upcoming Honkai Star Rail 2.0 update.
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Release Date
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 is estimated to be released on February 8, 2024. The official date is yet to be announced, but if everything goes as expected, we can be confident about this estimated release date.
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Livestream Release Date
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Livestream is scheduled for January 26, 2024, at 07:30 AM (UTC+8) on Honkai Star Rail’s official YouTube channel. This time, Dawei and the Honkai Star Rail project team will be delivering the content update for version 2.0. And like every time, Honkai Star Rail 2.0 livestream will also give out free Stellar Jade redeem codes.
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Banners
![Sparkle, Black Swan, and Misha Honkai Star Rail 2.0](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/sparkle-black-swan-and-misha-honkai-star-rail.jpg?w=1024)
Honkai Star Banners generally happen in two phases, each lasting approximately 21 days (3 weeks). Based on the previous assumption of the release date, we can estimate the Honkai Star Rail 2.0 banners will drop around February 8, 2024. The update will feature 3 new characters: Sparkle, Black Swan & Misha.
Other than that, there are rumors that Dan Heng Inbibitor Lunae is one of the rerun banners in Honkai Star Rail 2.0. The other rerun banner is yet to be leaked but we will update it here whenever we get any new information.
Here are the details for the Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Banners:
Phase 1 | Phase 2 |
---|---|
Black Swan – 5 Star | Wind | Nihility | Sparkle – 5 Star | Quantum | Harmony Misha – 4-Star | Ice | Destruction |
TBA | Dan Heng Inbibitor Lunae | Imaginary | Destruction |
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 New Characters
The Honkai Star Rail 2.0 update will bring three new characters — Black Swan, Sparkle, and Misha. The recent drip marketing campaign features all three characters, almost confirming them for the 2.0 update. Now, let’s take a closer look at the Honkai Star Rail 2.0 upcoming characters.
HSR Black Swan: Abilities, Paths, and Lore
![Black Swan Drip Marketing Honkai Star Rail](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/black-swan-honkai-star-rail-1.jpg?w=1024)
Black Swan is a 5-star Nihility character with the Wind Damage type. She is going to be a DoT character with a strong DPS kit. Black Swan’s kit revolves around inflicting enemies with Sacrament, her specific debuff, which deals DoT damage based on Black Swan’s Attack. Sacrament can stack up to 99 times on an enemy, and the number of DoTs already inflicted helps to inflict more Sacrament stacks.
Lore-wise, Black Swan is a Memokeeper of the Garden of Recollection. Other than that, she has a warm smile and is described as patiently heeding the words of others, using them as a pretext to enter memories.
Sparkle: Abilities, Paths, and Lore
![Sparkle Honkai Star Rail](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/sparkle-honkai-star-rail.jpg?w=1024)
Sparkle is a Harmony character with the Quantum damage type and she is going to be the 2nd limited 5-star Harmony character featured on Honkai Star Rail.
She will be a Skill point-generating unit who also buffs the Crit Damage and Attack of the entire team. Her Skill gives a Crit Damage Buff to a single ally and advances their action by 40%, similar to Bronya. Her Ultimate and Talent are for recovering Skill points and buffing allies based on the number of Skill points used. It’s clear that she will be a perfect fit for the Dan Heng Inbibitor Lunae and Qingque teams. We can safely assume that she is going to be one of the best characters in Honkai Star Rail.
Lore-wise, Sparkle is a member of the Masked Fools, who also wants to get into the Genius Society—described as a woman with countless masks and many faces and a dangerous master of theatrics.
Misha: Abilities, Paths, and Lore
![Misha Honkai Star Rail](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/misha-honkai-star-rail.jpg?w=1024)
Misha is a 4-Star Destruction character with the Ice damage type. His kit features a strong Ultimate multi-hit attack with a good chance of freezing enemies. The number of hits from his Ultimate increases based on the number of Skills she uses and the Skill points his allies consume. He can form a team with Ruan Mei, Geopard, and Jingliu to form a freeze team, constantly forcing enemies to delay actions.
As per the lore, Misha is a bellboy of The Reverie Hotel in Penacony and has a fondness for sharing interstellar rumors with guests. He is hardworking and skilled at fixing various machines. Furthermore, Misha’s grandfather was an intergalactic adventurer.
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 Light Cone Banners
The Honkai Star Rail 2.0 version will feature two new 5-star signature light cones of Black Swan and Sparkle.
- Reforged Remembrance: Increases Effect Hit Rate and dealing damage to an enemy inflicted with Wind Shear, Burn, Shock, or Bleed will make the wearer gain 1 stack of Prophecy (max 4 stacks) and each type of DoT can only generate 1 stack. Each stack of Prophecy increases the wearer’s Attack and the DoT dealt ignores the target’s Defense.
- Earthly Escapade: Increases wearer’s Crit Damage and makes them gain Mask at the beginning of the battle. After gaining Mask, allies of the wearer have increased Crit Rate and Crit Damage for 4 turns. When the wearer recovers Skill points, including the limit exceeding Skill Points, they gain 1 stack of Fireworks, and getting 4 stacks will convert it into Mask.
Honkai Star Rail 2.0: Missions, Features & QoL Changes
Besides the new characters and light cones, Honkai Star Rail 2.0 will bring many new missions, events, game features, and QoL changes. Here is a quick look at what to expect.
New World And Multiple New Explorable Locations
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 will feature an entire new world — Penacony the Land of Dreams. Penacony, like Xianzhou Luofu and Jarillo-VI, will also have multiple explorable areas, which unlock slowly with each following versions. For the moment, leaks via Hiro reveal 5 new locations in Penacony — The Reverie Reality, Golden Hour, Dream’s Edge, A Child’s Dream, The Reverie Dreamscape.
The areas are also separated between Reality and Dreamscape, which indicates that the Reverie Hotel will be a kind of entryway to the land of dreams Penacony. Every other area of Penacony will simply be part of a large connected dream. The new video about Penacony from Honkai Star Rail also gives indicates a similar outlook.
The trailer features Clockie, voiced by Niko Gerentes, and Hamster Ball Knight, voiced by Jacob Craner, showcasing a dream-like futuristic world, where all the wishes of the people come true as long as they have the money for it. The trailer showcased Penacony as a fantasy land tinged with many disturbing elements.
Besides that, Penacony will also have a new travel mechanic and puzzles. The land will use optical illusions for traveling between areas, and the above trailer and other leaks also indicate vehicles (like cars) being very common in Penacony.
New Villains, NPCs, and Trailblaze Missions
![Who is Duke Inferno in HSR](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/who-is-duke-inferno-in-hsr.jpg?w=1024)
The HSR 2.0 version will bring the first of the Penacony Trailblaze missions. We also have a mix of leaks and official information about new characters being introduced in Honkai Star Rail 2.0, including a new Villainous sect — The Ever-Flame Mansion Family, led by Duke Ifrit Inferno.
Here is a complete list of upcoming characters in Penacony World:
Likely Villains and Bosses: Duke Inferno, Akash, Dubra, Caterina, Constance, Sam.
Notable NPCs and Possibly Future Playable Characters: Sunday, Robin, Misha, Firefly, Gallagher, Acheron, Black Swan, and Boothill.
All of us have high expectations of the Penacony trailblaze missions, and we will update you whenever we get any new news about them.
New Enemy Types and Fight Mechanics
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 will also feature many new enemies and fight mechanics. Recent leaks show many new enemies including weird Trash can-looking monsters. This will definitely be a problem for the Penacony trash-can hunt all of us are bound to do after the 2.0 release.
Updated Forgotten Hall Store
Honkai Star Rail 2.0 version will bring new Light Cones to the Forgotten Hall store. The latest leaks also reveal the 7 new Light Cones coming in the Forgotten Hall Store, one for each path.
This is great news for F2P players as the Forgotten Hall Store is completely based on in-game currency attained from the Forgotten Hall. There are a few really good Light Cones in the current version of the Forgotten Hall Store, and many of the new ones look quite good.
New Relic Inventory Filter, Leveling Option & Salvageable Items
![New Relic Salvage and Filter HSR](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/new-relic-salvage-and-filter-update-honkai-star-rail.jpg?w=1024)
HSR 2.0 version will also introduce a new much-needed Relic Inventory filter update. The new filter will allow players to filter specific Main and Sub stats of Relics. Players will be able to do this on top of filtering a specific Relic set.
Another major update coming to HSR 2.0 is the ‘Enhance to Next Stage‘ option. When leveling up relics in HSR, the game roles for additional sub-stats (or enhances one existing sub-stat) every 3 levels of the Relic. With the new feature, players won’t have to manually optimize the Relic XPs to hit the next roll level for the Relic, instead, they will be able to select the Enhance to Next Stage option to achieve the same result.
Other than that, Relics will be salvageable into Lost Gold Fragments with the 2.0 update, allowing players to keep their inventory clean while keeping a handy Relic XP material.
Orlay Crossroads System — New Mission Tracker
The Orlay Crossroads system is also coming in the HSR 2.0 version and it will act as a mission tracker for all the Trailblaze, Trailblaze Continuance, Companion, and certain Adventure missions, ordering them by their timeline and locations. This is a good feature as it will help players keep track of the story.
New Achievements
A new explorable area also means new achievements, and the 2.0 HSR version will have 97 new achievements, according to recent leaks. Some of the achievements are quite wacky, like We get hit by a car, or talk to Cielo using a character shorter than her.
So, there you have it. This is everything we know about the upcoming Honkai Star Rail 2.0 update. We will update any new information announced by HoYoverse accordingly. Share your thoughts about the 2.0 version in the comment section.