Honkai: Star Rail Ruan Mei banner: Release date, kit, abilities, and more

Ruan Mei is an upcoming playable unit in Honkai: Star Rail and a lot of information about her has been shared ahead of her official release.

Recruiting new characters in Honkai: Star Rail is a tough process thanks to the brutal nature of the gacha system, so it’s always quite helpful to save up for the characters you want as far in advance as you can. If you’re interested in Ruan Mei, then you’ll want to learn about her abilities, her kit, and her release date to prepare for her arrival as much as possible.

Ruan Mei element in Honkai: Star Rail

Ruan Mei has control over Ice, so she’ll be able to inflict the Frozen debuff against opponents and all of her skills will be based around this element.

Ruan Mei path in Honkai: Star Rail

The Harmony path is the one Ruan Mei aligns with. Characters who are a part of this path specialize in buffing the team to enhance their overall combat capabilities, which means she’ll be a strong support-focused unit like Bronya or Tingyun.

Ruan Mei rarity in Honkai: Star Rail

Ruan Mei will be one of two five-star characters featured in the Version 1.6 update. This means she can only ever be recruited from her exclusive limited banner.

Her banner will debut in 1.6 and then likely won’t come back for a rerun for at least six months or more, but she will certainly return again many times in the future.

Ruan Mei abilities in Honkai: Star Rail

Ruan Mei has two drastically different leaked skillsets and it’s currently unknown which one is accurate. Regardless of which skillset ends up being correct or if it’s a mix of both, Ruan Mei’s abilities seem to focus a lot on weakness break.

A general outline of how Ruan Mei’s leaked abilities are believed to function is as follows. All of the abilities are missing the exact statistics and numbers associated with them since this information is not yet available.

Leaked skillset No. 1

• Basic attack: Deals an amount of Ice damage against a selected target.
• Skill: Raises the damage dealt by the entire team.
• Ultimate: Ruan Mei creates a barrier for the team which then raises their overall attack while in range. Additionally, when an opponent’s shield is broken and this barrier is active, a mark is applied to them. This mark increases the length the weakened state is active on the selected opponent.
• Talent: Raises the damage dealt by the entire party against foes who are afflicted by the weakened state.
• Technique: Ruan Mei activates a barrier that eliminates all enemy hostility within its range. If you choose to attack an enemy while the barrier is active, all allies will have their break effect drastically increased for a few rounds after entering battle.

Leaked skillset No. 2

• Basic attack: Deals a percentage of Ruan Mei’s attack as Ice damage against a selected target.
• Skill: Raises Ruan Mei’s speed by a specified percentage and boosts her allies’ speed too. This will last for a few turns.
• Ultimate: All allies are buffed by Ruan Mei for a few turns and have their weakness break ability increased. When the weakness of an enemy is broken, this Ultimate then activates a special effect when they recover from the weakness break to extend it and delay their action. Ice damage is also dealt against them and this effect cannot be applied to a target until they have recovered from weakness break.
• Talent: When a teammate is hit with weakness break, the damage they deal is boosted.
• Technique: After Ruan Mei uses this ability, all teammates have their attack boosted at the beginning of the next battle based on the total amount of her attack. This will last for a few turns.

Ruan Mei kit in Honkai: Star Rail

Since Ruan Mei is part of The Harmony path, her kit is dedicated to supplying her allies with strong support through buffs. Even though her exact abilities are unknown since there are two major leaked versions of it floating around, Ruan Mei should still be a buffing-centric Harmony unit unless she ends up being a character guilty of path-crossing.

Regardless of which of the two skillsets ends up being accurate, Ruan Mei seems to possess some incredibly useful weakness-break-focused abilities. If these end up being as powerful as they seem, she’ll be an unmatched support ally capable of rendering opponents so weak you’ll likely not need any kind of defense present on your team because of how quickly you’ll be able to vanquish all opposing lineups.

Ruan Mei personality in Honkai: Star Rail

Ruan Mei is described as a “sweet-tempered and elegant scholar.” She’s the 81st member of the Genius Society and a devoted expert in biological sciences.

She was invited by the Aeon Nous to join the Genius Society thanks to her “talent and terrifying perseverance.” After she joined, Ruan Mei “began her research on the origin of life in a secret corner of the universe.”

Ruan Mei also collaborated with Herta, Screwllum, and Stephen to create the Simulated Universe. Outside of her scholarly pursuits, Ruan Mei “enjoys traditional theater and desserts” and is highly “interested in embroidery.”

Ruan Mei release date in Honkai: Star Rail

Ruan Mei was first unveiled on Oct. 31 with Dr. Ratio and Xueyi, which means she’ll officially be released sometime during Version 1.6. Dr. Ratio is also a five-star character, so Ruan Mei will either be available for the first half of the update or the second half.

If Ruan Mei debuts during the first phase of Version 1.6, then she’ll become available for about three weeks starting on Dec. 20, 2023. But if Dr. Ratio is the phase one character instead, then Ruan Mei won’t be released until about the middle of January 2024, likely around Jan. 10, 2024.

Either way, you’ve got a decent amount of time to save up for her if you’re hoping to add Ruan Mei to your roster. You’ll certainly want to pull for her debut banner if you can since she’ll become unobtainable for a long period of time, likely around six months, immediately afterward.