How the pity system works in Honkai: Star Rail

Like all of miHoYo’s other gems, Honkai: Star Rail is centered around an expansive cast of unique characters. Obtaining characters, however, remains a laborious feat as players will be battling with unpredictable gacha mechanics, but luckily the underlying pity system will ensure players eventually end up with the assets they desire.

Honkai: Star Rail’s pity system functions behind the scenes of the larger gacha system which players will experience through the various Warp banners. Warps are basically the Honkai: Star Rail version of Genshin’s Wishes and will grant players powerful rewards after they first put in a massive amount of work.

Related: This Honkai Star Rail cheat sheet makes choosing your character super easy

The gacha system is known for being unforgiving, but players who understand the pity system will at least know they are guaranteed to eventually obtain what they are after as long as they strategize carefully. While most of Honkai: Star Rail’s gameplay features are carefully explained to players, the pity system remains an underlying feature as it is in most of miHoYo’s games, which likely means many players are unfamiliar with how it works.

If you’re looking to obtain the best assets that Honkai: Star Rail has to offer, you’ll need to learn how the pity system functions so that you can utilize it to guarantee the desired results.

How does the pity system work in Honkai: Star Rail?

As the name hints, the pity system is the gacha system taking pity on unlucky players. Pity is tied to the rolls that players make through Honkai: Star Rail’s gacha system and essentially guarantees players will receive rare assets after a specified number of pulls.

If you’re familiar with the gacha system in Genshin and Honkai Impact then you already have a solid understanding of how it works in Honkai: Star Rail. The gacha system makes it so every roll—or as it is also called in Honkai: Star Rail every Warp—has a random chance of granting players any of the available items.

The best way to conceptualize this system is to think of it like a toy vending machine packed with a wide array of items. Some of these items are more common while others are extremely rare. Every time you use the machine you will randomly receive one of the available assets just as every time you roll in Honkai: Star Rail you will randomly receive a character or weapon.

Without any extra rules, this system is luck based, notoriously unpredictable, and would result in many players never obtaining the assets that they desire. But miHoYo luckily implements a few extra rules to ensure players will always eventually get their desired loot which is primarily reliant on the pity system.

With the general functions and rules of the gacha system in mind, here’s how the pity system comes into play in Honkai: Star Rail.

• The pity system grants players at least one four-star character for every 10 pulls that they make on a character banner.
  • If the four-star you pull is not one of the featured four-stars then the next four-star you receive is guaranteed to be one of them.
• The pity system grants players a guaranteed five-star character for every 90 pulls they make on a character banner.
  • While you are guaranteed a five-star character every 90 pulls, there is a 50/50 chance that it will be the featured recruit.
  • If you lose the 50/50 and get another five-star character that was not the featured one then the next time you obtain a five-star recruit on a character banner it is guaranteed to be the featured one thanks to the pity system.
• The pity system guarantees players at least one four-star Light Cone for every 10 pulls made on a Light Cone banner.
  • Players have a 50/50 chance of receiving a featured four-star Light Cone the first time they receive one. If it is not a featured Light Cone then there is a 100 percent chance it will be one of the featured ones.
• The pity system guarantees players a five-star Light Cone for every 80 pulls made on a Light Cone banner.
  • When players receive a five-star Light Cone it has a 75 percent chance of being a featured one. If it isn’t, then they are guaranteed to receive a featured one next time.
• Your pity will transfer between all banners of the same type but does not apply to banners of a different type.
  • This means that all players will build pity individually for each unique banner type including the Standard Warp, the Character Event Warp, and the Light Cone Event Warp.
• Although it has not been officially confirmed by miHoYo yet, Honkai: Star Rail seems to have a soft pity cap like Genshin.
  • This means that once you reach a certain number of pulls, your chances of obtaining a five-star asset continuously increase until you obtain it sooner than the guaranteed cap or when you obtain it by reaching the guaranteed cap.
  • Many players have been reporting on Reddit and other social media platforms that this cap seems to be around 75 wishes and that most players should thus obtain a five-star between 70 and 80 pulls.

In our experience, Genshin’s gacha and pity system is brutal and mostly unforgiving with fairly dire statistics that can be discouraging when you are unlucky. But Honkai: Star Rail’s statistics are overall more forgiving and generous, which means players are at least a bit more likely to receive their desired assets.

When does pity reset in Honkai: Star Rail?

The pity system resets for the specific banner type anytime you receive a five-star asset. But it will only reset for the specific banner type that you received the five-star asset from.

This means when you receive a five-star character from the limited Character Event Warp your pity will reset for any banner of this type but will not affect the pity you have built on the Standard Warp or the Light Cone Event Warp.

Related: How to use the Honkai: Star Rail Interactive Map

Individualized pity may be a tough concept for players who are new to miHoYo’s games to understand, so think of each unique Warp banner as its own separate vending machine that may occasionally receive some new goods for you to obtain. But while new goods may come, the number of assets within the machine continuously shrinks until you have received the one you want most at which point it is then restocked entirely.

How do you guarantee a five-star in Honkai: Star Rail?

While the gacha system is mostly unpredictable and luck based, the pity system allows players to guarantee a five-star of their choice. Players can ensure they unlock their desired five-star by building their pity so they have a guaranteed 50/50 win when they reach 90 pulls.

There are a few ways to go about ensuring that you build your pity and obtain your desired five-star, but the safest way is to build up as many pulls as possible and then spend as many as necessary on your desired banner.

In other miHoYo games, many players choose to build up their pity across other banners leading up to the one they really want, but this is dangerous since there is always a chance you might get unexpectedly lucky and recruit another featured five-star by accident which would then reset your pity.

Building pity on other banners is useful when you do lose the 50/50 as intended since you’ll then know you’re guaranteed your desired five-star when you reach their banner, but if you win the 50/50 on a character you don’t want then you’ll be as far away as possible from pulling your desired recruit.

Because of these factors, the only true way to guarantee that you receive your desired character is to build up 180 pulls if you have not yet lost a 50/50 or build up 90 pulls if you have already lost the 50/50. You’ll then need to spend as many pulls as it takes to receive the desired five-star unit.

Regardless of which spot you’re in, you’ll be guaranteed to get your desired character or Light Cone and will likely receive them sooner than the full amount of wishes unless you end up being extremely unlucky.

Can you check your pity in Honkai: Star Rail?

There is no easy way to view what your pity is in Honkai: Star Rail. Players can, however, use the same system that Travelers employ in Genshin to calculate their pity for themselves.

On each unique Warp banner, players can determine their pity by reviewing the history of that specific Warp. This can be done by selecting the “records” button on any banner. This will then show players their pull history and every asset that they have claimed from the banner.

Since a five-star is guaranteed for every 90 pulls for characters and every 80 pulls for Light Cones, players can count the assets they have received for each individual banner to determine how close to receiving either one they are. This is thus the pity number and will help you strategize for obtaining your desired recruit.