How to solve Navigation Compass puzzles in Honkai: Star Rail

While enjoying the sights and battles across The Xianzhou Luofu in Honkai: Star Rail, you may have encountered a variety of puzzles, including the Hexanexus Puzzles and potentially the Navigation Compass puzzles.

Related: How to solve the Abacus Circuitry Puzzle in Honkai: Star Rail

These exciting pieces of content are scattered across the various areas of The Xianzhou Luofu and offer great rewards. But they can be challenging to solve.

Honkai: Star Rail: How to solve the Navigation Compass puzzles

For the most part, the Navigation Compass puzzles are easy to solve. When you first encounter a compass in the Xianzhou Luofu, you’ll be given a general overview of how the compass works.

How does the Navigation Compass work?

Essentially, you must align the compass rings with one another so they all point in the correct direction. 

When the Astral Marks are blue, you have correctly positioned that ring; when they’re orange, it means the ring isn’t in the correct position.

The Navigation Compass has three rings you may need to rotate: an Inner, Mid, and Outer. When you are locked onto a specific ring, it emits an orange glow and an icon underneath the compass indicates the ring. 

So, the Inner ring is the first dot, the Mid ring is the second dot, and the Outer ring is the third dot. The dots will glow orange to match the corresponding ring.

This is an example of an outer ring’s appearance when it’s been selected or ‘switched’ to. As you can see, the Outer ring is glowing orange, and the third dot beneath the compass is orange. 

There are also two main buttons you’ll need to use: Switch and Rotate. When you press ‘Switch,” you’ll switch between the rings or ring combinations. When you press ‘Rotate,’ you will rotate that specific ring, and it’s Astral Mark.

How do you solve the Navigation Compass puzzles?

To solve the Navigation Compass puzzles, you will use the Switch and Rotate buttons to move the orange Astral Marks around the compass until they’re pointing in the same direction as the blue Astral Mark on the left.

For the easy puzzles, you can move each ring individually, meaning if you select the Inner ring, you will only move the Inner ring. So, you’ll move each ring until the Astral Mark aligns with the mark on the left of the compass and turns blue. You’ll know when you’ve solved the puzzle when all Astral Marks are blue and the cargo ship arrives with your treasure chest.

For the more challenging puzzles, you’ll get ring combinations, meaning you may have to move both the Inner and Outer rings or maybe the Inner and Mid rings together. So, you’ll have to switch between the three-ring combinations until you align all Astral marks.

It’s not always easy, and you may even find yourself randomly switching back and forth between the rings while rotating them. But they are relatively easy to solve once you notice puzzle patterns. There are a few tips you can try if you’re struggling.

Tips for solving the more challenging Navigation Compass puzzles

When solving the harder ones, where you have to move two rings at once, switch between the rings to see if there’s a single ring or one that’s by itself. If your puzzle has this, you can save this ring for last and not worry about aligning it immediately. 

You can focus on the other ring first and then switch to the single ring, moving it last. You won’t always find this in the more challenging puzzles, but it’s always worth switching through the rings, in the beginning, to see if you can save a ring for last and get an easy win. 

Or you could work through the puzzle in the process of elimination format. An example of this would be the following puzzle ring combinations:

• Inner plus Mid ring
• Mid ring
• Inner plus Outer ring

For a combination like this, you would save the Mid ring for last, as it’s the most effortless ring to move, and you can focus on the other rings. 

So, you would solve it in the following steps:

1. Rotate the Inner plus Outer ring until the Outer ring’s Astral Mark is aligned and has turned blue. This is the hardest of the rings to move, so you’d want to get this one out of the way. By doing so, you’ve made it easier to discover which ring to move next.
2. Next, you’d rotate the Inner plus Mid ring until the Inner ring’s Astral Mark is aligned and has turned blue. 
3. Finally, you would rotate the Mid ring until the Astral Mark is aligned and has turned blue.

If you’re struggling to see a pattern or unsure of what to rotate, you can write it out like I’ve done above, so you can see if there’s a way for you to work through the puzzle in the same process of elimination style. It helped me to do it that way when I found a puzzle to be challenging, so hopefully, it can help you too.

But this is everything you need to know about the Navigation Compass puzzles in Honkai: Star Rail, how to solve them, and tips that may help you.