The endgame ofHonkai: Star Railis a robust one, with three pinnacle game modes that ask for different skill sets and team compositions, with Pure Fiction asking players to defeat as many enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time. The more enemies you defeat, the higher your score, and with higher scores come better rewards.
As an endgame mode, don’t expect to conquer Pure Fiction without significant investment in some good characters, and even unlocking the mode takes time. Discover everything you need to know about Pure Fiction here.
How to Unlock Pure Fiction
You won’t be playing any Pure Fiction until you’ve put a few dozen hours of playtime into Honkai: Star Rail over several days. Unlocking the mode requires completing a few steps first:
There are many more activities, missions, and methods to increase Trailblaze Levels than there used to be. However, the campaign still has significant level gates, starting early in the Jarilo-VI storyline and extending well into the Xianzhou portion of the game.
Specifically, the level gates require you to:
How fast you can breach each Trailblaze Level gate will depend on how much time you invest in the game daily and if you’re willing to spend real-world money to expedite the process (which, for the record, is not necessary).
You’re likely to be at or around Trailblaze Level 36 by the time you defeat Phantylia, meaning you’ll be doing some additional grinding to reach Trailblaze Level 40 and unlocking access to Pure Fiction.
How Pure Fiction Works
Pure Fiction tests how fast two of your teams can defeat three sets of enemy waves.Every action your teams take awards points, and each enemy defeated, awards significantly more.
The waves are separated by the number and type of enemies faced.
Each wave has a set number of enemies, and if possible,you will always be fighting five enemies at a time. You have a time limit of four cycles (one set of turns for your team, one for the enemy) , and if you don’t finish all the enemies efficiently enough, you could end up wasting part of a cycle fighting only one enemy, wasting both time and points.
Your goal in Pure Fiction is to reach 60,000 points across both rounds. You can only earn a maximum of 40,000 points for defeating every enemy in the first round, so you must get at least 20,000 points in the second round or vice versa. In practice, and without a hefty investment in the best characters for the mode, you’re more likely to get around 32,000 points or so per round at the highest difficulty you can complete.
There are four levels of Pure Fiction, with higher levels adding higher-level enemies. Specifically:
Each level of Pure Fiction also has different enemies to fight,meaning the team composition that beat level one might not be ideal for level two, and so on.Each version of Pure Fiction also comes with a special buff for a particular damage playstyle, like damage over time (DoT), follow-up attacks, or Break Effect.
There are alsoteam-specific buffs you can apply if one or both of your setups don’t synergize with the current activity buff.
Lastly,there’s a quick-clear feature once you’ve completed a level of Pure Fiction.When the next phase of the mode arrives after 42 days, you’ll be able to clear up to level three of Pure Fiction with 60,000 points and automatically clear the two lower levels, earning their rewards without having to trouble yourself with lower-difficulty chores.
How to Beat Pure Fiction
As with the other endgame modes in Honkai: Star Rail, certain characters are better in Pure Fiction than they are elsewhere, with some exceptions. And because of the mode’s emphasis on area-of-effect damage, characters thataren’tas effective anywhere else are suddenly at the top of the tier list.
Some of these surprisingly ascendant characters, and the other ones you want to complete Pure Fiction are:
Himeko
Main DPS
As an Erudition character, Himeko is the one standard banner 5-star that excels in Pure Fiction thanks to theamazing AoE damage in her follow-up attack and Ultimate, and AoE Fire damage being a rarer element
Herta
Like Himeko,Herta’s ability to hit every enemy on the field with all of her abilities, and a follow-up attack that hits based on how many enemies have reached 50% health, makes her ideal for Pure Fiction.
Argenti
Argenti continues Erudition’s dominance, offeringtop-tier AoE Physical damage, which is hard to come by in any capacity. Only Yunli really competes with Argenti in that respect.
Jade
Sub-DPS
Jade offers AoE Quantum damage and buffs your main DPS. She won’t be soloing Pure Fiction without somesignificantinvestment, but she immediately amplifies any Erudition team, and especially follow-up attack versions.
Rappa
Rappa is one of the best Erudition characters, asshe can function as a main DPS outside of the mode almost as well as she does in it. Her Imaginary AoE damage and Super Break amplification make her an absolute mostner, if she’s part of your team.
Aventurine
Sustain
Aventurine makes it so your team ends a Pure Fiction run without taking a point of damagethanks to the massive Shields he provides the team. His follow up attacks also add some supplemental damage and weakness break, meaning he’s good in almost any team setup.
Robin
Support
There aren’t many characters Robincan’tbuff, whether they rely on Ultimate, follow-up attacks, or more traditional Skills.Her ability to instantly give your team a second set of turns with her own Ultimate is almost overkill.
Yunli
Yunli isn’tquiteas good as Argenti when it comes to Physical AoE damage, butas a Destruction unit, she is still a fantastic choice, especially against the beefier elite and boss enemies.
Acheron
Acheron requires a bit more investment and a specific team composition for optimal damage, buteven without every tool at her disposal, she can reach some of the highest DPS numbers in the game.
Lingsha
Lingsha has a lot going for her, includingAoE Fire damage with every aspect of her kit, top-tier healing, and general utility. She magnifies the potential of characters like Firefly, but any follow-up attack or Super Break team would be happy to have her.
Ruan Mei
Ruan Mei is one of those characters that can fit into any team comp and make it better,with her ability to improve and extend Weakness Break, plus her absurd damage buffs.
Gallagher
One of only two four-stars at the top of the Pure Fiction list,Gallagher offers clunky but effective healing, good Break Effect, and AoE Fire damage on top of it all.
Fu Xuan
The Crit buffs Fu Xuan provides, as well as her ability to reduce team-wide damage, makes her a solid choice for Pure Fiction, andshe works well in almost any team regardless of composition.
You don’t need all of these characters to be successful in Pure Fiction, and if you’re a newer player you won’t have few or any of them. That list is a good starting point for characters you’re able to save for when they come around again on the limited banners, which usually takes six to eight months from their initial release or rerun.
Once you have the right team, you’ll need to use their kits optimally, especially on Pure Fiction level four.Focus your attention on elite and boss enemies, as these usually come with additional abilities that can make your life difficult, butdon’t ignore the mooks, either. Death by a thousand cuts is still very much a thing.
One final note:never worry about not being able to get to the 60,000 points on level four, as you might not have the perfect team to conquer it every time. Clearing levels one through three is overall more valuable, and even if you can only get 40,000 on level four, you’re only missing out on the equivalent of a single pull on either banner, which is a fine sacrifice to make.
