If you’ve ever stared down a tough Simulated Universe boss with no good support characters to borrow, or wanted to run co-op Forgotten Hall runs with your real-life friends, you already know how useful it is to figure out how to add friends on Honkai Star Rail. The game’s social features are surprisingly under-explained in the opening tutorial, so a lot of new players miss out on all the perks of having an active friends list for weeks after they start playing. I’ve been playing since launch, and I still add new friends every week to get access to different build types for my weekly challenges, so I’ve broken down every possible way to connect with other players below.
How to Add Friends on Honkai Star Rail: Official In-Game Steps
First, you don’t unlock the friends menu until you reach Trailblaze Level 17, so don’t panic if you don’t see the icon on your home screen when you first start playing. Once you hit that level, follow these steps to send friend requests in under a minute:
- Tap the phone icon in the top right corner of your screen to open the main menu
- Select the Friends tab, which is marked with a little person silhouette icon
- Click the Add Friend button on the bottom left of the friends menu
- Enter the player’s UID (you can find your own UID listed under your profile name on the main menu) or search for players using the recommended list
- Tap send request, and wait for the other player to accept your invite
The recommended list will populate with players around your Trailblaze Level, which is perfect if you’re looking for random friends to borrow supports from instead of connecting with people you know IRL. If you’re sending a request to someone you know, double check that you entered their UID correctly, even one wrong number will send the request to a completely different player, and most people ignore random requests from way lower or higher level players.
Perks of Building a Large Honkai Star Rail Friends List
A lot of players skip adding friends because they think the game is mostly single-player, but that’s a huge mistake. The rewards you get from having an active friends list add up really fast, and they make tough content way easier to clear. That’s one of the biggest hidden perks of learning how to add friends on Honkai Star Rail that most new players never find out about.
First, you can borrow one support character from any of your friends for almost every single PvE mode, including Simulated Universe, Forgotten Hall, and even event challenge stages. If you don’t have a built Hunt character for boss fights, adding a friend who has a fully kitted Seele or Jing Yuan can save you hours of frustration on hard stages. You also get daily friend credits every time you use a friend’s support, or when a friend uses your support character for their runs. You can exchange these credits for Star Rail Passes, Ascension materials, and even Stellar Jade in the in-game shop.
You also unlock the ability to join co-op missions once you have friends added, which is the only way to farm certain high-level materials fast without spending tons of Trailblaze Power. For example, the weekly Echo of War runs are 30% faster when you run them with two friends instead of matching with random players, and you’re way less likely to get a team full of under-built characters that wipe halfway through the fight.
Common Issues When Adding Friends (And How to Fix Them)
Even if you follow all the official steps correctly, you might run into a few common snags when trying to add friends. I’ve run into every single one of these at least once, so I know exactly how to fix them fast.
The most common issue is getting a “player not found” error when you enter a UID. This almost always happens because you’re on a different server than the player you’re trying to add. Honkai Star Rail doesn’t allow cross-server friend requests, so if you’re on the North America server and your friend is on the Europe server, you won’t be able to add each other no matter what you do. The only fix for this is to make an account on the same server as your friend, or find other players on your own server to connect with.
Another common problem is friend requests not showing up for the other player. This usually happens if either of you have your friend request privacy settings turned on. You can check this by opening the friends menu, tapping the settings icon in the top right, and making sure the “allow friend requests” option is toggled on. If you get a lot of random spam requests, you can also set it to only allow requests from people you’ve played co-op with previously, which cuts down on annoying invites a lot.
If your friends list is full, you won’t be able to send or accept any new requests. The default friends list cap is 60 players, so if you hit that limit, you’ll have to remove inactive players who haven’t logged in for 30+ days to make space for new active friends. That’s a super easy fix, and it also makes sure you always have access to recently updated support characters instead of characters that were built 6 months ago by people who quit playing.
Best Practices for Managing Your Honkai Star Rail Friends List
Once you have a solid list of friends, there are a few small things you can do to make sure you get the most value out of your friends list, and that other people want to keep you on their list too.
First, make sure you update your support character regularly to match the current meta or popular event requirements. For example, if there’s a new event that requires a lot of Ice damage, swap your support to your strongest Ice character instead of leaving your low-level starter character up. People are way more likely to use your support if it’s useful, which means you get more daily friend credits without having to do any extra work.
You should also remove inactive players once every two weeks. Any player who hasn’t logged in for more than 2 weeks isn’t going to accept your co-op invites, and their support characters are probably outdated, so they’re just taking up space. I usually do a quick purge every Sunday, and it only takes 2 minutes to scroll through my list and remove anyone who’s been offline for a while.
If you’re adding random players from the recommended list, try to pick players who have characters you don’t have built on your account. For example, if you don’t have a 5-star Abundance character, look for players who have a built Luocha or Bailu as their support, so you can borrow them for tough content where you need extra healing. That way every new friend you add adds actual value to your account, instead of just being a random name on your list.
At the end of the day, even if you prefer playing solo most of the time, taking 10 minutes to figure out how to add friends on Honkai Star Rail will make your entire playthrough way smoother and more rewarding. You don’t have to chat or play co-op if you don’t want to, just having access to stronger support characters and extra free rewards every month is more than worth the small amount of effort it takes to build your list. Next time you’re stuck on a tough boss or running low on materials, give your friends list a look, you’ll probably find exactly the support character you need to clear the stage first try.
