We’ve all been there: you spend 40 pulls on a limited 5-star character you’ve been waiting months for, only to realize you can’t make them hit as hard as content creators show off, because their relics are garbage. The difference between a mid-tier and broken character almost always comes down to the quality of their relic set, but the grind can feel endless if you don’t have a clear plan. That’s exactly why we put together this no-fluff guide covering how to farm relics in Honkai Star Rail without wasting weeks of your free time on useless drops.
How to Farm Relics in Honkai Star Rail Without Wasting Your Trailblaze Power
Trailblaze Power is the most valuable resource you have for relic farming, so you need to spend it intentionally before you even step into a cavern. Most new players make the mistake of farming relics as soon as they hit Trailblaze Level 40, when 5-star relics first become possible drops. That’s a huge waste of power, because the drop rate for 5-star relics at that level is barely 10%, and most of the drops you get will be 4-star pieces you’ll replace within a few weeks of leveling up. Never spend your reserved Trailblaze Power or Fuel on relic farms before you hit Trailblaze Level 65 , when 5-star relics are guaranteed as drops for every run.
You can spend a small amount of power on relic runs at level 50 or 55 if you’re hard stuck on Memory of Chaos or Simulated Universe runs, but only farm for placeholder 4-star sets that you can use temporarily. Don’t upgrade any of these pieces past level 6, because you’ll salvage them as soon as you start getting 5-star drops at level 65. If you’re F2P, you only get around 240 Trailblaze Power a day for free, so every bit you waste on low-level farms sets you back days of progress on endgame builds.
You also want to split your power appropriately between Caverns of Corrosion (for regular 4-piece relic sets) and Planar Ornament runs (for 2-piece set bonuses that apply to stats like ATK%, CRIT Rate, or break effect). Regular caverns cost 40 power per run, while planar ornament runs cost 60, so plan your budget ahead depending on what parts of your build you’re missing.
Prioritize These Relic Sets First to Cut Down Grind Time
One of the biggest mistakes new players make is farming niche, character-specific sets before they have solid universal sets for their entire roster. For example, if you don’t own Blade or Imbibitor Lunae, farming the Longevous Disciple set is a total waste of time, because no other character in the game gets full value from its 4-piece bonus. You’ll get way more value out of farming sets that work for 3 or more characters on your account first, even if they’re not the absolute best in slot for your main DPS. You can cut your total grind time in half by only farming sets that work for 3 or more characters on your roster .
If you’re not sure which sets to start with, these universal sets are a safe bet for 90% of account rosters, no matter what 5-star characters you have:
- Musketeer of Wild Wheat: Works for all physical DPS characters, plus many attack-scaling supports like Tingyun and Asta
- Passkey of Lonesome Traveler: Universal break effect set that works for every team composition, no matter what elements you run
- Space Sealing Station: Fits 90% of attack-scaling DPS characters regardless of element, so you don’t have to farm separate planar sets for every damage dealer
- Broken Keel: Best universal support planar ornament set for characters with high effect RES, like Luocha, Gepard, and Fu Xuan
Space Sealing Station is the best universal planar ornament set for most DPS characters , so if you’re just starting your endgame relic grind, run that dungeon first until you have solid 2-piece sets for all your damage dealers. You can go back to farm niche, character-specific sets later once your core team is fully built.
Optimize Your Runs for Higher Quality Relic Drops
There are a lot of small, underrated tricks to get more and better relic drops without spending extra jades or Trailblaze Power. The biggest one is saving all your Fuel and reserved Trailblaze Power for double relic drop events, which run roughly once every 6 weeks. During these events, you get twice as many relic drops per run for the same power cost, which effectively doubles your grind speed for the duration of the event. I usually save up 30+ Fuel for these events, and I’ve gotten entire perfect sets in 3 days of farming during double drops, compared to 3 weeks of regular farming.
Use the Relic Filter feature in your inventory to mark unwanted substats before you start farming runs , so you don’t waste 10 minutes after every run checking each relic to see if it’s worth keeping. You can set filters to automatically mark relics with bad main stats or unwanted substats as salvageable, so you can clear your inventory in 10 seconds after every run. If you’re farming with a friend, you also get a small 10% drop rate boost for co-op runs, which adds up over dozens of runs a week.
Don’t forget to use the relic synthesis system when you’re missing a single piece of a set. A lot of players spend weeks farming the same dungeon trying to get a CRIT Rate body piece for their main DPS, when they could synthesize one in 10 minutes using extra relic drops they’ve salvaged. You can synthesize 1 5-star relic of any set you’ve unlocked per week, so use that feature to fill gaps in your builds instead of grinding for impossible drops. Always spend 10% of your monthly jades on Trailblaze Power refills if you’re actively building characters , because it’s way more value than pulling on the standard banner for most F2P players.
Avoid These Common Relic Farming Mistakes That Waste Hours of Grind
Even if you follow all the tips above, you can still waste dozens of hours of grind if you’re making these common mistakes. The first one is upgrading every 5-star relic you get just because it’s a 5-star. I’ve seen players waste 100,000+ relic XP upgrading a 5-star body piece with a DEF main stat for their DPS, just because it had one good CRIT DMG substat. If a relic doesn’t have the correct main stat for the character you’re building, salvage it immediately, no matter how good the substats look. A 4-star relic with the correct main stat will always outperform a 5-star relic with the wrong main stat, even at max level.
Another mistake is farming relics for characters you don’t actually use. A lot of new players will farm a full set for a 5-star they pulled randomly, even if they don’t have the supports to make that character viable, and then never touch the character again. Only farm relics for characters that are already on your main team, or that you know you’ll be adding to your team in the next month. Don’t farm sets for characters you might pull in the future, because you could end up wasting weeks of grind on a set you never use.
Never upgrade a relic that has more than two flat non-scaling substats for endgame use , because it will never be competitive with percentage-based rolls. Flat ATK, flat DEF, and flat HP rolls are only useful for low-level characters, and they waste roll slots that could have gone to percentage stats, CRIT, or speed. If a 5-star relic drops with 3 flat substats, salvage it immediately, even if the main stat is correct. The odds of it rolling the good single substat multiple times are so low, it’s not worth wasting the XP to test it.
Relic farming doesn’t have to be the soul-crushing grind that a lot of players make it out to be. You don’t need perfect 5-substat rolls for every character to clear all endgame content, you just need to be smart with how you spend your resources and what sets you prioritize. I used to spend 2 hours a day running relic farms and getting nothing but flat DEF rolls, but after switching to these strategies, I got a perfect set for my Jing Yuan in 3 weeks, which cut my clear time for most endgame content by half. At the end of the day, the goal of learning how to farm relics in Honkai Star Rail isn’t to get perfect rolls every time, it’s to get good enough sets that you can enjoy the game without spending all your free time grinding dungeons.
