If you’ve ever stared at your character screen frustrated because you don’t have a matching 5-star light cone to make your main DPS hit harder, you’re not alone. Most new players struggle to stockpile enough rare, useful light cones for their full roster, even after sinking dozens of hours into the game. We’ve tested every available method over months of play to figure out how to get more light cones in Honkai: Star Rail without wasting your hard-earned Stellar Jade or real money. These tips work for both casual F2P players who log in a few times a week and paying players who want to get the most value out of every purchase.
How to Get More Light Cones in Honkai: Star Rail Via Permanent Free Sources
You don’t have to spend a single cent to get high-quality light cones, even 5-star options, if you know where to look. Most of these sources reset on a set schedule, so you can plan your farming routine around them to build your collection steadily. We’ve ranked the most efficient free sources below based on time investment and reward value:
- Forgotten Hall and Pure Fiction rewards: Clear these endgame challenge stages each bi-weekly reset to earn Undying Starlight, HSR’s premium free currency that you can exchange directly for 4-star and limited 5-star light cones in the shop. Even clearing the first 5 floors of each mode gives you enough currency to pick up a 4-star cone every 2 months, no pulls required.
- Simulated Universe rewards: Run World 7 and 8 on difficulty 4 or higher to earn random light cone drop rewards, plus Herta Bonds that you can trade for exclusive 5-star light cones in the Herta Shop. The best part? You can run these stages on auto once your team is built enough, so you don’t have to actively play to get rewards while you do other tasks.
- Event and login rewards: Almost every limited-time event gives out at least one free 4-star event-exclusive light cone, often with effects that are perfectly tailored to the event’s featured 5-star character. Don’t skip these events, even if you don’t plan to pull for the featured unit, since the event cones are often better than standard gacha 4-star options for niche support and DPS builds.
You can also earn free light cone warp tickets from daily and weekly mission rewards, which give you a chance to pull 4 and 5-star cones on both the limited and standard banners. Don’t waste these tickets on standard banner pulls if you’re chasing a specific limited cone, though, since limited banner pulls give you a guarantee of getting the featured cone after 80 pulls. That reliability makes it far easier to plan your collection around characters you already use regularly, instead of crossing your fingers for a random lucky drop.
Optimize Your Warp Strategy For Higher Quality Light Cones
Even if you only have a small stash of Stellar Jade to spend on warps, you can adjust your strategy to get more useful light cones instead of random 3-star junk you’ll never use. The biggest mistake new players make is spreading their pulls across multiple banners at once, which drastically lowers your chance of hitting a pity for a specific high-value cone. Always save your pulls for limited light cone banners that feature a cone that matches one of your existing main characters, instead of pulling on standard or character banners just because you have 10 pulls saved.
Limited light cone banners have a 75% chance that your 5-star pull will be the featured cone, and if you lose the 50/50, your next 5-star is guaranteed to be the featured one. That means you can get a specific 5-star cone for around 120 pulls on average, which is far more reliable than hoping to get lucky on the standard banner. This method is far more consistent than any other way to get more light cones in Honkai: Star Rail if you’re targeting a specific rare option for your main DPS.
You also get Undying Embers from every duplicate light cone you pull, which you can exchange for useful materials like super imposition materials, or even extra warp tickets if you have enough saved up. Don’t feed duplicate 4-star cones to other cones for XP, either, since superimposing a cone to level 5 gives you far bigger stat and effect boosts than using it as fodder. It’s always better to save duplicates for super imposition unless you have 6 or more copies of the same cone.
Paid Methods To Get More Light Cones Without Wasting Money
If you’re comfortable spending a small amount of money on the game, there are a few high-value purchases that will give you far more light cones than buying raw Stellar Jade directly. Skip the one-time Stellar Jade packs in the shop, since they offer almost no extra value compared to subscription options, and you’ll end up paying 3x more for the same number of pulls. The monthly Express Supply Pass is by far the best value purchase for light cone farming, giving you 90 Stellar Jade per day plus extra materials for just $5 a month, which adds up to enough for 2 full 10-pulls every month.
The Nameless Glory battle pass is another great option, giving you a free 4-star light cone selector of your choice at level 30, plus extra warp tickets and Undying Starlight as you level up the pass. If you only buy one paid item each patch, make it the battle pass, since it gives you more than 10x the value of buying equivalent Stellar Jade directly. These small purchases will help you get more light cones in Honkai: Star Rail faster without draining your bank account.
Avoid buying individual light cones from the paid shop unless it’s a cone you desperately need for a character you use every day, since they’re extremely overpriced compared to earning them via warps or free sources. You also get exclusive light cone rewards from paid event packs sometimes, so check the shop at the start of every new patch to see if there are any limited high-value offers that fit your budget. We’ve seen event packs that give a 4-star cone plus 10 pulls for $10, which is a far better deal than buying pulls individually.
Common Mistakes That Slow Down Your Light Cone Collection
Even if you follow all the farming and warp tips we’ve shared, small mistakes can set your collection back by weeks or even months. The most common mistake we see new players make is wasting Undying Starlight on 4-star character dupes instead of saving it for limited 5-star light cones. A 5-star light cone gives a far bigger boost to your team’s performance than a single character dupe, even for your main DPS unit. Unless you’re a competitive player pushing for top 100 leaderboard ranks, there’s no reason to buy character dupes with Starlight before you have all the 5-star cones you need for your main roster.
Another mistake is feeding 4-star light cones to 5-star cones for XP, when you can farm far cheaper XP materials from the Calyx stages in less than 10 minutes a day. 4-star cones are far more valuable as super imposition fodder, or even as placeholders for characters you haven’t built yet, than they are as XP material. You should also avoid pulling on the standard light cone banner at all costs, since there’s no way to target a specific cone, and you could end up with dozens of useless 5-star cones for characters you don’t even own.
So if you’ve been wasting your Starlight on cosmetic items or character dupes, stop right now and start saving for the next limited 5-star cone that fits your main team. You’ll notice a huge jump in your team’s power as soon as you get that matching cone for your main DPS or support unit, and you won’t have to grind extra hours to make up for the wasted resources.
Building a strong collection of light cones doesn’t have to require thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours of grinding if you work smart, not hard. By prioritizing the free sources we listed, optimizing your warp strategy, and avoiding common wasteful mistakes, you can figure out how to get more light cones in Honkai: Star Rail that fit your exact team composition in a fraction of the time. Don’t stress if you don’t have every 5-star cone right away – even F2P players can build a full roster of well-equipped characters with a little patience and planning.
