If you’ve ever spent 300 stamina farming a relic set only to walk away with three garbage 3-star drops and zero usable main stats, you know how frustrating gearing your Honkai: Star Rail characters can be. There’s no worse feeling than unlocking a new 5-star unit you’ve been saving for, only to realize you don’t have a single decent relic to slot on them. This guide breaks down exactly how to get more relics in honkai star rail, plus tricks to make sure more of those drops are actually worth keeping, instead of just fodder for leveling.
How to Get More Relics in Honkai Star Rail Without Wasting Stamina
Stamina (called trailblaze power in-game) is the biggest limit on how many relics you can farm, so optimizing how you use it is the fastest way to grow your collection. The first rule is to save all your stamina reserves and fuel for double relic drop events, which run every few months. These events double every relic drop from cavern runs, so you get twice as many relics for the exact same stamina cost. I always save at least 10 fuel items for these events, and I’ve gotten as many as 12 5-star relics in one day during past double drops.
You also want to avoid letting your trailblaze power cap out for long stretches. Power regenerates one point every 6 minutes, so if you let it hit the 180 cap and stay there for 8 hours while you sleep or work, you’re losing out on 80 free power per day. Even setting two quick phone reminders to log in and use power before it caps can give you 7 extra cavern runs per week, no extra effort required. Don’t forget to claim the trailblaze power overflow from the daily activity bar either, it gives you 60 extra power per day for free as long as you hit 500 activity points.
Hidden Relic Sources Most Players Ignore
Caverns of Corrosion are the most obvious source of relics, but they’re far from the only one. Most players miss out on dozens of free relics every month by skipping other game modes that don’t cost any stamina to run. The biggest hidden source is Simulated Universe rewards. Every time you clear a world, you get relic drops as a reward, and the weekly point exchange lets you pick up two 5-star relic crates every week for free. I used to ignore this exchange for months, and once I started claiming those crates regularly, I got three perfect main stat pieces for my Kafka in one month without spending any extra stamina.
You can also get free relics from Forgotten Hall clears, both from first-time floor clears and the bi-weekly reset rewards. The Forgotten Hall shop also lets you exchange leftover currency for set-specific 5-star relics sometimes, so you can target exact pieces you’re missing without farming. The free Nameless Honor pass track also gives out multiple 5-star relic crates every season, plus dozens of 4-star relics that work great as fodder or early-game gear. These extra sources add up fast, and can give you 10 to 15 extra 5-star relics per month even if you don’t change your regular cavern farming routine, making it far easier to figure out how to get more relics in Honkai Star Rail without spending extra time or money.
Tips to Increase Usable Relic Drop Rates
Getting more relics doesn’t help if most of them are useless garbage with bad main stats and terrible substats. These small tips will help you get more usable pieces per run, so you don’t waste time farming drops you’ll just throw away later. First, farm higher difficulty caverns as soon as you can clear them reliably. Caverns unlocked after Trailblaze Level 60 have a 30% higher drop rate for 5-star relics than lower difficulty ones, even if your clear time is 2 minutes longer, it’s worth it for the better drop odds.
You should also prioritize sets with multiple use cases when you’re first starting out. For example, the Hunter of Glacial Forest set works for both Jingliu and Yanqing, so farming that set gives you usable pieces for two characters instead of just one, cutting your farming time in half. Don’t write off 4-star relics early on either, a well-rolled 4-star set can perform almost as well as a poorly rolled 5-star set, and you get way more 4-star drops per run, so you can build functional teams faster while you save for perfect 5-star pieces. The relic synthesis system also lets you turn 10 useless 5-star relics into a random piece of a set you choose, so even bad drops aren’t a total waste. These small adjustments won’t just increase the number of relics you get, they’ll also make the process of how to get more relics in Honkai Star Rail feel far less grindy overall.
Common Relic Farming Mistakes to Avoid
A lot of players slow down their relic farming progress without even realizing it, by making small, avoidable mistakes. I’ve made all of these myself at some point, so I know how much time and stamina they can waste if you don’t catch them early. Some of the most common mistakes are:
- Capping your trailblaze power for more than 4 hours at a time: If you let your power hit the 180 cap and stay there, you're losing out on free power that regenerates every 6 minutes. Even setting a quick phone reminder to log in and use power twice a day can give you 7 extra runs per week, which adds up to 30 extra runs per month.
- Leveling bad relics just to fill slots: It's tempting to level a 5-star relic with terrible substats just to get the full set bonus, but you'll end up wasting thousands of relic exp that you could have used on a good piece later. Only level relics that have at least 2 useful substats for the character you're building.
- Farming relics for underleveled characters: You can't equip 5-star relics until a character hits level 60, so there's no point farming sets for units you haven't leveled up and tested first. You might find you don't even like using them, and all that stamina was wasted for nothing.
Another mistake I see a lot is ignoring substats entirely to chase a full set bonus. A 2-piece set bonus plus two off-set pieces with perfect substats will almost always outperform a full 4-piece set with garbage substats, so don't be afraid to mix and match until you get full set pieces that are well-rolled. You can always swap pieces later as you get better drops, so don’t feel like you have to lock into a full set immediately.
At the end of the day, gearing in Honkai: Star Rail is a grind, but it doesn't have to be a frustrating one. By focusing on stamina efficiency, using all hidden drop sources, and avoiding common mistakes, you'll be able to get more relics in Honkai Star Rail way faster than you would by just spamming cavern runs every day. You don't have to spend real money to get great relics, either; all the tips in this guide work for free-to-play players just as well as they do for players who spend on the battle pass. The best part is that once you build up a decent stash of relics, you can swap pieces between characters easily, so every run you do now pays off for all your future pulls too.
