If you’ve ever spent hours farming a Cavern of Corrosion just to pull a perfect 5-star relic for your main DPS, only to waste half your credit stockpile leveling it wrong, you’re not alone. New players make this mistake all the time, dumping rare resources into relics that won’t give them any meaningful power boost, or rolling bad substats that make the whole upgrade feel like a waste. This guide breaks down everything you need to know to get the most out of every relic you pull, no unnecessary resource drains included. We’re covering how to level up relics in Honkai Star Rail the way long-time players do, so you can push through forgotten halls and simulated universe worlds faster than ever.
How to Level Up Relics in Honkai Star Rail: Core Basics You Can’t Skip
First, let’s cover the actual upgrade process for anyone who hasn’t messed with the system yet. To level a relic, head to your inventory, select the “Relics” tab, pick the relic you want to upgrade, and click the “Enhance” button in the bottom right corner. You can use other relics as fodder, or use relic dust (a material you get from decomposing unused relics) to power the upgrade, plus a small credit fee for each level up. It sounds simple on paper, but the mistake most players make before they even hit the enhance button is picking the wrong relics to level in the first place.
Only 5-star relics from level 65+ Caverns of Corrosion or Simulated Universe World 3+ are worth leveling to +15. 4-star relics are fine for early game up to Trailblaze Level 40, but their stat caps are so much lower than 5-star options that dumping resources into them past that point is just throwing materials away. If you’re still using 4-star relics at level 50, you’re making your team way weaker than they could be for no good reason.
Another key basic to remember: every 3 levels you upgrade a relic, you’ll either get a new substat (if the relic has fewer than 4 total) or a random upgrade to one of its existing substats. This is why most players stop upgrading at +3, +6, and +9 to check how the substat rolls are going before investing more materials. If your first two upgrades go into a useless stat like DEF for your main DPS, you can cut your losses early and use that half-leveled relic as fodder for a better one later.
How to Pick Relics Worth Upgrading to Avoid Wasting Materials
Before you even think about clicking the enhance button, you need to make sure the relic you’re targeting is actually worth the investment. A lot of new players get excited when they pull any 5-star relic and level it immediately, even if it has a terrible main stat or substats that don’t fit any character on their team. To avoid that mistake, run through this quick checklist before you spend any materials on a relic:
- Main stat matches your character’s core needs (e.g., ATK% for DPS, SPD for supports that need to act first, HP% for preservation characters)
- At least 2 of the 4 starting substats align with the character’s build (e.g., crit rate/crit damage for DPS, effect hit rate for debuff supports)
- The relic belongs to a 2-piece or 4-piece set that the character actually uses, not a random set you pulled by accident
- You already have the full set for the character, or this is the last missing piece to complete their set bonus
Never level a relic just because it’s a 5-star. I’ve seen F2P friends dump 100,000 credits and 20 fodder relics into a 5-star body piece for Seele with DEF% main stat, just because it had a 4% crit rate substat. That’s a terrible tradeoff, because the main stat contributes 3-4 times more to a character’s power than any single substat roll. If the main stat is wrong, the relic is basically useless even if it has perfect substats, so just decompose it or use it as fodder immediately.
For early game players, you can be a little more lenient with these rules. If you’re still at Trailblaze Level 30 and haven’t pulled any 5-star relics yet, leveling a 4-star relic with the right main stat to +6 or +9 is totally fine. Just make sure you don’t take it all the way to +15, because you’ll replace it within a few weeks anyway.
Efficient Fodder Farming Tips for Relic Upgrades
One of the biggest pain points for upgrading relics is running out of fodder or credits halfway through a level up. If you’re tired of waiting days to get enough materials to max out a single relic, these tips will help you farm fodder way more efficiently without wasting your valuable Trailblaze Power.
The most efficient way to farm relic fodder is running the Cavern of Corrosion for the sets you actually need. A lot of players waste Trailblaze Power on the relic dust calyx, but you get way more value running caverns for the sets your team needs, even if 90% of the drops are bad. Every bad drop you get can be used as fodder for the good relics from the same cavern, so you’re making progress on building your set and getting fodder at the same time. It’s a win-win, and you’ll never have to waste power on random dust runs again.
You should also make sure you’re clearing all your weekly Simulated Universe runs and weekly boss fights every reset. These give you a ton of free relic drops every week, no Trailblaze Power required for the boss rewards, and most of them will be fodder you can use for upgrades. I usually get enough fodder from my weekly runs to level one full relic to +15 every week, no extra farming needed.
Don’t use 5-star relics as fodder unless you’re 100% sure you will never use them on any character. HoYoverse adds new characters every patch, and you never know when a new 5-star will drop that perfectly fits a random set you had sitting in your inventory. I kept a random 5-star Musketeer set with SPD substats for 3 months before I pulled Sparkle, and that set ended up being perfect for her. If I’d foddered it earlier, I would have had to farm the whole set all over again.
Advanced Relic Leveling Strategies for Endgame Players
Once you hit Trailblaze Level 65 and start building endgame teams for Forgotten Hall and Pure Fiction, you can start using more specific strategies to get the most out of every upgrade. These tips are for players who already have their core team’s main stats sorted, and want to min-max their substat rolls without wasting hundreds of materials on bad RNG.
First, for main DPS characters, stop upgrading a relic at +6 if none of the first two substat upgrades went into your desired stats. For example, if you have a DPS relic with crit rate, crit damage, ATK%, and DEF as starting substats, and the first two upgrades both go into DEF, you can stop at +6 and use it as fodder for another relic. The odds of the remaining 3 upgrades going into your desired stats are extremely low, so it’s not worth wasting the extra materials to find out.
For support characters, you don’t need perfect substat rolls to level their relics to 15. As long as the main stat is correct and the set bonus fits their kit, even if all the substats go into useless stats, the main stat boost and set bonus will be enough for 99% of endgame content. I have a Bronya with +15 relics that have almost all DEF substats, and she still works perfectly in every endgame team I put her in. Don’t waste weeks rerolling support relics for perfect SPD rolls unless you’re trying to hit a very specific speed breakpoint for a top-tier clear.
You should also prioritize leveling relics in the order that gives you the biggest stat boost first. Head and hand pieces have fixed main stats (HP and ATK respectively), so there’s no RNG involved, you can level those to +15 immediately as soon as you get them for a character. Next, level the body and feet pieces, since those have the biggest variable main stat boosts, then level the planar ornaments last. This order ensures you get the most power for your materials as fast as possible, instead of wasting 100k credits on a planar ornament that only gives a small stat boost.
At the end of the day, learning how to level up relics in Honkai Star Rail isn’t about following some super strict meta rulebook, it’s about making the most of the materials you have, especially if you’re playing F2P. It’s totally normal to mess up a few upgrades when you’re first starting out, and you don’t need perfect substat rolls on every relic to clear all the game’s current content. If you’re ever unsure if a relic is worth leveling, test it at +3 first before you pour more resources into it, or ask a friend in your Honkai server for a second opinion. A little extra care before you hit enhance will save you weeks of wasted farming down the line, and help you build a team that can take on any content the game throws at you.
